While I’m working on all this website fixorama, I figured I’d go ahead and post this. A few weeks ago, we decided to treat Nicolaus to a movie. We have an old book of Disney’s The Jungle Book, so we were going to get the DVD of the movie. Except you know what? You totally cannot get The Jungle Book on DVD. I’m not sure why. I heard there were riots going on about a cartoon or something, maybe that has something to do with it.

So instead we bought Shark Tale. We based this decision on the following factors:

• He really liked Finding Nemo
• He likes sea creatures in general
• It had an all-star cast featuring the voice talent of Will Smith who was totally funny in Independance Day
• Our kid was jumping up and down in the shopping cart basket yelling “Mr.Ed wants to BUY THAT movie!”
• Maybe I should have mentioned that my child is a talking halloweeno horse.
• Mr.Ed really, really wanted me to buy Shark Tale.

So we grabbed some Jiffy Pop – hey! Did you know they still make Jiffy Pop? – and went home to watch Shark Tale.



I wish I had taken the time to read the reviews on the back…
“Shark Tale is a rollicking and heartfelt family film that all children are sure to thoroughly enjoy. Your children ARE familiar with gangster movies and are comfortable with scenes involving fighting, threats, death of a major character, drinking, smoking, drug use, torture, and sexual inuendo, right? Okay, cool! Your kids will love it. Two thumbs way, way up.”
- Ebert. Or Siskell, whichever one is alive and/or still doing movie reviews.

“BRILLIANT! EXACTLY LIKE FINDING NEMO.”
- New York Times

“Why God WHY?”
- Washington Post

“In case you couldn’t tell, that was sarcasm.”
- New York Times

“Well, we were wondering!”
- Washington Post


The worst part is that Nicolaus loved it. He begs us to let him watch it again but we won’t because all he did the first time was ask us question after question about “What did that shark SAY? Why are those guys DOING THAT?” while we tried to give answers that would satisfy him. Finally we resorted to, “This movie is just silly! It doesn’t make any sense.” Which didn’t really satisfy him, but we stuck to it.

So now even though it’s been over a month, he still acts out the movie and pretends to be Frankie and then gets annoyed when I tell him he is not permitted to act out the part where (SPOILER!!) Frankie dies. Because every mother has to have that weird thing that they don’t allow because it just plain creeps them out. For my mom it was anything involving a certain guy in a red suit with a pitchfork whose name I won’t even mention because if I do she’ll have to take her laptop down to the nearest Catholic church to have my blog blessed. For me, it turns out, it’s my kid pretending anything that has to do with him – I can’t even say it. Doing that thing that Frankie does in that movie.

Which brings me to my point. I am giving away this DVD. It is basically new, we only watched it one time. All you have to do is be the first person who wants it and I will send it to you, no questions asked about how on earth you could seriously want to own this horrific piece of crap.

If you don’t mind sending Nicolaus a little thank you card or something in return, that would be great. He’s not happy about me doing this. I had to promise to buy him another movie as soon as we ditch this one, plus some of those Japanese Pockie cookies.

Incidentally, if this works well I might soon be offering all kinds of free giveaways. Bad books, obnoxious toys, pets who barf in your lap… yes, yes. This could work.

Hey! Remember that time when that hacker mother fucker stopped fucking his mother just long enough to hack into my site and fuck around with a bunch of stuff? Maybe my site reminded him of his mother, I don’t know.

Well I’m slowly putting everything back. And, probably I had bigger things to worry about fixing than the look of my blog but I couldn’t think with all that white everywhere. My professional site and Kevin’s site aren’t even close to being repaired, and none of the images have been fixed and half the site is still 404 errors but you know what? Orange and turquoise! Yay!

I’m such a jackass.

In other news, yesterday Kevin was picking on Nicolaus by saying silly things about him that aren’t true. Nicolaus replied in kind: “Daddy, you’re a TOOL.”

No, he’s never heard anyone call anyone a tool. It’s the give a million monkeys a million typewriters theory. If you have a kid who fills up every minute of every day with every word he can think of, sometimes he’s accidentally going to hit on some hilarious cursewords. We laughed so hard that now he has that insult ready at any moment. Kevin picks on him, Nicolaus shrugs and says, “Ya well you’re just a tool daddy. A big ol’ powertool. Like a… like a hammer or a screwdriver or something? You know? You’re just kindof… kindof like a TOOL. Sorry. You’re a tool.”

And every time he does it, we die a thousand deaths from how funny it is. The delivery is so matter of fact, so perfect, it even beats the time I watched my very modest father-in-law plead with Nicolaus to name his triceratops anything, ANYTHING but Horny.

Hey look, he has a lot of spikes! You could name him Spike!

“No, those are his horns.”

How about Greeny?

“No, his name is just Horny.”

That’s going to have to tide you over for a day or two.

“Did you choose me?”

“What’s that?”

“You and daddy. Did y’all… choose me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like how people choose tings. Did y’all choose me?”

No, kiddo, we were just very very lucky. Unless – there wasn’t one available just like you that maybe like… slept a little more? No? Okay well forget I said anything. We definitely definitely would have chosen you.

DONE. Ha! In your face, Puritan jerk baby! I only had to dive out of the bathtub and get purple dye all over the floor and leave a frantic trail of naked wet footprints between the bathtub and his cradle one time during the whole deal. My fault for not realizing that there was now to be a nightly midnight snack for Mr.Graham. I thought last night was a freak midnight snack thing but no, exactly at midnight he freaked out because he was starving. How in the hell do babies and dogs manage to tell time?

But! I fed him, he went back to sleep and now my hair is done and I cannot even express how unreasonably happy I am to have purple hair. Pictures tomorrow, there’s not enough light to get good pictures now but man alive. I love it. I’m in love with it. Now I need to get into shape and wear makeup and stuff just so I can live up to how pretty my hair is. I wish purple didn’t fade so quickly, and I wish my corporatey jobs had let me do this all through my 20s. Because really 20s are the best years to have weird hair. It’s a little silly to have it now, in my 30s during the minivan-driving, kid-toting, dog-barf-cleaning phase of life. But maybe that’s the fun of it.

I had a whole funny thing about Nicolaus I was going to write, but it’s 1:30 in the morning. I’m sleepy and my hair is purple.

Graham’s asleep on my lap, and half of my hair is a very brassy blonde. I know what I said about him being wonderful, but all babies are sometimes jerks. I think I’ve said this before but I really want to call the police sometime and say, “Yeah my son is here. He won’t leave. He’s totally out of control, just screaming at everyone. I think he might be drunk, it’s like he can’t even walk. Can you come talk to him?”

For all his mellowness, there are certain things that completely piss him off…
* Being put down for more than 5 minutes at a time
* Going any significant span of time without seeing some titties (universal male trait as I understand it)
* Being too cold
* Being too warm
* Being unable to fit the entire world and everything in it into his mouth
* Scary things like the dog standing up suddenly, or Kevin burping, or really any sudden noise or thing happening without prior warning
* Nicolaus walking out of his sight
* Me taking a shower
* Kevin and I expressing, however quietly, any intention – however far in the distant future – of ever touching one another, even for totally platonic and innocent things like high fiving. Is he trying to ensure that he never has another sibling? Or maybe he’s a Puritan? We aren’t sure. He doesn’t dress like a Puritan, but maybe that’s just because he can’t dress himself yet. Time will tell.

But the thing he hates more than anything is to be sleepy. Most evenings, everything goes along just fine until he gets sleepy and then he’s a jerk and a half. A miraculous and beautiful and cuddly jerk, but still. He loses his shit, and we start running through the Baby Shutup checklist.

This is our second kid, so now we zip through the list much faster than we ever did with Nicolaus. Poor poor Nicolaus, it always took us forever to figure out what he was crying about. No wonder he learned to talk so early. In his baby book I think it even says that his first words were, “Give me some food, you goddamned morons.” -Which is weird because Nicolaus didn’t really like baby food… he would demand to be fed and then when we fed him, he complained and often refused to eat. Knowing him now, I know what the problem was: they don’t sell babyfood jars of liquified cookies. They do sell one called “Dutch Apple Dessert” which is close – sugar is the first ingredient – but I never bought it for him. I only know about it because my mother in law bought every jar of it she could find so that whenever I mentioned that I had a hard time getting him to eat she could shrug and say “He eats just fine for me…”

And I would say, “Well yeah of course he does. You feed him straight sugar.”

“So feed him sugar!” She would say, “And take vitamins! You’re an Aquarius and Aquariuses need vitamins. Nicolaus is a Capricorn. He needs dutch apple dessert! Don’t make me quote the Bible. And by the way, do you EVER VACUUM?”

Or something like that. Wait, let me think… the zodiac, vitamins, religion, cleaning, and wildly incorrect but well-intended nutrition information. Yep, okay, that covers it all.

With Graham, we run through the checklist much faster: 1. change diaper, 2. Feed baby, 3. Pat his back and rock him 4. Put him down 5. Pick him up 6. Give tylenol 7. Give vodka, 8. GOTO 1

Well, tonight Nicolaus is spending the night with Grandma Dutch Apple Dessert. Kevin was exhausted so he went to bed early, which was fine because Graham was being so good. Oh so, so cheerful and sweet and mellow. So mellow in fact that I decided to sneak off and bleach my hair and dye it purple.

Gosh it sounds so stupid when I write it out like that.

I got the bleach almost all painted on when Graham must have sensed that I was about to take a shower. Oh! Crying! Sleepy! Oh and hungry! Don’t forget hungry. I had already fed him, but that didn’t matter. He will stop at nothing to keep me from taking a shower. So Kevin stumbled awake to help with the baby while I rinsed the bleach out of my hair. I came out into the living room, wrapped in a towel and took Graham. My technically asleep husband stumbled back towards the bedroom, mumbling in a sweet, half-dreamstate voice, “Hey I have a question. About what in the hell is wrong with you? That you wait until I fall asleep to put a bag of dogshit on my porch and set it on fire? Only…” He crawled into bed and sighed and smiled, “…instead of a bag… it was baby clothes. And instead of dogshit, it was Graham.” He turned out the light, …”And instead of lighting it on fire… you left him alone with me while you went to go dye your fucking hair.”

“I love you, Kevin. Go back to sleep.” He was already snoring.

So then I spent the next hour running through the baby shushing checklist. Rocking, patting, feeding, changing, repeat. And finally, finally he’s asleep. And by golly I’m going to go dye my hair a ridiculous color, and no baby jerk puritannical little cuddly lump is going to stop me.