Blog Archives
MPD- Multiple Personality Dad
A couple of months ago I am putting Lil b to bed and I start doing a random character. For no real reason, the character that I jump into on this particular night is an old Jewish grandmother, or bubbe. To become a bubbe, I hobble around his room like any elderly woman might while I talk about my day. In my best Jewish old lady accent of course. This is supposed to be a spur of the moment, one-off type thing to ease him into bed one night and never mentioned again.
For whatever reason, the character resonates with Lil b and he starts to ask for “Boobie” the next night and the following night, and so on. Now it’s to the point where I have to practically become this old broad every night when I put him to bed! Don’t get me wrong, Boobie is great. She tells stories about growing up in New York. She tells Lil b all about her day at the beauty parlor, or the butcher shop and the choice cuts of meat…and how big they used to be compared to what you get now…and how everything is so expensive. The best thing about Boobie is that she gives super wet, sloppy kisses, which I think is what stuck with Lil b in the first place. (you perverts get those dirty thoughts of Boobie outta your head right this minute!…sick bastards)
This is all fine and good and only happens for a few minutes each night…no harm, right? My ass…Since Boobie is now an official family member, I am strapped with the task of coming up with new material for her every friggin’ night. I feel like one of those shitty standup comedians that travels the country telling the same jokes every night and then binge drinking himself to sleep in his budget motel room. (the only embellishment there is the comedian part) Needless to say, playing Boobie gets old. Especially on those nights where I have had a bad day and all I want to do is drink myself in to an autoerotic dream world. You try getting off when you’ve been portraying a crotchety old Jewish lady…(Now I know what Howard Stern feels like…)
Needing a break from Boobie, I have had to come up with an acceptable substitute. I sometimes become Slim Jim, the crazy cowboy that yells his own name every 30 seconds. I have a French chef character when it comes time to feed the kids. They call him Chef Daddy and he snobbishly serves them processed foods for breakfast on the weekends. There is “Ze German”. He comes out rarely as he and Boobie don’t seem to get along all that well for some reason. And finally, there is Frank The Tank, my personal favorite.
FTT is a fairly new character. He talks in a Gomer Pyle voice, but acts like the Will Farrell character from Old School just after he does the beer bong. Only, I take it a few steps further and I actually pin Lil b down on his bed and punch the life out of him. (Ease up CPS dorks, I don’t hit him in the face where you could see the bruises…body blow!, body blow!) The first time I did FTT, Lil b loved him. I don’t know what happened, but the next time I broke into character Lil b was having none of ole Frank and he went into instant fit mode. Me being me, or Frank being Frank, this only eggs me on to take it up a notch… to the point that Lil b is huddled in the corner of his room sucking his thumb and quietly rocking himself into a happy place.
It is about this time that Mommy rescues him and bans FTT from upstairs in an effort to keep Lil b from developing a few personalities of his own. That being said, FTT still comes in very handy when I need to get Lil b to quiet down or get back into bed…All I have to do is fire up the ole tank and start the fist guns in motion and he squeals with delight…or terror…yes, it’s definitely terror as he sprints back to his room yelling that he hates Frank…silly kid…I am probably causing some kind of psychological damage…Guess I had better get my cane out and put on my grandma dress…my baby boy needs his “Boobie”.
It’s Holiday Season Again: Christmas…Execution Style
I am proud (or embarrassed) to present the final installment of the Holiday Season Series. So sit back, drop your pants, tighten that belt around your neck one more notch and try not to lose conciousness before you “finish”.
Ah Christmas, the culmination of a long journey that is the holiday season. Complete with enough glitz and glam to impress even little bearded baby Jesus, who just happens to share a fake birthday with our favorite day to celebrate capitalism. It’s funny really when you take a step back and look at how we have bastardized what was once a holy day to many. Frankincense and Myrrh have been replaced with PS3 & iPad. Saint Nicholas is now a fat ass cookie-gobbling home invader, and the traditional nativity scene now comes with Yoda as the baby Jesus. But hey, at least we are winning the war on terror… Suck on that Bin Ladin! However, I admit that I, too am to blame for the capitalization of Christmas, but screw it, I like blinky lights and boxes wrapped with shiny paper just as much as the next guy, which brings us to Christmas and my family.
I have purposely waited 2 months to publish this entry because it has taken this long to recover. I still shutter at the mere thought of a Christmas tree. Once upon a time Christmas could quite possibly have been my most favorite time of year. My folks were blessed with the good fortune to be able to afford to buy my sister and me pretty much anything we asked for, and believe me, we asked for a lot. I think at one time I had enough G.I. Joe paraphernalia to invade a small country and my sister had a enough Barbie dolls to recreate Hugh Hefner’s wildest Playboy Mansion shindig…that is until we turned all of those plastic bitches into Pope-shredding Sinead O’Connor doppelgangers! It’s safe to say that my sis and I loved us some Christmas.
Fast forward from prepubescent, kung fu grip-enthusiast to 37 years old, married with kids. Now I am getting a glimpse behind the shimmering, happy happy-joy joy facade that is Christmas and I don’t like what I see. I used to look under the ole Christmas tree and I was instantly transformed into a present-hoarding Gollum, or Smeagolif you prefer…my precious…Now when I look under that same tree I see boxes wrapped in my money and an ever-worsening toy infestation problem in our home.
Looks more like my sister than me
I don’t know how my folks did it. It seems like my sis and I had a ton of toys and somehow my folks managed to keep the toys from taking over their home. I can’t walk through my house now without stepping on a Zooble (WTF is a Zooble??), or having to clear the furniture of stuffed animals and books just to sit down. In fact, we once had a guest room in our house that is now overrun with Elmo and his gang of Asian-made marauders. And this Christmas is no exception.
Christmas Eve: My House
Since Francine, our Elf on The Shelf, came to live with us a couple of years ago, we have ceased to travel for Christmas. The original thought of setting up the Santa crime scene was endearing…until we realized that “some assembly required” means that you will spend endless hours putting together toys that your kids will play with for about an hour on Christmas morning. Those same toys are never to be seen again once they are shuttled off to the confines of Elmo’s World…er the playroom. Still, with the dexterity of South American sweat shop workers we assemble toy after toy. We are about half-way through a handle of Crown when I notice that the decals are going on a bit crooked, but screw it, we are on a mission and we will not be delayed by drunken decal-ing! It is about midnight and I am putting the finishing touches on Lil B’s new basketball goal when in walks a groggy M. We just freeze like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar (who the hell has an actual cookie jar?). The wife suddenly breaks herself from the Crown-induced haze and shields M’s eyes from the harsh reality as she whisks her back to her bed.
Thank You Roofies Jr.
Amazingly, M has no recollection of waking up that night and is fully surprised on Christmas morning…thank you Rohypnol!- (When simply being an irresponsible parent just isn’t enough)
Christmas morning goes as expected, or at least my hangover-hazed memory tells me that it did. M walks into the room calm and collected. She makes her way through the maze of toys that “Santa” painstakingly set up and she is silently taking inventory. The first thing from her mouth is not, “YAY!” or screams of delight. No, M remembers exactly everything that she asked for and she is mentally scratching each item from the list as she makes her way around the tree. Upon completion of her rounds, she simply looks at us with a sad little face and says, ” I didn’t get the Zhu Zhu Palace”…(WTF is a Zhu Zhu??)
To add to our toy prison overcrowding problems, our kids just happen to have some of the best grandparents in the world. With the undying love of grandparents comes…you guessed it, boxes and boxes of toys arriving almost daily throughout the month of December. My neighbors must think that our house is acting as an overflow distribution center for FedEx. It got so “bad” this year that if there was no box on our porch when we went to check the mail, that my greedy kids thought something was wrong. The toy situation is so bad that we have to cull through the post unwrapping carnage and sneak as many of the toys away as we can to be hidden away and used for bribes during the coming year. (I highly suggest this if you have the room to hide more toys)
Despite the fact that we are prime candidates to make an appearance on Hoarders, this Christmas goes off with little incident. We are thankful and lucky to have such great grandparents and an Elf on the Shelf that knows how to regulate. I am starting to feel the stress of the holidays melt away as we edge ever closer to spring. In fact, I am already making a list of toys to get the kids next Christmas. Actually, my list is not toys, but rather a list of those to be executed. Three guesses as to what bearded, fat-bellied bastard is at the top of that list.
One Down...Now where is that damn Easter Bunny?
It’s Holiday Season Again: Thanksgiving
Okay,
so I promised to complete the holiday series and by GOD I am going to do it! For those of you that have long since put the torturous memory of Thanksgiving out of its misery, I am happy to reopen that wound for you as I am doing so to myself by authoring this very entry.
As is often the case, we opt to travel for Thanksgiving this year. Only this time we are not on a 3-hour tour, we jump in head first and sign up for the 6-hour variety of road trip. Granted, if I roofie the wife and NyQuil the rug rats , I can make that trip in 5 hours flat. This being said, I am fresh out of roofies and at last check we have two wide-awake ankle-biters in the back seat. Begrudgingly, we head off to the windy, treeless prairies of the Texas panhandle.
Based on previous road trips (see https://genericdad.com/2010/09/21/were-no-donner-party/) you all know my children do not do well in the car over long periods of time. Now, in the past we would typically drive thru a fast food joint and scarf down a high calorie, deep-fried mystery meal while I would attempt to distractedly eat and drive. This is coupled with the wife riding reverse cowboy (on her knees in the front seat facing the back seat trying to force the kids to eat food that they don’t want in the first place)…maybe “Reverse Cowboy” is not the term…In fact, I know it’s not…I have Cinemax ya know. Needless to say, this is not the safest way to transport our precious cargo, so in recent trips we have been stopping at an actual restaurant with actual waiters. This, at the very least, allows the wife and I to enjoy decent food while our kids run around howling like banshees in whatever Small Town, TX eatery we bless with our noisy presence.
The meal goes without incident. I tip the poor 78 year-old woman who had to endure the ear-piercing shrieks of my kids and we are back on the road just as an icy rain starts to fall. Because the kids are somewhat behaving and because they actually ate some lunch we are inclined to let them have some candy while they watch their annoying movies (thank GOD for headphones!). I don’t know if is something that he ate at lunch, car sickness, or something else entirely, but Lil B lets out a painful sounding belch that would put Booger Presley to shame. That air bubble must have been serving as some makeshift cork because as soon as the cork blew, so did Lil B. The kids had each just plowed through a tasty sack of M&Ms, so naturally, what was currently being projectile-vomited all over the back of my seat had the look of a lovely chocolate fountain one might see at a decent reception. The comparison to the reception stops there because this is about the time that the smell hits the front seat. Of course, we are in the middle of nowhere by this time and it’s pouring rain. Luckily we see a roadside stop that we can at least have some cover to get Lil B. out of his Baby Gap Chocolate Fondue gear. Clean as I might, I am not able to rid the vehicle of the scent of chocolate mixed with stomach bile, but some creative directing of the air vents at least keeps the smell in back with the livestock…err kids.
By comparison, the rest of our journey goes swimmingly and we soon find ourselves in the dusty plains of the panhandle on the outskirts of Amarillo. There is not much to do in Amarillo other than binge drink and get pregnant. Since we are already saddled with two fun babies, we opt for binge drinking. We relax and visit with family in the days leading up to the turkey day feast(s).
Our first feast requires a short jaunt to the metropolis of Dumas, a small agribusiness-centered community in which the wife’s family resides. Dumas is filled with good people and…hispanics, but mostly good people and I do not mind our brief visits. It is actually a nice departure from the busyness of Dallas. Things are quiet and simple and there is not much to do and I kind of like it…if only I could get 4G to connect so that I could Facebook and watch internet porn…maybe I don’t like being out in the boonies after all…at least there’s binge drinking…
After a delicious Thanksgiving meal with the wife’s family we are forced to exit rather quickly as we are already running late for our 2nd feast at my folk’s house back in Amarillo. We arrive at my parent’s place just as my family is sitting down to eat. So as not to disappoint, I heap the fixin’s onto my plate as though I had not seen food in days. You can’t show up to mom’s and not eat after she has spent an entire day preparing a meal…So, the wife and I take one for the team and eat our second complete Thanksgiving meal within a two-hour span. I am a fat ass and this is not much of a feat for me to accomplish, but I give the wife credit as she made a great showing at both feasts. I am not positive, but I could swear I hear the sounds of a desperate woman purging her system later that day…it reminds me of high school and for a short time I bask in the nostalgia of my hometown.
The voyage home is uneventful. There is no projectile vomiting, no crying, and no rain. As we listen to an audiobook my mind drifts in and out of the story. My liver and colon wreaking havoc on me for a week’s worth of overeating…and drinking, I am left with a warm sensation knowing that we are blessed with such a great family…nope, that’s not it…I think I just sharted…where the hell is that roadside stop!
It’s Holiday Season Again: Halloween
Let’s face it. Halloween is one of those holidays that people either love or hate. There simply is no middle ground when it comes to All Hallows Eve. As I grow older I find myself in the crossroads of hating and loving Halloween.
When I was a kid I loved all things Halloween. The costumes, the trick-or-treating and especially all of the candy. It was the one time of the year that my folks would let me run loose around the neighborhood soliciting sugar high-enducing treats. My parents were so cool that they didn’t even go through my candy claiming to pull out the unsafe looking pieces while secretly culling out the good stuff for them selves. 
Nope, I was free to tear into every razor blade-infused apple, every drug-laced, unwrapped candy, and even those nasty ass candy corns. Although I have it on good authority that they would sneak into my stash once I finally crashed from my sugar high.
As I grew a little older the trick-or-treating would give way to just running wild through the neighborhood wreaking havoc on people’s Halloween yard art and kicking in the faces of their lovingly carved jack-o-lanterns. Rather than begging door to door for candy I would simply steal the candy of a younger ‘treater. Yes, I know this is wrong, but kids did it to me and by God, I was going to have my revenge. Plus, I couldn’t return home empty-handed and dressed like a zombie.
As I entered the high school scene Halloween would shift gears significantly. For me and my crew it was all about property damage. We would steal pumpkins and drive around hurling our loot at unsuspecting brick mailboxes and parked cars. 
Trick-or-treating would become underage drinking-themed house parties. This trend would continue on into college with the property damage portion of the evening eventually fading away. Call it maturation if you will, but I credit 
binge drinking and girls dressed in slutty costumes. Who wants to toss pumpkins when you can stare at coeds while drinking your way to tossing your cookies just before you pass out on a stranger’s couch. Man, I just realized how much I miss college. These first 3 phases of Halloween are what I always loved about the holiday.
In the years after college the fun would begin to fade. Dressing up for costume parties would become a source of stress to have the most kick-ass costume. Binge drinking would become a liability as we all had jobs and responsibilities. I would also develop a hatred for overaged trick-or-treaters. Why won’t those teenagers just move to the next phase? Get to a party, get to stealing other kids candy, or get to smashing pumpkins. Either way, just get off my porch you greedy little bastards! Essentially, I begin to hate Halloween at this point in life.
Enter marriage and babies and the cycle begins again. This time it’s my children entering phase one of Halloween. It is such a great feeling to see the pure joy on their faces as they are handed a piece of candy from a complete stranger. Their little eyes just light up at the sight of that dum-dum being dropped into their oversized plastic pumpkin buckets. Watching them fight through the completely ridiculous costumes that we force upon them while trying to run to the next house brings forth a hearty giggle. And perhaps the best part of the evening is when we have made our way home, candy buckets dumped onto the floor, and we drop the big one on them. We tell them that they can have one candy before bed, and one candy only. Their little, round faces become serious with the weight of the decision that is upon them. Despite their selection we all win. They get delicious and hopefully unlaced candy and we get to feel like good parents…for a night. I think it’s safe to say that I have come full circle on Halloween. Hell, I think I am gonna go smash my neighbor’s pumpkins and steal some poor kid’s candy just for the nostalgia.
My Little Zombies
Weekend at Jerry’s Place
This past weekend was a monumental sports weekend for DFW. On Saturday alone the metroplex hosted 5 NCAA football games as well as the Texas Rangers first home game of the 2010 ALDS playoffs. Sunday was equally busy with game 4 of the Rangers-Rays series as well as the Cowboys playing host to the Tennessee Titans. Needless to say, the sports-packed weekend was busy.
I was fortunate enough to attend two of these events and I fear the recovery process will be long and arduous. We had a couple of buddies fly in from Denver, so we got Cowboys tickets for Sunday and the Denver Boys grabbed Rangers playoff tickets for Saturday. The weekend was setting up nicely to be a festivus of tailgating, professional sports, stadium munchies, and $9 beers.
Saturday afternoon we grabbed the Denver Boys and were off to The Ballpark in Arlington for Game 3 of the Rangers-Rays ALDS playoff series. The Rangers had taken a 2-0 lead in the series and were poised to clinch a spot in the ALCS. This was going to be a huge scene if the Rangers could pull off a win. The sun is beating down, we are cooking in the heat, but the beer man cometh, and he cometh often. Unfortunately, not even the timeliness of the beer man could help the Rangers produce a victory. So, with hopes held high that the Rangers would take the series on Sunday, we all left the stadium in fairly good spirits (thank you beer man!).
Rather than go home, we decided to hit a sports bar near the house to catch the end of the evening college games. Once again, multiple beers were imbibed and some bar fare consumed. It is at this point of the evening that I should have gone home and gone to bed. Instead, we head to a buddy’s place to keep pounding beers and end up breaking out the washer boards to teach the Denver Boys a thing or two about Texas. After only a couple of warm-up rounds, these boys think that they can actually beat us and they want to play for money. Silly Denver Boys…thanks for funding my day of drinking!
I roll into my house at roughly 3:00 AM knowing that I have to get up and do this all again on Sunday for the Cowboys game. Must sleep…but what do I find in my bed? You guessed it, M. is hogging my entire side…(https://genericdad.com/2010/02/05/the-other-woman-in-my-bed/) I was too tired, too beer-logged, and too lazy to move her, so I crashed in her bed, which was quite comfortable actually.
Sunday morning comes quickly and harshly. I am greeted by an angry wife and two rambunctious toddlers. I am handed a grocery list and with M clinging to my leg, I am shuttled out the door half hungover and starving…okay, I was fully hungover…
After making it through the grocery store in record time (It’s because M drove the racecar cart), I make it back home just in time to don my Cowboys gear, slam another bottle of water and a handful of aspirin when I hear my ride honking. Here we go again (I hurled a little in my mouth at just the thought of more tailgating). But I am a man, and I do what any many would do…I sleep in the car all the way to the stadium…
Cowboys Stadium, Jerry World, The Death Star…we have arrived! We decide that, in order to get our heads right with tailgating, we need to slam a quick beer at the truck before meeting up with our fellow tailgaters. This process takes about 20 minutes longer than it should have …needless to say, we are all hurting this morning. Finally, with 3 bottles of water, 4 aspirin, and one beer in my system I am ready to meet the day face to face. 
We all take it pretty easy during the tailgate because we are all still so messed up from the previous night’s misadventures. However, by game time (roughly 3 hours after we arrive at the stadium) we are all in high spirits and ready for the game. The game is pathetic. The Cowboys are embarrassing and we quickly decide that the only way to salvage the poor playing is to drink more beer…and eat bbq nachos…and drink more beer.
I do not recall much of the ride home from the stadium as I was, again, fast asleep. Before I know it we are in front of my house and I am saying farewell to the Denver Boys as I stumble out the truck still half asleep. I wearily make it up the walk and into my house. I sit with the wife for what seems like an eternity, but was really about a half hour before I throw in the towel. I finally face the facts that I put up a good fight, but the weekend has conquered me. My sweet pillow never felt so good.
I learned a couple of things about myself this weekend that I would like to share with you all:
1) I have the best wife in the world! Thank you for letting me have my sports pouty weekend. I love you!
2) I have lost my ability to binge drink, at least for multiple days in a row…
3) I am a badass washer player~ no matter how much alcohol I have consumed.
4) The Cowboys suck.
Generic Dad 