Tonight, after the wife went to work, the kids and I played outside. We kicked around balls and rode bikes and pushed cars and Smella and I were going to toss around the frisbee but on my first throw I nailed her in the space between the upper lip and nose which according to Google is called a philtrum.
After about half an hour, I realized that I was slapping at so many mosquitoes that the neighbors were probably thinking that I had recently taken up smoking crack as a hobby. In hindsight, it probably didn’t help that I was dancing around, frantically swatting at my head, and yelling “The bugs! Smella, do you see all the bugs?!”
I knew coming back in the house would be a hassle because it always is no matter how many times you explicitly tell the kids that they absolutely can only go outside if they promise not to freak out when it’s time to come back in and no matter how many times they nod and agree one hundred percent and insist that I’m the crazy one because they are waaaaay too mature to do anything as unbecoming as throwing a fit in the yard at the first mention of maybe it possibly being time to I don’t know go back in maybe. Maybe? Please?
So I quickly scooped up Boobers and took him in the house before he knew what hit him. He cried but quickly got over it when I distracted him with a sippy cup full of ice water.
Smella did indeed whine and I could tell that she was thinking about making a run for it but I eased my way over to her and talked her down until I got close enough that I could reach out and grab her (Abra-abra-cadabra). Honestly, it wasn’t that hard to convince her that we should go in because she had a look on her face that said, “OMG, mosquitoes, WTF?”
By the time I went back out to get Big D, it was already starting to sprinkle so that was easy. We picked up the outside toys and went in to get drinks and cool down. As I was pouring myself a drink, Big D asked if he could have some of my Coca-cola. I told him that it was actually cherry coke. He then begged me to give him a drink. Smella was all “Me too! Me too!” so I let them both get a drink out of my glass. Then Big D asked if he could have a straw and I had to draw the line there.
Around 7:30 I got a phone call. It came up as a toll-free number on the caller ID and I answered it because sometimes it’s fun to answer surveys. It wasn’t a survey. It wasn’t exactly a robocall either. It was a real live person calling for the Republican National Committee and I could barely hear her at first so I asked her to speak up and she started over much louder telling me how much of a douchebag Barack Obama is. Apparently his gay lover best friend is a terrorist, but, lucky for us, John McCain is a hero who suspended his campaign to fix the economy.
(I was thinking damn I need to stop getting my news from the internets because I didn’t realize the economy was fixed. Last time I checked, the Dow was down about 25% over the last month. Just think how hard they could be fixing it if they weren’t calling me or if John McCain wasn’t getting ready to debate Barack Obama in about an hour and a half or if Sarah Palin wasn’t planning a visit to the Indianapolis area on Friday. Hell, she’s so smart I bet she could fix it all by herself if she would just take one little day off from the campaign to study it. Right, Sarah? You betcha!)
So anyway, the caller rushed through her spiel practically yelling the whole time and I’m pretty sure she never even took a breath. This being my first call of this nature, I was under the mistaken impression that we would maybe have a little discussion time after her initial introduction. I thought that perhaps it was a push poll and I could at least answer a question at the end. But apparently that’s not how it works. After they blurt out thirty seconds of bile, they just hang up. Cowards.
It sucks trying to write and watch a debate at the same time.
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