Five down and Glory

Dear Rex-


Are you 5 already? Seriously?

Young man, you have grown like a weed this year! And speaking of weed, don't ever smoke it. You can cut it with a lawnmower and kill it with pesticide, but leave the other kind alone, its un -American.

Well, I am not "Tah" anymore, but now I am either "Dad" or "George"--some folks get excited about the "dad" part, but I tell them you have things under control---Daniel is "Daddy" and George is "Dad", the same as Mom, Aunt Lyndsay and Uncle Joe call me--and that’s perfectly ok--you know and I know the difference and that’s all that matters. But please know that you can call me George, Dad, Old Man, or mean old SOB if you so choose--just don’t call me Grandpa, because that’s for old folks, and I am NEVER Old when I'm with you, Rex. I'm only old when you leave after a visit, and then I am old and sad. I have tried my best to not cry when you leave, but as everyone knows, that is impossible....everyone else is just going to have to get over it. Grandma still laughs at me when I do it but I always show her my middle finger and she leaves me alone, HA HA!

And hey, we are calling you REX now a lot more than Pottamus Rex, and only Grandma is still saying Pootie.

I am so proud of you starting school this year--you are learning so fast-and writing all your letters, your name, and drawing really great pictures. The teacher even stopped your Mom and told her what a good boy you were--that scared Mom to death because she thought that the teachers talking to parents only meant trouble--that’s because she was thinking about when she went to school! You fooled her!

I am very proud of you learning the Pledge of Allegiance! I also think that it fit nicely as the blessing at our supper and breakfast--I hadn’t ever heard it used like that before but it certainly was sincere and as far as I'm concerned it was PERFECT. Just remember that it is the greatest pledge you will ever take, and means that you love your Country just like you do your family.

Rex, you are so much fun to be around, and you are growing up so fast! You had your first year of Baseball, the greatest game ever, you got all into Captain America, and now Spiderman, and you play the games on the computer without anyone helping you--The bicycle you got last year now fits you, and you're still keeping your hair cut to military standards. Did I mention already how much better I feel when I get to hang out with you? If every old person had a Rex to hang out with, there wouldn’t be any old people! And by the way, thanks for holding my hand and helping me walk to the mailbox after I had my surgery. I was feeling pretty bad until you came to visit, and boy, you really made things better!

Remember when Mom told you no potato chips at breakfast time and they were only for lunch and you changed your lunch time to 0900 hours? That was the BEST! I also thought it was hysterical when you told Mom that when you're at Georges house that you went by Georges rules...Mom didn’t like it too much, but that’s because she doesn’t know that "lunch" is served 24 hours a day at our house.

Cant wait to see you this weekend, buddy. Know that I love you so much it makes me bust! Hope you have the greatest Birthday ever, and remember to not use any 'George' words.

George

Honey Boo-Boo is a Crock of Poo-Poo!

I never heard of Honey Boo Boo until this week. I had heard of the television show “Toddlers and Tiaras”, and in all my channel surfing had seen the commercials for it, which always disturbed me and left me with throw up in my mouth.


The Honey Boo Boo Child, as she calls herself, now is a spin off reality series. It greatly disturbs me on several levels. I have seen some of the YouTube videos. The first level is to cut a switch and stripe that younguns legs--which she probably deserves—there’s never been a kid born yet that didn’t deserve a switch at least once---but after more consideration it seems perhaps the second and more fitting level is to take a Taser to her Parents, followed by a several days long session of water boarding. If the Department of Family and Children services EVER had a need to justify their existence, this would be it.

We could make the entire scenario a bit more apropos by waiting until the Perry State Fair comes to town and we can put her down there right next to the snake with 3 heads exhibit....bless her heart...ahem.

I’m not sure that Ms. Boo Boo is old enough to know what kind of brainwashing she has undergone. If my Father had lived to see such a debacle, he would have enforced his “No Child Left with a Behind” policy on that kid. And she would have had to cut her own switch, too. I am certain that giving Boo Boo Child Mountain Dew mixed with an energy drink makes her a blessed little angel. Maybe, after she gets juiced up, we give her the Taser and she can unleash on her parents.

I shouldn’t even get into this, but the child isn’t even remotely cute. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that we can blame the Mom for that as well. I am not one to talk, and I certainly am not befitting of a “horseshoe of roses”, if you catch my drift, but most human beings know that one can’t help oneself when one is ugly. But it is what it is, and you just have to live with it. I know firsthand that a good sense of humor is a good thing to have when not “cursed” with good looks. Perhaps, and again I’m out on that limb, the Boo Boo Family is working towards that end.

Admittedly, I haven’t seen much of the Boo Boo Daddy. I have seen Boo Boo Momma, and her antics are a testament to wife beating. Her other hobby besides abusing her Boo Boo Child is extreme couponing, so she has eleventy kajillion hundred rolls of toilet paper in her house. I guess the other TV show “Hoarders” can schedule some time with her.

It has already adversely affected me. For example, I was listening to Jimi Hendrix sing Voodoo Child on my iPod, and already I have changed it to “Boo Boo Child, Boo Boo Child, Lord knows I’m a Boo Boo child…..”

The TLC network (and you do know that TLC stands for “The Learning Channel”, right?) is shameless in their pursuit of viewer ratings. They have an entire schedule of train wrecks on their network, and this is only the latest. It could be scripted, as one of my relatives informed me. That may be true, and I would submit to you that Romeo and Juliet was scripted too, and it ended up with two dead teenagers. What really chaps what little bit of buttocks I have though, is specifically placing the other 639 residents of McIntyre, Georgia, and all of us Georgians—in fact, Southerners-- in a bad light---reinforcing already jacked up Hollywood stereotypes-(I mean, how many movies actually have someone speaking correct Southern?). That, in my humble opinion, warrants an ass kicking all its own. Let me cut their switch, please.

And so now beloved, we have for the world to see, Miss Boo Boo speak her dialect—It isn’t English, and it sure ain’t Southern English, either. It is more of a "Boo Boo coupon lady uneducated jacked up on mountain dew and throw some ghetto in for flavor flav" language which best I can tell, involves only the Boo Boo clan, and not the rest of the residents of McIntyre, Ga, who have to work for their money, not prostitute their kids out for the world to see.

There’s not a snowballs chance in you know where that this story is going to have a happy ending. I had rather see the commercials about pre-lubricated catheters than to watch The Miscreant Adventures of Boo Boo Child.

It is, as one wise philosopher said, “A crock of excrement, and it stinketh.”

Death by Shovel

Spring has sprung, and with it has come "outside chores". The outside chores I don't mind are mowing the lawn and washing the cars. Both allow me to listen to my music entirely too loud, transporting my soul to my happy place, where I am forever 17 years old.

The Wifey is in charge though, and along with wonderful weather comes Wifey with good ideas… and it’s only a matter of time that one can dodge the bullet.

Why is it that my Wifeys good ideas always involve me and a shovel?


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I am not alone. We have some friends who upon each Saturday it is declared "A and E day"(the "E" means elbows)--which the husband and son are relegated to labor camp until such time as the work is done. I have listened in awe as my friend explained to me a typical A and E, and wondered how he had energy to make it in to work on Monday. I admit Wifey has allowed me most of the winter off while I languished in my mancave with John Wayne and others.

( It is important to note that the cowboys work six guns and not shovels).


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Ok, so anyhow we are "A and E" (the "E" means elbows) at La Casa de Pescador and my little truck has made 35 trips to Lowes in the last 3 weekends. She also knows that Waffle House and Nu-Way are both across the street so she has plied me with peanut butter waffles and chili dogs to keep me aligned as a consenting adult.


Today’s outside chore was the removal of a basketball goal. The plan was to dig around the goal with yon shovel, down and around the concrete, at which time some shaking and shimmying of the goal post would thereby loosen up the remains, of which I would haul off.

If only it were that easy.

Using my D handled implement of death I dug, and promptly ran into plastic pipe that I believe runs power to the house... "Call before you dig" entered my mind but there wasn't anyone to call and Wifey already had her hands on her hips watching. I maneuvered around and down, exposing the concrete enough that I thought I could shake it loose.

Har, Har, It was to laugh.


I tried getting a grip on the post and maybe pulling it loose. That would have been laughable had I not been on the verge of losing a testicle in the process.

My neighbor Mike heard me grunting, and offered his assistance. A few minutes later he showed up with a chain, truck, and trailer hitch-- we hooked up the chain to the post and then the trailer hitch and only managed to bend the post and goal over, although it was still securely in the ground—

How deep does a goal post need to go into the ground? Well, I didn’t know before and I don’t know now.

Normally in this part of the story I would have lost my temper and let a few adjectives fly--but I saw Wifey in my peripheral and bit down on my lower lip, deciding instead to hum "zip a dee do dah" instead.

Not to give in, Mike went back to his shop and got his Sawz-all, a manly testosterone drenched saw if there ever was such, and cut that everlasting infernal no good sonofayouknowwhat down at the root, thereby leaving me and my shovel to fill in the hole.

The thrill of victory. The agony of deshovel.


Back in olden times men only lived until they were in their 40s or 50s, (save perhaps for Ben Franklin, who was smart enough to trade in his shovel for writing letters to the editor and flying kites, and who was like 86 when he checked out)--at any rate the men died early in their lives not because of disease, famine, toothaches or even the common cold, but they expired from being worked to death. The foundation of all their back breaking labor was the shovel.

That holds true today.

Other tools of death are post hole diggers, axes, and sledge hammers--all equate to back breaking labor and by my calculations early death. Verily, these are the tools of chain gangs and hardened criminals who deserve such a fate.

But don’t take my word for it, folks, just do the math:

D=(A+E) x 52 {S2} (remember E is elbows)

L= -(L-F) no leisure no food

S = D+L

Thus S=D (shovel=death)

My math may be sketchy, but you’re just going to have to trust me.

TUNA ON WHITE

Preface:

Winnie, the blonde headed daughter I never see, informs me she is enroute to her place of work but has made tuna fish and there’s “plenty”.



When Life hands you tuna fish you add some mustard and mayo and a few sweet pickles and make, well, what I call tuna fish. You know, the kind for crackers and or sammiches. My expectation was a sammich.



Maybe it wasn’t my expectation as much as it was what I had envisioned. I envisioned white bread cut in diagonal. It goes without saying that the Lord himself eats sammiches cut diagonal. In this instance, what I envisioned shattered my expectations. It cut them to pieces, and not diagonally.



No bread.



By that I mean, again, if you will digress with me, the bread the Lord himself eats. White bread. Sammich bread. Alas, the Lords bread. And I ain’t got none. Correction. Its ‘ain’t got any’. Pardon the grammar, I’m a bit stressed.



At this point in my diatribe I must make mention that Wifey has been on a “fiscal cleansing” jihad. “We ain't buying no more groceries until we thin out what we have in the cabinets!” says she.



I look again, as my blood pressure begins to rise. Nothing. Then I saw it.



Bread. Well, the wrapper said bread, but it also said “WHEAT”.



You can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish on wheat.



In my mind I heard a voice. It was the voice of every Mother since the beginning of time saying "Wheat bread is better for you..."



Mom law 101, section 2, paragraph 3 a (1) states: “Mothers will utilize white bread to convince their children to eat until such time that the implementation of whole wheat is achieved. This deception will further be enhanced by the repetitive chant of “its better for you”. Normal Whole wheat transition may vary from child to child, but should be complete by the 16th year, at which time no recollection of ever having served white bread will be acknowledged. For further guidance in this see section 17, appendix A; Spouse Reinforcement Training.

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I am a victim of the damn fiscal cleansing. There’s nothing in this house to eat save for a can of chick peas......chick peas aren’t eligible for fiscal cleansing. In fact, they wouldn’t even make good fish bait. Chick peas are called that because only girls eat them.





I work hard, am in the car for nearly four hours a day, and don't give or take any crap ---at the very least my expectation should be some white bread sammiches—yet here I am with whole wheat…..







Hold your nose

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Wheat bread is to sammiches what methiolate and mercurochrome was to cuts and scrapes. “Blow it”, Mom would say as she would apply it into my wound. But the end result was the same. Intense stinging. The problem is that nowadays wheat bread still exists.



Want another example? Ok. To compare wheat to white is to compare castor oil to chocolate milk. Yes, you are exactly right. There's no common denominator. But by using this same logic—this comes from George 101 so bear with me--- and compare castor oil to wheat bread. Now you can clearly find the common denominator. Got it? Correct! A hyperactive gag reflex.



Friends, there’s no room for discussion or debate here. Wheat bread is medicine!



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For a nanosecond I opted to make a PBJ, but then thought why waste good Peanut butter and jelly on wheat bread?



WWJWD. What Would John Wayne do?

He would have done what any real man would do—beat his wife senseless with the can of chick peas and tell her to pack her bags. Well, no not really, that’s just me being emotional. The Duke would have darn well went to Kroger and bought a buggy full of Colonial Old Fashioned White. He would have also stopped on aisle 3 for cereal and aisle 5 for Ovaltine, but again I digress.



As it turned out, I reached down where my man parts are supposed to be, made me a tuna fish sammich on whole wheat, pinched my nose, and like most medicine, swallowed it whole.

To get the taste of tuna fish and wheat bread out of my mouth, I found some Tony Tiger Flakes and ate them. After all, wheat bread is better for you.