Frosty the Penis Man

Two things are on my mind in equal parts. First, my kids' current obsession with injecting the word "penis" into everything they say and second, the neighbor's 10-foot plastic snowman that has been slumped over - still glowing, mind you - for two months.
Let's talk about the marriage of Lady Gaga lyrics with penis talk, two of Jack's current favorite things. "Pa Pa Penisface Pa Pa Pa Penisface," sung to the tune of "Pokerface" is the refrain around here. Talk about karma! I spent months using "breast" as a verb ("She was breasting her turkey dinner") or adverb ("breastily cutting her turkey") or the stand-by noun ("turkey and gravy over breasts"). I knew this phase would come eventually, but I thought I might have a decade or so to mentally prepare. There is something just plain wrong about my three-year-old daughter asking for penis for breakfast.
And then there's Frosty the Penis Man in my neighbor's yard glowing in misery just a few yards away. I demand a show of hands from people who don't find these holiday decorations appalling. Huge, electric-powered, plastic bunnies/snowmen/pumpkins. What.The.Fuck. What a brazen use of resources. And by the way, neighbor, Frosty is slumped over because the season is O-V-E-R.

Hi to the Larious

The post that I wrote and then erased yesterday would have qualified me for Worst Blog Ever status, worse even than the soft-focus-family-picture-conservative-Christian-values-blogs. The gist was that the kids were playing nicely with their toys, no one was sick, everyone seemed happy, etc. You could practically hear the gentle violin music.
Another amateur mistake! No sooner had the words been written (and then erased), the Barfathon commenced. But in true Joey fashion, he let it roll off his back - literally and figuratively - and he proceeded to play all night long. Oh, the fun you can't have at 3 AM in a cold, drafty house with a sick, high-energy baby!
And good old Oscar, he doesn't think we're crazy; he thinks we're marvelous. Who better to do clean-up detail on a puke-fest than the family dog?
The world is exactly as it should be. Unmanageable, messy, hilarious.

Death

I cry in church for all the wrong reasons. A new Catholic church, for example, seems like blasphemy. Catholic churches should be creaky and old and haunting. So maybe I shed a tear today about the newness of the place, the padded pews, the carpet, etc...it seems so wrong.
Day Two of this blog seems like a bad place to introduce death, but I gotta roll with things as they come. My grandmother's funeral was today, and I did, in fact, cry, despite being an emotional cripple. Seeing my mother's head sandwiched comfortably between her siblings after 20 years of estrangement turned on the waterworks. With death comes new life. I have no idea where we go from here, but I am optimistic. Rest in Peace, Nana.

Sucking on Legos

My Facebook status updates read like a conversation in a hurricane, with lots of expletives but lack of clarity. This blogging format, on the other hand, requires me to string several sentences together at once, connecting the dots. This has never been my strong suit, but the practice might not be a bad idea; I have started to think in side-splitting one-liners or open-ended questions.

Oscar, of headline fame here, is our dog. I will NOT gag you with another blog about the family pet. This blog is more about the dog's point of view. I am totally sure that Oscar would rebel if it wouldn't mean being cut off from the shitloads of table scraps that he gets every day.

Today began with a rousing game of Shell Peanuts All Over the Floor. Jack and Joey (5 and 1, respectively) quickly lost interest in this game, though, and moved on to Stick Penis Creepily out of Pointless Hole in Underwear and Suck on Legos, respectively. By 7 AM, my husband, ready to blow his top, was out the door for his and Oscar's first walk of the day. Ordinarily, though, Oscar is not the winner of any of these "games" the way he was today.