random pictures

yes. that is just what it looks like. watermelon covered in shredded cheese.

getting ready for bed after a long, hard day of being awesome:


biggest of the 4 fish he caught today:


okay. now. here is a 3-1/2 minute window into what my entire day sounds like (okay, at least 14 hours of it, anyway.) it has narration. and theme music. lots and lots of theme music.

FISHING TRIP

SpazMonkey is really into making movies these days. i've taught him the rudiments of post-production editing, as well, and he's working on captions, voice-overs, splicing, and transitions for a movie he shot a few days ago of a plush mario being attacked by some odd-looking mcdonald's happy meal toys. he's disappointed that i can't teach him computer animation, because "explosions would make my movies totally sweet." and who could argue with that?

this is what happens when you stick a buttcrack in PRM's face

another one bites the dust

baby gate #4 eats shit after a particularly emphatic rattling session:

welfareloser's rules, #2: know the heimlich maneuver

i've now had to do it at least once on 3 out of 4 kids. DramaQueen wins the honor of never needing it (so far. i wouldn't put competitive hot-dog swallowing past him at some point in his middle school career.) EvilGremlin wins the honor of needing it the most - at least three times that i can remember before age 2. that little shit did the worst job i've ever seen of swallowing, something that you would think would be instinctive, but apparently is not.

a few nights ago, it was MonkeyBeef's turn. as i was cooking dinner, i became aware of MB making a really fucked-up noise, just as EvilGremlin shouted "oh my god i think he's choking!" every now and then he made a horribly labored noise as he breathed in for all of a second, and then it would get choked off again. i swiped through his mouth, found nothing, and started the heimlich. the second i heard air rushing in, i'd go digging in his pharynx, but by the time i got my finger there, he had sucked the object back down. i tried to get him to eject it more forcefully, but he never seemed to be able to move it completely out of his airway. and so it went, for a good two minutes. two minutes of trying to get your baby to breathe is a very long fucking time.

finally, my finger caught the object: a marble. a slippery, round marble. i jabbed my finger in good and hard to make sure i got behind it instead of it slipping to the side and getting pushed back down. i probably scratched him in the process, because when he coughed up the marble, a fat rope of bloody mucus came with it, like a comet tail. he was still making fucked-up, labored noises, which resolved when he finished puking up the bowl of popcorn he had just eaten, but was terrifying until then.

and did i mention all of this happened in the middle of a tornado? going to the hospital wasn't even an option!

yeah. fun night! anyway. heimlich maneuver. good shit to know. i guess i'm officially a "veteran" parent, because not only was i able to hold my shit together well enough to figure out a sort of hybrid between the baby-technique and adult-technique heimlich, i also had the presence of mind to call EvilGremlin over and talk him through what i was doing to MonkeyBeef so that he would be able to do it himself in the future, and finish off with explanation to the twits that this is why you don't try to fit as much food in your mouth as possible, because sometimes, that actually isn't going to be hilarious.

LiquidCourage thought maybe that would teach the little shit not to eat glass. and by god, two minutes worth of punching the boy in the stomach did what two years worth of scolding couldn't do... he doesn't put marbles and dice in his mouth anymore. later that night, he stole a pair of dice from his brothers' board game, held them up to his (closed) mouth, and looked at me fearfully. when i said, "no, no, hurt you!" he threw them at the wall and started wailing like... well, like i'd just punched him in the stomach.

so, uh, back to square one with the recovering arm (so much for "no lifting anything over 5 lbs") but the look of terror on MB's face when he spots a marble is totally worth it!

remember when you were nine years old...

and your mom told you to clean your room? and you were like, what? why? why do i have to clean my room? and she was like, do it! and you were like, awwwwww, man, why?!?!??!


THIS IS WHY:


now go apologize to yo mama. you know you need to.

i hate quitters!

i started fencing last september. the first session of the 12-week beginner's class had what looked like about 200 people, but people started dropping off like flies as it became obvious that fencing makes you sweat. a LOT. by the end of the class, when we started going to the twice-weekly open fencing bouts, there were fewer than 40 beginners left.

owing largely to the fact that i practiced the footwork for at least half an hour a day before we were ever handed weapons, i was able to develop two essential skills very early: taking priority and attacking instead of standing there like a deer in the headlights, and getting the hell out of scoring range when i don't have priority, also instead of the deer-in-headlights technique. i mostly beat the other beginners, and scored at least one, if not two or three points, against the really good fencers. i was awesome!

for a little while. the problem with feeling like you suck at a sport is that it makes you want to quit, which is what almost all of the other beginners did over the next couple of months. by the time christmas break was over, there were fewer than ten of us from the beginner's class still there; just three of us foilists.

i was no longer awesome. luckily, at this point in my life, i have very little left in the way of pride, so i can take an ass-kicking and keep coming back for more. i'm practicing daily, i'm taking private lessons, i'm seeing slow but steady improvement, and i'm pretty sure that i will, someday, be good at this. as i've mentioned before, i really, really love fencing.

which is why the current situation with the non-functional hands is just about driving me batshit. i've lost months of time while everyone else has been improving their skills. i got my stitches out from the surgery on my right arm a week ago, and have three more weeks of "take it easy so you don't rip up all of the very, very insulted soft tissue around your ulnar nerve's new location." the surgical dressing came off to reveal a right arm that was noticeably skinnier than the left arm... and that left arm has lost quite a bit of the girth it once had when i was still fencing, but at least it still had some good curves on the forearm, and a discernible bicep. *sigh* i lost muscle everywhere else, too; two months ago, i could stand in a low squat for hours and leap forward and backward to get in and out of scoring distance. last week i hustled around a playground for an hour with the boys and was sore the next day. wtf?

it's frustrating, but fuck it. it's survivable. 3 more weeks - i've got the day marked on my calendar - and i can take my ass back to fencing. from the recovery so far, i'm guessing that i will be able to start working out on footwork drills again in another week. it won't make me a rockstar, but it should at least make me more than a complete marshmallow by the time i show up to open bouting two weeks later. PRM just got his schedule for the coming academic year, and got his request for "no call on tuesdays or thursdays" fulfilled, so i won't have to miss a single session. (besides taking about 3 weeks off when i get my left arm done, but all i have to do with my left arm when fencing is keep it the hell out of the way, so full recovery isn't necessary.) i doubt it will have me in good enough shape to kick ass at the hawkeye open tournament in the fall, but maybe by the spring's hawkeye novice tournament, for fencers with fewer than two years experience, i'll be able to place respectably well.

at this past spring's hawkeye novice tournament, i placed 36 out of 42 foilists. not dead last! i could offer up excuses about how, by that time, i had lost 90% of sensation and 70% of function in my pinky and ring fingers on my weapon hand, and the pain had gotten to where it was interfering with the function of my other three fingers. however, this wouldn't change the fact that, after fencing the 4 bouts in the initial pools, i lost my first direct elimination bout 15-12 to a fencer who has the opposite problem i have: instead of her ulnar nerve, her radial nerve is getting smashed, and she has a significant loss of sensation and function in thumb and first two finger of her weapon hand. since the weapon is gripped and controlled almost exclusively with the thumb and forefinger - the other three fingers being referred to in fencing books as "the aides" - i pretty much need to shut the hell up, work my ass off, and get good at this. preferably before ShampooBanana moves here, which she tentatively plans to do after the coming academic year. partly for the awesome university, partly for the VA hospital that is not only on campus and not scary (don't laugh. have you seen Danville, IL? trust me: scary), but also has a neurosurgery department that can hopefully fix her up... and mostly for the awesome fencing club, of course.

so, some pictures of the awesomest fencing club on the planet. first, our saberists, who kindly allow me to play with them when there aren't any other foilists around to play with. i would like to tell you about how i'm gaining sabre skills after 3 or 4 sessions with them, but i mostly sit inside my gong of a helmet, a foot and a half shorter than those corn-fed, pond-raised mofos, and take repeated hits to the head. and somehow, even at that, it's fun as shit!




some of our epeeists:



and some foilists (technically, a foilist and the women's epee team captain kicking our asses):


and now some pictures of the hawkeye novice tournament a couple of months ago.



a woefully tiny cameraphone shot of me making a pretty good lunge and scoring in my DE bout against ShampooBanana:


me chatting with one of the illinois fencers between the pools and DEs. i recognized the IL team instantly; they reeked of enginerdiness... heheheheheheh. just kidding. don't stab me.


DramaQueen, watching one of our 7-1/2 foot tall saberists, points at him and declares, "that's the guy i'm going to fence! in the green socks! he's AWESOME! where's my sword? can i borrow your sword? what about that sword? but nobody's using it!"


and then, as SpazMonkey tried to quietly sidle away to grab a sword, it was time to leave the tournament before certain members of my entourage got escorted out of the tournament:


so. 20 days and counting until i get to get back on it. and if my ego needs a boost, there's another batch of beginners showing up in a few months.

road trip to st. louis, part 2

we took the kids to the city museum with TalkyTalky and TalkyJunior. the other kids had been several times, but it was MonkeyBeef's first time. he had a good time, and we didn't lose him, so we'll call that a success!

the little kid ball pit, for kids 6 and under:


now, right next to that ball pit was another ball pit for the big dogs. and it was very, very thunderdome dodgeball deathmatch in there. teenagers ran around screaming, hanging from the cage walls and roof, swinging on ropes, and winging playground-quality dodgeballs at each other with deadly force. EvilGremlin begged to go over there. my exact words were, "the kids over there are really big, they're playing rough, and i guarantee you're going to get hurt. and if you really want to, yes, you can go." so his skinny 9-year-old ass (which is roughly the size of your average 7-year-old ass) bounded over there and dived in. he skulked. he snuck. he sniped. he actually got in several really good hits and did an excellent job of hiding, and completely dodging the few hits that did come screaming in at him. and then, at about the 30-minute mark, he caught a ball right on his eye. there was a loud THWOCK, his head snapped back, he clapped his hands over his eye. it had to hurt, but he didn't let on. he just slowly, carefully crawled over the balls and came back to sit next to his dad and sip quietly on his slushie until we moved on to the next area.

MonkeyBeef had no fear:


SpazMonkey, then PositiveRoleModel and MB coming down one of the bigger slides:



the caves in the basement, full of crystals with rainbow backlights, fake dinosaur fossils, tunnels that parents can't fit through, exposed wiring, and lots and lots of darkness!


all the boys headed through yet another hamster tunnel... lemme tell you, i had to avoid killing my elbows, so instead of crawling through miles of tunnels, i freaking duck-walked through them. and my elbows and hands survived with no further damage, but the next day my legs were about as sore as they've ever been, far beyond even what a fencing tournament did to them:


outside on top of the building. PRM instructed DramaQueen to "look scared"


we took a break for lunch on the third-and-a-halfth floor, ordering cheese pizza, more slushes, and caesar salad. now, here's something i have to share about TalkyTalky. PRM and i use his name as a verb. when you get talked into doing something that you intended not to do, you have been TalkyTalkied. this is a guy who can walk up to someone he's never met before, find out the guy intends not to drink that night because he has a job interview early the next morning, and say, hey, dude, that's cool. but could you hold my beer for me? cool, thanks. yeah, it's good beer; you should taste it! oh, right, right, you're not drinking; i forgot. you should smell, it though; this is a really fresh keg, or maybe they changed the recipe or something. smells better than usual, right?

two hours later, mr. job interview is doing kegstands and can't find his pants.

now, TT also uses his superpowers for good, and actually not only got SpazMonkey to try the caesar salad, he got him to eat an entire PLATE of the shit. this is the kid who, at age 2, could be chased from the dinner table screaming and crying if you menaced him with a forkful of lettuce. this is a kid who will not sit next to an adult who is eating something as nasty as freaking salad. but after listening raptly to TT's treatise on how salad gives you superstrength, just like popeye and his cans of spinach, how caesar dressing was just like ranch dressing, only with MORE SUGAR in it, and then finding a small pile of salad "accidentally" on his plate, he was popping into his slackjawed mouth with a befuddled, almost hypnotized look on his face.

if i had a superpower, i'd want invisibility, but the talkiness might be a close second.

and now a few video clips. they all love the skate park, and MB is steady and skilled and fearless, and wouldn't need watching at all if not for the fact that, upon hitting the bottom of the halfpipe, he feels no need to look out for 120-lb teenagers as he tears off for the stairs to do it again.
skate park movie 1
skate park movie 2
skate park movie 3

and he learns a life lesson: if you have to duck to get IN the tunnel, you're probably going to have to duck when you turn around to come back OUT of the tunnel: tunnel movie



we also went to the st. louis zoo with PRM's mom and stepdad.

for reasons that should be obvious (if not, say it three times fast and slur it just a little bit on the last word), the twits' favorite animal was the buff-crested bustard:


EG's favorite was the somali wild ass:


MB's favorite was... not the penguins. DEFINITELY not the penguins. you approach the penguin house on a nice sunny day, and as you enter, you're suddenly overwhelmed by darkness, cold, and the well-balanced smells of dead fish and poop. before you can even figure out what the hell happened, suddenly, at eye-level, some phallic-shaped creature dives into the glass-walled tank of water in front of you and flaps its wings to close in on you like a bat out of hell. as with all of his brothers before him, this reduced him to screaming in terror until he had gotten the hell out of the bat cave.

he did kind of dig the free-range peacocks, though. they look awfully easy to catch.