TAKE YOUR PICK OF A CAVALCADE OF INTERESTING WEEKEND STORIES...NO...REALLY

Hi!!

How was YOUR WEEKEND?!?!

GOOD!!!

(You know...unless a close family member died or something. Then..."Ooooo! I'm sorry!!")

So Friday night for us?

Well...I was craving steak. Since we live in an apartment complex with conditions that are just slightly better than your average Nazi concentration camp, we are not allowed to cook anything on grills here.

"We're going to be building community barbecue grills immediately," the nice little letter they sent out four days after we moved in said.

I haven't seen ANY signs of constructing barbecue grills yet. Lying bunch of conniving bastards.

So I want the steak. I want the biggest, reddest, most succulent steak in the free world.

So I email the missus and tell her "Leave at 5 p.m. today, because I want steak. Not 5:15. Not 5:30. Not 7:00. 5 freakin' o'clock."

...Because if I don't specify these things, she'd stay at work until the place burned down.

So I get home and Andrew's caretaker for the day, Michelle and Andrew's pal William are still at the house. Which is a good thing as ... well ... Michelle didn't leave the boys there by themselves. That's one of the things you look for when choosing a babysitter...is this the type of person who will actually hang around with your kid until you get home and relieve them of their duties? If the potential babysitter candidate has a tendency to run out and score some crack and leave the kid at home with a cigarette lighter and a propane torch to play with, you may want to keep searching for another babysitter.

So Michelle hangs out for a while, telling me all about their day, while the boys shriek that shriek that only toddlers close to being two years old can shriek. It's a happy shriek, but it's a shriek that will stomp all over your eardrums.

William's dad shows up to pick up William. At this point, Michelle feels safe enough to leave us. We pay her, she leaves. Actually, she bolts. She had just spent nine hours with two toddlers in a cramped apartment. That's why I'm shocked she was still there when I got home.

William's daddy doesn't leave so easily. He wants to stand around and ... talk.

Ummmm...okay. I've never really talked to the guy before...what does he want to talk about?

Well...he sells trucks for a living. Big trucks. So he talks about big trucks for a while while I nod my head and do my patented look called "I'm Pretending To Listen To You, But Really I'm Fantasizing About The World's Largest Steak".

Susie comes home while William's Daddy is still here. Since these two apparently talk quite a bit at daycare on a regular basis, they have plenty of catching up to do.

Meanwhile, all the big steaks at my favorite steakhouse are being eaten by people less worthy than myself.

Finally, I shoo William's Daddy outside with William and his diaper bag. We're almost to the point of getting rid of them.

Wait.

William sees one of Andrew's push toys on our patio that he hasn't played with yet.

So William's Daddy asks if it's okay if William pushes this toy around for a minute?

Just as I'm about to say "Get the F outta here, you truck-selling mongrel", Susie says "Sure!!!"

So...we all stand out in 95 degree weather with a heat index of 313 while William pushes this toy around our courtyard.

Whee, indeed.

Finally, they leave. We run up to the steakhouse and it's a 25 minute wait, which was what I was trying to avoid by getting us there a whole lot earlier.

I manage not to visibly pout, because Andrew's giving me plenty to do without having time to concentrate on pouting.

He's hellbent on running out of the waiting room, out the front door and into traffic every time someone walks in or out.

This is a game to him. Meanwhile, my shirt has come untucked and I'm perspiring because the waiting room is right inside the door and the heat index is up in the 500s. Little old ladies are turning to dust as they wait for a table. The cooks are just sticking steaks on long forks and sticking them out the window for three seconds in order to cook them...THAT'S how hot it is outside.

We get our table, we eat. As luck would have it...the steaks sucked. At this place, some nights the steaks are great...other nights they taste like crap.

It was Crappy Steak Night Friday night.

We go home.

Saturday morning, Susie wants to take Andrew to K-Mart to get his pictures taken.

Normally, I wouldn't step foot in our local K-Mart. I don't really have much of a problem with Walmart anymore. Walmart TRIES to keep a clean store.

K-Mart gave up on that concept years ago. Today, you can be shopping for toothpaste and have to move month-old half-eaten sandwiches out of your way to get a tube of Crest that's been opened and had dirty hypodermic needles shoved inside of it.

It's a Filth Palace, I'm 'a tellin' ya.

But the reason we're taking him to K-Mart is simple.

...They have Bear.

Yep...you can have your kid get his picture taken with Bear from Bear in the Big Blue House, the best damned show on television according to toddlers everywhere.

Of course, it's not really Bear. It's a poster of Bear. And not a very good poster of Bear either. It's more like an 8 x 10" of Bear. Your kid, holding an 8 x 10" of Bear while in the shoe department at K-Mart.

What a bargain.

So we get there, and naturally ... Andrew doesn't want to get his picture taken.

He is HOWLING. He hates this shit. He's flailing his arms and twisting and turning and refuses to sit still for the camera to even find him.

So the photographer suggests that Daddy lay across the table and rest Andrew on my stomach facing the camera.

We try this. But anytime Andrew sees Daddy laying down, he takes this as an invitation to hump my face.

If it's true that you're gay from birth, my boy's going to be a struggling ballet dancer in about 20 years who cruises bars with names like "Mustache Fuckers" looking for men who will let him hump their faces.

This is alright at home. He likes it. It makes him feel good. Nevermind that Daddy neither encourages it or makes the practice fun in any way. Daddy just lays there prone and gets a faceful of urine-soaked diaper for about 15 seconds before picking the kid up and putting him on the floor next to me.

So he does this. Humps my face in front of a horrified photographer.

I pick him up, flip him so that he lands butt first on my tummy facing the camera and he laughs.

*CLICK*

We do this again.

*CLICK*

We do this a total of 10 times.

*CLICK CLICK CLICK ...you get the picture*

...No pun intended. Tee hee!

So we get that done. And because K-Mart is so trashy, we can't even see any proofs for two weeks. So we have to go back to this rat-infested battle zone in two weeks to look at pics of our dizzy kid sitting on my fat gut with a picture of Bear being held up next to him.

Can I get a "Yay"?

We get home, Andrew's cranky and needs a nap.

He gets in his crib and passes out.

Because we had planned on going wallpaper shopping, I suggested that Susie go by herself since I had no real interest in shopping for wallpaper.

I gave her instructions to bring back THREE samples for each bathroom. From those three samples, I would help choose the wallpaper.

Sounds simple enough???

She brings home a dozen wallpaper books.

Each one is the size of your average picnic table.

She "couldn't decide" on three samples so she just brought these books home for the weekend and we can pick out stuff....TOGETHER.

Jeezum Crow. This is her idea of us "bonding". Looking at wallpaper books that requires the use of a crane to turn the pages.

For some unknown reason that she's not even quite sure of, she's brought home several "Kid's Bedroom" wallpaper books.

We are not decorating the kid's bedroom with wallpaper. It's being painted.

Still, I was forced to look at page after page after page of ballerinas and teddy bears. In every shape, size and color. Pages and pages of Obese Portugese ballerinas. Which is just the image you want to be staring at when you're constipated.

We cannot come to terms with what we want, so we drive out to the model home and have our realtor help Susie pick out some wallpaper. By this point, I simply don't care what wallpaper goes in our bathrooms. I thought I had a vested interest in the process but that quickly shifted into a "No Obese Portugese Ballerina" mode.

I think we've got it all picked out now. Basically, she picked it out and I gave final approval, or at least acted like I cared.

As it's now August, that means it's my month to be a Deacon at the church.

Which means I perform two main functions ... I join others to pass the plate around for collections. And I pass the tray around with ground up crackers and grape juice that signify the body and blood of Christ.

I'm always given the middle aisle to do this in, which requires double duty. I'm passing trays from row to row and it can get a bit hectic, much more hectic than the ends of the aisle which is where we put the feeble old folks and the mentally challenged deacons.

The collection plate goes smooth. It's the first of the month, so everyone's contributing. There's nothing worse than handing the plate to an elderly couple who wave it off because they only contribute once or twice a month...not every week.

I just always feel like apologizing when they wave me off. "No money this week, Uncle Bob" is what they're saying. "We're elderly and should have planned for the future a bit better and not been so dependent on our social security pensions that are being used to fight the War on Drugs, a war we're desperately losing."

(Oh, c'mon...you really thought I wouldn't mention it?!?)

The communion tray ... well... we had a bit of a problem there.

Whoever filled the little cups with the blood o' Christ didn't put enough in there. Or we just had a much larger crowd than normal.

All I know is...we ran out of the blood of Christ.

...On MY aisles.

I panicked. The elderly people who didn't get the plastic thimbles full of grape juice panicked.

Oh no! What's going to happen if they can't have a sip of grape juice when the pastor tells everyone to slam their shots o' juice?!?

Will ... will ... will they all go to hell?!?

Luckily, I'm Middle Aisle Boy for a reason. I may be panicking, but I have a cool demeanor that doesn't show my inner freak out.

I scan over to the other side of the church. I zero in on a tray that has PLENTY of blood still on it.

I make eye contact with the surly teenager passing the tray. I give him the universal silent facial feature that says "Send that tray o' blood my way, junior."

It's passed my way. The organist had to play for about 15 seconds longer than normal. Other than that, everyone got their blood and nobody in the other 20 rows was the wiser.

All thanks to me.

Blood Boy.

I rawk.

Whooohoooo!

I watched the Anna Nicole Show last night because I officially have no life.

Man oh man.

If you saw the show ... what the hell was that chick on???

I'm guessing heroin. Although you would hope that a strict diet of heroin and water would have her weighing in a little lighter.

She's like one of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade floats that got away from its people and just floats around the city at ground level.

She was slurring her words and barely making any sense at all while shopping for a house.

She was climbing into every bathtub she could find and rolling around in them.

She said something along the lines of she couldn't wait to get home and masturbate because she had forgotten to masturbate that morning.

She cried because she couldn't afford the rent on her dream home.

It wasn't the laugh riot that was promised. It was a sad train wreck of a show to watch this woman come across like a hopeless drug addict.

It was hardly compelling television.

Anna Nicole's not "wacky". She's pathetic.

...And you're damned right I'll be checking in again next week. Apparently, she gets several strippers to pile on top of her!!

I wouldn't miss that for the world!

Alright, I'm bored and distracted so I'm hanging this up.

Have a good 'un.