Friday, November 26, 2010

What’s Thankgsiving Without Wings.

Posted by He Said

There are many laws and rules which shape our lives and the world we live in.  Gravity, Physics, Murphy’s Laws and a more specific but particular favorite of mine is the If You Have Been Married For Any Length Of Time You Will Be Required To Purchase Feminine Hygiene Products For Your Wife Law. Now let me be clear, I don’t find this embarrassing or awkward in any way.  It’s life.  In fact, there is something particularly enjoyable about being asked if I would mind “picking something up” when I KNOW it’s going to give me fodder  for a good mocking.

My wife looks at me all doughy eyed as this is going to be a HUGE inconvenience for me. “Will you pick up some panty liners for me?”

YES. In my head I am already processing, realizing that there is a good joke in here somewhere.  In fact I thought about it so much I apparently stood there looking dumbfounded because I paused long enough for her to ask if it was a big deal, and then for her to retract her question.  After a bit of convincing that no, really, this is just funny for me because the If You Have Been Married For Any Length Of Time You Will Be Required To Purchase Feminine Hygiene Products For Your Wife Law has just kicked in and I think its funny.

So I ask “What kind?”
She Said: “It doesn’t matter.”
Me ( very skeptical ): “What size?”
She Said ( very mockingly ): “There is only one size.”
Me: (throw skeptical WTF are you saying look).
She: (throws are you an idiot look)
Me: (quickly retract skeptical WTF look and say) “Ok, I will get some at the store.”

Now in a society that has human beings of many shapes and sizes I just assumed that there would be super tiny panty liners for oh say a size 0 woman. Everything we buy has choices to be made.  For a moment I thought I just MIGHT be right about this (I was right once before) and then the moment passed and I realized that of course I MUST be wrong.  There probably is only one kind of panty liner.  Right?  Getting my wife’s preferred panty liner details was like pulling teeth.

When I finally got to the Feminine Hygiene products aisle I see that I was right.  There is more variation in panty liners than Ford has in its auto lineup.  To prove it I had to use the panorama app on my phone to capture it.

Photo Nov 25, 11 59 01 AM

So the texting conversation went a little something like this.

Me: There is only one kind (include picture above).
She: LMAO.  Unscented. I don’t care what brand. Smile with tongue out
Me: What brand do u usually buy. Only generic say unscented.
She: Always. I think. Usually grab the best deal. Go figure.

The cheapest unscented brand was a box of 24 for like a dollar.  I KNEW if I brought this home there would be something about them that was wrong.  I just couldn’t get myself to do it.  I couldn’t find the Always brand in unscented. So I started browsing the various types.  Just a small sampling of the “one size” as my wife put it.

Regular, regular with wings, regular with wings scented, long, long with wings, long with wings with baking power, all night, super thin and all variations in between.  My favorite choice of all were the thong shaped. I thought about bringing those home just for fun to prove that I could screw this up somehow.

In the end I found a non $1 brand that met the detailed requirements and purchased those.

This blog is the follow up to the mocking my wife got when I got home. I don’t think I will be letting this go anytime soon, and as such, I don’t think I will be asked to buy panty liners anytime soon.

Monday, November 8, 2010

What’s In A Number Anyway

Posted by He Said

This last week there has been an unusual focus from the kids on numbers.  I don’t know if it has to do with what the kids are studying in school, a change in what Susanne and I are asking of the kids, or that Susanne has been counting the stacks of $100 bills we have been saving since we moved out of the house.  Regardless there has been a lot of Braedyn walking around the house counting by 1, 10, 20 and even by 100’s as high as he can go.  And he can count high, let me tell you. As proud a parent as it makes me to hear him get started, it’s a little like listening while sober to someone sing “Bottles of beer on the wall” and counting down from one billion.  Yeah.  It really is a little like that.

Just a few days ago, we were all sitting around in our family time circle.  For newcomers this is me on the couch with my iPhone and/or laptop, Susanne at the dining table on her laptop AND iPhone and both the kids either watching a movie, or playing on their iPods.  Like I said, family time, I mean we are all in the house at once, what more can you ask for.

So there we are, enjoying family time and Braedyn starts counting by 1,000’s.

“One thousand, two thousand, three thousand” and no, I will not edit this for brevity, if I have to live through it, then so do you, “four thousand, five thousand, six thousand, seven thousand, eight thousand, nine thousand and one MILLION!”

He looked at me with an ear to ear grin, just bursting with pride.  He was SO thrilled with himself and looking for confirmation of his grand feat, and what does this un-father of the year do?  I look at him, tell him, great job, but “after nine thousand comes ten thousand.” 

He pauses for a moment and says “No dad, when you count to one thousand by one hundreds there are no ten one hundreds, so there are no ten thousands.”

Now this is logic that is hard to argue with. I mean when you think about it, he has a point.  There are ten 1’s when counting to ten and there are ten 10’s when going to 100 and there are ten 100’s when you are going to 1,000.  So who am I to argue that somebody really screwed up this counting thing and that Braedyn’s logic is sound. But I tried to explain that there really were 10,000’s and more on the way to one million.  All I did was make my son feel bad.  I took note of this, slotted it in the back of my mind in the section “thing’s NOT to correct my son about”  and said, “well, ask about it in school and let me know. “  End of the argument and we all returned to family time.  I don’t think I ruined him for life.  I won’t know till he calls from from jail to bail him out.  That will likely wait till he is at least 18.

As I said, this has been the week of numbers.  Saturday the three of us (Susanne had left me yet again, and yes, she came back) were on our way to get a little high.  Doughboy Donut sugar high that is.  Nothing like an angel cream stuffed chocolate covered donut to start the day.  Halfway to our destination Braedyn pipes up with a comment about lines of cars being the definition of traffic. I of course was shocked that he was focused on SOMETHING, ANYTHING other than how to piss his sister off in the car. So I jumped on the opportunity to keep the conversation going.

Me: “Yes, technically the cars don’t have to be in a line to be traffic, there just have to be lots of cars on the road to be a lot of traffic.”
Braedyn: “Like in China where there are lots of cars?”
Me: “Yes, and in China there were thousands of cars on the road, wasn’t there?”
Braedyn: “Yeah, maybe millions, or even billions!”
Me: “Yeah, maybe!”

Emily had been strangely quiet up to this point, and I was wondering if she was even paying attention when she pipes in with “or maybe more, maybe one hundred and three!”

This time I kept my mouth shut, I mean, what’s in a number anyway.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Houdini, Part Freakin’ Two

Posted by She Said

Our dog saga continues, much to my chagrin. Charmin, although her squeezable softness is remarkable, should have been named Tigger due to the freak-of-nature height she reaches in her every jump. We (we being Greg) have lined our fence with an electric wire, which presumably would keep any dog cowering away from the fence in fear of getting shocked. That would be true for any dog that subscribes to the Pavlov theory, and if you haven’t already guess, that would NOT be our dog. She’ll be damned if she is going to let a little jolt stop her from riding along with me as I take the kids to school, attend a birthday party, or even tag along for those once-a-year “fun” check ups.

This, let me assure you, IS. A. BITCH.

Our test run with the fence resulted in me coming home to her terrorizing the construction workers in our expanding neighborhood. The best part? She kept jumping into the back yard of the cookie cutter home that looks just like ours only several doors away. Hey, I never said she was brilliant, just impervious to the powers of conditioning.

As my friend Kerry would say, Oy! I have a headache in my eye!

photo (23)photo (21)

Gotta love her persistence!

Actually, no I don’t.