Part 2

My hopes of tranquility were shattered, almost literally when I arrived home,  went to get a glass of water, and the ceiling started shaking. I ran upstairs to find three boys playing nerf basketball and beating the crap out of each other ( but not necessarily in that order).  I chased them into the basement where they continued to beat the crap out of each other, this time while playing pool, but at least I didn't have plaster in my drink.

Along the way I passed the girls in standard formation....braiding each others hair, listening to base laden music on a devise with no base, and compulsively pouring over facebook making duckfaces.

I headed back downstairs and cooked myself up a California kitchen frozen pizza.  It's the spiciest, toppings laden, cardboard crust frozen pizza, completely devoid of all nutritional value but heavy with carcinogens.  It's delicious.


My wife and her mother sat in from of the TV which was turned up to ear shattering levels, projecting the insights and emotions of one home makeover show or another.  The programming was periodically interrupted by commercials for other home makeover shows, estrogen replacement therapy products, and some god awful Seth Rogan/Barbara Streisand movie.  These ads are all implausibly louder than the program, but since the women only talk to each other during the breaks, they're forced to scream at each other at the top of their lungs.






I moved onto eating little tiny cheese cakes with cherry topping that I hid  way back in the fridge so no one else would eat them. Then I found where someone else had hidden some whipped topping and stole just enough that they might not notice that any was taken.

I yelled  at the women to turn the T.V. down during the commercials and get yelled at back for being unreasonable.

Then I ate the rest of the whipped topping and buried the evidence deep in the trash.

At some point during all of this my third daughter facetimed ( if that's even a verb) in from my parent's house.   The girls came down and the boys came up and a fight broke out over the iPad as everyone tried to talk to Sophie, who was thoroughly excited to be the center of chaos and attention. When it was finally my turn she makes it a point to tell me that I still l look like I'm losing my hair and I have a unibrow "even on the Internet".  I faked outrage and she laughed uncontrollably then told me she loved me before she was snatched away by the girls who took over the iPad as the boys wandered off to the kitchen.

I became concerned that someone would start looking for the whipped toppling.


That's when total pandemonium hit,  " A mouse, a mouse, we're all going to get the plague.....ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. "  Kids started screaming and running in place and a little mouse scampered across the kitchen floor and up under the cupboard.

Four goddamn cats....I'm halfway to being a shut in, with all these stupid cats... and we have a mouse.



I chased everyone off and went out to the garage to find a mouse trap. After 20 minutes I found 3 hidden keys I'd forgotten, an almost empty bottle of sambuka from 2004, and a Polaroid from a friend's bachelor party that might have gotten him divorced if he wasn't divorced already.

By the time I admitted defeat and came in, the ladies had shuffled off to bed and I laid on the coach alone.  I watched one of the cats repeatedly try to climb the Christmas tree only to come cartwheeling back down in a rain of ornaments and fall into the tree stand moat.

As I sipped my vintage sambuka and drifted off to sleep, I mumbled to myself, "They're never going to get respect from the mice at this rate."

Just a typical Thursday ( part 1)

I was greeted home last night by a house full of teenagers.

Downstairs in the kitchen were a gaggle of 14 year old girls who were drinking hot chocolate after coming in from the snow.  After, " Hello Mr. Flick" I pretty much lost the plot.  They talked non stop and despite me knowing it was English, I couldn't understand a thing in a sea of acronyms, high pitched babbling and snorting laughter.

Then the three boys rolled in from sledding.  Somehow the figured out a way to get a days sledding out of one inch of snow, but failed at any time during a the day off to shovel the driveway or put the trash out.  They flew through the door in an explosion of hats and gloves and headed right for the refrigerator smashing into everything on their way across the house.

It was 4:15.  I'd never make it the whole night.

After setting the boys upstairs with a video game, and the girls downstairs with a couple of bags of popcorn and a teen movie ( Pitch Perfect, and apparently its not about a baseball pitcher....omg Dad you're soooo weird !) , I got the hell out of dodge.

I headed directly to Schwartz's house.  Schwartz's house is the set of Leave it to Beaver as painted by Norman Rockwell.  The boys are well mannered and calm, his wife, looks like she just stepped out of a Lands End catalog and is always smiling..... smiling !, and Schwartz is a pipe away from being Ward Cleaver in slippers and a sweater doling out sage  advice in earnest tones.

Upon diagnosing my condition, Dr. Schwartz took me out to the garage for a game of washers.  Washers is both an amazing horseshoe style game of dexterity and finesses, and a very good excuse to go into the garage to get drunk. We played a lot of washers.  And if that wasn't enough to fix what was ailing me, on cue Mrs. Schwartz then called us in for a bowl of ice cream.

"Chocolate syrup ?",  she asked rhetorically.

I stood in the Schwartz's kitchen and I knew how Eddie Haskell must have felt.  Wally and the Beav sat at the counter politely enjoying their ice cream , Schwartz ate basking in the glow of his recent washers victory, and Mom doted over all of them in soft lighting and the quite hum of holiday music in the background.  At any moment I expected us to fade to commercial for Tide.

I contemplated the possibilities of conking Schwartz over the head and moving myself in caveman style, but dismissed the idea as I always do, out of a deep seeded love for Schwartz and the fact that I can't seem to figure out how to get away with it.  But, eventually, and after staying my standard 10 minutes too long, I had to depart my island of tranquility and head back home.

Driving home, I hope that a few hours would have things settled down, and at that the washers and ice cream would leave me better prepared.


 ( part 2 to come)

My Christmas Theme

On Christmas morning my mother in law just asked me to help her take the turkey out of the oven.

I picked it up and turkey grease poured out of the side, onto my left ass cheek and down the left leg of my pajamas.

I threw the turkey down and in a panic ripped off my pajamas. I then ran a full lap of the kitchen naked, howling in pain, trying to swat the grease off with my left hand and cupping my package as best I could in modesty with the right.
 
As I ran up the stairs, I heard my son wander into the scene and ask my daughter, " what happened to Dad, did he burn his dick ?"

That's a far cry from, " god bless us everyone "