Puddintopia

I managed to make it all the way through my obligatory screening of Twilight last night and didn’t even get a case of the nods. See there? That’s proof that occasionally, my physical form still bends to my wishes. Yes, that’s right, take that, advancing middle age! I’m still in charge around here, and I’ll stay up late watching movies whenever I want. I just won’t want anymore after hockey games. Or when I’ve been in the sun all day. Or the night after cutting the grass.

So, what did I think of the movie? Boy, whew, would you look at the time. I’ve got to get bed, um, because I was up, err…late last night. Yaaaaawn. Good night!

Not buying that? Ok, seriously, here’s the thing. It wasn’t…awful. I actually…kinda liked it…a little. Just a bit, mind you. Now, though, I’m all irked that I might, maybe, have to read the whole damn “saga”. What’s worse is that I’m going to feel compelled to see the rest the damn movies when they come out. I’m not paying to see them at a theater, mind you. Oh hell, no. I can just imagine being dragged out of the cine-plex, clutching a bag of excessively priced popcorn to my chest, by well-intentioned police officers called to investigate a suspicious-looking pudgy guy sitting alone in a dark theater with a hundred and fifty love-struck teenage girls.

No sir, this is why I have a 56-inch HD TV in my family room. I don’t have to be “the creepy guy”. I can share those special, private moments with Bella and Edward without fear of judgment, embarrassment, or criminal charges.

Ahem, moving on. It was a loving, shiny, happy day today. The sun actually appeared in the sky and my kids got outside to play. It was so nice that I even decided we should celebrate the “springness” of the evening with a trip for ice cream after dinner. The Puddinette, being the wiser and better of our halves, did some quick research and found that it’s apparently berry time at UDF. That means special prices on the berry-flavored ice creams, cones, etc.

When we arrived, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get anything; I haven’t got much of a sweet tooth, really. I do love me some chocolate, but I have to be in the mood for ice cream. At any rate, the wife entered the store with instructions to let me know if the berry-derived shakes were on sale. As it turns out, they were, indeed, on special too. I asked her to kindly procure for me a raspberry chocolate chip shake. As I said, I do love me some chocolate.

When she got back in the car and handed me my 24 ounces of extra thick goodness, I asked her how much it was after the special. She told me the sale price was $1.99, but mine was 75 cents more because they told her the “raspberry chocolate chip is a UDF/Homemade ice-cream”.

Blink, blink.

Um, what? Really? Look, I’m sorry, but isn’t this a United Dairy Farmers location? Isn’t that, you know, what they sell here? What other kind of ice-cream was I supposed to get? Do they have a McDonald’s soft-serve machine in the back some place? Should I maybe have run across the street to Wal-Mart for a generic half gallon that the UDF people to make a shake with for me?

Seriously, this is messing with me. Does anyone know what the hell this business is about? If not, I might not sleep tonight as I ponder the other places in the world where they have stuff with sale prices, which you have to pay a little more for because, you know, it’s the brand they sell there. Got help me when I find out how much more my tacos are costing me because I want them to use Taco Bell meat.

pud’n

Before I get started with my normal ramblings for the week, I figured I ought to review my progress on my Twilight project. So, yes, I plopped my bottom down in the faithful recliner last night at about 11:30, popcorn at the ready, for a Sunday night screening. Unfortunately, my condition at the time (plum tuckered out) took precedence over my desire to complete the assignment given by my first born. In other words, I think I got about 20 minutes into the movie and then found myself waking up just in time to see the closer credits roll.

That particular outcome probably shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. As I’ve said, I have something of a habit when it comes to family room nodding-off, and hockey compounds the effect. I’m just too damned stubborn to admit when I physically need rest; either that or I’m hell-bent on earning a reputation as the family narcoleptic.

By the way, random note derived from an office conversation: if a colleague is trying to remember the word narcolepsy, and asks you what it’s called when someone just up and falls asleep all the time, don’t accidentally start to reply that it’s “necro…” Anything starting with that prefix is something else altogether, and not a topic you typically want to bring up at the office. Unless you’re like a mortician. Or you run a prison.

Anyway, as tonight is Monday night, I was planning to meet my buddies at the bar for the weekly moderate consumption of beers. We’ve been doing it in some form or another for over a decade now, although I generally only manage to attend once or twice a month. You see, the Puddinette works in the evenings, so it’s my job to put the kids to bed. While that’s certainly no big deal, my buddies are all less stubborn than I am when it comes to fulfilling their physical need for rest. In other words, I’m apparently the only middle-aged dude in three counties that makes any kind of habit of going to work in the morning on just five hours of sleep. Staying out a little late doesn’t bother me, but by the time I’ve got the kids down and reasonably settled enough to get away, everyone else is just about to head home.

Oh well, there’s always next week; having missed out tonight gives me the chance to take another crack at Project Twilight. Maybe I’ll get though the whole first hour this time. It gets less broody eventually, right?

pud’n

I’m afraid tonight’s new content is going to be lacking, and not nearly enough to qualify as a daily entry as set forth by The Challenge. It’s getting late, I’m tired from a very fun, very entertaining weekend with my boys, and it’s always a stretch to be able to generate something of value after skating in the weekly Sunday Night hockey game. Beyond that, not only am I plum tuckered out and considering an early bedtime, I have an assignment from the Puddinpop for the night.

Apparently, I have to watch Twilight. Do I really want to watch Twilight? No, not at all. Obviously I didn’t see it in a theater during its initial release. For one reason, I haven’t read the books, because I’m just not sure that series my cup of tea. I did read The Host, and enjoyed it quite a bit; Stephanie Meyer is a very talented author. The Host, though, was a character-driven novel in a sci-fi setting, and that’s right in my sweet spot. Honestly, the world could, in my opinion, definitely use more science fiction works with great characterization. I’m always looking for that kind of thing. Most sci-fi work is big on the aliens, warp speed, and ray guns, and equally heavy on the Buck Rogers cardboard cutout hero. In general, I have no use for that.

Another reason I haven’t seen it is because going to see a movie isn’t cheap nowadays. I took the boys to see How to Train Your Dragon yesterday, but had to stop and sell one of my kidneys to a guy named “Badger” first. He’s still scheduling the extraction.

Yet another reason: as the Puddinette wouldn’t have been interested, I’d have been seeing it alone had I opted to catch it at the movies. Granted, I typically like going to see movies alone. I have no problem being the guy seeing something without a buddy. I’ve never understood that anyway. You shouldn’t talk during a film, so what’s so great about having someone see it with you? At any rate, the bottom line on the issue is that a 37 year old man shouldn’t see a movie aimed at middle-school girls by himself. Going to see a movie, alone, whose primary target demographic is the squealing 13^th year-old girl all hopped on how cute and broody the main vampire seems is pretty much a first class ticket right past the front gate of Perverted Middle-Aged Dude Manor.

Being in a theater and having fellow movie-goers give you that “what’s up, freak” look doesn’t really bother me. Being in a theater and getting the “what’s up, perv” look is far less desirable.

So, no, no Twilight for me. I further decided that when Twilight became available on DVD that I wasn’t going to waste my cash or time on that either. Sure, I typically dig vampire movies, but this thing looked pretty much a high school prom full of the blood thirsty. Proms don’t entertain me much anymore, so I decided to pass. Maybe someday, I thought, if I read the books, I’ll make the effort.

Friday, though, my Twilight outlook changed. The Puddinpop said a number of his classmates have apparently seen it and wanted to know if he could watch it too. I informed him that it had kissing, expecting that would be enough to squelch his interest. It was not; it seems he really is 7 going-on 14. So, here I am, at 11:00 PM on a Sunday night, planning to screen Twilight solely because I feel like I need to have a good answer for whether or not it’s an OK movie for my first grader.

The things we do, indeed.

Well, at least it turned into a full-blown daily post. So I got that going for me, which is nice.

pud’n

I was supposed to be a lot of places today; perhaps Pittsburgh for a Penguins game, maybe Columbus to see the Blue Jackets skate, or, at last resort, the Cincinnati Beerfest. That last one wouldn’t have included any activity other than standing in line for a multitude of 4 oz samples of beer. I would have enjoyed that a lot, possibly a bit more than the Puddinette, who’s required by law to put up with my foolishness once the samples reach my thought processing centers. Odds are, though, I wouldn’t be enjoying it much tomorrow morning when all those tiny little samples became an Acme anvil on my head.

Hangovers notwithstanding, any one of those places would have been loads of fun for a Guys’ Day with the peeps, consuming copious volumes of beer while completely free of children and responsibility. As it turns out, though, I got to go to exactly zero of those places and my Guy’s Day turned into the wife taking The Daughter to Indiana overnight.

If you’re wondering what the smell is, it’s the definitive odor of me getting the shaft, and yes, it stinks.

The worst part is that my attempt to plan Guys’ Day was actually already to make up for a trip I had to miss. The peeps went to Michigan in February and I had intended to join the party going north, freeze the family jewels into sterilization, snowmobile like a fool, and drink the aforementioned copious volumes while watching a hole in Lake Michigan not produce any fish for consumption.

Work and school schedules conspired, however, to prevent my participation in that, so the lovely Puddinette suggested I put together a trip to see an NHL game somewhere. Well, that didn’t work out either. Apparently getting tickets to see the Pittsburgh Penguins play at home this season is only slightly less difficult than photographing Santa Claus as he jams his pie hole full of stale sugar cookies. The backup plan was to spend a night in Columbus and see the Blue Jackets play. That’s certainly not a difficult ticket to get, but when your recreational planning shoots for five days in Michigan, sails past a weekend in Pittsburgh, and land on an overnight stay in Columbus? Well, it’s a lot like asking the hot girl in school to the prom, getting rejected, having your lab partner reject you too, and eventually listening to your mom try to convince you to take your ugly cousin Gertrude, who’s a freshman, the captain of the Math Team, and wears a retainer helmet thing.

I passed on the Gertrude, er, Columbus option and no one wanted to join me for Beerfest, possibly fearing their own cartoon anvil. So, instead, I decided I’m going to buy a set of golf clubs of my very own as an excuse to schedule a golf trip for the next month or so. I’m excited about the plan since I end up golfing at least once a year with my grandfather’s clubs from 1950. In other words, my woods are made of actual wood. In the hands of skilled practitioner of the game, they might be an artisan’s tools. I, sadly, resemble Rodney Dangerfield on the golf course and really need one of those drivers with a face the size of a wall clock.

So that’s how it happened that I decided to stay home this weekend with the family. Coincidentally, the Puddinette and my daughter got an opportunity to take an overnight trip at a heavy discount. The Puddinette nearly refused because she didn’t think it fair for her to be gone on what was supposed to be my weekend away. I convinced her otherwise, but little does she know how dearly she’ll have to pay for it later.

Seriously, though, it’s funny how things work out. I was trying to construct a Guys’ Day (or Weekend) and ended up having a weekend at home with my boys. In the end it probably turned out for the best this way anyway, as my sons and I took full advantage of our special time together today. They had sushi for the first time this afternoon, and we learned how to train a dragon, in 3D. They got to stay up late for the Kids’ Choice Awards, and I got to teach them a thing or two about how to be a bachelor, complete with dipping sauces.

Today ended up exactly as today should have ended up, and I have absolutely zero complaints.

Also, no hangover. Can you say, “bonus?”

pud’n

Ok, so where was I? Oh, yes, I was rambling on about nicknames.

My second son, aka Sanford, who was born of the job interview, called me “Dadster” after dinner, which I’m cool with, and then later, “Mexico”. I’m not really sure why Mexico. I’ve always thought of myself more along the lines of a “Canada”, or maybe an “Ireland”. Probably not a “Belize” and definitely not “Chile”. There will only ever be one Chile, and that’s Jon Travolta in Get Shorty. And, yes, I know that his character is actually “Chili”, but it suited my purposed better the other way; save yourself the wasted email.

So why Sanford? Well, let’s just say that the boy and Redd Fox share a common interest. He likes junk, a lot. Trinkets, old gadgets, discarded stuff, and pretty much anything either shiny or mechanical (especially anything mechanical), are all items of immense value and terrific wonder to the little dude. Of course, it’s only full of value and wonder for 8 hours or until bedtime, whichever comes first. The next morning, the Exciting! New! Junk! is now just something else of his, and no longer something new. The shine wears off a newly acquired piece of someone else’s stuff faster than the new construction smell at a White Castle grand opening. After that? Well, the recently gained and no longer all that interesting item finds its way into the boy’s “junk box”, where it lays untouched until The Attitude digs it out and carries it around the house.

The worst part about the whole Sanford business is his incredible tenacity when it comes to inquiring about new pieces for his “collection”. Honestly, the way he coerces innocent grandparents into giving up 20 year old trinkets, you’d think he was in the business of finding unknown Van Gogh’s, lost to history for a hundred a fifty years in someone’s dusty attic. Unfortunately for me, it’s not a rough sketch of the Mona Lisa he’s looking for, it’s a an 15 year-old adjustable wrench or mechanical pencil from 1986, but God help you if you think he’ll take “No” for answer. FYI: he doesn’t.

Lastly in our nickname-o-rama, there is my youngest son, who alternates between calling me “Dada”, “dadoo-baba”, and just screeching to get my attention. As I’ve said before, he’s at an age when the execution of a full body tantrum apparently seems the most reasonable way to accomplish his goals. Before long, he’ll realize that we find it more entertaining than compelling. Until then, I’m blessed with the opportunity to watch him roll about on the carpet at least once a night while screaming as if he were witnessing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Even more fun than the nightly fit ritual is hearing him utter the ubiquitous expression, “dadoo-baba”. No one has any idea what it means, none whatsoever; it’s very much like the word “smurf”. If you remember The Smurfs cartoon from the early 80′s, you know what I mean. The term “smurf” could be used for any purpose by the little blue monsters. For example, “I need to go to Gargamel’s and smurf some milk”, “Papa Smurf said the next smurfing smurf that touched his whiskey would be smurfing the back of his hand”, or “Smurfette was in a mood and being a total smurf last night, so I slept on the smurfing’ couch“. The Attitude’s use of “dadoo-baba” is pretty much equivalent. He uses it whenever he wants and it can refer to absolutely anything. Honestly, I’m just glad that he seems to use it most frequently in connection with either myself or his stuffed Elmo. That’s about as rarified company as it gets when you’re dealing with a 17 month old.

So, long story short, everyone in the family has a nickname of some kind, and I somehow have a whole boatload. Ironically, I didn’t even mention the one that my mother gave me as a baby. Its use is forbidden, and outside of my parents and siblings, only my wife knows it. Our continued marital bliss is contingent upon her keeping it to herself. So, having piqued your interest with that little nugget, I think that’s enough smurfing nickname talk for me. I’m gonna go smurf an Arrogant Bastard and watch TV until I smurf out in my chair.

pud’n

I have many, many nicknames. In the relatively brief span of time between my somewhat unheralded yet triumphant return home from work and the present moment, members of my family called me “Smitty”, “Dadson”, “Smitty-Daddy”, a screeching noise, “Dadster”, and “Mexico”.

My wife, the lovely Puddinette, paged my alter ego, Smitty, from the second floor shortly after dinner. Once again, the kids’ bathroom was in desperate need of some plunging. Actually, that doesn’t really do it justice. The, um, blockage, in question was significant enough that after working on it for 10 minutes, I had to retrieve the “big guns” from the garage.

Yes, that’s right; I have a varsity plunger that plays only when the game is truly on the line. It’s kind of like Judge Smails‘ putter, Billy Baroo . Usually, the somewhat more aesthetically friendly “apprentice” plunger that stays upstairs can accomplish the requisite task at hand. Very occasionally, though, like when there’s a logging convention at the house or an interstate trucking convoy passing through the neighborhood, only Big Bertha will get the job done. Regardless, whether it was a family of gophers living in my plumbing or the work of my dainty four year-old daughter, tonight the heavy artillery was needed.

After completing that task, I returned to the kitchen where my daughter, aka The Daughter aka Pretty, Pretty, Princess Drama, spent the next three minutes attempting to get my attention by giggling, “Smitty-Daddy, Smitty-Daddy, we need you. Good job, Smitty-Daddy.” It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her how she manages to eat an entire wheel of cheese every day without being seen and who’s paying for it, but instead I suggested she just call me Daddy if she wanted me to pay attention.

My eldest son, aka the Puddinpop aka Captain Curmudgeon, decided to call me “Dadson” just before he got into the shower for the evening. I suppose that if your child is going to create a nickname for you there are worse things than combining your given name and a form of your hard-earned parental title. He, himself, earned the moniker Captain Curmudgeon over the course of the past year, as he’s apparently now seven going-on 13. Typically, he is your normal, happy-go-lucky first grader. On occasion, though, he’ll get his underoos twisted up quite completely and spend the next hour or so muttering about the unfairness of life. Say, for instance, if I was to suggest he clean up his room, or better yet, erroneously tell him to take a bath when it is clearly his brother’s turn to go first. Such offenses result in at least an hour of sullen moping and dirty looks. I cannot wait until he’s actually 13.

I’ll have to continue this tomorrow. The UK game is on. I live in Kentucky and a fella has to have his priorities.

pud’n

“Very well,” she began, “we will start with what I know about you.”

Ana resumed her perch on the same metal stool, apparently unmoved since their last meeting. “What is the last thing you remember before waking up here?”

He opened his mouth to answer and paused. Thom had given that exact question a good deal of thought in the handful of days since finding himself in this room. To be completely honest, he had not yet come up with a good answer. He remembered walking away from Heather in that hotel and wandering an underground parking garage in a daze, looking for his car. He remembered his hands shaking as he drove and thinking that he needed to stop before he killed someone. Most of his memories after that are a hazy collection of bars, smoke, and alcohol.

He remembered the papers. Try as he might, though, he could not recall anything after opening the manila envelope holding his divorce papers. Did he even talk to an attorney?

“My wife filed for divorce. That’s the last thing I remember.”

Ana frowned. “A pity, I was hoping for more. It is common, though, in cases of head trauma, to not recall events leading up to the responsible incident. I suppose we’ll never really know how you ended up in the coma.”

“Once I became aware of your….situation, I began looking for background information. Eventually I managed to locate your original hospital chart, but it was partially damaged and large sections were missing. From what I can tell, during the spring of 1997, you suffered a massive head injury and became comatose.”

“Was there anything about what caused it?” Thom asked.

“Not that I found, and my search was extensive. If the computer system at the hospital had been operating, I might have found out, but electricity is not universal anymore.”

“Well,” he mumbled, “it was February, I think, when I got the papers. Maybe I drove myself into a tree or something.”

“Perhaps,” she allowed. “Regardless, you ended up with a significant head wound and a very negative prognosis. No one expected you to ever be conscious again. You were you lucky, though, that the hospital was participating in a medical study regarding coma. As a result, rather than being shipped off to whatever establishment your family could afford, you remained there for nearly ten years. You apparently received a variety of experimental drugs intended to boost your brain activity. You were very closely monitored and well cared for, until Charon.”

“So everyone got super-flu and died, but I didn’t get it? How’d that happen? And, even if I didn’t get it, how’d I manage not to starve to death. Don’t people in comas need feeding tubes or something?”

Ana smiled wryly. “Yes, feeding is necessary. I don’t know exactly what happened when everyone else died. As I told you, though, there are those that survived, but they are largely…different…not really exactly human beings anymore.”

“What do you mean, different?”

“We’ll get to that. The important thing is that somehow they found you, and they had to have found you relatively soon. You could not have survived long, helplessly comatose and without food.”

“Ok, fine. So someone else, some people like, what, the Road Warrior guys, took care of me for three years and kept me warm, dry, and fed? Great. I don’t care how screwed up they are or if they’re a bunch of psychos or elves or something. Whatever. They kept me alive. I should get them a card or something. I need to say thanks.”

Ana jumped up from her stool. “You will make NO attempt to do any such thing!”

“Whoa, lady,” Thom began.

Her eyes narrowed in the moonlight and she pointed at him. “No. Listen to me, carefully. If you ever try to return there, you will surely be killed. You were held by a very twisted man for three years; kept alive only because, well, you weren’t dead already. I only just found out about you a month or so ago and I spent every waking moment trying to devise a way to sneak you out of there. You cannot go back. It isn’t safe. You have to trust me.”

“Ok, ok. Calm down. But why? Why would anyone want to kill me, especially now? What the hell were they doing with me all that time?”

She sighed and dropped back onto the stool. “Experiments, Thom,” she said quietly, “hundreds, maybe thousands of them. What do you think made those circular marks all over you?”

If, at any point during my 37 years on this planet you had offered me a wager regarding whether or not a normal, everyday, weeknight dinner might one day be interrupted with the announcement that our ants had finally arrived from Uncle Milton via US Postal Service, I would have bet my car, my house, and probably my firstborn against it.

I was reminded again last night exactly why I don’t make bets unless the stakes are largely inconsequential. Dinner became jubilant chaos with the realization that our ants, yes, our live ants, had indeed been delivered.

Why are we receiving live ants in the mail from someone with the rather dubious moniker “Uncle Milton”? Well, the story goes like this: my second son, whom we have nicknamed Sanford (for reasons I will explain at a later date), received a National Geographic Ant Farm as a gift for his birthday in December.

As he is a typical six year-old boy, with typical six year-old enthusiasm, his excitement about this gift was, needless to say, boundless. In fact, he was so excited that he wasn’t even put off by the fact that the box contained no actual ants, but rather a mail-in voucher for them. He was, however, not happy about the fact that he got the gift on a Sunday and had to wait one entire, excruciating day before the voucher was safely on its way to be traded for a colony of insects.

Worse than that one day, though, was the actual waiting for the ants. Waiting, and waiting, and more waiting; waiting that seemed very much like the phrase, “through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year”. By the beginning of February, the Puddinette and I were actively wondering if Sanford’s ants were every going to arrive.

Interesting piece of trivia for you: the National Geographic Ant Farm Gel Colony is actually a rebranded version of the Uncle Milton Ant Farm Gel Colony. Why is that relevant? It’s important because getting an email about live animals from National Geographic is not overly alarming. However, receiving an email bearing the subject “Uncle Milton Creature Order Status Notification” is enough to give anyone a moment’s pause. The likelihood of finding a truly disturbing message within (potentially, with pictures!) is well beyond most people’s comfort level.

The Puddinette received a message with that exact subject at the end of January; she nearly deleted the thing without even viewing it. Luckily, as she is a smart girl, she put one and one together and got ants. Thus, at the risk of compromising the health of my home network as well as having surprise images burned directly into her retinas, she opened the email. I suspect she might have built one of those reverse viewer things you use for watching eclipses in elementary school so you don’t go blind.

At any rate, it turns out that Uncle Milton isn’t a pervert but rather is the company that ships the ants for the ant colony. The email indicated that, as it was winter, and we live in a place where winter is cold, even potentially freezing, we were S.O.L. on getting any ants before spring. Yes, that’s right, Uncle Milton so deeply cares for their ant colonies that they won’t ship them during winter.

Just to be clear: I know at least two people who bought AKC-registered puppies from out of state breeders in February, and both of them were delivered. My son’s ants, though? Well, I’m afraid those little things are too dainty for such travel. Maybe in the spring, we’ll see what the groundhog says.

Last night, exactly three days into spring, I noticed a manila envelope in the mail stack stamped proudly with the name Uncle Milton. Inside we found a sealed plastic tube containing a picnic’s worth of red ants. Not tiny black household ants, mind you, no sir, we’re talking large red, mean-looking Texas-style ants. Included was a short note: “Warning, ants will bite”. Of course they will.

Long story short, we waited all winter for Uncle Milton to finally deem environmental conditions safe and adequate for the transport and delivery of a colony of red, biting ants whom I’ve been instructed not to make angry. My children were and are elated. As far as gifts go, with the happiness of my children in mind, the Ant Colony is clearly one of the best ones ever. Still, I’m wondering if I could trade it for one of those puppies that can survive winter travel. At least I can train them not to bite.

pud’n

I awoke this morning to the sound of the doorbell. My basement contractor was on time, as is his custom. For some reason, I was sleeping the sleep of the righteous, aka the sleep of the dead. After looking around my bedroom with lost eyes, reminiscent of a college student trying to find English Comp. on their first day, I threw on a t-shirt and pair of jeans and let him in. He’s a good contractor. He brought doughnuts. He has cool tools and brings doughnuts. I think my kids like him better than me..

The Puddinette was already in full Sunday morning mode by the time I returned to our room after overseeing doughnut distribution and discussing a couple of things with The Contractor. She was showered, dressed, and changing the The Attitude, who had again starting his morning by rudely complaining to Elmo.

I did the only sensible thing and slipped back into bed. My eldest came into the room twenty minutes later and inquired, “when are you going to get up, sleepyhead?”.

My children, being seven years old and younger, have little respect or understanding for the necessity of an extra half hour of sleep. To them, if the sun has risen above the horizon, well, then it’s awake time, by golly! I will be certain to remind them of my rough Sunday morning treatment when they’re teenagers, if I’m up in time.

I actually suspect the Puddinette put The Puddinpop up to it this morning. She has less tolerance for my return-to-bed antics than they kids do, largely because a) there are many To-Do lists on hand, which cannot be checked off while dozing, b) she’s jealous that I’m gifted with the ability to fall asleep within minutes of making the decision to do so, and c) she fears her family will find out someday that I’m actually a shiftless layabout and not the Perfect Son-In-Law spoken of in prophesy.

To any of my in-laws reading this post, I was actually up at 6 am this morning, working at the soup kitchen. Everything else is purely for comedic effect.

When I did finally drag my sorry self out of bed, I found The Attitude attending to the ritual removal of The Puddinette’s many Creams of Unknown Purpose from one of the drawers in the master bathroom. She looked on, chuckling, as he arranged the various tubes in a meticulously straight line on the side of the bathtub.

No, we have no idea why our 17 month-old is compelled to act in such a manner. What I do know is that God help you if you interrupt the Removal and Arrangement of Tubes of Cream. The kids is cute as a button, but he’s also smack in the Full Body Tantrum phase that precedes the terrible twos. His ability to drop to the floor while crying inconsolably rivals that of a sorority girl at a kegger after badly losing a game of quarters over a bottle of MD 20/20 and subsequently finding out that her high school boyfriend is cheating on her three states to the north. Luckily, he only cries for a few minutes and gets up of his own accord. Also, no one needs to hold his hair back for him.

pud’n

Winter is long, cold, dark, and hard on families with many smallish children. On the Sunday morning when the clocks were set back this year, I pretended to be asleep as our youngest, just a year old at the time (who proudly now carries the nickname The Attitude), began his morning routine by yelling at the Elmo he keeps with him at night.

The yelling mostly consists of youthful gibberish at this point; someday, when my son’s language resembles more like English, we hope to find out exactly what makes Elmo so offensive in the early morning.

At any rate, my saintly wife knew I was pretending, but she let me have the extra hour anyway, as she has done on nearly every “fall back” morning since our wedding. She got up to see to the kids’ breakfast, and allowed me to squeeze in that precious 60 minutes of bonus sleep. It’s in her best interest, in the long run, to give me that extra hour in the morning, because, as far as I’m concerned, that day, Fall Back day, is when the hardness of winter first gets rolling.

Sure, sure, there are plenty of days between that autumn morning in October and the days before Christmas that mark the true beginning of winter. But it’s the short daylight hours that make regular outdoor play largely impossible, save for a handful of random days of the White Death. When you have more than a couple of children, and suddenly you have to be indoors with them nearly all day, well, things get pretty interesting.

Children under the age of 10, in case you didn’t know, have enough potential energy to power the city of Poughkeepsie, New York for a full 72 hours. Be warned then, parents, if you do not give them an appropriate outlet (or six) for all that potential energy, well, rest assured they’ll be converting it to kinetic energy one way or another, regardless of your wishes. Literal bouncing off the walls is not out of the question. Seriously, in January, I had to make running up to and colliding with a wall for no apparently purpose whatsoever, officially forbidden.

The Puddinette, then, has a terrifically difficult job. I get to go to work five out of seven days and deal with adult people. Sure, some of them occasionally challenge my idea of what defines a human being, but for the most part I participate in reasonable conversations with normal people who don’t typically engage in competitions to see how loudly one can yell “poop!” while giggling, or how fast one can run in a circle from the family room to the kitchen and back, around the island, 38 times.

Last weekend, blessedly, was “spring forward” Saturday. Sure, there was the necessary adjustment period, especially for The Attitude, who is now a very opinionated 17 months old. Regardless, it was wonderful to return from work several times this week to find my children frolicking happily in the late afternoon daylight and a wife basking in the glow of glorious sunlight nearby. Everyone rushed to the car with joyful greetings of “Hi, Daddy!”, and nobody gave me a look suggesting that I better be hiding airline tickets to a Tahitian vacation in my briefcase if I expect to make it through the evening alive.

It’s sunny now, and today is the first day of official Spring. Welcome spring! I can feel my psychology bills going down already.

pud’n