Hurray for summer.

Hurray for vacation time. I’m looking forward to visiting my homeland. It‘s been two years since our last trip. It’s a 14-hr drive that always turns into a 16-hr event because the kids need to pee every few hours… and get one hot meal… so when we finally arrive I’ll see brand new worry lines on my mother’s face. Wait… she doesn’t know exactly when we’re leaving, so I’ll try to keep it that way. I‘m sure I‘ll fail miserably. She has a way of finding out things. If only I were an only child… but then I’d have no one to sympathize, or top my stories of pain and woe.

Hurray for beer. A tall cold one always tastes great on a warm day, and is probably one of my favorite things about summer. I really don’t enjoy beer much the rest of the year. I will have one or two on occasion but I have to be in the right mood for it. I don’t understand this summer phenomenon. Before I had kids I used to drink beer nearly every day through all seasons, and like water on my days off from work. I couldn’t get back into a regular drinking schedule after the first kid. I’m such a loser.

Hurray for ice cream. The kids have a chant that goes like this: I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream. Then Mom screams. They always get what they want in the end.

Hurray for baseball. I hope the new ballpark is open this summer as planned, and is still cheaper than a movie. I’m not a tightwad, I just have trouble sneaking kids into the theater, and after the first two it starts getting spendy. The popcorn is like crack and priced like gold. And you can’t have popcorn without a three or four dollar container of pop that could drown a small child.

At Cobb Field everything was reasonably priced which made for a true day of fun. Holy crap, I’ve turned into my father.

Anyway, fun time with the kids is important and I’m always happier when it doesn’t cost too much green. Yep, I’m my dad.

Not only do I enjoy ball games, but my kids will come along, and getting ALL of my kids together to spend time with mom is a tough feat these days. Teenagers are funny people. The strange thing is I can relate.

Hurray for the drive-in, but it’s only for the kids. And when the kids are happy, I bitch on the inside.

Movies just don‘t get me excited like they did years ago. When I became a grown-up (some time in the 90’s) I started seeing a trend of crap peddled by Hollywood, so I thought, like I’ll die if I don’t see Arnold in his latest multi-million dollar deal. I think the way I feel means I’m getting old. I’d guess my parents lost their love for movies when Clint Eastwood stopped starring in Westerns. For me, cinema died when Harrison Ford disappeared. He is a true stud. I’m glad he’s making a comeback of sorts in this new Indiana Jones flick, but I didn’t see him in the last three Star Wars episodes! I still want my money back. Darned kids. Yoda hypnotize them so, why does, hmm?.

Hurray for Independence Day. Our town really gets into the celebration and stretches it out over a few days with parades, fireworks, etc… and people are always on stage trying desperately to convince me that they are entertaining. I’m not like the rest of the drunken sheep, I only applaud when I mean it.

Rodeos are fun, but only when Cowboy Poker is played. There’s something special about watching a live group of snuff-chewers sitting around a card table in a ring with a bull. How does your poker face work when you have over 1,000 lbs of irate animal (complete with horns) breathing down the back of your neck? At some point the fear reflex kicks in and running for your life becomes a bit more important. In fact, the mean bucking machine doesn’t really allow time for a game to get started. To see grown men scrambling and crapping their pants is always a hoot.

We can light fireworks for two weeks straight if we feel like it. This can be fun, depending on who your neighbors are. There is a guy on our street who goes to bed early, and he will call the cops, even though he knows full well we aren‘t breaking any law. So out of respect we resist whipping out the noise makers on weeknights. Who am I kidding? The truth is we don’t want the cops hating us any more than they already do. They get really annoyed by his phone calls, so we are kind to the guy just in case we ever need to call 911. As far as I know there aren’t any specific fireworks that are banned because I’ve seen it all. Then again, I don’t have a copy of the city code handy. It may not be a defense but it works for me.

Sometimes ignorance really is bliss, especially when you‘ve got a deputy watching your every move because you justifiably insulted a woman, who turned out to be his wife. I didn’t start it, but I like to finish things in a memorable way. I guess the truth really can hurt. This is why I have a newfound love for attorneys. You never know when you’ll need one on your side, which is better than having one on your back. But it’s good when they have your back. But not your rear. What am I talking about?

What do you like about summer?

I've reached a milestone

Tonight it dawned on me that I’ve managed to accomplish something big without even trying. No, I didn’t win the lottery or find a cure for my insomnia. But believe me, I have tried, it’s just that the balls never roll in my favor. And I gave up on the lottery a long time ago.

The milestone is, in the last week I’ve managed to tick off (or at least annoy) a record 1,940 people. But not just any people.

I was checking my stats for the last week, and it turns out that 1,940 people who viewed my blog in that time used Google Images to hunt down Vanity Fair pictures of Miley Cyrus. But in the post that received the hits, I only mentioned the pics and didn’t actually post any. This means that I’ve managed to waste a few precious minutes of 1,940 people’s lives. I know I do that every week on a slightly smaller scale, but these folks possibly give a damn about Miley Cyrus. And odds are that a lot of them were hard core fans since my blog is at the bottom of the barrel. This gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling. Especially since I didn’t plan it. I wasn’t rubbing my hands together with a cigar hanging out of my mouth thinking, “Ah ha, I know exactly how to get a handful of those kids, concerned parents and perverts now!”

I think before this, the most people I’ve managed to irk in a week’s time was 24, back in April. Wait, that was family so it doesn’t count.

I wonder how many will be slighted this time around?

Who do you like to annoy?

No time, but that will change

I really loathe the song “No Time” by The Guess Who, and it has found its way into my head again. Once every few years is entirely too often. I know it’s because I barely have any time to myself lately. Or maybe I heard it via a TV ad but I really don‘t see how the song could be used to sell a car. Either way, I’m looking forward to summer. Maybe you’d think life would be even more hectic with the kids out of school, but it’s quite the opposite. At least until August, when this evil thing called ‘boredom’ sets in and I consider trading away kids for things that are much more useful. For example, I’d like to get a man-maid just to see what the hell it is and discover all of its capabilities. It made an appearance in one of my dreams a while back, but I left him at the house to go out and dodge bombs so my questions were left unanswered. Anyway, with less than a month of school left our summer begins on Memorial Day Weekend, and I’m getting excited. Here are some ways I’ll have more time during summer:

The kids won‘t have homework. Thanks to the internet I’m always soaking up info but when it comes time for my brain to retrieve it, this is where I have a problem. “I can remember reading about the Mayans and when they predicted the end of the world, but sorry Son, it may have been 2012 or it could be December of this year. One of them is right, so just use both in your report to be safe. Or was it the Aztecs?”

Again, thanks to the internet it doesn’t take too long to find out but I’d rather have a photographic memory for the time-saving benefits.

They love to play outside. I get more done when they’re not in my face every ten minutes needing something. We know the people who live on our street and actually like two-thirds of them. Some of them have kids around the same ages so they all play together, then I don’t hear from my own until chow time or some one gets hurt. Usually it is only feelings. It doesn’t really matter unless blood is drawn, so I don’t let their squabbles rob me of my time. I tell them if they don‘t want to play I have some work they can do, which has quickly healed their broken friendships many a time.

They will spend more time with their dad. Their father rotates all shifts at work, and his days off are so varied and unpredictable it would take three rocket scientists with an 8-ball of cocaine to make an accurate prediction of his next schedule in advance. So throughout the school year the kids and I never know when he’ll have a weekend off to take them. During the summer it doesn’t matter - they can be whisked off at a moment’s notice on any day of the week, and I have no complaints.

I‘ll be doing less laundry. We’ll be wearing shorts and tees every day and when you compare that to bulky sweatshirts and jeans I guess it‘s pretty obvious. My sons wash their own clothes, but I don’t even like washing my own clothes, so I’m really excited about doing the wash for myself and two girls who spill everything they eat on themselves less often. I just can’t wait for summer.

Hurray for the grill. That means fewer pots and pans to wash. And it is always fun to draw a crowd only to send them away hungry. What happened to the pot luck concept? Someone bring me a dessert, damnit. I have lots of burgers to share, but someone please bring a good dessert. If I‘ve slaved over a hot grill it‘s the least you could do. And for God’s sakes people, stop sniffing the air and saying, “Ummm.” If you can’t contribute in some way, just step away from the grill. And keep moving ‘cause if I can see you, you’re too goddamn close.

So, how will I spend the extra time this summer? I hope I’ll be gazing upon the millions of stars up there in the sky like the wannabe hippie-slacker that I am, but most likely I‘ll be training our new dog to behave himself. But that is another blog entirely.

Are you looking forward to summer?