Happy Thanksgiving!

Dear Lord, I've been asked, nay commanded, to thank thee for the turkey before us ... a turkey which was no doubt a lively, intelligent bird ... a social being ... capable of actual affection ... nuzzling its young with almost human-like compassion. Anyway, it's dead and we're gonna eat it. Please give our respects to its family.  Amen.

- Milo Bloom

Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

A Few Simple Toys

Cute little guy, isn’t he?

We all know him as Captain Jack, the youngest swashbuckler on Pirate Mom’s should-be-an-award-winning blog, The Pirate Mom Dot Com. If you look a little closer at this picture you will see that in keeping with his name, Captain Jack plays with an instrument of sheer terror, a toy that sends adults scrambling frantically to get anywhere, as long as it is far, far away. I am speaking, of course, of the Playskool Boom Box radio on the blanket next to the young Captain.

It’s an innocent little toy. Shaped like a radio, it is preprogrammed with 16 songs in four categories. There are country-and-western songs, classical music selections, lullabies, and rock-and-roll. There are four buttons to push for four different tunes in each category, and a selection knob that is impossible for any child to turn. This simple device that brings hours of entertainment to young children is also an instrument of torture, a sure-fire tool that guarantees no one will sit with you and your child on even the shortest of Southwest Airlines flights.

It was the Boss who returned from a trip with our young General Mayhem, as proud of herself as a young mother can be.

“How was your flight?” I asked.

“Wonderful!”

“Crowded?”

“Absolutely packed!” she beamed.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I replied. “Who did you end up sitting with?”

Passengers who get stuck sitting in a row with a parent and a small child are notoriously grumpy people.

“No one,” she smiled.

“How did you pull off that feat of magic?”

“Do you see this?” she asked, pulling our Playskool Boom Box Radio out of her carry-on bag. “Aunt Barb gave this to the General. When I see her I am going to kiss her!”

“Oh, really? Do tell.”

“I was able to pre-board. I took a row near the front of the aircraft, put the general in his car seat next to the window, and took the aisle seat. There was an open seat between us. Then I gave him the radio to play with when the other passengers started to board.”

I saw where this was going. The general rarely made it through an entire song, preferring to speed punch the buttons until the radio was a cacophony of ear-piercing sound.

“Every person who even looked at the seat between us grimaced and walked to the back of the plane,” she explained. “By the time the plane was loaded I think the seat between us was the only open seat on the flight.”

“You listened to that for an entire flight? That must have been long.”

“Are you kidding?!” she exclaimed. “The minute they shut the door and pushed back from the gate, I took it away from him and gave him a book. I didn’t want to listen to that sh*t!”

Kellie hit on a great idea on her funniest of homeschooling blogs. In yesterday’s post, Christmas Toys on a Budget, she listed a variety of toys that keep children entertained for hours but will not break the bank. “This is just the beginning of this concept, folks,” she wrote. “ If we can pulll all of our ideas together, we can really turn this economy around this season.” I think we should explore the other uses of children’s toys. If we pool our collective parenting resources, we can write the book on how to escape any unwanted situation with the help of a few simple toys.

Pocket Change

I suspect that a man’s pockets are just a purse attached to his pants. We carry those things that we need, (or accumulate) on a daily basis in much the same manner that a woman’s handbag slowly gains weight until it takes an earth mover to carry it to and from the car. How many of you women permanently lean to the right from the weight of your purses? This conclusion comes after many hours of researching the answer to GingerB’s question on yesterday's blog, “Tell me, man blogger, why do men need so many coins?” There are pages and pages on the World Wide Web dedicated to researching the contents of men’s pants. Why do men jingle the coins in their pockets? What do men carry in their wallets? What do men carry in their pockets? I’m certain that this was exactly what Al Gore had in mind when he invented the internet so many years ago.

The Boss has been asking me these questions for years, and I’ve been answering her with the most honest answer that I can think of.

I dunno.

The stuff just gets there. And when there gets to be too much stuff, it has to be emptied. The most natural place to empty the contents of your pants pockets is on top of your dresser. This is the natural course of life. Men accumulate stuff in their pockets. Their pockets get filled. Their pockets must be emptied.

So, what do men have in their pants? According to multiple websites, the answer is cash, phones, wallets, and condoms. A couple of guys added combs, Carmex, and Vaseline to the list of things they carry in their pockets. There’s an early morning EEWWW! for you. I assume that the prophylactic answer was written by single men. At least, I hope so. Married ladies, does your husband carry condoms in his pockets? I thought the telltale ring in the wallet went away after the words, “I do.”

There is considerable virtual space dedicated to answering two questions. The first is, “How much change should a man carry in his pockets?’ The second is, “Why do men jingle the change in their pockets?”

One writer suggested that men should “always have a quarter in your pocket in case your mobile phone fails or you’re located, as I am, in panhandler territory.” This is odd, because a quarter will not make a phone call anymore and offering a quarter to a panhandler could get you knifed. This writer went on to suggest that “a gentleman should also carry $200 in folding money in case he needs to tip a cop or settle a fender bender amicably. The other coins are useless. I haven’t had a dime since my last divorce.” Another writer suggested that men carry change in their pockets “because it makes them feel like they actually have money. In my case, it's just an allowance.”

An interesting comment on the change question came from a writer who observed that “Our change has become just that, change back from bills, and not something that can be used to actually purchase anything. Coffee is no longer a dime a cup, but $1.75. So instead of carrying a couple of dimes, we carry a $5 and bust that up to purchase our refreshments.” That is an interesting thought. We are not dropping small change here and there anymore because small change will not buy us much. We have to accumulate a lot more change in order to buy something using coinage. There is also an image problem with counting out coins to make a purchase. Guys do not want to look cheap, or look like they are scraping the bottom of the barrel to make a purchase by counting out change. A guy will break every bill in his wallet and pocket the change before he will start using the change to make a purchase. Who wants to look like a Babi on a pension counting out coins from a little plastic change purse? We’re men, dammit! We flip bills. We don’t count pennies!

There are about a gabillion theories as to why men jingle the change in their pockets, from simple nervous habits to things that I will not reprint on my blog. I think the best answer to Kathleen’s question, “WHY do men play with the change in their pockets?” is that I don't want them playing with the change in my pockets!

So, What's In Your Pants Pockets?

My pants weigh about three pounds.

Did you know that? More importantly, did you want to know that?

I discovered that this morning when I realized exactly how much stuff I keep in my pants pockets. This has been a running joke in our house for a long time, going back to the days when the Boss did laundry. That was way back in the last century. I would walk in the back door of our old house and find a mountain of pocket stuff on the clothes dryer. It was a source of mild annoyance for the Boss until it became a source of bemusement and then morphed into a shrug of the shoulders and a shake of the head.

My pants are filled!

The Boss was looking for her house keys this morning. After she asked me if I knew where her keys were I went straight to my pants. There has been more than one occasion where we’ve swapped keys and hers were discovered in my pants pockets the next morning. I picked my pants off the floor and heard the tell-tale jingle jangle of….

Allen Wrenches. Five of them, to be exact, all together on a key ring.

But wait! There was more jingling. I reached in and pulled out…

My house keys. And then the house keys for a friend of ours. We were watching their dogs this weekend.

I also pulled out 5 paper receipts, a lottery ticket, one piece of hot pink tag board on which was written information concerning a one-year-old chocolate lab named “Magnum” who was running the neighborhood, 2 dimes, one penny, 1 pop can tab, a flint and steel striker, the plastic sleeve to a new paint brush, my wallet, and a shopping list.

I smiled at the Boss. “Kinda makes you wonder how I keep them around my waist, doesn’t it?”

“I was thinking about Felix the Cat’s magic bag,” she replied.

Wouldn’t it have been funny if I pulled a canoe out of my pants?

What was even more surprising this morning was what I discovered when I put the contents of my pants on a scale. It was only 14 ounces! I was genuinely surprised. The heaviest items were my wallet, at five ounces, and my keys, at four ounces. I would have put that pile of stuff at a pound-and-a-half, easily!

My wallet is almost an inch-and-a-half thick, filled with important stuff. What isn’t in my wallet? Why, money, of course. I found one, lonely, folded, greenback.

Kinda pathetic, isn't it?

The Boss found her keys in her jacket pocket, hanging in the hallway closet.

So, what’s in your pants pockets?

I Hate It When She Does That!

The phone rang at 12:30 in the morning. The Boss and I were sitting on the couch in our former home in Missouri, watching TV. She quickly grabbed the cordless phone between us, the phone she gave me as Christmas present two years ago, and said “hello” with a big smile. I looked at her with a puzzled expression. When the phone rings at 12:30 in the morning it’s either a wrong number or bad news, but this call was obviously not bad news. She looked back at me as she stood up, shook her head in annoyance, and walked out of the room. Twenty minutes later she returned, her conversation over.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“An old friend from high school,” she replied.

“An old friend?” I asked. “What’s his name?” I knew it was a guy.

“Paul.” She spoke her answer matter-of-factly. I could see that she was struggling to suppress a smile.

“Paul. How long has Paul been calling you at 12:30 in the morning?” I asked. It was rare that I was awake with her at that time of the morning, and I knew from her reaction when she answered the phone that she was expecting it to ring and was very happy that it did.

The Boss responded by walking into the kitchen. She stepped up to the kitchen sink and started to wash the dinner dishes that didn’t fit into the dish washer. I leaned against the counter next to her, crossed my arms over my chest, and looked around. The room felt comfortable. I knew I had spent a lot of time there but I did not recognize it as any place I had ever lived.

We stood there quietly while she washed, listening to the sound of the running water and gentle clanking of dishes. Minutes passed before she glanced at me. “He’s just giving me some attention.”

“You’re having an affair,” I challenged, feeling the threat swelling in the center of my chest. “Planning on leaving?”

A heated exchange ensued, the kind of verbal fencing that takes place between a husband and a wife when one person is angry and the other doesn’t want to participate. She stopped washing and started to dry her hands on a towel.

I realized that my head hurt. It had been hurting for days, and it was genuinely starting to annoy me. And that was the clue that I should open my eyes. The alarm clock on the nightstand read 5:02 a.m., and I knew that I was awake for the day.

The entire conversation was a dream. I should have recognized the clues, those things that only make sense in a dream world, such as the house in Missouri with the cordless phones she bought for me after we moved to Kansas, a kitchen I did not recognize, and the Boss doing dishes. My subconscious is an idiot.

Nightmares have been flaring often over the last few weeks. They happen right before I wake up for the day. A few days ago I struggled to rescue a carefree Major Havoc as he merrily chatted while walking through an alligator infested zoo enclosure in the middle of a family room in a house we were thinking of buying. That’s just crazy stuff. My kids don’t walk anywhere. They run.

So, I’m up for the day.

My doctor chuckled yesterday afternoon when he walked into the exam room. He was reading my symptoms that the nurse had written in my chart. He glanced at Captain Chaos, smiled, and said, “I wonder who gave this to dad.” She’s been to the doctor twice in the last two weeks for the same problem that I have: bronchitis with a side of sinus infection.

Why is a parent obligated to catch whatever their children have one week after the children’s antibiotics kick in and heal them? 

At least I’m feeling better with pharmaceuticals.