Chapter 6: In Which Daddy is Exposed as a Terrible Parent

Gert: Daddy, can I have more noodles?

Daddy: Eat your meat and corn and then you can have more noodles.

Gert: I don't like corn. It makes me gag.

Daddy: You like corn! You ate a whole bunch the other night.

Gert: I only like it on the cob. Corn off the cob makes me gag.

Daddy: Well, you still need to eat some of it. Then you can have more noodles.

Gert: But it makes me gag.

Daddy: Honey, it's healthy. Please eat it.

And so, Gert eats her meat and then starts on the corn. Lo, at that point, the gag reflex engaged.

Gert: Blork.

Daddy: Oh honey, you gagged and puked on your plate!

Gert: Duh. I told you that corn off the cob make me gag!

Daddy: I'm sorry honey. Why don't you go get a brownie.

Later that evening, after we all relaxed I had this conversation with my wife.

Wife: When we go shopping tomorrow Matilda and I need a few minutes to go pick something out.

Daddy: What?

Wife: Don't worry about it.

Daddy: Does she need new shoes for the vacation?

Wife: Don't worry about it.

Daddy: But now I'm curious. Shorts? Swim suit?

Wife: A bra! She needs a bra!

Daddy: Blork.

Online Society to Stop James Blunt UPDATE

I am not alone.

Chris Cotton, programme controller of local radio Essex FM in southern England, said: "We don't have anything against James Blunt and we're pleased he has been so successful, but we really need a break."

That Damn Cat

Misc.:
1. This is our new family favorite:
Grandaddy - What Happened . . .

2. Here is a more normal song from their (sadly) last album (sure to be the indie disc of the summer):
Grandaddy - Elevate Myself

3. If I ride roughly 22 miles tomorrow I will peak 500 miles for the month, with an average speed of 17 mph and a maximum speed of 31.5 (though that didn't last long). 17 mph doesn't sound like much until you try to sustain it. It's a great improvement for me.

4. Vacation starts next weekend. Too bad I spent every day this weekend, every night last week and every night this week working to make up for the week off.

5. I may live in the cabin we are renting.

6. Pray it doesn't rain next Wednesday, other wise I won't be able to ride through the park in the morning.

7. Scouted the roads around the cabin via maps and traffic reports. Looks like I might be able to ride every morning before we get going. Will have to drive the route to make sure I won't be patching my tire every five feet.

8. The kids are excited.

9. That's all that matters.

10. I like my kids, who are currently swimming with mom while I'm covered in grass.

Bonus: Yes, I rode many miles (just 21, actually) on my bike this morning, came back and worked, and mowed the lawn all before lunch. Just ask Frazz.

Extra bonus: It's funny what happens when you increase your fitness level.

Wayne Coyne Suggests You Wear Sunscreen (Not Really)

My commencement speaker was . . . Actually, I don't remember. I would have killed to have Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips give our speech. Even if on tape. How a burned out hippie punk on acid grew up to be a profound, intelligent, literate mad scientist out of a 30s sci fi movie, is beyond me.

Wayne Coyne's Speech Part I

Wayne Coyne's Speech Part II

Rocking the Suburbs?

I'm not sure how I feel about this:

Ben Folds Featuring William Shatner - Rocking the Suburbs (Over the Hedge Version)

It's not that I have a problem with him writing movie music. Worked for Randy Newman, why not Ben Folds? Plus, William Shatner being funny is . . . well . . . funny.

Plus, the movie looks nicely animated. I'll probably take Gert to go see it and contribute to the massive amounts of money it'll make.

But the original version of this song was purely brilliant satire with a funny Bon Jovi joke. Don't listen at work if you can't handle laughing at the word "Fuck". They should have kept this version in the movie. It would have been nice to blame the kids dropping the f-bomb on someone other than me.

Ben Folds - Rocking the Suburbs

A Momentous Occasion

First, the good news. My new bike has over 1000 miles on it! I rode it for the first time in March. I'm addicted.

Bad news. Today, for no reason that I can really understand, about 12 miles away from where I needed to be, I heard a thunk on my bike. I did not hit anything. I did not run over anything and I was not about to be boarded by pirates.

But a bad sound 12 miles away from "home" sucks. I limped back. By then my rear wheel was so out of true that it very nearly needed a congressional hearing.

I took it to the shop (not where I bought the bike, ironically . . . I'm not talking to them because they are some of the biggest jerks with the worst customer service in the history of customer service. Now, the Touring Cyclist? Awesome. These guys are great. I sincerely wish I could have bought the bike from them, but they don't stock that brand. However, if you are in need of a bike, go see them. They won't BS you, they'll tell you the truth and don't be fooled by their Internet catalogue . . . they carry a ton of fantastic bikes of all makes and models from comfort to the same rig that Floyd Landis has ridden to some pretty good results this year), where they laughed at me because it's the third time I was there this week for, honestly, horrible luck. What did I do? Broke a spoke. How? I don't know.

But I walked out with a repair at no charge (but I bought a bunch of stuff to balance out the bike karma). The staff there is great. And I promised them that nothing would go wrong with the bike for at least a month.

Until I walked out the door and somehow managed to knock the chain off. Heh. As I fixed my little error, they waved to me from the window. On their dry erase board there's 2 to 1 odds that I'll be hit by a meteor tomorrow, which will damage my headest.

Tooth Fairy

Last night Matilda extracted a molar from her mouth. Either that or she found a hippo tooth. Hard to tell. But it was huge.

Gert was fascinated. She wanted to hold the tooth in her hand, feel its weight, get to know the enamel. She even wanted to touch the blood and inspect the void in Matilda's head. She asked questions about teeth and wanted to know when she would lose her own.

"I bet Matilda has lost 80 or 90 teeth by now," she said, her mind doing the math for how much each tooth is worth.

That night they went to bed, one with a tooth under her pillow the other with silly putty.

This morning I was watching the dog get the newspaper (what, your dog doesn't fetch the paper?) when Gert came screaming into the living room holding a piece of paper.

"Did you see her? Did you see her?"

"Who," I asked.

"The Tooth Fairy! She gave Matilda money! And she left me a note under my pillow! My says she came last night and was pretty sure she saw her leaving this morning!"

"No, I didn't see her. She's small and fast."

For the rest of the morning, Gert searched every nook and cranny of the house exclaiming, "She has to be here somewhere!" She looked high and low for any trace of the tooth fairy. She dusted, collected forensic evidence. For this morning the Search for the Fairy became all consuming.

Alas, she found no proof other than a hand-written note under her bed. For a moment I feared she was going to ask for handwriting samples.

It took a moment to convince her to brush her teeth. Knowing that they will fall out if she doesn't means something different now. She's looking forward to being older and losing her teeth. It will be a moment she'll wear with pride and excitement. The poor tooth fairy probably won't be able to get under that pillow because she'll be wide-eyed with excitement.

And she was wide-eyed this morning, her little four-year-old mind filled with the possibility that a real fairy had visited her house. This was better than Santa and the guys who brought copies of the Watchtower last week. Better than the pizza guy's always welcome experience.

She has the mind of a kid. A mind that can go climbing into the far reaches of fantasy. Fantasy that is so close to reality that you can almost hear the swish of the chiffon of the Tooth Fairy's dress.

And hear the chinging of the coins as they pile up for each and every tooth.

Team Type 1

This, in a word, is fantastic. I can't believe I didn't know about it before. A group of Type 1 Diabetics racing and competing, proving that being diabetic doesn't mean you can't perform at a high level while raising money for a cure.

I've been diabetic for 25 years and am new to cycling (unless you count the period between 11 and 14 where I rode my bike as a primary means of transportation, but I never considered myself Greg LeMond . . . though I did love the movie Breaking Away). As a newbie cyclist, and a diabetic, I'm met with unique challenges that a non-diabetic cyclist wouldn't have. Like keeping my blood sugar regulated on the bike. And afterward. I can step off the bike and have a normal glucose reading, but two or even six hours later crash and burn. And when I crash and burn, my body takes the glycogen stored in my muscles. In many cases I had plans for that glycogen the next day on my ride.

What Team Type 1 is doing has inspired me. I was going to start actively seeking a group of riders to meet up with periodically to share the road. Now, I think I may seek out other diabetics so we can not only act as support for one another, in our unique training situation, but maybe get jerseys and start riding events as a group to not only promote awareness of Type 1 diabetes (because all you non-insulin dependents get all the press and research these days) but promote living a healthy diabetic lifestyle.

It's never too late to start.

Fitting Tribute

This is sad, and yet cool and touching at the same time.

Among the cars and trucks in Michael Pohlman's funeral procession rode a cluster of 14 cyclists . . .

In Thursday's procession, the cyclists rode in pairs on Main Street, Meridian Road and Illinois Route 157. But one spot in their formation remained empty for a reason.

Said Branz: "We kept the open spot for Mike."

Mother's Day

A tribute:

The Beauty Of A Woman
Maya Angelou

The beauty of a woman
isn't in the clothes she wears,
The figure that she carries,
or the way she combs her hair.

The beauty of a woman
must be seen from in her eyes;
Because that's the doorway to her heart,
the place where love resides.

The beauty of a woman
isn't in a facial mole;
But true beauty in a woman,
is reflected by her soul.

It's the caring that she cares to give,
the passion that she shows;
And the beauty of a woman
with passing years only grows.

Happy (early) Mother's Day to my wife who, if I can say, trumps all other mothers on the planet as the world's best. Hands down.

National I Hate Everything Day

My Internet connection keeps dropping out.

My phone stops working intermittently because the phone company is doing upgrades to our line.

My two-month old bike's bottom bracket needed to be repacked, so I was without my bike for a few days.

I have my bike back but the wind gusts are up to 30 mph. And tomorrow will be more of the same. Rain for the three days after that and temps barely touching 60. Come on. That sucks.

I have a project that is insanely late. Insanely. And it is requiring more work than I should be spending on it. However, I have about an hour or two a day that I can work on it. Why? Because the client has me running in all sorts of directions doing crap that that really isn't important and, honestly, someone else should be doing.

Worse, the project itself seems to defy order. It keeps moving toward chaos. I'm trying to organize it, make a book out of it. But it seems for every figure or table I stabilize, three disappear or the author forgets where he found them or can't even explain his concept. I think I shall rename it Entropy.

My laptop's power chord plug is crapping out. As is its wireless card. Hooray. Love it.

I keep getting collect calls from a local prison to my cell phone. Why? Scam I suppose. Jerks.

Even traditional technology isn't working for me. I'm doing work (see above on the project from hell) that involves pencils. And damn if I can't get one sharp enough or not breaking. Right now all of my pencils look like I stole them from a miniature golf course.

I'm writing this in Word with the hopes of some day posting it. Why cant' I post it? Because, of course, Blogger keeps failing. Ha ha ha. Oh, Universe. Why not just make my hair fall out and have me grow breasts while you're at it?

Happy I Hate Everything Day. I hope it finds you as happy as it finds me. Pray that no solicitors come to the door today or you may read a news report of a man pinned to the ground with mini-pencils and covered with the remnants of a crappy manuscript that apparently never wants to be a book.

Song of the Day:
Spizzenergi – Where's Captain Kirk?

Bad Feelings

This is my favorite song today. Well, the album's been spinning all week. I can't say why I like it. I don't pretend to understand. But I do.

The Robot Ate Me - Bad Feelings

Bonus:
The Robot Ate Me - On Vacation