Here's what I did so far today: I invented a new kind of cereal. I call it "Breakfast Cereal." It will have little cereal bits shaped like pancakes (and slightly maple flavored) and muffins, and will also have marshmallows shaped like bacon and eggs.
I have no idea how to take it from the "I'm driving to work but have a brilliant idea which I will text to myself using my cellphone while I drive so that when I get to work I have an email that says bkfstcrl waiting for me" to the "Here's the finished product that people can buy for too much money at the store and then have their Babies! spill all over the floor so that the vacuum cleaner they bought for $39.99 at Wal-Mart will jam up, as though it didn't jam up a lot already because it's frequently used to vacuum up macaroni and Ramen noodles and pretty much everything else that's on the floor after dinner, including, possibly, one of The Boy's school textbooks" stage, but that's not really my problem, right? It's a problem for engineers, or factory workers, or someone who has skills that are more of the functional/useful variety than mine.
Although not useful, I am very proud of the skills I do have, which at this point include not just lawyering and inventing breakfast cereals but also making up new games to play with the Babies! -- the latest is "Police Bees," which I had to invent because "Cloverfield" is taking a toll on me. Cloverfield is a hard game to play. These Babies! are up over 30 pounds now, and so to play "Cloverfield" I not only have to walk around swinging my arms, but I have to pick them up and drop them on the couch, sometimes doing that for as much as a half-hour, and sometimes they don't really try to get away, sometimes they just sit on the couch, because the best part of the game is the dropping, not the running, and I have to pick them up right away again, so my arms don't even get a break. Plus, I have to roar and keep yelling "CLOVERFIELD!!!!" and that gets hard on my throat.
So I invented a second game, for when my biceps just can't lift them anymore, and that second game is "Police Bees," which is more or less what you think it is, assuming that you think it's me chasing Mr F and Mr Bunches around our house while making siren noises and, when I catch them, tickling their ears while buzzing -- because that's what Police Bees do, they chase the criminals and then sting/tickle their ears when they've got the bad guys.
That's pretty much my contribution to society these days. I've been worried about my contribution to society ever since I gave The Boy's friend a ride to school last Friday. I had to give The Boy's friend a ride to school because it was the first of final exam days, and at The Boy's school, they don't have to be at school all day for finals; they only have to show up for the start of their test and they're free to leave after their tests are done.
Ordinarily, The Boy and Middle and the friend go to school together at 7:30 in the morning. But on that morning, The Boy wasn't going in until 9 and Middle wasn't going in until later. Neither had bothered telling the friend this, so he showed up at our house at 7:30 expecting a ride to school and only then learned that he was on his own.
I don't know why The Boy didn't tell him; I don't know what it is that makes The Boy so busy that he can't tell his friend -- who lives next door -- that he's not going into school until later so the friend would be able to arrange his own ride. It might be that The Boy's projects keep him busy, projects like the olive-ectomy he performed on a slice of pizza the other night. We were having leftovers for dinner, and The Boy wanted leftover pizza. So while I sat down and ate and Sweetie sat down and ate, and the Babies! sat down and ate, The Boy was off at his own end of the table doing something with his slices of pizza... for 45 minutes. When we were all done (I thought) I got up, and began cleaning up Mr F and Mr Bunches and said to The Boy "Okay, start clearing up," and he protested, saying:
"What? I haven't even eaten yet!" I asked him what he'd been doing for 45 minutes, and he explained that he'd removed, apparently surgically, every olive and mushroom and green pepper from the leftover pizza, digging into the cheese to get them out while leaving as much cheese and sausage as possible.
Because The Boy is always too busy doing food surgery, I ended up driving his friend to school, and asked him what exams he had that day. The friend's only exams were in shop-related classes, and he described how he'd machined a bolt and built other kinds of stuff and wired things, and kept on until we got to the school and I dropped him off and drove away wondering what good I might be to society.
As a longtime fan of science fiction, I've long known that it's only a matter of time until civilization as we know it collapses. It might be a nuclear war, like in The Day After or Alas, Babylon. It might be giant elephant-like aliens who we have to attack with a nuclear-powered spaceship piloted by bikers with bad backs. It might just be that American Idol gets cancelled. Whatever it is that causes the collapse of civilization, it's certain to collapse.
After it collapses, then, it's also certain to need rebuilding, and that's where I get nervous. I have exactly zero useful skills. Do you think all those people gathering in Colorado to battle Walking Dude and his forces of evil in The Stand would need a blogger? When they relocate the capitol of the US to Albuquerque, New Mexico, because the Russians have invaded and C. Thomas Howell isn't around to fight them off, will a consumer lawyer be very much in demand?
I'd like to think so, but I'm skeptical that the dregs of humanity will be beating a path to my door saying things like only your encyclopedic knowledge of e e cummings' poems can help us now!
It's not like I'm completely useless. This past Sunday, for example, when crisis threatened, I was able to capably lose a tool while getting soaked. We were coming home from church around 10 a.m., and I was contemplating how we'd have to spend the next few hours continuing the shed demolition, when God intervened and rewarded me-- I thought -- by making it start to rain. Hooray! I could spend the rest of the day watching TV and playing "Police Bees."
Only it didn't work out that way, because the back stairwell started to flood again. Having just replaced the carpet, I wasn't about to let it get wrecked. We might have bought bottom-of-the-barrel, 55-cent per square foot carpet, but I like it and I'm going to defend it with my life.
My life, or the tools to unclog a drain. At least, the tools I have to unclog a drain. The tools I used to try to unclog the drain were: my Starbury running shoes (not the basketball shoes; those were muddy from the shed day), a long pole that was duct-taped to another long pole and used to be in my closet for some reason, a spade, a long metal pole with a hole in one end, a branch trimmer, a bucket, a laundry tub, and two hammers.
With those highly-useful tools, I went out in the pouring rain -- there was also lightning-- and stood ankle deep in the mud and began to try to figure out how to unclog the drain. I first tried reaching down into the drain itself, which required that I kneel in the mud water.
You have to know this about me: I saw Jaws when I was really little and ever since then, I don't trust any body of water larger than my hand. I don't even like bottled water.
I mention that because when I reached my hand into the water to reach down into the drain pipe, my very first thought was I hope something doesn't bite me. I don't know what I expected to be living in the drainpipe under water. An aquatic raccoon-shark, maybe. I just expected something to bite me.
When getting my arm dirty and wet proved to be useless, I began phase two of Operation Save The Carpet, which involved sticking various poles and saws into the hole and trying to dislodge the dirt and muck I assumed were in there clogging it. That's why I needed two hammers. I would put one of the poles or the shovel in there, and then ram it around with my hands, and then pound on the end of it with a hammer. (Don't try that at home. Or, do try it. After all, I did it safely, so you should be able to, as well.)
That completely failed to work, too, and resulted in my losing a hammer when the first one slipped out of my hands and dropped right down into the drain. So far from unclogging the drain, I was adding to it. And still the rain kept coming.
Phase three of Operation Save The Carpet had me pouring all of our Liquid Plumber into the drain, in case Liquid Plumber is capable of dissolving rock and dirt and hammers. (It's not.)
Phase four involved me realizing that I was now standing just over ankle deep -- the water was a risin' -- in muddy water in the lightning, only now the muddy water also contained Liquid Plumber that was probably going to start eating away my shoes.
Phase five was bailing out the stairwell with the bucket. I did that three times that day, going outside and getting soaked and throwing buckets of water into the yard until the water level went down to where it was no longer threatening to flood the new carpet. One of the times bailing the water out was around midnight that night. So whatever I'd thought earlier that morning, it was clear that God was not giving me a day off, and I'm definitely going to pay a lot closer attention in Church this week.
It worked: there was no flooding, and we got a drain guy out the next day. I had to call three drain guys to get one to come out there; the other two actively talked me out of hiring them. I'm guessing they had so many calls the day before that they'd retired from being drain guys and were going to move to Hawaii on their drain guy profits.
Drain guy number three came out, looked at the drain, and said it wasn't clogged, it was
just a small "French drain," designed to take runoff and leach it into the ground, and that it was overloggged with water from all the rain. In short, there was nothing he could do for us-- except charge us $60 for coming out, and recommend getting a pump.
So if society's collapse was one involving either (a) a lot of flooding, or (b) a need for new breakfast cereals, or (c) someone to guide the Police Bees to their quarry, I'm your guy.
Anything else, you'll probably want to get The Boy's friend. Or The Boy -- odds are, pizza surgeons will be in high demand in the new world order.
Want a free t-shirt? Of course you do. Click there to find out how you can get one courtesy of The Best of Everything: Our Opinions Are Righter Than Yours.
Help Mateo and McHale! The Wonder Twins are medical miracles, but they can't do everything. Find out more about them, and how to help them with their medical bills, by clicking this link.
Snack Food:
I have no idea how to take it from the "I'm driving to work but have a brilliant idea which I will text to myself using my cellphone while I drive so that when I get to work I have an email that says bkfstcrl waiting for me" to the "Here's the finished product that people can buy for too much money at the store and then have their Babies! spill all over the floor so that the vacuum cleaner they bought for $39.99 at Wal-Mart will jam up, as though it didn't jam up a lot already because it's frequently used to vacuum up macaroni and Ramen noodles and pretty much everything else that's on the floor after dinner, including, possibly, one of The Boy's school textbooks" stage, but that's not really my problem, right? It's a problem for engineers, or factory workers, or someone who has skills that are more of the functional/useful variety than mine.
Although not useful, I am very proud of the skills I do have, which at this point include not just lawyering and inventing breakfast cereals but also making up new games to play with the Babies! -- the latest is "Police Bees," which I had to invent because "Cloverfield" is taking a toll on me. Cloverfield is a hard game to play. These Babies! are up over 30 pounds now, and so to play "Cloverfield" I not only have to walk around swinging my arms, but I have to pick them up and drop them on the couch, sometimes doing that for as much as a half-hour, and sometimes they don't really try to get away, sometimes they just sit on the couch, because the best part of the game is the dropping, not the running, and I have to pick them up right away again, so my arms don't even get a break. Plus, I have to roar and keep yelling "CLOVERFIELD!!!!" and that gets hard on my throat.
So I invented a second game, for when my biceps just can't lift them anymore, and that second game is "Police Bees," which is more or less what you think it is, assuming that you think it's me chasing Mr F and Mr Bunches around our house while making siren noises and, when I catch them, tickling their ears while buzzing -- because that's what Police Bees do, they chase the criminals and then sting/tickle their ears when they've got the bad guys.
That's pretty much my contribution to society these days. I've been worried about my contribution to society ever since I gave The Boy's friend a ride to school last Friday. I had to give The Boy's friend a ride to school because it was the first of final exam days, and at The Boy's school, they don't have to be at school all day for finals; they only have to show up for the start of their test and they're free to leave after their tests are done.
Ordinarily, The Boy and Middle and the friend go to school together at 7:30 in the morning. But on that morning, The Boy wasn't going in until 9 and Middle wasn't going in until later. Neither had bothered telling the friend this, so he showed up at our house at 7:30 expecting a ride to school and only then learned that he was on his own.
I don't know why The Boy didn't tell him; I don't know what it is that makes The Boy so busy that he can't tell his friend -- who lives next door -- that he's not going into school until later so the friend would be able to arrange his own ride. It might be that The Boy's projects keep him busy, projects like the olive-ectomy he performed on a slice of pizza the other night. We were having leftovers for dinner, and The Boy wanted leftover pizza. So while I sat down and ate and Sweetie sat down and ate, and the Babies! sat down and ate, The Boy was off at his own end of the table doing something with his slices of pizza... for 45 minutes. When we were all done (I thought) I got up, and began cleaning up Mr F and Mr Bunches and said to The Boy "Okay, start clearing up," and he protested, saying:
"What? I haven't even eaten yet!" I asked him what he'd been doing for 45 minutes, and he explained that he'd removed, apparently surgically, every olive and mushroom and green pepper from the leftover pizza, digging into the cheese to get them out while leaving as much cheese and sausage as possible.
Because The Boy is always too busy doing food surgery, I ended up driving his friend to school, and asked him what exams he had that day. The friend's only exams were in shop-related classes, and he described how he'd machined a bolt and built other kinds of stuff and wired things, and kept on until we got to the school and I dropped him off and drove away wondering what good I might be to society.
As a longtime fan of science fiction, I've long known that it's only a matter of time until civilization as we know it collapses. It might be a nuclear war, like in The Day After or Alas, Babylon. It might be giant elephant-like aliens who we have to attack with a nuclear-powered spaceship piloted by bikers with bad backs. It might just be that American Idol gets cancelled. Whatever it is that causes the collapse of civilization, it's certain to collapse.
After it collapses, then, it's also certain to need rebuilding, and that's where I get nervous. I have exactly zero useful skills. Do you think all those people gathering in Colorado to battle Walking Dude and his forces of evil in The Stand would need a blogger? When they relocate the capitol of the US to Albuquerque, New Mexico, because the Russians have invaded and C. Thomas Howell isn't around to fight them off, will a consumer lawyer be very much in demand?
I'd like to think so, but I'm skeptical that the dregs of humanity will be beating a path to my door saying things like only your encyclopedic knowledge of e e cummings' poems can help us now!
It's not like I'm completely useless. This past Sunday, for example, when crisis threatened, I was able to capably lose a tool while getting soaked. We were coming home from church around 10 a.m., and I was contemplating how we'd have to spend the next few hours continuing the shed demolition, when God intervened and rewarded me-- I thought -- by making it start to rain. Hooray! I could spend the rest of the day watching TV and playing "Police Bees."
Only it didn't work out that way, because the back stairwell started to flood again. Having just replaced the carpet, I wasn't about to let it get wrecked. We might have bought bottom-of-the-barrel, 55-cent per square foot carpet, but I like it and I'm going to defend it with my life.
My life, or the tools to unclog a drain. At least, the tools I have to unclog a drain. The tools I used to try to unclog the drain were: my Starbury running shoes (not the basketball shoes; those were muddy from the shed day), a long pole that was duct-taped to another long pole and used to be in my closet for some reason, a spade, a long metal pole with a hole in one end, a branch trimmer, a bucket, a laundry tub, and two hammers.
With those highly-useful tools, I went out in the pouring rain -- there was also lightning-- and stood ankle deep in the mud and began to try to figure out how to unclog the drain. I first tried reaching down into the drain itself, which required that I kneel in the mud water.
You have to know this about me: I saw Jaws when I was really little and ever since then, I don't trust any body of water larger than my hand. I don't even like bottled water.
I mention that because when I reached my hand into the water to reach down into the drain pipe, my very first thought was I hope something doesn't bite me. I don't know what I expected to be living in the drainpipe under water. An aquatic raccoon-shark, maybe. I just expected something to bite me.
When getting my arm dirty and wet proved to be useless, I began phase two of Operation Save The Carpet, which involved sticking various poles and saws into the hole and trying to dislodge the dirt and muck I assumed were in there clogging it. That's why I needed two hammers. I would put one of the poles or the shovel in there, and then ram it around with my hands, and then pound on the end of it with a hammer. (Don't try that at home. Or, do try it. After all, I did it safely, so you should be able to, as well.)
That completely failed to work, too, and resulted in my losing a hammer when the first one slipped out of my hands and dropped right down into the drain. So far from unclogging the drain, I was adding to it. And still the rain kept coming.
Phase three of Operation Save The Carpet had me pouring all of our Liquid Plumber into the drain, in case Liquid Plumber is capable of dissolving rock and dirt and hammers. (It's not.)
Phase four involved me realizing that I was now standing just over ankle deep -- the water was a risin' -- in muddy water in the lightning, only now the muddy water also contained Liquid Plumber that was probably going to start eating away my shoes.Phase five was bailing out the stairwell with the bucket. I did that three times that day, going outside and getting soaked and throwing buckets of water into the yard until the water level went down to where it was no longer threatening to flood the new carpet. One of the times bailing the water out was around midnight that night. So whatever I'd thought earlier that morning, it was clear that God was not giving me a day off, and I'm definitely going to pay a lot closer attention in Church this week.
It worked: there was no flooding, and we got a drain guy out the next day. I had to call three drain guys to get one to come out there; the other two actively talked me out of hiring them. I'm guessing they had so many calls the day before that they'd retired from being drain guys and were going to move to Hawaii on their drain guy profits.
Drain guy number three came out, looked at the drain, and said it wasn't clogged, it was
just a small "French drain," designed to take runoff and leach it into the ground, and that it was overloggged with water from all the rain. In short, there was nothing he could do for us-- except charge us $60 for coming out, and recommend getting a pump.So if society's collapse was one involving either (a) a lot of flooding, or (b) a need for new breakfast cereals, or (c) someone to guide the Police Bees to their quarry, I'm your guy.
Anything else, you'll probably want to get The Boy's friend. Or The Boy -- odds are, pizza surgeons will be in high demand in the new world order.
Want a free t-shirt? Of course you do. Click there to find out how you can get one courtesy of The Best of Everything: Our Opinions Are Righter Than Yours.
Help Mateo and McHale! The Wonder Twins are medical miracles, but they can't do everything. Find out more about them, and how to help them with their medical bills, by clicking this link.Snack Food:
1 comment:
Reading your blog is fantastic - I no longer have to think about what sort of games I am going to play with my son when he gets older, I just steal all the great ideas out of your blog like some kind of vague copyright infringement.
That's interesting, don't you work in a law office? Are you going to sue me until I pay you royalties everytime I tickle my son and buzz at the same time? Then you really would be the Bee Police. There could be some real money in here, for you, if you applied yourself! Maybe it should be the one thing on your list that gets done next week!
I love reading your blog - even the advertisement posts are hilarious enough that I sometimes actually check them out for useful things (which I also sometimes actually find!). Keep up the great work! I'll update again...soon. I'm leaving work to be a stay-at-home-dad so you can bet there will be time - and some humorous anecdotes in there when I do.
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