Classic quotes, Vol. 41

Here are a few more recent quotes from my 8-year-old son D-, my 5-year-old daughter M-, and my nearly-2-year-old son E-:

D- (having been shown an "I'm too busy to be organized!" mug I'd gotten for my wife J-): Hey! Mom should put that on her desk! ...Because she's always so busy... that she can't be... organized.

E- (coming into his family heritage, waking unwillingly as I laid him down to change him one morning): Eyes! (rolling away, pawing at his face) Wight! (openly frustrated that I just don't seem to get it) Bwight!!

D- (seeing an Adidas footprint in the dirt): Hey look! It says AIDS in the footprint!

M- (vehemently disputing D-'s account of her assault): I didn't punch him in the EYE... I punched him in the FOREhead!!

D- (referring to a man speaking through a megaphone to a crowd of kids): That's not a very loud... shouty-thingy.

A conversation with M- and D-: How many licks does it take?

The following is a recent conversation I had with my 8-year-old son D- and 5-year-old daughter M-, the tone of which is predictably not all that rare around here:

D- (sharing an announcement with the world) : She LICKed meeeeee!

M- (feebly beginning a defense): No...

Me: M-, did you lick him?

M- (thinking better of it): Yes... Because he was being a jerk, and wouldn't stop!

Me: It's not a good strategy to use your germs as a weapon. And it's never a good idea to ever LICK an 8-year-old...

D- (almost proudly): Yeah, especially THIS one!

---

You may enjoy my previous D- conversations, M- conversations, and (wife) J- conversations.

Amusing searches, Vol. 18

Here are more of the most amusing searches that have brought people here, in no particular order.

(All search strings are reprinted exactly as they were entered, and the search text links to the post at which the visitor arrived.)

• things i enjoy my wife hates (Akron, OH) - If you're looking for tips and advice, I unfortunately have nothing much to offer you, but I can say that wives have notoriously poor taste and questionable judgment.

• RI ESCORTS (Warwick, RI) - This was clearly a smart search, because YOU KNOW I AM ALL ABOUT THE RHODE ISLAND EXCORTS, my friend!!*

• when to label a 5 year old girl as homosexual (Quezon City, The Philippines) - How about, "Never"? Is Never an acceptable answer? You'll find out in good time, or not at all, depending on her comfort level...

• PEE (Norvenich, Germany) - Either PEE is a legitimate, dignified acronym in Germany, or I think maybe this was supposed to be some kind of horrible image/video search.

• waxelene for vagina (Valencia, CA) - Sorry, can't help you at the moment, I haven't tried using it on my vagina yet.

---

* Given that you arrived here via an amusing Internet search yourself, sir, it was probably a bit awkward in an "uh-oh, too late" kind of way when you landed on a post in which I was mocking the previous searches of others. Sorry you had to see that... and I'll be sorrier if you ever happen upon this one in future searches. Just make sure it's a good one! No reason...

Classic quotes, Vol. 40

Here are a few of the recent quotes (that I remembered to write down) from my 8-year-old son D-, my 5-year-old daughter M-, and my 20-month-old son E- (still not yet on the banner!):

M- (seemingly unburdened by Knowing It All, dropping some knowledge on her older brother): Did you know, that cheese is just dried, hard milk? (waving around her wrapped, pre-sliced piece of cheese-like food substance) Just like... floppy milk?

D- (seeing a "No Grills Allowed" sign as we drove through a park entrance to the soccer fields): Whoa! Wait, what?!? This park says, "NO GIRLS ALLOWED"!!

M- (already pushing fashion limits, when I asked if she was there to give us all a Belly Show with the size-4T shirt she had on): If it's only a small belly show, it's okay...

E- (though barely verbal, being under 2, when asked if he wanted "a cookie"): Two!!

M- (sprinkling some color in her daily gossip, trumping up her tattling charges on some kid I don't know): And then she started saying... you know that BAD word, that starts with F??!?*

---

* After a bit of internal hubbub on our part, it turned out to be "fart", which is odd since it's not considered a "bad word" in our house, though I may have been known to discourage them from shouting it out at the dinner table.

A lion in autumn

An e-mail I recently received from Buy.com asked the deceptively simple question, "What will you be this Halloween?"

That quandary was immediately and permanently addressed within the body of that very e-mail, in the form of a timeless treasure buried beneath a pile of boring, foolish, or even mildly ridiculous costumes: "A Sexy Wizard of Oz Cowardly Lion!"

Just in case one did not immediately grasp the magic inherent in those words, they included a siren song for the eyes:

Seems astonishingly obvious once you hear it and see it laid out like this, doesn't it? I mean, right here you have the very heart* of the film if not of the original book series itself! The whole narrative, this fictional universe, it all begins to collapse without the hefty weight of the Cowardly Lion's sex appeal anchoring it all --unspoken, undescribed, unobserved... possibly nonexistent-- and yet I'll bet you never once thought of it before now. Genius. Just genius.

Now, granted, the "sexiness" of this particular creation is highly dependent on the nature of the clay used to craft it, but I'm pretty confident I have the body to pull it off. The only real stumbling block to my undisputed ownership of this and all future Halloweens is the fact that it's currently on sale for $77.

I may have to let some pretender claim my throne, for that price. Or else, hmmmm... what would one of those craft bloggers do?

I'm off to find where I left my tan Spanx bodysuit and faux-fur boots 'n' muff!

---

* Tin Woodman be damned. Again.

Things that amuse me, Vol. 13

Though nasty she may frequently be these days, as she adjusts to waking up early for kindergarten, my 5-year-old daughter M- apparently still manages to be amusing enough to dominate the quote lists as well as this, the latest list of Things That Have Been Amusing Me recently:

1. When trying to find the words to describe the chaos that results from trying to simultaneously treat (and bathe!) eight 2-month-old kittens for fleas in the same evening, this is what she came up with: "It's like a KITTEN NURSERY in here! ...Except a kitten nursery run by drunk people who have no idea what they're doing!" It was an inspiring vote of confidence.

2. When trying to clarify what she saw when retelling part of a Tintin cartoon she'd watched, M- asked, "Wait, do 'bombs' have little, like, tails coming out of them?"

3. Kids love to keep you guessing... as I watched my 1-year-old son E- cruising around the school one morning, eating a tiny banana for breakfast and loving the independence, I figured I'd need to be on the lookout for the moment he would be struck with the unoriginal inspiration to rub it all over the disgusting hallway floor before taking another bite.

Instead, he decided to throw me a curveball by waiting till I blinked to subtly pick up some kind of mysteriously blackened bark chip off that floor and then stick it directly INTO the banana, for absolutely no reason at all. It's not as if he could say, "Oh, my mistake-- I thought it was that OTHER kind of thing we commonly shove into our bananas!" Even after 8 years of this, I was just not prepared for that move.

Classic quotes, Vol. 39

Here are a few recent notable quotes from my 8-year-old son D-, my 5-year-old daughter M-, and, in his quote-list debut, my 20-month-old son E-:

M- (among her rules for decorating the cakes from her little cake-making kit): No punching, no kicking, and no head-butting.

D- (smiling while reminiscing, after I pointed out he and his sister have already taught their little brother E- to laugh at mentions of bodily functions, by example): Yeah... heh-heh... we have...

M- (the day after the Olympics ended, out of the blue): I want to wear an outfit like those... who are those people, again, who jump over those GIANT hurdles? (Me: "Hurdlers?") Yes, hurdlers. I want to wear those shorts and one of those shirts, that shows my belly, then people will think I'm one of them! (giggles)

E- (begging for a bite of popsicle from his big brother D-): Bite! Biiiiite!! (after digging a tiny Nerf gun into his chest) Bite.

Super fun vacation time for old ladies

Well, after a few years of working from home while watching the kids (easier with all-day school, for sure!), and thus splitting responsibilities a lot more with my wife J- than I had been, I'm now ankle-deep in a taste of juggling everything by myself again for a week and a half: J- is taking a vacation with my sister and her friend to hang around a beach house and reflect on turning 30 and 25, respectively.

I shouldn't complain, since I took a similar trip with my brother last year* when I turned 30, but who would I be if I didn't? I mean, you may not realize it, given my laughably outdated banner up there, but I'm dealing with an 8-year-old, a 5-year-old, a 19-month-old, a basement full of fleas, and a garage full of 9 cats**, whereas J- only had to deal with a 7-year-old, a 4-year-old, a 7-month-old, a kitchen being drywalled, and a very welcome mother cat and three kittens*** who'd recently shown up on our doorstep out here in Cat Country.

So, clearly, the difference is night and day.

J- dealt with the stress last year by buying them off with a promise to have candy for dinner, and then following through in legendary form.

Problem for me is, not only do they now have their bars set somewhere just above, "There is such a thing as candy for dinner", but they've already spent most of this summer being spoiled by one set of grandparents or another, to the point that the older two wouldn't bat an eyelash at being handed the keys to their own set of his-and-hers hovercrafts.

So what am I supposed to do?

All I've come up with so far is to go totally the other way and just put them to work as much as possible, to make them really appreciate heading back to school soon, as a break in their strict schedule of Cleaning Up After Myself, plus Other Light Chores****. It seems to be working pretty well, knock on wood... for me, at least.

I think they'll be happy to see Momma walk through the door.

---

* Of course I didn't take the opportunity to get back into writing real blog posts at the time, because that would make too much sense.

** Now that we found a home for one of the 8 kittens born in two litters within two days back in May...

*** The surviving kitten of which just had her first litter (of 5) in our garage at almost exactly 1 year old.

**** The latter of which generally gets bumped off the schedule, due to the first show running long...

Amusing searches, Vol. 17

Here are some more of the most amusing searches that have brought people here.

(All search strings are reprinted exactly as they were entered, and the search text links to the post at which the visitor arrived.)

• is too many orgasm fatal - Honestly, for the last time, I don't know, but I suppose you'll have a lot of fun pioneering this important research.

• pic of odd middle aged mom (Bournemouth, UK) - I certainly do make an odd middle-aged mom, I grant you that. But I charge for pictures.

• dead animal smell in vagina (Modesto, CA) - Ahhh, yes, this is a common side effect of passing out in the woods while wearing edible underwear. I'd suggest not doing this anymore, or if you must, at least lay out some traps first rather than relying on suffocation as your method of execution, given the difficult and awkward process of corpse extrication the next morning.

• orangutan named Karl (Lake Worth, FL) - I'm sorry, you must have been looking for my orangutan-related dating site, takingadvantageoforangutanobsessions.com

• my three-year-old son is an asshole - Aren't they all, really? In fact, I think this is just a slightly-less-PC version of the milestone label doctors have always used.

Classic quotes, Vol. 38

Here are a few recent notable quotes from my 8-year-old son D- and my 5-year-old daughter M-:

M- (amused by my response to her claim that she and D- will become spies when they grow up): No, we wouldn't have to work hard in school for it, it's all very easy!

D- (with slack-jawed awe, quietly to himself while watching The Avengers at a drive-in, after a giant flying robot-bug ship crashed into a building): Now thaaaaaat's... somethin'...

M- (as if I could have no idea what she's talking about, after she cleared her lunch plate): I'm going to go ask Mom something... (mysteriously) because it's something that can only happen after lunch...