I’d Rather Be Watching Better Call Saul…

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children, funny, Humor, kids, musings, Parenting, stay-at-home Dad, television

 

It’s true, I would.

 

I’d rather be finding out more about Saul’s brother’s affliction, and how it manifested.

 

I’d rather be learning more about Mike, and how he eventually gets into bed – not literally – with Gustavo Fring.

 

And I could find out more about his daughter-in-law, and what mental anguish is causing her to think she hears gunshots late at night.

 

I could find my empathy going out to Saul’s luckless girlfriend, Kim, stuck in the basement all because she chose to hitch her wagon to a horse of ill-repute.

 

And of course there’s the glorious Saul himself, a slippery loveable rogue, whose best intentions look more than likely of scuppering things for a few people.

 

I’d rather watch that.

 

I really would.

 

But I can’t.

 

Because my son’s at home, off school, with diarrhoea (yes, I had to copy and paste that word).

 

So what am I watching?

 

Mr Popper’s Penguins.

 

The seminal 2011 Penguin-themed flick starring Jim Carrey and Carla Gugino.

 

It’s also got Clark Gregg from Agents Of Shield in it too. This fact makes me like it even less.

 

That is as much information as I want to give on this film.

 

I never want to see it again.

 

Oh well Saul, tomorrow is another day, and hopefully the poorly tummy will go away.

 

The 5 a.m Curse Of The Middle-Aged Dad

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children, funny, Humor, kids, musings, Parenting, stay-at-home Dad, toilet

 

I don’t remember going to Egypt in recent years, or ever for that matter. But I must have done. I must have ventured into some dark and dusty tomb, and opened the sarcophogus of some king of old. He certainly wasn’t happy, because he put a curse on me. A very, very specific curse.

 

I now can’t sleep through the night without having to get up for a wee.

 

This wouldn’t be a huge problem, I’m sure I’m not alone in this. Except Mr Mummy (ahem) decided to withhold activating the curse till I’d had kids.

 

And it only strikes at 5.am.

 

Oh 5.am. How I loathe you. Known to me – and probably many parents the world-over – as the most dangerous time of the night…day…errr night/day (look, you know what I mean). This is the time when the slightest disturbance can rouse your kids, bringing them to full activation mode in seconds. You may only have a precious hour-or-two before you rise anyway, but removing that time can set you up for a very bad day.

 

It won’t matter to the kids though. They’ll be happy and larking around while your brain struggles to comprehend what’s going on. This comprehension will be impaired by your head being subjected to numerous blows, from the pillow your two-year-old daughter is merrily wielding. 5.a.m is just as good as 6 or 7 a.m to a child. Which is why I detest it so.

 

1a.m – 4.am? Not a problem, you could conduct fracking beneath our house at that time and everyone would happily remain in the land of nod.

 

5a.m? Not a chance. My son, usually a comatose lump of flesh for many hours, develops Daredevil-levels of hearing. And if he misses me my daughter – who is capable of cries akin to an air-raid siren in their levels of loudness – will more than likely hear me, thus waking up her brother.

 

The problem for me is navigating the creaky boards on the landing. During the day there are maybe one or two of them. The power of the curse multiplies these by a factor of at least ten. And those then invite their partners and children to join in the fun. Even with my best tip-toe ninja-walk, it still sounds like a horror movie.

 

Then there’s the inevitable forgotten obstacle. basket of ironed clothes, bag of junk for the tip, hairdryer, inflatable snowman , large pile of hand-bells…whatever you can think of will magically appear at the top of the stairs, even if no-one’s actually placed it there, again the curse in action. This will then, no matter how soft or quiet it is during daylight hours, go off like an airbomb, or send me stumbling.

 

If you manage to avoid all these traps, and make it to the toilet safe and sound with two kids still snoozing away, you then have to actually have a pee. You can’t turn on the light – that’s just what they want you to do. So instead you have to try your best to figure out if that pale hazy shape in the gloom is the toilet or a copy of your partner’s latest magazine.

 

My hit rate is about 70-30 (not in my favour). The problem for me is that I wear glasses and contact lenses. So if it’s a lens day, no problem. But if it’s a glasses day well then Houston, we have a problem.

 

I keep my glasses on my bedside table. I never look for them to put on when I go for a pee. That’s because in the time between going to sleep and being woken by my bladder, somebody from ancient Egypt comes into my room and rearranges my bedside table. They leave behind a pile of crap, stacked, Jenga-style, just next to my glasses, waiting for me to knock it over and wake up my partner. Which is, in many ways, even worse than waking up the kids. They don’t judge you about your nocturnal noises over their coffee in the morning.

 

I have managed a 5.am pee, occasionally, without disturbing the kids, so maybe the curse isn’t all-powerful.

 

But as a rule, the kids being woken up, getting frightened by the scary man myopically-stumbling around with no pants on, and having to seek solace in our bed is an all-too regular occurrence. Which then leads to me having to seek my own solace – in the spare bedroom on the couch – our bed just ain’t big enough for the four of us.

 

Maybe one day I will be able to get through a night without peeing, or maybe I will just have to wait till the kids are of an age where they don’t care, and just mock me about it the next day. It could be worse. I have heard of cursed men who get up TWICE in the night.

 

Oh for an end to this curse.

 

Failing that, can I have an en-suite next Christmas?

 

 

 

 

 

This Is How I Get My Rocks Off These Days…

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children, funny, Humor, kids, musings, Parenting, stay-at-home Dad

I could have been a titan of industry, sailing the seven seas, on a yacht filled to overflowing with truffles, fine wines and fine ladies.

I could have been a contender.

I could have been a pilot, flown the world, a girl in every port and all those old stereotypes.

I could have conquered the globe, planned strategies, helped starving people escape tyranny and made the world a better place.

But I didn’t.

I stayed home instead.

I looked after the kids.

I love it.

But sometimes I wonder.

About the days of my youth, when the future was unmapped and unknown.

When anything could have happened.

Did I ever foresee a day, in my bright and shiny future, where I would get excited by the prospect of having an additional 12 knives in the cutlery drawer to equalize the knife – fork ratio?

That day, as unexpected as it was, back in those halcyon days of my youth, has come to pass.

No more for me the late nights and carefree carousing. No more for me the 4pm wake-up times, followed by a Pot Noodle breakfast/dinner. No more nights gaming till 6am.

No.

Now I fill my days running stock-checks and ironing and doing the dishes and…

…waiting eagerly for the arrival of cutlery to fill the utensil-deficit in the kitchen.

This is how I get my rocks off now.

And I wouldn’t change it for the world.

 

Staving Off Cabin Fever: The Half-Term Holidays Day Three – RAIN

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children, funny, Humor, kids, musings, Parenting

I had plans for today, after the car’s MOT was underway.

Off to the park, just me and my boy, having a lark.

But the heavens have opened and the rain has come, so that plan’s scuppered, and now where’s the fun?

We’re doomed to stay indoors out of the rain, we can just watch TV, for my son it’s fine but for me it’s a pain.

So we head to the place where we both feel fine, whatever the weather, come rain or shine.

It’s a big old house and it belongs to grandpa, he’s always got lollies and even the odd Mars bar.

We settle in and turn on the box, I read the papers, my son watches telly and munches some chocs.

I’ve got him a treat as he’s spending the day indoors, a Simpson’s Lego figure, a series I know he adores.

With eager fingers he pulls off the wrapper, he pulls out his prize and gives me a thankful smacker.

‘Who is this?’ he cries holding the figure aloft, I recognised the plunger, the tattoos, the red hair and so I coughed:

‘Groundskeeper Willie’, I watch my boy’s face, it wrinkles with glee and he looks down at his ‘special place’.

‘Willy!’ he cries, his eyes light with glee, ‘It can also be a name!’ I blurt out desperately.

He’s having none of it, and points merrily at his ‘bits’ ‘Willy! Willy! Willy’ he collapses in fits.

The day passes by and the rain hammers down, but the room is always filled with laughter, and there’s nary a frown.

It could have been much worse I think, as the day draws to a close, we’ve had a day filled with laughter and love and there’s never too many of those.

The phone tinkle merrily, on its stand in the hall, it’s the man at the garage and he’s got news that casts a pall.

The car’s failed its test and I’m going to be spending some money, to go on its suspension or else it will drive funny.

It’s a costly end to a lovely day, but we’ve had some fun and haven’t let rain get in the way.

The Sad Tale Of The Twelve Little Stikeez…

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children, cleaning, funny, Humor, kids, musings, Parenting, toys

Author’s note: For the uninitiated Stikeez are a collectable toy sold by Lidl, the food supermarket, here in the UK once a year, for one month. This is the story of what happened to twelve of these plucky little toys in my house…

Man. What were we thinking? We were just raw recruits, fresh out of the packaging, we didn’t know no better. We just wanted to get on and do our tour, we figured it would be a breeze; get in, get played with, get out.

Shoved together in that Austrian Supermarket pit-of-hell, we clung to each other, as we were carried back to the place that would become our prison. And for some, our coffin.

Things were ok at first. We got played with, got stuck to surfaces and licked. But that was ok, because that’s what we were designed for. But then strange things started happening.

We were supposed to be played with by the large one, one of the guys heard him getting shouted at, and we realised he was four. That was ok, he was a wise guy and liked to play rough, but we was built for that.

It was when the smaller one got hold of some of us, that’s when things went wrong. She wasn’t even two. My god…what were they thinking. 36 months and above…36 MONTHS AND ABOVE it said..RIGHT THERE ON THE PACKAGING.

There were whispers that there had been other Stikeez originally, but some of them hadn’t even made it out of the car. The little one was quick with her hands, and she liked to pick stuff up…but she liked to throw stuff away too. And she did it real quiet.

Crabbo, used to cry himself to sleep at night, one of the other guys, Fluffle, said he was crying for his twin, said he remembered seeing him in the car…with a little fist wrapped around him.I had a word with him. Asked him to sleep somewhere else, his cries were disturbing the rest of the crew.

Also he glowed in the dark.

Not long after the little one got her mitts on us, the first of my crew disappeared.

Fishy, god, why Fishy? He was the heart and soul of our crew. Then one fateful bath-night he went up with the kids as normal…and never came back. Some of the guys say they can hear him up there, on nights when the kids are especially dirty. They say his wails come through the plughole.

Bucktooth bought the farm next.

He went in the great Lego massacre of 10.36am, Wednesday. The big guy, we heard him called ‘daddy’, just lost it. Started screaming ‘I’M TIRED OF PICKING UP THESE BITS OF BLOODY LEGO’ and then he got out the big suck machine. We know to hide when the big suck machine comes out. It’s dangerous. But them Lego kids…they don’t know no better. They ain’t smart like us see?

They just stood there and got hoovered up. Little pieces, wheels, arms…Finally Bucktooth couldn’t take it no more. He ran in to try to save a Lego man, with Boba Fett’s body and Spiderman’s head, and… that was all he wrote.

The glitter girls were next. We all loved them. They brought a feminine touch to the gang, and helped keep us warm on those lonely nights when we’d been left inside the cupholder in the car. They went out one day, all four of them, full of joy and laughter. They went out clutched in the little one’s fist. They went out…but only one came back.

Sparkle didn’t speak much after that. We couldn’t make head or tail of what she said. Just occasional snatches, things like ‘she kept putting us in her mouth..my god..the drool’ and ‘why would you put a Stikeez there…why?’.

We tried to keep an eye on her but one night she slipped away and we found her the next day, on the way to school. She’d got outside during the night, and hid underneath the back wheel of the neighbour’s car. That weren’t no sight to see, let me tell ya.

Fluffle and Wuffle…they got some stick over their hair, but they was real stand-up guys. We all was. That’s the way they manufactured us. They went to school with the big kid, you could see the fear in their eyes. They weren’t supposed to go to that school. None of us were. We knew the rules, and we’d heard the rumours about toys that went to school. But that one day daddy was distracted, with the little one doing a ‘big smelly’ as we called it, in her pants. While he was dealing with that, the big kid just picked up Fluffle and Wuffle and stuffed ‘em in his pocket.

We never saw ‘em again…

Things unravelled quick after that. Whaley and Pinko went to a birthday party, and well, Pinko…he don’t see too good no more. We think what happened was he wandered into the wrong kid’s backpack…Whaley went in after him and…man..Whaley was only a pup, his manufacture date was just this year…

After that it was just me an Crabbo..he cracked. Started ranting about how he wasn’t gonna take it no more. He was gonna do something about it. He was gonna go looking for the others, and get the gang back together and make things right. He went native, went in to ‘the jungle’ out back. I see him sometimes, when the night is black, well I would, after all he glows in the dark. He just sits there next to the bins…just sitting there staring at the moon.

So now there’s just me…the last of the Stikeez dozen. I don’t know how long I’m going to last. It gets lonely out here, and them Lego kids ain’t much for conversation. I haven’t been stuck to a surface in weeks. And my suction cup is beginning to desiccate.

My time’s almost up…I’ve seen the way the daddy looks at me when he’s vacuuming…the end’s close. I can feel it. I’ll be with my buddies again soon…

Pvt First Class Bobo ‘Bluey’ Jones

I’m Going To Marry My Vacuum Cleaner

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children, chores, cleaning, fun, Humor, kids, love, melt down, musings, Parenting, technology

Why do I bother vacuuming?

I get on this hamster wheel every day.

I follow the trails my children leave around the house like Hansel, or Gretel. But there’s no sanctuary at the end of my trail of breadcrumbs. There’s no witch waiting to fatten me up, and then put me in an oven either.

No, there’s only more breadcrumbs. And the occasional piece of shrivelled up ham.

I treasure those brief moments where everything looks nice and clean. Admiring the vacuum cleaner’s marks on the carpet, like contrails in the sky.

It lasts overnight sometimes.

Then the kids wake up.

And the lovely sucker goes back to work, eating all the food that doesn’t quite hit the target.

She’s got the best diet of anyone in our household, despite just being an appliance. There’s not a day goes by when she doesn’t gorge herself on cereal, bread, cheese, meat and the occasional sock (good for roughage are socks).

She’s better than a dog when it comes to finishing meals. She’s not fussy. And she’ll never leave you a present in your slippers.

She’s my first, and last, line of defence against the enemies of cleanliness in my household – my children.

Sometimes, they even create work while I’m vacuuming. Following me round while I hoover up.

They eat biscuits while they watch me.

Their eyes glint with mirth, while they chow down on Mr Crumblie’s Extra Mega Crumbly Biscuit (NOW WITH 50% MORE CRUMBS KIDS!). They leave a trail that is all but guaranteed to lure ET into the house, if he ever comes back to see Elliot again.

I’m going to marry my hoover, I might as well, we spend so much time together. One can’t work without the other.

I spend more time touching it than I do my partner. That’s not sick, or warped.

Or is it?

No. That’s just one more part of being a stay-at-home dad.

Tune in next week for:

‘WHAT I DID WITH THE DISHWASHER, AND HOW I JUSTIFIED IT TO MY PARTNER’

My Daughter Loves Sole Food

Tags

children, diet, food, Humor, kids, musings, Parenting

Remember the guy from There’s Something About Mary, Dom Woganowski? He was the fella that was obsessed with Mary, despite his protestations to the contrary, to such a degree that when she came back on the scene, he developed a skin condition. He was caught out at the end of the film, sniffing Mary’s shoes.

My daughter is only 20-months-old and, last time I checked, the named father on her birth certificate isn’t Dom Woganowski . It wouldn’t be, he’s fictional.

That being said, she does have some very strange shoe-related appetites.

In what may be a criticism of us her parents, and the diet we are providing her with, she has taken to removing her shoes, taking out the soles and then sucking and chewing on them. Clearly we are failing in our duties, and are not giving her enough ‘roughage’.

She usually does this bizarre little stunt at the end of a long day of running around, falling over and generally working up a sweat. So they have her ‘stank of the day’ on them.

She has yet to fully digest a sole, to my knowledge, and being as I’m generally the one cleaning up her exit I should know. Despite this, there are now several pairs of shoes with soles missing. So either her digestive juices are such that no Clarks’ branded sole can withstand them, or she’s secreting them somewhere, perhaps for a midnight snack.

It’s just a phase, I told myself at first, but it’s been going on for a while now, and she’s even started to branch out. I caught her the other day midway through removing the missus’s soles from her work shoes. Yummy. In another post on here I mentioned how she was watching a guy, who had been sleeping rough at a castle, gather his things and relocate. Now I’m thinking she may just have been hoping he’d leave his shoes, so she could have a mid-morning snack.

This will hopefully end soon and I can breathe a sigh of relief, and her mum can stop going ‘Urgh!!!’ every time she puts her feet inside shoes with slather-slimed-soles. But if it continues where will it end? Will she base her dating decisions on the fetidness of her potential suitors Hush Puppies?

At least we can be confident either way, whether she stops or continues, that she won’t be lonely when she’s an adult. After all, there are thousands of fetish clubs dedicated to all things sweaty-sole related, and she’ll be right at home with all the other shoe-obsessed freaks.

32 bikes at the bottom of the lake

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children, cycling, Humor, kids, musings, Parenting, park

I wish you’d make up your bloody mind son, this is the third time this month we’ve come out to the lake and every time it’s the same.

 

‘Can I bring my bike Daddy?’ you say to me, your big eyes even larger than usual.

 

Of course I agree.

And now look at me – I’ve got a bike on my shoulder.

 

Halfway round the lake and a slight incline causes my son to stop pedaling.

 

The going’s got, slightly, tough. The tough have got off their bike.

 

He’s alright. He’s running in the fallen leaves, playing with his stick.

 

You ever tried carrying a bike (suitable for ages 3 – 6) home?

It’s great

 

 

They aren’t designed for adults (They’re suitable for ages 3-6) so pain’s involved any which way you choose.

 

 

You can walk along holding it, you will be guaranteed to look like Caesar, the simian leader from Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes if you do this, shuffling along, bent over (unless you are Tom Cruise, then this does not apply).

 

Carry it, see how long that lasts, it’s surprising how quickly these things start giving your muscles that lovely burning sensation.

 

I plump for wedging it on my shoulder, using the gap between the seat and rear wheel. This is painful, but I can bear it. I can’t turn my head though. Pedals in the way. I did that once, it hurt.

 

I pass people as I walk round the lake, they give me strange looks. Not the dads though. They know my pain, their eyes say, my son does it every time too.

 

My son’s happy, he’s jumping between ditches now, getting his new shoes nice and dirty. I look at the lake, I bet if they dredged it, I think to myself, they’d find 3 shopping trolleys, a car and 32 bikes (suitable for ages 3-6). Chucked in by dads like me, who’d finally snapped.

 

 

I look ahead, only another mile-and-a-half to go. By the way, did I mention I’m pushing his sister along on her trike too?

 

 

Soon there will be 33 bikes (suitable for ages 3-6) in that lake, I think, as the bike bites into my shoulder.