Monkeys Wearing Pants (7 page)

So I have been trying to
teach the twins a little Spanish. They have friends in their
daycare who mostly speak Spanish, so I’m trying to teach them a
phrase or two a week. This week, I have been teaching them how to
say, “I’m your friend,” (
Soy tu
amiga
). We were all in the van this
afternoon, and I prompted the twins to see if they remembered their
new sentence in Spanish. They were having a hard time remembering,
so I gave them a hint. “OK,” I said, “it starts with
Soy
…”

“Oh! I know, I know!” Gracie exclaimed! “Soy
latte!” Not correct, but at least she remembered her mom’s favorite
Starbucks drink.

It takes a village to raise a child, but a
couple of pretty good parents with Netflix and nearby in-laws can
get by.

Gracie was having a hard time putting on a
pair of shoes this morning. When I suggested she loosen up the
laces a little more she said, "Daddy, please! I've been doing it
this way for years!" She's four.

Me: We're leaving in ten minutes. Does
anyone need to go potty?

Kids: No.

Me: OK, we're leaving in five minutes. Does
anyone need to go potty?

Kids: No.

Me: Alright, let's go! Last chance...does
anyone need to go potty?

Kids: Daddy, no! We said we don't have to
go.

Five minutes after we leave the house, one
(or more) of the kids: Daddy, we have to go potty now! We can't
hold it! Daddy!

Yesterday, I was showing my daughter how to
use a can opener. I know this sounds weird, but the thought struck
me that this is what dads and moms are supposed to do. Teach your
kids all those little things so they don't grow up and have a
really awkward adult dinner party moment.

I know there will come a time when the
girls, now 9, 7 and (the twins) 5-years-old, will spend hours on
their hair and their make-up and all that other stuff that makes it
harder to get into the bathroom than it is to score a four day pass
for Augusta National, but for now they don’t care. Many people tell
Kim and I that we must be wonderful people to have adopted four,
Russian war orphans.

So the twins now have some of their Sunday
school training down pat. If I comment that something is big, they
will agree but add, “Yes, but God is bigger. He’s the biggest thing
ever.” If I say that something is nice I will get the compulsory,
“Sure Daddy, but God is even nicer. He’s the nicest of all!”
Tonight when we were putting them to bed, I told Riley that I liked
her pillow because it was so fluffy. “But not as fluffy as God,”
she replied earnestly. “He’s the fluffiest of them all!”

We have millions of pictures of the kids.
Millions. We have more pictures of the kids than my father ever
actually looked at me.

Men suck at grocery shopping, and I am a
part of that club. If I go to the supermarket, I spend $100 on
three bags of groceries and a baguette. When my wife goes shopping,
she comes home with the minivan full of groceries (that the girls
dutifully drag in, bag after bag, like little slave labor Oompa
Loompas), yet she has only spent $67.88. What is up with that?

We have a humor situation at our house…and
it’s my fault. These days, it’s difficult to go more than a few
minutes without one of the girls invoking one of the
seven-bathroom-or-anatomy-related-words-that-should-not-be-said-at-the-dinner-table.
I guess it wouldn’t be bad if there were some sort of truly comedic
thought process going on behind this and the occasional bathroom
humor witticism was used as a well-timed and witty comeback.
Unfortunately, when you are 4 or 6 or 8 years old, this kind of
humor is in the word itself. In a way, I suppose, it’s comedy in
its purest form.

Me: “Bailey, would you like some more
bread?”

Bailey: “Sometimes I poop because I have a
butt!” (Side-splitting laughter ensues…)

Me: “Riley, are you done?”

Riley: “Hey, everybody! I just farted!”
(Milk is reverse-snorted uncontrollably out of noses in a gale of
laughter…)

Me: “Cassie, can you hand your sister a
napkin?”

Cassie: “First, I’m going to pee sitting
down because I have a vagina!” (Nearly eaten peas become spit-out
projectiles flying across through the air as the laughter simply
cannot be contained…)

Me: “Gracie, stop messing around and eat,
honey.”

Gracie: “But Riley’s fart smells like
disgusting monkey turds coming out of her booty!” (One or more kids
roll off their chairs and has a semi-epileptic laughing fit while
rolling around in pea remains…) During all of this, Kim will shoot
me a glance or two because she knows that in this nature/nurture
world, most of the poop (humor) really does come from me.

A new study claims that marriage drives
women to drink. I'm not sure if that's true, but I'm going to ask
my wife just as soon as she gets back from the liquor store.

The twins were arguing about who was the
oldest. “Daddy,” Riley whined, “Gracie says that she’s older than
me and that makes me the baby!” I confirmed that Gracie was indeed
older, by one minute. Cassie Jo, standing nearby, decided to jump
into the fray. “Does that mean,” Cassie asked, “that Gracie came
out of mommy’s butt first?” Oh my God, I thought. This is what
happens when you make friends at a public school! Parents spend
twelve years running an anti-dissemination campaign.

“First of all,” I tell them, “nothing came
out of mommy’s butt.” Cassie tilts her head at me. “Nothing?” she
says in a tone that insinuates that I am very much mistaken. “OK,”
I say, “no babies came out of mommy’s butt. No babies, period, come
out of anybody’s butt, period.” Now I have an audience and I see
where this is going. “Babies,” I explain, “come out of a woman’s
vagina, or sometimes the doctor has to open a mommy’s tummy to take
the baby out.” Gracie, Riley and Cassie all nod their heads
solemnly as if some great truth has been revealed. I can see them
on the playground later giving their peeps the lowdown on this
whole birthing thing. “Wait a minute!” Cassie demands out of the
blue, “Which way was I born, the normal way or the gross way?” I’m
not sure which is which, so I simply tell her “You came out the
vagina.” Cassie signs a massive sigh of relief. “Thank God!” she
says before leaving the room triumphantly.

The twins learned a valuable life lesson
this morning: Silly Putty and cats do not mix.

You know your kids aren't little anymore
when you can no longer get away with that great parenting standby,
"We'll see...”

I just stepped on one of the girls’
necklaces and cursed Hello Kitty like Hello Kitty has never been
cursed before.

I just read a fun fact. Snails can sleep up
to three years straight. It didn't say, but it must be talking
about snails without any kids.

So today, I shouted at the top of my lungs,
"The next person who goes poopy without flushing is not getting a
popsicle!”

Take several handfuls of Cheerios, the head
of a chocolate bunny, one bite of leftover pizza, a bite of
something yet-to-be-identified off the floor, many mandarin orange
slices, a handful of corn, a pretzel and (quite possibly) a nibble
or two of the cat’s Meow Mix….eat them all together and you get THE
MOST DISGUSTING BABY POOP EVER! (Please don’t ask me how I
know).

Good evening, passengers, and welcome to the
bedroom shuttle. Tonight we will be traveling from Mommy and
Daddy's bed back to your bed. You will be flying at an altitude of
about five feet. Please keep your head on Daddy's shoulder and your
arms at your sides to avoid any unnecessary turbulence. Our travel
time will be approximately 10 seconds. Looking ahead to your final
destination, we're showing it warm and comfortable with your
stuffed animals arranged to your liking. Thanks again for joining
us on this short journey. We know you have choices when it comes to
snuggling, and thank you for choosing Daddy and Mommy in the big
bed. Good night, sweet dreams, and we love you.

I love my girls, but sweet, blessed Jesus, I
can't walk through this house without impaling my foot on a Lego,
toy ring, or half the pieces of a princess tea set! In other
related news, the shinbone clearly serves no purpose greater than
as a device for finding furniture in a dark room.

If you have read this far I either have some good news or
some bad news for you. If you have gotten to this point and think
it sucks more than a four-hundred-dollar Dyson, the end is in
sight. If you found a few things to be funny and entertaining, then
I have scraped the proverbial bottom of the Facebook posting barrel
and added this last little bit.

The Paleo diet is based on eating what
cavemen ate hundreds of thousands of years ago. That’s weird to me
because most cavemen only lived to be 20 to 30 years old, less if
they were crushed by a woolly mammoth or if they pissed off their
club carrying girlfriends. The exception would be the Geico
cavemen, but they had all that TV money so it’s really not a fair
comparison. Anyway, I don’t want to go on a diet where I die at 30,
because that would involve both time travel and several awkward
explanations.

So I had a dream last night and in it I
forgot to do something and then had to go through the time and
hassle to do it to go back and do it. You would think that your own
dream would cut you a little slack.

I don't want anyone to read anything into
this, but my space bar is sticking.

I don't know anything about this TV show,
but 'Devious Maids' is the most God awful title I have ever heard
of. (Note: Please look forward to my new television hit, "Scheming
Accountants.")

My porn name is Monkey San Marino.

I just spent the last three minutes going
mano-a-mano with a re-sealable bag that was not cooperating. That’s
three minutes I’ll never get back…

Of all the driving offences that bug me,
tailgating is the worst whether it’s on the freeway or just on some
street in town. When someone is tailgating me I feel like yelling
at them, “We are not two dogs at the dog park trying to get to know
each other better! Get your schnozzle out of my ass!”

Did you ever walk out of a store and go to
the place you parked the LAST TIME you were at that store and then
think, just for a minute, that your car has been stolen and then
remember that you’re actually looking where you parked the last
time and then walk around, resolutely, until you finally find your
friggin’ car? Yeah, me neither.

I'm going to download Photoshop into the
mirror in our bathroom and teach it how to airbrush.

I have a zit the size of Lake Titicaca. 54
years old and I'm dealing with a zit that could be mistaken for a
VW bug if I parallel parked my face. Now, if I could just teach it
to hold the door open for me.

I have got to clean the fish tank tomorrow.
It’s starting to look like aquatic section-8 housing.

It looks like Amazon is looking to get into
the online grocery business. If they do, remember not to shop
(online) when you’re hungry.

So I just left the sprinkler on in the front
lawn for like 8 hours. Some people might say that I’m forgetful.
No, I would argue. I’m just subliminally trying to restore
America’s wetlands.

The hotel I stayed at last night in Fresno
had a low-flow (water saving) showerhead. Taking a shower was like
being spit on by three, parched, mean spirited geckos. :-(

We just do not use the word skullduggery
enough in everyday conversation. I'm going to teach it to the girls
in hopes it spreads like wildfire in elementary schools
everywhere.

Irregardless is a word. Look it up. Yet,
even though it's a word, Merriam-Webster says you shouldn't use it.
That only makes me want to use it more and makes me, I guess, a
word rebel. Sweet.

Personal challenge…I am going to work in a
“You will rue the day!” into everyday conversations.

I have a fear of semicolons. They are
confusing and bully regular commas to no end.

Somewhere a study must have been conducted
that concluded most people need to be prodded about 10 times to
subscribe to a magazine before they submit to the pressure. At
least that’s about how many of those annoying, indexed-card-sized
subscription forms that seem to fall out of every, single magazine
I read.

I have a friend who hates the font ‘Comic
Sans’ to the point that it makes him angry. Ironic.

No, I didn’t roll a 300 in bowling, find a
4-leaf-clover, make a hole in one or win the lottery. But I did
find ALL THREE REMOTES in the remote caddie at the same time next
to the TV. Luckiest day ever!

I'm going to lock my shoelaces in a room
until they can work out their differences and agree that they can
be the same length coming out of my shoe.

Kid behind the counter: What would you
like?

Me: I'll have a number three, regular size
with Diet Coke, to go.

Kid behind the counter: What size?

Me: Umm....yeah, that would be regular.

Kid behind the counter: And what would you
like to drink?

Me: Still a Diet Coke.

Kid behind the counter: Is that for here or
to go?

Me: Wow. To go.

I take it back. A few people really should
earn minimum wage.

When did we become so flavor obsessed? I
went to buy some sunflower seeds and was amazed at how many
different flavors there are (dill pickle?). You can now buy
toothpaste that tastes like pork, or Champagne or even Cola-cola.
You can get buffalo wing soda, ice-cream that is a whacky flavor
mix of bourbon and cornflakes and jelly beans that taste just like
baby wipes. I have been slow to jump on the crazy flavor bang
wagon, but that may change with my recent purchase of vindaloo hot
curry suppositories. Stay tuned!

The other day I had to pull the word
“caddywhompus” out of my vocabulary arsenal. It wasn’t pretty, but
it had to be done.