An open letter to the jane q. public i wrote those tickets to…

Posted on August 13, 2013 by donofalltrades

Dear Jane Q. Public:

I recently became aware that you took a few minutes out of your life to send an online complaint to my Department’s Internal Affairs Division because you were upset that I would not listen to your excuses about why you drove through that red light a couple of weeks ago and also because I addressed you in a tone that you thought was less than respectful. You also thought that it was ridiculous that I wrote you an additional ticket for not having your two year old buckled into a car seat.

I’ve been given a copy of the letter because I have to take time that could be used patrolling the streets in order to address the complaints you’ve lodged against me to my superiors as well as to the Internal Affairs Division.

I do remember writing you those tickets, yes. I recall that you eventually said you were sorry that you ran through that red light, but you were in a hurry to get your son from a lacrosse camp he was attending. You were quite pissed off when your apology didn’t make us all squarzies, right? Do you remember how mad you were?

I remember several things that you said and did during the course of our encounter that I mostly ignored, but I’ll go ahead and address them right now.

First and foremost, I remember that you didn’t roll your window down right away while I stood outside your car in the afternoon heat waiting patiently for you to acknowledge me. As a younger officer, standing outside a car like this would have made me feel like a jackass, but I’ve been around long enough that these sorts of passive aggressive actions don’t affect my mood anymore. I will say that it sure looked cool inside your $70,000 Porsche Cayenne. I admit that I was a little bit jealous. You see, the a/c in my patrol car hasn’t worked all summer and my very own ten year old family car has more and more difficulty everyday cooling me down on the drive home from work.

You were quite busy on your cell phone talking to somebody. You were very animated and managed to avoid looking at me for several minutes before you finally rolled your window down just a little bit. That somebody on the other line turned out to be your big deal lawyer husband. Do you remember those were your words to me? When you finally rolled down your window, the first thing you said was, “Here, talk to my husband, officer. He’s an attorney and kind of a big deal in this city.” Oh how mad you were that I didn’t take your phone to talk to him. Your husband wasn’t driving the car and I certainly believed you when you said that you were running late to pick up your son. What was he going to say? You see, it didn’t matter to me whether or not your husband would tell me that he knows the mayor or that he is friends with some commander in my police department or even a police department other than my own. Maybe he would have said that he gives lots of money to Backstoppers to support the families of first responders who die in the line of duty. That may have softened my mood just a little bit, but at the time, I didn’t need or even want to hear any of that.

I remember you telling me that your husband works at a prestigious local law firm and that you work part time as a volunteer at your children’s school. I didn’t ask you what your husband did for a living, or even if you were married. That you would imply that such things matter during the course of our encounter confuses me. I did ask where your kids went to school, because I have kids of my own and I figured you brought it up because you wanted to talk about it. You said that your kids go to a swanky private school many miles outside of the City where we met. You and your family live in one of the wealthiest suburbs in our area, and I recall telling you that I thought it was a nice area and that I’d heard the school your kids attended has a great reputation. You were surprised to hear it when I mentioned that I had family that lived out that way as well.

You also asked me, at the same time you were rifling angrily through your purse for your license, whether or not I had anything better to do than write tickets to tax paying citizens. I heard what you said, but I said “excuse me?” to see if you’d repeat it to my face and you did! You looked right at me and said, “Surely there’s something more important to be done in this City than writing me a goddam ticket!” Whoah, I thought! Using the Lord’s name in vain isn’t necessary, but I assured you that were there something more pressing to be dealt with currently that I’d be there and left it at that. I didn’t even touch the fact that as a volunteer at your kids’ school, you weren’t really much of a tax paying citizen.

Boy you were mad and I could tell you were on the verge of tears. It’s possible that you were trying to make yourself cry because that would surely cause me to lighten up, right? You were fuming as you handed me your license and insurance information. I have to be stoic in the presence of others while I’m on duty, but when I got back to my car to run your information, I felt bad for you. Isn’t that silly of me? You clearly have a pretty charmed life compared to most and I was feeling bad for you a little bit because it was me causing you to be upset. That’s just the sort of guy I am though. I have a soft spot for people in distress, and I’ve given many many many people the benefit of the doubt and let them go with just a warning. I wasn’t in the mood to give breaks on this day though.

I felt less sorry for you when your name popped up with a red notation on my screen as having an outstanding warrant from that swanky municipality where you live. Imagine my surprise to see that it was a warrant for speeding.

I sat in my car for a little bit longer than necessary to suck in some of the luke warm air coming from the vents of my police cruiser and to run some scenarios through my head. I imagined taking you to jail for your warrant and the fit that would have caused you to have! Can you imagine?! I saw you looking, no, you were sneering at me in your rear view mirror as you talked on your phone yet again. You were clearly perturbed. Do you know what though? If I can be honest with you, I was a bit perturbed too and I’d like to tell you why.

My attention was first drawn to your car by the sight of your two year old jumping up and down in the back seat while you were weaving in and out of traffic without using your turn signals. Did you even see me as you passed me? I was doing 35 mph and you passed me right there even though I was in my marked police cruiser. You were doing at least 50 mph. I don’t have radar handy when I’m driving down the street so I couldn’t tell exactly how fast you were going, but other drivers notice such erratic behavior and they were looking at me with facial expressions that said, “Hey, don’t you see that woman driving like a maniac?”

I did see you, just like all the other commuters you were annoyed with having to share the road with saw you. I noticed that the light ahead had turned red and thought that I’d pull up alongside you at the light to tell you to please slow it down a little bit and be done with you, but you had other plans. You drove right through that red light without giving it a second thought. Not only did you not slow down, but you actually sped up to beat oncoming traffic coming perpendicular to you through the green light! Several cars honked at you but you didn’t care. You just traveled on like it was they who were at fault.

Again, those drivers who had to stop for you all looked at me and I could tell their faces were saying, “What the fuck, officer?” I hear you guys I nodded and I turned the lights and siren on to pull you over and that’s when we met.

I remember you well because I remember your bouncing baby boy in the back seat having the time of his life. I remember when I was a lad, we used to jump around in the car like that. That was many years ago though. Times have changed and kids need to be buckled in at his age now. I also remember that he looked a little bit like my own two year old son and even more like another Jane Q. Public’s two year old boy who I met at this very same intersection just a few days earlier. I met him as he lie dying in the back seat of his mother’s SUV, not buckled properly in his car seat. His mother didn’t run the red light that day her baby boy stopped living on this earth, no. She ran into a car whose driver ran the red light exactly as you had just done. Exactly the same!

That was only a few days ago and I apologize that my heart wasn’t interested in listening to your excuses that day. You see, that boy’s little bloodied face and blood stained blankie still haunt my memory. I worked that scene just long enough to have to see a dead baby I could have done without seeing before I was relieved by accident specialists so that I could go onto the next call as though it’s no big deal to see dead babies and then carry on with life.

That’s one of the funny things about this job. We have to put away what just happened, no matter how awful, so that we can move onto the next call. Sometimes the next call is something mundane and our minds are elsewhere. Those next callers deserve our undivided attention as they explain to us how their expensive items that they left in the front seat of their parked car while they were in a bar were stolen. Sometimes they sense that we’re not 100% interested in what they have to say and that we seem to be going through the motions and they call us on it. They call us on it right there on the spot, or sometimes they do what you did and lodge an official complaint, never knowing that it isn’t that we don’t care about their loss, it’s just that we haven’t quite cleared our minds of the loss we witnessed just hours before that still occupies our brains. That face. That blankie. That woman crying, wailing like she was crazy. I bet she was crazy at that moment. I know I’d have been crazy, and I bet even you, Jane, would snap as well.

So to you, Ms. Jane Q. Public, I’m sorry that you caught me at such a bad time. Had we had the same encounter a few weeks before, it’s possible that I’d have listened to your excuses and sent you on your way with a warning instead of writing you tickets that you earned. Does writing those tickets bring dead babies back? No, of course it doesn’t. Will it give the many people who travel through that intersection and see a cop writing a ticket pause next time they approach the intersection as the light turns red? Maybe not. Does writing those tickets help me in some way that may or may not be perverse in your opinion? Yes, it does. If it didn’t, I’d have let you go on your way to get your son, along with your other son. The one who but for chance could have been that boy who’s face put me in such an unforgiving mood on that day.

Please remember that I’m a person too. Police officers are moms and dads and uncle and aunts. We go to your church and coach your kids. This is just my job; it’s nothing personal.

Respectfully,

That Officer Who Wrote You Those Tickets

Posted in Police Stories, Stories, Uncategorized | Tagged law enforcement, loss, open letter, pain, police, stories, tragedy | 337 Comments

Tear free soccer? Let’s hope so…

Posted on August 13, 2013 by donofalltrades

Several moons ago I coached Ace’s soccer team. I played soccer my entire life and even enjoyed a soccer scholarship in college, so it was my hope that Ace would enjoy playing it as much as I did.

This was a not an uncommon scene during those precious father/daughter soccer moments.

I hate my coach…

I have no idea why she and I butted heads, but we did, a LOT. She didn’t want to listen and I’m sure I had a much shorter fuse back then.

This picture was when Ace was four or five years old. She’s ten now and still plays soccer, but I no longer coach her team since we moved to a new area and coaches were already in place.

She doesn’t play because her daddy is trying to live vicariously through her soccer success by any stretch of the imagination. Quite the opposite, she is asked each year whether or not she’s interested in playing and we give her every opportunity to quit and do something else instead. She chooses to play because she likes the girls on the team and has fun. That’s the point of sports at her level of competition, so we’re fine with signing her up and forking over the $100 it costs for her to have fun being part of a team.

As with Ace, I have no plans to force sports upon my boys either. Would I like for them to be interested in sports and even excel? Yes, I don’t have any qualms about admitting that. I’d love to rush home from work someday to watch one of my kids playing for the varsity team in a sport of their choosing. But, I won’t lose any sleep over it if Cool or G$ tell me to pound sand when I ask if they’re interested in signing up for soccer or baseball or whatever.

So far, Cool has been interested in playing anything that involves a ball.

Yay balls…yes, that’s me with a Bud Light Lime and flip flops on as usual.

Those who’ve followed this blog for awhile know that Cool is the runt of my little litter. He’s just recently made his way up to the 19th percentile in height as a four year old. In spite of his small stature and ginormous brain, he has always been pretty adept when it comes to sports. He can hit a ball tossed to him very well for a lad his age and he’s got some pretty decent soccer skills as well. Not bad for a kid who didn’t walk until he was 20 months old.

As was the case during T-ball, there were not a slew of parents begging and pleading to coach the pre-Kindergarten soccer team, so this old softy volunteered when it became clear that others were not going to step up and do it.

I’m a little better prepared this time around as I have lessons learned from coaching Ace’s team as well as my recent stint as Cool’s T-ball coach. I had such high hopes and grand plans for how that season would play out, but then the reality of getting four year old boys took over and all those plans were swept aside. Boys like to roll around in dirt and play grab ass with each other. It was insanity trying to get them to pay attention for even brief stints of time.

Try as I did to make if fun, T-ball is boring at times to the little ones because there is a lot of standing around. Soccer can be different. I’m hoping to make drills seem more like games and keep the kids interested for most of the hour long practice sessions. I’m also hoping that having girls on the team as well as boys brings some level of decorum to the squad. Girls seem to be a bit less savage and more able to listen than four year old boys. I don’t know what age they lose that ability, but it’s later on in their little lives.

So I’ve dusted off my cleats and read up on my coaching little ones 101 book in the hopes that crying is at a minimum this season, unlike it was all those years ago…

Posted in Family, Humor, Uncategorized | Tagged coaching, dads, kids, little league, soccer, t-ball | 32 Comments

How ‘you people’ caused me to incite a mini race riot…

Posted on August 12, 2013 by donofalltrades

My first regular patrol partner and I both joined the police department at about the same time. When we started, we were both green and inexperienced, but, out of necessity, we rode together a lot. Ideally, very new officers would ride with more veteran officers to sort of learn the ins and outs of the job, but in today’s police departments, that’s rarely possible anymore.

LC was, well he still is, black. We patrolled in a fairly mixed neighborhood as far as race and ethnic groups go. LC and I hit it off right away as we were both young, dumb and liked to drink after work. It’s not easy to spend 8 hours per shift in a car with just any person. Not everyone can stand it when there’s no conversation and will try to force conversation to fill the air with some noise. LC and I didn’t give two shits if there was nothing to talk about; the silence was fine.

We also worked out a fine arrangement whereby LC would take the lead in talking to black suspects/victims and I’d do the same for the white ones. Some of you will think this sounds terrible, but it really wasn’t. The reality is that many black people don’t trust the police at all to help them out, so a black officer is the lesser of two evils as far as many of them are concerned. Same with whites. Some of them will straight up tell you that they’re not talking to a white cop or a black cop. Whatever. While we wouldn’t go out of our way to send a black or a white officer on request, since there were one of each on the scene already when LC and I arrived, it didn’t hurt to make people think they were getting their way.

The impetus for our arrangement came one night when we got a call for a disturbance. It was a hot summer night and everyone was crabby because the heat had been unbearable for several weeks in a row. We got a call for a disturbance related to a family member supposedly stealing jewelry and cash from other family members. In typical ghetto fashion, sides were drawn, neighbors unfamiliar with any facts became involved for no good reason and it was a mess of 40 or 50 people getting ready to brawl in an intersection of a pretty busy area.

LC and I worked very well together as a team and we rarely called for backup unless it was obvious that we were about to get our asses overrun due to sheer numbers or there were some other exigent circumstances requiring more help. Sometimes, bringing more cops onto a scene makes a bad situation worse. We trusted our instincts as well as each other to know when to call for more assistance.

The crowd of 50 or so people were all fired up and LC and I were trying our best to separate them into their respective groups so we could get a handle on what was going on. We’d push one group to one side of the street so we could go talk to the other, but as we were talking to the other, the original mob would cross the street cursing and shouting their displeasure at whatever it was the other side was saying.

Even though it was late at night, it was still muggy and hot. While the crowd of fine citizens was no doubt hot as well, they weren’t wearing bullet resistant undergarments, long pants or combat boots. Plus, they were outside in the heat of their own volition while I had to be there against my will.

LC and I, especially for young officers, were both very patient and allowed people to vent their frustrations more than most officers would. There’s a fine line between letting somebody just get something off their chest and allowing somebody to be verbally abusive. Again, you just have to have a feel for the situation. So while trying to convince the pro victim of theft crowd to nominate a single person to tell us what happened, the pro accused crowd came charging across the street again to hear what the victims were saying. This was about the fourth or fifth time that this happened so I’d had enough and it was time to threaten the old everyone is going to spend their Friday night in jail if they don’t behave. With that in mind, I told the crowd something to the effect of “If you people on this side of the street don’t stay on the sidewalk and out of the street, we’re going to start hauling you off to jail.”

I remember the look on one particular guy’s face as he cocked his head at me and shouted, “You people?!” “You people?! Hey y’all, this white man just called us you people!” And just like that, we lost the crowd.

Apparently, “you people” is racist in any given context, so the crowd got ugly fast. It only takes one or two folks to incite the rest of the group into a frenzy, and incite they did. LC pressed his emergency button because he saw what was happening and, within seconds, we could hear the sweet sweet sounds of sirens headed our way.

At the end of it all, nobody got hurt and the woman being accused of theft finally did admit that she had taken stuff from her family members because she has a drug habit (as though that makes it forgivable). She had jewelry and cash crammed in her shoes, bra and even up her twat. Yep, that happens a lot! The crowd that supported her was deflated and they apologized profusely to the other side and even to LC and I for acting like fools.

LC laughed for a good 10 minutes before he finally asked if I’d really called those people you people.

“It’s 100 degrees out here with the humidity and they were acting like animals. They were lucky I called them people at all. How is telling people “you people” as in “you people” over here to stay on the sidewalk racist?!” I asked of LC while sucking down my gas station ice tea.

“It just is to some people, Don. It’s stupid, but stupid is all some of these people know.” LC said. “I know you didn’t mean nothing by it, but why don’t I do all the talkin’ to the black folk and you can talk to all the honkies from now on?”

“Honkies? You can say honkies but I can’t say ‘you people’?” I asked.

“Is honkies offensive to honkies?” LC asked. I think he was genuinely curious.

“I’m not even sure, honestly Buddy. It doesn’t bother me, but I’d not use it around everyone. I’m Italian and you can call me a Dago all you want and I’d care less, but some Italians take it really offensively. I guess it depends on context and the individual.”

“Well I’ll be damned.” LC said. “I always just thought honky was a funny word and never thought nothin’ of it being offensive.”

“Context brother. It’s all about context sometimes.”

And with that, our arrangement was born.

Posted in Police Stories, Uncategorized | Tagged law enforcement, police, racism, stories, you people | 44 Comments

Just writing SOMETHING, oh, and maybe run another 1/2 marathon.

Posted on August 9, 2013 by donofalltrades

For the love of fuck, I just can’t seem to jump start my brain into conjuring up anything funny, creative, meaningful, stupid, or even mediocre, to write lately.

I’ve scrapped numerous shitty blog posts that I’d started because if the words don’t start to come to me immediately, then I know I’m forcing something that won’t be fun and that never turns out well for any of us. This is supposed to be an entertaining release for me whenever I get the urge, but gosh darnit, all you fun people out there who read this crap and comment with me have made me miss your interaction.

Speaking of crap, Todd and Margo of Miracle of 2011 fame invited us to their lake house with them last weekend. By invited I mean that I’ve been hounding him for two years to take us to the lake, and by their lake house, I mean that his mother let him use her lake house.

During the course of what couldn’t have been much more than 40 hours, I think I managed to cram a case of Bud Light Lime down my gullet along with nearly an entire bag of Doritos and several other not so nutritious items of crap such as four pancakes the size of hubcaps and all the breakfast accompanyments a man could want at my new favorite breakfast joint. We hit that joint twice it was so good. Even Margo forced herself to eat a couple of chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. Of course, she didn’t drink a single drop of alcohol all weekend or abuse her body with the other crap that the rest of us did, so I guess she wins. Plus I think she ran about six miles the next morning to burn those naughty pancake calories off.

The speaking of crap segue was meant to be a reference to a funny story I was going to tell about when we took the boat out, but I can’t figure out how to tell it to do it proper justice. The boat apparently has a portal where piss is stored (only piss since there’s a no #2 rule on the boat) and it was about 3/4 full. At some point in previous weeks, Todd and Margo’s darling little three year old niece violated the no #2 rule because, when a three year old has to go, she has to go! Anyway, the theory, well, our theory, was that somehow these little turds chemically combined with the gallons of piss already in the boat and created a perfect storm of funk. When we finally got ourselves situated in a cove to swim and drink in, every so often a godawful smell would make it’s way into our olfactory glands. I mean it was fucking putrid! My sense of smell is horrendous, so for me to smell it, it was bad. My wife can sniff shit out like a blood hound, so it had to be much worse for her. At first, we thought one of the houses in the cove must have had a septic tank issue, but no, eventually it became clear that we were floating around the SS Shitstank and were causing the unpleasantness. There’s nothing like floating on a noodle and drinking beer, so a little intermittent, violent violating of the ole nose wasn’t enough to ruin my good time fun.

Add this weekend to the ridiculous feeding frenzy I enjoyed on my family vacation, and I was feeling like a bloated piece of whale turd come Sunday night. I was at my heaviest weight ever, I’m positive.

Margo must have been less than impressed by having had to see my exposed upper half as I frolicked in the lake, because on the same Sunday we returned from the lake, she sent me a text that I should join her in another 1/2 marathon soon.

…………………………………………what? Are you serious?

It was one thing the first time when I was in my 30’s and running for my pride. I mean, come one, I had to show her and Todd that I could do it back then, right? Well I did, and my feet have been bothering me ever since!

Still, like a dumbass, I ran it by Wife and she also thought it was a fine idea. What the fuck, dear? I thought for sure she’d tell me I was an idiot for even thinking about doing it again. I think the ladies conspired to somehow trick me into losing weight.

So yes, I am going to TRY to train for and run a half marathon in October. I didn’t want to throw it out here because there doesn’t seem to be any realistic way that this is going to happen because, did I mention that my feet are really sore at me for trying this? When I did this in 2011, I was certainly in better shape after the race than when I started the training, but I didn’t lose as much weight as I’d thought I would. Much of that was due to the fact that I didn’t change my diet at all (I figured I was running so I could eat whatever I wanted to, right) and I drank beer pretty frequently. Not as frequently as I had been, but still too much for a man in training.

This time, I’m going to try to eat a bit better and cut back drastically on the beer consumption. I’m not quitting the beer, mind you, but I’ll maybe keep it to less than 10 a week. That sounds pretty easy, right? Well, I could drink 10 Bud Light Limes before the Cardinals have to call in the first relief pitcher during a Jake Westbrook started ballgame. It’s not unusual for me to go through twice that in a week recently, and that’s way too much booze.

Thus far, I’ve taken to drinking protein shakes instead of skipping breakfast and started my running regimen by getting in a four and a three mile run this week already. I didn’t feel too bad I guess after either run. I haven’t had any beer since Saturday at the lake, and I’m eating much better than I was. I’ve already lost the weight I’d put on during my vacation/lake food and booze orgy, plus a couple that were there even before that.

I think with some patience, if I stick to what I’ve been doing, I’ll lose some weight eventually. I’m not built to be fat, so I think my body will cooperate. Once I lose some weight, then running should be easier on my feet, right? It’ll all be downhill after that I’m sure.

I know, whatever Don. Hey, it’s worth a try.

Posted in Fitness, Humor, Uncategorized | Tagged exercise, fitness, goals, half marathon, Running, training, vacation | 60 Comments

Cujo

Posted on August 1, 2013 by donofalltrades

Hey Blogdramedy, I obviously missed the boat on playing this time around, but I wanted to ask you if this sort of post would have been ok. Could you have tolerated 10 days of woofing from 10 different dogs?

————————————————————————————-

A car drives by:

Woof, woof woof!

A Bird flies by:

Woof woof woof! Woof woof!

A rabbit runs through the yard:

Very loudly now – Woof woof, woof woof woof! woo woo woof!

The wind blows:

Woof woof, woof woof woof!

A child runs past the fence:

Woof woof woof!! Woof! Woof!!!

A Neighbor enters the yard yelling, “Cujo, shut the fuck up! Quit barking!”

Cujo mauls neighbor to death.

News crew interviews neighbor, “Are you surprised?”

Neighbor: “Oh yes! That dog kept to himself and seemed so happy. We’d say hi from time to time and that was about it. I’m shocked that this could happen in this neighborhood”

Posted in Uncategorized | 20 Comments

Daily Prompt: State of Year Address

Posted on July 29, 2013 by donofalltrades

Whispers and shhhh’s echo in the room…

“Shhhh, he’s coming into the room! The big guy is going to speak to us!”

Papers shuffle, throats are cleared and finally, there is silence.

DOAT enters the room to thunderous applause as the crowd looks upon him in admiration and awe.

DOAT: “Thank you, thank you everyone, please…please, thank you! Thank you! Thank you very much, please…please calm down…thank you.”

The applause continues….

DOAT: “Thank you…ok, it’s not working. Fuck!!!! Ace, please press stop on the cd player already!”

Stop is pressed and the artificial applause finally ceases.

Wife is rolling her eyes in sync with Ace while G$ smears peanut butter on the wall. Cool has exused himself to “go potty”.

DOAT: I’ve called this State of the year address to catch us all up on the status of the DOAT empire halfway through this year and to make sure that we’re all on the same page moving forward. I’d like to start with the…

G$: Neenawg!

DOAT: I’d like to start with the budget since we are…

G$: Neenawg!

Wife laughs…

DOAT: What the fuck is a Neenawg?

G$ “NEENAWG!!!”

Wife: It means corn dog in G$ speak.

DOAT: Now’s not the time, son, we’re having a family meeting and I’d…

G$: “NEENAWG! NEENAWG! NEENAWG!”

DOAT: Sigh….We don’t have any corn dogs right now.

Wife: He doesn’t want a corn dog, he wants one of those breakfast sausages on a stick wrapped in a pancake.

DOAT: Oh, well goddamit, now I want one of those too!

Meeting is put on hold while Neenawgs are nuked and eaten.

DOAT: Very well, now let us continue please. As I was saying, we….

Cool: What’s that smell daddy?

DOAT: We had some Neenawgs while you were in the potty, son.

Cool: What the fuck is a Neenawg?

DOAT: Hey, watch your mouth! It’s apparently corn dog in G$ talk.

Cool: We have corn dogs?

DOAT: No, he wanted one of those breakfast things. Now, as I was saying, we need to…

Cool: Can I have a Neenatch?

DOAT: It’s Neenawg! Fuck! Yes, you can have one too.

Ace: I want one now too, daddy.

Wife: Will you bring me some ice water as well, please?

DOAT: Grrrrrrr!!!!!

Water is delivered and Neenawgs are nuked. All are satiated, momentarily.

DOAT: Very good, now let’s continue. As I said, I’ve called this family meeting to address the state of our life through the first half of 2013.

The year has gone by pretty fast and a lot of things are changing around here. Ace has just turned 10 and is about to start her last year of elementary school. Cool is a big boy now. He is about to start his last year of preschool and has learned to ride a two wheeler and played t-ball for the first time this year. G$ is still G$, but he’s finally starting to use his words, which is helping to ease some of his frustrations and almost making him tolerable to be around for more than 10 minutes at a time.

The budget looks ok, I think we can finish off the fiscal year right smack in the lower end of middle middle class where we started. We’re going to have to clean up the budget here though. Loose ends need to be tied up and some fat needs to be trimmed from our spendi…

Cool: Daddy said fat! Daddy has a fat belly!

DOAT: SILENCE BOY!!!!

Wife laughs to herself…Wife and Ace roll eyes in sync again…

DOAT: Where was I again?

Wife: You were trimming fat. From the budget.

DOAT: Ah, yes, let’s get… what is it, Cool?? What the fuck are you crying about?

Cool: Sobbing, You, you yelled at me and it’s all my fault! It’s all my fault!!!

DOAT: Oh for God’s sake, that wasn’t yelling. You’re fine, son. You’re not in trouble! Still though, it’s not nice to call daddy fat.

Ace: You said that truth is always a defense, dad.

DOAT: SILENCE GIRL!!

Wife excuses herself in a fit of laughter…

Wife: I’m gonna piss my pants!!

DOAT: SILENCE WOMAN!!

Carly: Woof! Woof!!

DOAT: SILENCE DOG!!!!

The crying and laughing escalates…the barking intensifies and the noise is unbearable.

DOAT: EVERYBODY SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!! Jesus, I knew this was a bad idea during nap time.

G$: NO NAWP, DADDY! Noo nooo nooo nooo…!!

DOAT: Can everybody please come back to the table? I had a whole thing written out about what I was going to say and you people are ruining it.

The family reassembles and all are finally quiet.

DOAT: Finally! Now, let’s finish this up by discussing where we need to be when….

Ding dong…

DOAT: Jesus Christ…

Ace answers door and returns with Jesus Christ…

Ace: Can Cool and I go out and play with the neighbors? Who is this guy? He let himself in?

DOAT: You most certainly cannot go out and…

Wife: Yes, Ace. Go outside with your brother.

DOAT: How do you not know who Jesus Christ is? Don’t you pay attention in PSR class young lady??

Ace: Bye dad!

Cool: Bye dad!

DOAT: Jesus!

Jesus: Yes?

DOAT: Why are you here again, Jesus?

Wife: Are we done with this meeting? G$ needs to go down for a nap.

G$: NO NAWP, Momma! NOooo nooo noo nooo no!

G$ bangs his plate onto the table repeatedly…

DOAT: Oh my God, fine! We’re done! Take him away, please!

Wife and G$ disappear to G$’s room.

Jesus: Nice job, Don.

DOAT: What?

Jesus: That was one of your best meetings yet.

DOAT: I know, right? I think it went pretty well! You wanna go out front to drink beer and heckle joggers?

Jesus: You read my mind. How are things going so far this year anyway?

DOAT: Great, Jesus, thank you for asking. Things have gone really great…

——————————————————————————————-

Daily Prompt: State of Your Year
by michelle w. on July 29, 2013
Write up a mid-year “State of My Year” post.

Photographers, artists, poets: show us NOW.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged dads, Daily Prompt, family, humor, kids, meeting | 42 Comments

Family vacation…it sure beats working?

Posted on July 28, 2013 by donofalltrades

I checked out this donofalltrades.com site and noticed that a post hadn’t been added since July 11th, and that post was a Daily Prompt number. July 10th was the last unprompted post on the blog, and that was to shout out about the 100th post. What a lame fuck I’ve become.

I reached 100 posts and then I stalled mentally.

I was frazzled. Between the never ending files that keep making their way to my inbox at work, to wrapping up the t-ball season, getting ready to coach the upcoming soccer season, remembering to get haircuts and put pants on, secondary work, family obligations, cleaning up dog poop, mowing the lawn, breathing, etc., blogging got the boot for a bit.

Other than a stray comment here and there, I’ve been away from it for nearly three weeks and I didn’t even realize it had been that long.

A couple of people were kind enough to inquire as to my whereabouts though, and I appreciate them for that. One of my real life friends texted me pleading that I blog again because he enjoys reading my nonsense while he poops. Shame on me for depriving him of that pleasure. I’ll go ahead and assume that many of the rest of you missed me as well, but simply didn’t know how to reach me to tell me so, or couldn’t find the proper words to describe the void in your life since I’ve been away.

So what have you been doing besides what everyone else in the world with a family and a job has to do, Don?

Thanks for askin’! We’d been kicking around whether or not to go on a family vacation for several weeks. I think we’d resigned ourselves to just staying home this year until on Thursday, July 18th, Wife finally found an acceptable condo in Florida that didn’t require we pawn our kids’ bikes and toys and take out loans to afford to stay a week in some shitty condo. With a semi-reasonable place to stay found, we decided that we’d load the family into Ole’ Girl and hit the road for some old fashion family beach time after all! Oh, and we’d leave on Friday, the very next day!

Ole Girl! She runs even better than she looks!

We normally like to park our fat asses somewhere in the gulf, especially Orange Beach or thereabouts, but this time we struck out on lodging and had to go all the way across the state of Florida to St. Augustine. It was somewhere new, so I was sort of excited about a change of scenery. The drive from STL to St. Augustine, FL is about 14 hours before stops are factored into the equation. Using mathematics, we know that with three kids in the car, 14 hours feels like 37 fucking days.

Wife left work early on Friday and did an amazing job of Jenga stacking all of our crap inside the van so we didn’t have to use the rooftop contraption that is always an adventure anytime we strap it to our non luggage rack having van. We left the house around 6 p.m. or so, which was 2 hours later than the latest we were hoping to leave. At 6:03 p.m. I was already about to turn the van around in a fit of rage. I know it would surprise none of my regular followers to learn that G$ was the cause of 97.5% of the in car turmoil. Everything is “mine, mine, mine” which is accompanied by snatching whatever it is that Cool is holding right from his hands. Cool whines and cries, G$ screams and cries and daddy ponders driving the van right off the goddam highway and into the nearest river.

I’m adamant that the drive be made in a single trip, with no spending the night along with way. Pushing the little ones to the brink of insanity by keeping them in the car for 16 plus hours is just part of the family fun.

We were making fine time after dropping Jojo off at the in-laws house until somewhere in Podunk Kentucky my debit card was declined at a gas pump. Apparently, it’s my responsibility to contact my card provider to let them know when and where I’ll be travelling with my card. After a brief exchange with English as a second language customer support employee Nadia and security department personnel whoever, the matter was taken care of and we were on our way again.

The drive through southern states like Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia wasn’t wholly unbearable, other than G$ getting pissy at some point and demanding some sort of satisfaction which turned out to be in the form of a ride in his mother’s arms in the front seat for a little while.

Lil fucker…

One thing I did notice, unrelated to this adventure, mostly, is that people from South Carolina and Georgia are completely devoid of any sort of driving manners whatsoever. Whether it be driving 32 mph in the fast lane and not moving over for faster traffic or cutting in front of another car just inches from the other car’s front bumper with no turn signal to indicate that the asshole is changing lanes, chances were good it was a car with a SC or GA plate affixed to it every single time. Also, I don’t know when or how the State of Georgia became the size of Canada, but it took what seemed like 47 hours to get through the state on the way home. When I thought we were finally through it and into Tennessee for sure, there was another welcome to GA sign! What the fuck!?

I digress…

We arrived at the condo and it was a filthy circa 1970’s setup with three floors for us to live on for the week. Holy fuck, the up and down the stairs to get to the kids was exhausting! The carpet was nasty and the mold and cockroaches were unwelcome surprises, but it was reasonable and as close to the beach as it got in this area.

If I had to guess, I’d say that 83% of our time not driving on vacation was spent walking.

We walked up and down three flights of stairs many times a day to put the kids to bed or get from our room to the front door. We walked to and from the beach over the protected dunes all the way to the ocean and back several times. We had a good distance to walk to and from the condo pool, and just when we thought we hadn’t quite had enough walking already, we took a day trip to St. Augustine’s Old Town.

The police cars in St. Augustine read “The nation’s oldest city” presumably because “Boring as fuck to most human beings on a budget and all normal children” isn’t as tourist friendly. It’s a bunch of shops with crap nobody needs along with some restaurants all of which have to be walked to and from in the oppressive Florida heat. There are some tours to be taken, but most of them are, yep, walking tours. They’re walking tours that would cost us nearly $100 per tour and we’re not that interested in learning while on vacation thank you very much. I’m sure some folks enjoy learning about the oldest wooden school house in the country or about Spanish settlers, but I’m done with school and know how to Google shit like that for free in the air conditioning.

So, we just walked without paying to have to do so.

Here’s G$ walking.

G$ walking his way to an “I’m missing my nap right now” meltdown…

Here’s more walking in the heat.

More walking!

Ace carrying G$ because he could no longer walk.

No more walking…

And finally some sitting on a cannon or some such excitement. Look how fun this sitting on a cannon is! Holy shit, who needs Disney!??

Sitting isn’t walking, yay!

The most fun the kids had outside of eating some ice cream before it melted in the heat 2 minutes and 4 seconds after it was exposed to the air was playing near this fountain with randy green water in it. Good times!

Yeah, I’d not drink that kids.

Thoroughly exhausted from our Old Town St. Augustine walkabout, Wife and I got a wild hair that it’d be a neat idea for the ~~unappreciative little fucktards~~ kids to experience Sea World. This brilliant idea allowed us to incorporate even more walking, spending way too much money AND getting back in the van together for four hours out of the day, so it was a no brainer.

Upon arriving at Sea World, it was immediately obvious that English was not the preferred language of 97% of the guests, so saying “excuse me you dick” after one of them bumped into me for the 159th time was probably a lost gesture of kindness on my part. G$ must have caught on that we were subjecting him to another day of walking and looking at stuff, because he was in meltdown mode right away upon entering the park. He was screaming his little head off in Shamu Stadium (I believe we were in the Bolivian section based on the conversations around us) until the whales finally did something amusing.

Look, I’m finally done being a pill!

G$ was mesmerized by the whales or orcas or whatever they’re called. They were pretty kickass as far as sea creatures go, I guess.

Whoah, look at me jump, G$!

We watched the shows and the kids got to ride on some rides and we walked a lot again. It was good walking this time instead of bored out of our skulls walking though. Ace and I rode another roller coaster as well, even though she had her reservations about The Manta.

*Here’s where a funny picture of her scared out of her mind was supposed to be, but I can’t find it anymore. Use your imagination.

We also lost Cool for a few minutes at the end of the day after we inadvertently got into one of those God forsaken “Quick Queue” lines. This is the Sea World version of the “Flash Pass” I’ve lamented on this blog when discussing recent Six Flags visits. The line to this ride was denoted as a line for special douchebags (Quick Queue holders) only by a 3″x5″ card I think. Everyone was going in the wrong line and it was the end of the day so we were all tired. Somehow, while leaving the special assholes line and joining the peons in the regular line, we forgot about Cool for a few minutes until Wife finally asked where he was. Well, it turns out he was still back in the special dickface people line with some nice woman who’d picked him up and had coaxed his name out of him. Of course everyone there realized what had happened and I felt like a total dick. There’s probably somebody out there blogging about “some fat straw hat wearing fucktard who lost his kid for a bit at Sea World.” If you read that one, he or she is talking about me. I know I’d have blasted me pretty good about it.

Nearly losing Cool wasn’t as scary as when he nearly drowned in the real kid friendly pool at the condo whose shallow end was 4′ deep! What the fuck kind of setup is that?

Cool forgot his waterwing device and while we were waiting on Ace to go and get it for him I suddenly hear Cool say, “Hey daddy watch, I can stand up in the water…” before he inexplicably jumped into the pool without his wings on. He went under like a rock, came up maybe to his eyes and then went down again immediately. The poor kid was flailing the whole time before I could get to him while some real fucking dimwit hero just stood there literally 2 feet away from him and watched the boy going under water. Thanks for nothing, jackoff. Seriously, if Wife had been there, I may have handed Cool to her and fucking killed this guy for just standing there. Anyway, Cool was fine but he scared himself and me pretty good. The pool can can be quite an adventure with two little boys running about with their big sister and only one set of adult eyes to watch them all.

We managed to make it out alive though and had a fine time at the beach. Cool loved that he could ride his bike on the beach as well as swim and chuck sand around.

Sweet stuff right here…

He also enjoyed just laying around in the water.

Chillin’…

The ride home was pretty awful, what with the Georgians and South Carolinans at it again with their vehicular cluelessness. I’m also pretty sure my GPS lady, Juanita, was trying to sabotage me for some reason by sending me miles and miles out of the way.

We had to stop at some shit hole for gas and so that I could take a wicked leak when I came across this tempting advert as the Europeans call them.

Nice…

Oh, Katie or Debbie, for $50 I assume that BJ means nice blue jeans or that these ladies will find you a better job or something. My phone never did pick up reception in that area, so I couldn’t call to find out what I was missing out on.

My card was declined at this shithole gas station so I went across the street where it eventually worked. That it wasn’t working all the time was making me nervous because I was about out of cash.

We found a place to eat that that Goober from Diners Drive-ins and Dives went to in suburban Atlanta called the Marietta Diner.

Yeah, it’s just ok…

This place was a lot of bling and razmatazz, but at the end of the day, the food was just ok. There were about 239,000 items on the menu though, so it’s possible that something they serve is really really good and we just missed it. When I went to pay the bill here, my card was declined yet again! What the fuck?!!!

Well, it was the card provider again, trying to protect me from myself even though I told them when I had to straighten it out the first time that I’d be in this area and travelling until Sunday. It was only Saturday. Mel the security expert was less than thrilled with my attitude, but I was pissed off pretty good at this point in my relaxing vacation, so Mel could go fornicate himself real good for all I cared. Mel did get me going again though, and the rest of the trip was nice and quiet.

G$ relaxed to a Shape Magazine while the other two kids slept peacefully.

Only reads it for the articles he says…

Me, I bought a lotto ticket in Florida and made plans to never do anything again, including shaving. This is my pathetic 9 day growth.

My face hair growing skills suck ass…

There is lots of gray and hair growing where it never used to, but when it comes to face hair, I suck. I may try to grow a mustache though, just to see if I can! I just thought of this idea and I’m pretty stoked about it already.

Wow, this got pretty long (that’s what she said!)!

Here’s one more of the kids on the beach because I like pictures and they’re cute fucking kids and I can put as many pictures of them on my blog as I want!

DOAT kids…

For those who read this far, I’m sorry, but thank you! Talk to you all sooner rather than later next time!

Posted in Family, Humor, Parenting, Uncategorized | Tagged beach, dads, family, Florida, humor, kids, sea world, the south, vacation | 51 Comments

Daily Prompt, Fandom: St. Louis Cardinals

Posted on July 11, 2013 by donofalltrades

Daily Prompt: Fandom

by michelle w. on July 11, 2013

Are you a sports fan? Tell us about fandom. If you’re not, tell us why not.

————————————————————————————–

I am a fan of sports.

True fandom doesn’t come from buying a jersey or hat because you like the team colors or from jumping on a bandwagon because an organization is suddenly successful.

True fandom is like religion. It’s part of a true fan’s culture, just as sure as a certain food dish or type of clothing is a part of that same culture.

I’m from St. Louis. I am Catholic because I was raised Catholic. I’m a Cardinal baseball fan for the same reason. My dad roots for the Cardinals because his dad rooted for the Cardinals. Everybody has rooted for the Cardinals in my family since getting off the boat and settling in The Hill Neighborhood many years ago.

My one living grandma still roots for the Cardinals. It’s the only reason she has cable television.

My kids will root for the Cardinals. It’s not an option to do otherwise until you leave the house.

I’ve heard my grandmother say fuck and shit and goddammit more times than I can remember while watching her beloved Cardinals. That’s part of the thing with fandom, you give a part of your heart to a team.

The Cardinals represent my hometown. When they are successful, the City basks in that success and revels in the recognition that comes with national television exposure. When the Cardinals are in the playoffs, everyone stops being a South Sider or North Sider or gay or straight or a Democrat or Republican or a man or woman. For just a little while, we’re all Cardinal fans and we’re all oblivious to our differences.

We all suffer together with every blown call or missed opportunity, but rejoice as one with each timely hit or defensive gem turned out by our team.

A team builds a true fan base over generations. Fandom is passed down from father to son and daughter and from son and daughter to grandsons and grand daughters. We love the Cardinals because we love our City. We’re proud of where we come from.

I lived in Dallas very briefly and tried to like their teams, but it was a lost cause. Many people who lived in Dallas when I was there were from other cities. Their loyalties were with their home grown teams still, including mine for my Cardinals. While a trip to Arlington was fun, the game itself lacked the passion that you’ll find in a city where a team has been supported by generations of families.

From the Gas House Gang to Stan the Man to Ozzie Smith and Yadier Molina today, great players are appreciated in St. Louis and even revered. We adopt these men as a part of our families.

The same is true in many great cities. While their team sucks, the Chicago Cubs have the same tradition and love from their fans as the Cardinals. While I hate both teams, watch a Red Sox or Yankees playoff game and you can see the fans living and dying with each pitch of the game.

The ups and downs are brutal, but we love it. If the team manages to win the championship, the City rejoices. There is nothing else that brings St. Louis together collectively as a Cardinal World Series victory. We win it together. We say WE did it, not the Cardinals did it.

Fandom is more than watching a team or having a favorite team. It’s changing the channel because you can’t bear the pain of watching the other team’s closer record the final out in a playoff series that you’re about to lose. It’s wearing red and dressing your kids in red and meeting your grandma and friends all in their red at the stadium to watch a game.

Fandom is a few thousand people taking off from work and their bosses letting them to watch a parade.

That’s a winner…

Fandom is crying like a baby when the team’s greatest broadcaster ever passed away because you listened to him with your dad as a kid while riding in the back of the car on Sunday afternoons. It’s one more link to the past gone forever.

That’s a winner, folks!

Yep, fandom to me is something more than just liking a team. It’s loving a team. It’s suffering when the team stinks and being on cloud nine when they’re winning. You can’t fake true fandom.

Real fandom is passed down from generation to generation. It’s not a choice. It’s in your blood. It’s part of who we are.

——————————————————

Daily Prompt: Fandom

Posted in The not meant to be funny stuff, Uncategorized | Tagged baseball, Busch Stadium, Cardinals, Daily Prompt, family, fans, st. louis, tradition | 71 Comments

100 posts ‘n stuff…

Posted on July 10, 2013 by donofalltrades

Since I don’t believe that yesterday’s reblogging of Ace’s awesome photo counts as a post, this one here is numero 100.

100 posts.

Wow!

Many of my posts are of the long variety, generally 1000 words at least. I apologize for that, people, but once I get going it’s difficult for me to stop.

I started this blog on a whim, really. I’ve always enjoyed writing, though I hadn’t done it in quite some time outside of police reports or motions to quash subpoenas from dumbshit defense attorneys, but that’s another post altogether. I’ve also always enjoyed being snarky and sharing my thoughts and opinions where they’re not wanted, much to the dismay of many of my closest friends and family members.

During a particularly contentious political season during the latter part of 2012, there was a lot of back and forth about abortion and gun control and so forth. One of our fine Missouri senators even went so far as to suggest that “legitimate rape” victims rarely became pregnant because he understood from doctors that their bodies somehow shut down or something to prevent such a travesty from occurring. Yes, he said this out loud and on purpose. His name is Todd Akin and he’s an idiot.

I was that guy on Facebook everybody kept asking mutual friends “who is that fucking guy?” Taking moving or otherwise mundane Facebook posts and steering them straight into the gutter with a single comment was my thing, as was heckling perfect strangers when I found them to be super annoying.

Here’s an example. My friend Sarah had posted a link to a cool post about teaching kids values or respect or loving everyone in spite of their differences or some such bullshit, and this MW woman somehow managed to turn it into an anti-abortion related thread even though it was not in any way shape or form an abortion related post.

Here is her comment:

MW: Had a busy day, but when I had a chance to read the article I had some thoughts to share. When did America become a feminist country? If we are a feminist country, why don’t we care about the 3,000(yes, 3,000-about the same number killed on the first 9/11) babies who don’t get a choice in America by their free mothers who choose to abort them? Just because I continue to speak with passion about our country’s big mistakes that has happened with this administration and will continue if we can’t stop them, doesn’t mean I am being disrespectful. My kids are seeing compassion, determination, love of God, love of family, love of country. We speak out to those we love. Love speaks the truth, love listens.

November 7, 2012 at 10:16pm via mobile · Like

I had never met MW and to this day have no idea who she is, other than some acquaintance of my friend Sarah. Her comment annoyed me and since I was feeling frisky and had probably had a few beers, I joined in the thread with the following:

Donofalltrades: Nothing to do with this thread, but I remember during the Clinton administration when I was very anti abortion. I was picketing at a planned parenthood clinic in the CWE with a younger Todd Akin, whom i’d met in Vancouver, because those people at PP kill babies and somebody gave me $10 to do it. That was more money then. Anyway, I’m all shouting F you baby killers and God hates your mothers and stuff when this sort of fat but not too ugly chick pulls up and says “hey Don, I’m pregnant!” I looked at Akin and was like, did she say Todd or Don and she was all you Don of all trades I wouldn’t touch that other doofus. Well crap I thought, how did this happen? Then I remembered that there was a sale on Mickeys Malt Liquor a few weeks prior at a bowling alley. Lots of bigger but not really ugly gals hung out at this bowling alley. Well anyway, she says we did it in my Cavalier right in the bowling alley parking lot and I wasn’t careful. Well I says that it’s her body and that if I was drunk enough to bang her fat ass then clearly she should have been more responsible. Well the short of it is that I told her I had $10 and would gladly change my mind about my anti abortion ways because i was broke and no woman should have to raise a baby that was the product of bowling alley parking lot sex and she said ok. I had already spent $5 on Taco Bell so she was pretty pissed. Anyway, she said she was already going to do it because she loved her boyfriend when it wasn’t league night on Thursdays when her love sometimes wanes. She did it with my blessing and $5 and then when we were leaving she was all what is this piece of junk? She was talking about my pretty sweet GMC pickup. I guess she was too scared to notice on the way there. She thought I had a Cavalier but I remembered I never did own a Cavalier so I guess she aborted some other dude’s fetus and I never did touch that fat gal, but i was still out $5. Had I ever told you that story, Sarah?

November 7, 2012 at 11:36pm via mobile · Like · 1

See, what the fuck does that even mean?

Then the next morning, I had to apologize to Sarah in my own special way, just in case MW was a good friend of hers and I had ruffled some feathers.

Donofalltrades: Sorry, Sarah, that was TMI. That was before I met you in Texas when I spent five years pursuing my associates degree in French at Belleville Area College. I wanted to learn French because I had met a really beautiful chick in Quebec while we were campaigning to keep the Nordiques in Quebec! We failed of course, because they left a few years later for Colorado, but I swore that one day I’d go back to find that woman and be able to tell her, in French, that she had nice hair and great hips for breeding. Alas, I never went back because flights were so expensive again and I never learned the French word for hips. The Internet wasn’t an option then and I didn’t have a library card to borrow a book about learning French. Oh well, God had a plan for me I guess as I met my beautiful wife, you and Johnny Earl all shortly after my failed attempt at love. Plus I was able to resume my passion for drinking beer on somebody else’s dime.

November 8, 2012 at 7:23am via mobile · Like · 1

Almost every last bit of this crap was made up nonsense. I’ve never been to Canada, but you get the idea of the sort of FB annoyance I was.

Of all people, my wife actually encouraged me to start a blog so that I could share my asinine thoughts with the willing of the world instead of my poor friends and family who had no choice but to unfriend me if they didn’t want to have to read my crap. Though I’m sure there are times when she regrets it, it’s been nothing but fun and a great release for me. I didn’t know anything about blogs really, but with some help from my aforementioned pal Sarah, I got myself up and running on this here WordPress.

My first post was on November 12, 2012. It was just a stupid story that popped into my head about a friend who was showing me porn. I had porn in front of my face and instead of looking at a naked woman on the screen, I found myself trying to see the wall behind her. Not knowing what I was doing, it was never tagged and has never been “liked” or commented upon. Will somebody please go like it now? It’s terrible, but it’s not too long so you can do it as a favor to me, ok? Click here to read it.

I followed that up with yet another untagged and unliked post about my CDO (because OCD isn’t in the correct order). I finally learned about tagging and managed to get a single “like” on my third post which was a shot at all my hunting buddies who were having such a time on Facebook boasting about their prowess at killing a stupid forest creature.

Since then, I’ve posted about my pleasure at hosting Thanksgiving (even included a drawing) and finally got some comments from people I know in real life because I was forcing them to read my blog by this point. I posted about parenting adventures, and then one of my more popular posts, Honkey Bus, and on and on and on with asinine stories that some of you have grown to love.

I also struggled with whether or not to include any serious thoughts I wanted to share on the same blog as my crap. I decided in the end that this is my space and I was going to do what I wanted, so I wrote a post about my deceased grandpa in-law (mostly out of love for my wife on her birthday) wherein I lamented not getting to know him better as well as a poem about the Connecticut tragedy. That poem sucked because I’m not a poet, but it honestly helped me to have a little cathartic cry and get on with life.

I’ve posted helpful tips on how not to be a douche, as well as useful stuff people should know to be a grown up, as well as tips for 15 year old girls. My expertise knows no bounds!

There of course has been much mention of my love for Bud Light Lime and we had some laughs when Don got to hang out with a Jesus Christ you may not recognize (warning, this post may cause hard feelings).

I’ve written about the kids and work and have been honored to write some guest posts that have gone really well and really really badly. I’ve “met” a lot of great people along with way as well.

When I get a comment that you were moved or laughed or that you read something to your spouse and he or she laughed, it makes me happy. Getting to know many new people from all over the world has been awesome, and I’ve been glad to share myself with all of you. I think even my real life friends have gotten to see a part of me that they’re probably surprised exists, and that’s cool with me.

So, while I have about 10,000 words I’d like to say, I’m going to cut myself off and get on with my day.

I was going to wait and make my 100th post epic, but I don’t have epic in me and I’d rather just post something now because that’s how I get to talk with all of you guys via your comments.

So, from my very first real WP friend, Cookie from Canada (congrats again on you beautiful son by the way) to all of my newest friends in this blogoshere, thank you for following me and helping to make this such a rewarding 8 months.

I look forward to the next 100 posts (sorry dear). I hope we’ll laugh more than we cry, but whatever happens, let’s enjoy the ride.

Posted in Humor, Uncategorized | Tagged 100, blogging, facebook, friends, humor | 41 Comments

Happy Beerthday, Papa!

Posted on July 9, 2013 by donofalltrades

Hard to believe that this card was from nearly 5 years ago already. Ace’s classic card to Pawpaw has made an appearance on Stuff Kids Write. It’s about crap kids write so you know it’s hilarious.

Stuff Kids Write