Randomness + An Award

A new collective noun inspired by my recent usage of "murder of crows." I present "terror of toddlers" as a new collective noun.

Usage: "I invited one too many kids to my son's party and ended up with a terror."

What could possibly be more appropriate? Get the word out.

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On a car ride with The Boy, The Wife, his grandmother and grandfather...

The Boy (in reference to something completely unrelated): "I'm confused."
Me: "Just wait until you get married."

The Boy's grandfather laughed and for some reason his grandmother offered to let me walk the rest of the way. I felt The Look from my wife bounce harmlessly off.

Was I wrong? I think not.

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The Boy's grandparents wanted him to spend the night since she hadn't seen him much over the holidays. We, of course, were more than happy to unload him and go enjoy ourselves oblige.

The Wife asked, "Would you like to go to your grandparents' for the night?"
The Boy nodded and replied, "I could use some time away from you people."

I can't fault him for stating the obvious. I actually admire his wisdom at such an early age.

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An Award

This award comes from Nonna at Nonna's Nonsense. I would like to thank her sincerely for it and apologize for taking so long in getting around to acknowledge it. Stop by and check her out if you get a chance. I really do like this award because it emphasizes the community of blogging. Here it is:

“These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must may choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.”

Okay, so I changed a word in there because I never give awards and expect people to pass them on. I only give awards out to people that I enjoy reading and that's that. If you choose to pass it on, great. If not, just as great. No pressure, just props for the reads that I like.

Also, charming? This is not a word that I generally use, but there it is, somewhat out of place on my blog...sigh. The perils of copy and paste.

Now for the victims:

Miss Grace @ Miss Grace's Disgrace.

CK @ Creative Kerfuffle.

Khadra @ Crab Goggles.

Weasel Momma @ World of Weasels.

Stacey @ Is There Any Mommy Out There?

Laura @ Living Laura.

Sarah @ Sarah's Blogtastic Adventures.

Bern @ Bernthis.com.

I'll get around to notifying everyone they got the award but I'm too lazy right now. Hopefully, they'll just figure it out all be themselves.

and that's a wrap...

 

Technorati Tags: this was supposed to be a quickie post but then an award got involved and it took up lots of time - how does this happen?

That's Gonna Leave a Mark

The other day, I was in the kitchen tidying up. This is the important part, mind you. I was most pointedly NOT in the living room at the time and bear utterly no responsibility for what happened.

Not. My. Fault.

The Wife has acknowledged this fact.

Anyway, at some point I heard The Boy say, "Mom, I cut my finger." It was a simple statement of fact. Nothing more, nothing less.

Hmmm. "Curious," thought I. Being me though, when somebody says they cut themselves, I have to go see how good a job they did, so I walked into the living room to see what had happened.

The table was scattered with shreds of paper that magically occur when my son get a hold of a pair of scissors. No biggie.

The Wife was staring at some small particle that appeared to be roughly the size of two grains of rice. Not the long, wild kind. Just simple, white rice.

The Boy was staring complacently at his thumb.

The particle was actually a small chunk that The Boy had taken off of his thumb with the scissors.

I frowned. Cuts are easy, stanching a missing chunk sucks.

There is a peaceful time right after you cut yourself like that when your body seems to marshal its forces for one purpose and one purpose only.

To bleed. Profusely. With reckless abandon.

I knew it was coming, so I walked back into the kitchen for a clean towel. Then I heard the wailing.

Ah, right on time.

I came back to The Boy's thumb which had started bleeding. My first thought, being the loving father that I am was, "I hope he doesn't get any on the new couch." Seriously, blood is damn hard to get out.

I wrapped his thumb in the towel and let him know that we needed to apply pressure. He started a mantra. "It hurts, it hurts, it hurts."

The towel was fairly absorbent, so I waited for a second to see if he would calm down. He did not. Instead he added, "I can't believe I did that," to his mantra. A little long for an effective mantra in my book, but hey, he's six and still learning. The Wife playing with the piece of ex-thumb didn't help the matter, so I got rid of it. Ick. That's all I'm saying.

When I came back, The Wife was way past Frantic and heading on to Freaked. I'm sure that was most soothing to The Boy as well. I did what I had to and delivered the riot act to The Boy at 110 decibels. It elicited more tears, but he wilted and let me put pressure on. Mission accomplished.

Don't get me wrong, I was all compassionate and crap after that, but you have to get audience participation for stuff like this. It stopped after about 20 minutes. There was a brief tussle over cleaning the wound, but 'the hairy eyeball' squelched that handily.

He's fine now, no worries. The really funny thing? Here is the implement of destruction:

Don't screw with Frosty, man. He'll cut you bad. He's as cold as ice.

 

Technorati Tags: pwned by Frosty

By Request: The Corner Psychos - part 1

We live in a nice neighborhood and we have a dog and a child so we go for walks. On these walks, we have the pleasure of walking past Dick and Joan's house. It's sort of like the Dick and Jane books, but if they were demons:

"See Joan throw a nutty."

"See Dick have his spirit crushed and complain about the universe."

"See Joan use inappropriate words around children."

"See Jim get in her face and eventually just try to find ways to make them both have a stroke: gleefully."

Before the boy came along, when we were new to the 'hood, we used to take the dog for a walk and Joan used to say, "I used to have a dog like that." We thought, "She's not bad."

Then, one day, the dog set foot on her lawn...just walked on it mind you -- two or three steps tops -- no peeing was involved. All of a sudden we heard an outburst. Sort of like if nails on a blackboard could come to life at 120 decibels. "Get your Goddamned dog off my lawn!" At that time, being new to the block, we just moved along.

We slowly learned from other neighbors that this is what they do. It was like the neighborhood secret -- House of 1000 Corpses minus the corpses. They hover around their front door waiting to cuss out potential offenders. The guy that lives across the street from them has a Harley. They yell whenever he starts it up. Once, there was a fire and the hydrant is located in front of their house. The fire was contained but the resultant water had washed some mulch away. They called the city and demanded to be reimbursed for the mulch and also called the water company so they could be reimbursed for the water they had to use to clean up.

They hate when people walk on their sidewalk, so they park their car so it lays across the sidewalk. In the Summer, they lay their hose across it as if it creates and unseen barrier that people cannot cross.

They have called the police on children playing ball in the street.

My favorite time of year is Fall though. It turns out that Joan is quite fussy with her leaves. I can sit on by back porch and watch the multi-colored leaves waft on the cool Autumn air to the sweet sounds of Joan. "Goddamn it, Dick! You're raking those leaves wrong! What the hell is wrong with you, you asshole!" That's pretty much verbatim. I didn't take the time to write it down, but poetry like that just sticks with you.

Once, the mood took me and I yelled out, "Shut up Joan! Abuse your husband in private. We don't need to hear it." She volleyed back, but I had had my fun. Nothing more needed to be said.

We live in an area with a lot of woods and mountains and I always think, "If he came to his senses, they would never find her body. Nobody would even care to look," and shrug. If I was him, it would be worth a late night of negotiating a dimly lit mountain path, but that's just me.

Once though, we were walking The Boy and, being twoish at the time, he tread on their grass. Joan came out and started yelling...at my son. The Wife kept walking while pulling The Boy along, but I felt the need to speak my mind.

I led off with, "Shut your yap and listen, you harpy." She quieted but that was short lived. I laid into her about yelling at my son. I realized I was getting nowhere after about a minute after I had the quick epiphany that I may as well be telling a starving wolverine to stop biting me. Instead, I figured that I needed an endgame move.

I stepped onto their lawn.

She lost her freaking mind. It was awesome. All the crap I had to hear from her and her husband was suddenly worth it. She never shut up for a second, but I no longer cared. I walked off her lawn with a parting salute. I didn't feel vindicated, but I did realize one thing.

I had a new sport.

Baiting Dick and Joan.

More on that tomorrow though...

 

Technorati Tags: crusading against miserable people for 40 years!

Anti-Wordless Wednesday

I tried, I really did. I had pictures here and everything. They just sat there though...taunting me. They weren't funny, they weren't witty. They were just there.

Instead, let's talk about a cat...

There was this cat in the neighborhood. He was a neighbor's cat and would roam about. We tend to believe in keeping cats in the house when you live in town. That way they don't decimate the bird population and are much healthier in the long run. I don't point this out to the neighbors who let their cats roam though. If I'm going to potentially alienate a neighbor, I like to go big. Ideological differences aren't any fun. Now a pulling a single leaf off the psychos' tree on the corner property...that's my idea of fun because they. Lose. Their. Shit. Then I egg them on because the rest of the block enjoys the harpy shrieks of the female half of team whackjob too.

That's another story though...I digress.

So this cat was about 6 months old and was pretty keen on finding all the female cats in the hood and doing what boys do. My wife is on the board at the SPCA so this creates an instant issue.

The Wife: "What should I do?"

Me: "Not hearing this."

TW: "Seriously, what should I do?"

Me: "Seriously. Not hearing this."

My ruse of temporary deafness did not work however. Imagine that. Perhaps I should try the old "air embolism" ruse next time. I'll have to write that down. We talked about it for a while and it was decided (by her, I just replayed Jimmy Buffett songs in my head -- it's easy to smile and nod with Jimmy playing) that we would abscond with said cat and get him snipped as a public service.

Yee freaking hah.

Off the cat goes to get a denutification and promptly picks up a respiratory infection. Note to owners of said cat: vaccinations are a good thing. Now The Wife is in a tizzy. Let's play "What happened next?"

A) Cat convalesces at the SPCA.

B) Cat gets adopted and recuperates at a new, loving owners house.

C) Cat hangs on the futon in my attic where I get to give him a 14 day course of antibiotics and develops the uncanny ability to turn on the TV to watch daytime/late-night television while I'm not looking and causes The Boy to grow progressively more attached while I continually think that two cats in the house is just fine and when is he going back to either the SPCA or the previous (rightful?) owners.

Thanks for playing people...I think you all picked the right answer. There is no prize though because I got no prize in this deal either. So tough noogies.

So let's imagine where this will end up...

Have I mentioned that we've had 5 cats? (not all at the same time) Three were shelter cats but more importantly, two were from a neighbor whose house I can point to from mine. Yeah, I know I'm screwed despite my objections.

Well, at least I like the cat...unlike the "Little Dog" reign of terror.

 

Technorati Tags: Hello? Do I get a say in this?

Spin Cycle: Birth of Blog

The lovely Jen at Sprite's Keeper was inspired by the nappy Jen at Steenky Bee to do a spin on the birth of a blog. Why you started, what it's named what it is, and so on. Here is my humble tale:

I started blogging mainly so I could kick around and just write. I was writing short stories and freelance stuff but I wanted to have something that I could do with a little more regularity -- to keep in practice and try out new stuff. I already had a nickname of "Heinous" from when I was a gamer. (I don't have time for that anymore, but once my son is old enough for some pwnage, I'll make sure I school him well.) I tried to use it for my blogger name but some fiend (who never seems to have used it -- the lousy mofo) had taken it. I had to resort to my 'leet' spelling, because I'm just all cool like that (read: geek), and that's where 'h31n0us' came from.

The first part of my blog name, 'Irregularly Periodic', just came from the fact that I didn't post with much regularity originally. I still skip days, so it still sort of applies. The 'Ruminations' part came from the way I like to sit and look at things, generally with a touch of humor. I silently curse my choice of blog name just a little bit whenever I have to type it out. Thank the heavens for spell check. A find myself using IPR a lot nowadays.

It started off smallish (as we all do) with a few visitors here and there and has grown a lot in a small time...much faster than I could have ever expected or even hoped for.

I blog now because I love it. It has helped my writing in general, so that's been good in itself. Most important to me now though is the fantastic community of bloggers that I am fortunate enough to be a part of. I'm grateful for all the comments I get and the fact that people seem to enjoy reading my blatherings. I've made quite a few friends that I rarely, if ever, have to pay to talk to me. Now if I could just get my wife to read it...

I'd just like to give a big, sappy thanks to you all for coming by whether you're new here or have been here from the start.