don of all trades

Nonchalant projectile vomiting…yes, it’s a post about puking!

Posted on January 7, 2013 by donofalltrades

Kudos to G$ for starring in three consecutive blog posts! Your shenanigans are second to none, my son!

Fortunately for the world around me, I seldom puke (what a disgusting word, let’s use hurl from here on out).

This is no small wonder considering that I eat like crap and drink too much. I have a pretty strong stomach and almost always manage to keep my lunch where it belongs.

This is sort of what it’s like when I hurl except I’d be lying down…

When I do have occasion to hurl though, It’s never pretty. Even were we to plan the event ahead of time, with drop cloths and a plastic bucket to hurl into at the ready, I’d still manage to get it all over everything in the room except the drop cloth and plastic bucket.

It’d be on the ceiling, in my hair, my wife’s hair, the walls, the tv…everything! I don’t know how I do it, I black out when I hurl and I’m in no state of mind to control my actions. There is crying and yelling and groaning and arms flailing about in all directions.

Is it pathetic? Yes.

Disgusting? Yes.

Genetic? Apparently not.

Little G$ has followed up his recent head wound episode with a current bout of projectile vomiting. Sorry, projectile hurling. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he’s sick so soon after having spent three hours with an open head wound in an emergency room waiting area filled with disgusting, sick, white trash people who were apparently too weak to lift their arms to cover their mouths as they spewed germs all over one another. Try as we did to stay to the side, away from the herd, they found us.

A special thank you goes out to those trying to be nice by walking right over to him and talking directly into G$’s face to ask him what happened to his little head. Uh, not to be rude, but get the fuck away from him you dumb, sick hoosiers.

Anyway, little man woke up and had hurled all over his sheets and crib (sorry momma) at some point during the night. While in his high chair he projectile hurled whatever he had just tried to eat for breakfast. Then again a few minutes later…more projectile hurling. It went on all day long, until he ran out of anything to hurl from his little stomach. All the hurling nearly had the wife and I hurling, which would have been neat.

I marvelled at the boy’s ability to simply spew hurl from his mouth without missing a beat. No crying, no arm flailing, and once, he even got most of it into a bucket intended for such an occurence!

It’s as though hurling is as natural a part of his life as breathing. He just does it and carries on with whatever it is he’s doing at the time, without missing a beat, almost as though he’s burping instead of violently expelling the contents of his stomach all over his clothes and my carpet. I wonder if most kids are like this and we don’t become babies about hurling until we’re older. Or maybe it’s just me who sucks at it.

Posted in Family, Parenting, The not meant to be funny stuff, Uncategorized | Tagged hurling, sick kids, vomit | 5 Comments

Astroglide…it’s what’s for dinner and apparently non-toxic!

Posted on January 4, 2013 by donofalltrades

Something about this look delicious?

A few weeks ago while working in the yard (I know, this story sounds made up already,right?) the wife called for me in a semi-frantic tone. Not as frantic as the recent G$ incident, but enough so that I put down whatever I was doing to see what was going on.

When I turned the corner, I saw the wife in the front doorway with G$ in one arm and a bottle of what I noticed to be Astroglide in her opposite hand.

My heart started racing and I’m sure I smiled from ear to ear in anticipation of what I assumed was to come! Of course, I assumed that she was going to toss G$ into a closet or his bed or lock him in the bathroom and daddy was going to be rewarded for something! Was it for doing yard work, maybe?? This was a first time situation, as I’ve never seen Astroglide in the house before and have no clue where it came from. I didn’t care at this moment though.

The moment and my entire physical being quickly became flaccid when she said to me “your son just ate half a bottle of Astroglide.” pffffffffffffffffftt……….wah…wah…wah….

Eeeeew, you use that stuff for what??!!!!

Where the boy found a bottle of Astroglide in our house is a mystery in and of itself. We were given some KY Jelly as a “gift” once from a neighbor who does that couponing thing. I think she had to buy a bunch of boxes of KY Jelly to get a deal on diapers or something, I’m not entirely sure how it works. Anyway, she gave several neighbors sex jelly, among other items because she’s a sweet woman. I think I used ours to lube the bicycles in the garage and fix the squeaky door. We’re not sex jelly people!

So not only did he manage to find the Astroglide, but he somehow manipulated the cap open and decided that it looked yummy, so he lubed his duodenum with our mystery sex jelly.

Wife was concerned that he might get sick from ingesting this crap and I guess we didn’t want to have to call poison control to explain that our one year old swallowed some sex lube and we were wondering if it’s toxic. Uh, hold on sir, I have to call DFS real fast before I answer your question…no thanks!

It dawned on me that surely hookers and sorority women have been ingesting the stuff via oral sex for years, and I’d never heard any warnings against it. The bottle didn’t say anything either. Surely, in this day and age of everybody being a total litigious retard, there’d be a giant warning telling people not to ingest it, if it were that bad for a person to do so.

Huh, that’s true, wife says. I hadn’t thought of oral sex.

No shit, thank you wedding ring and children, I thought to myself.

G$ did not get sick and I kept my thoughts to myself.

Well, crap, until now.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged astroglide, children, Parenting, poison control, sex jelly | 9 Comments

Hey St. Clare Hospital emergency room, if you were a person, i’d f$cking punch you in the face.

Posted on January 3, 2013 by donofalltrades

No problem here, it’s just a giant hole in my head…

Once again, poor G$ had to experience the failure that is the American health care industry, specifically, the wunderkinds at SSM Health Care System. Doing who knows what with his brother, he managed to whack his head on the bathtub in our bedroom. At least we think it was the bathtub.

I had just poured milk into my Honey Smacks downstairs when Wife began to yell hysterically for me from upstairs. She had the boy in her arms and he was doing a fine job of crying and bleeding all over the place. Wife would be the first to admit that she’s not great in emergencies, so she was upset as well. All the hysterics had Ace crying too, so the scene was pretty pathetic.

We called the pediatrician, and he assured us that going to the closest ER was the best thing to do (we asked because there’s an urgent care very close or we could have driven 25 miles into the City to one of the children’s hospitals instead). The closest ER to us is St. Clare Hospital. It’s a fairly new hospital, but it’s downfall is that it’s convenient enough for uninsured, white trash America living in the meth capital of the country to easily reach it.

We were there within a half hour of G$ cracking his melon open, and waited patiently while one pajama pants wearing fat bitch after another rolled through the ER doors with the sniffles. Sadly, these people can’t buy Sudafed when they need it legitimately, because the State of Missouri or it’s counties have fucked-up laws about buying meth making products that are really only an inconvenience to those of us who don’t make or use meth.

Anyway, G$ was the only person I could see who was obviously bleeding from his head and he was by far the youngest person waiting in the ER to be seen. I’m no medical field expert, but what happened to triaging patients??

At some point, we’d been in the ER for nearly three hours. My wife and I and all three kids. I was feeling gross because there was a whole room packed with disgusting, sick fucks who were never taught to cover their mouths when they coughed (or to say no to dessert apparently either). The feeling of sickness from germs in the air was palpable. When I was certain that people who came into the ER after us were being called back to see a doctor, I felt my blood begin to boil just a little bit. When it finally became too much for me to take, I went to the counter and asked the poor nurse, as nicely as I could, how much longer it was going to be.

When she said, tersely, that there were six people in front of G$ and that she didn’t have any rooms, I think I started to see double.

I said there aren’t six people in this waiting area who have been here longer than we’ve been here, let alone six kids. I had G$ in my arms so she could see how pathetic he looked with a hole in his head (not to mention he missed lunch and it was well past nap time). Are you telling me that we’re not even going to see a pediatric doctor, just a regular doctor? What’s the point of calling yourself a pediatric emergency room then? She said she didn’t have any rooms and I suggested that maybe if they didn’t give a room to anybody who showed up because they had the fucking sniffles and no insurance, that maybe those of us who intended to pay our bills and have legitimate issues could be seen at some point. She became defensive and started talking about old people with oxygen tanks (I don’t know what her point was). I pointed out to her that my 20 month old has been sitting in her disgusting, germ infested waiting area with a hole in his head for three hours and nobody has done anything…not even cleaned the wound or something to pretend they were interested in helping him.

When she said, “it’s not like he’s going to die from the hole” I think I may have lost consciousness for a second. In my mind I envisioned dragging her by her ears over the counter and bashing her skull against her desk until she had a non-life threatening hole in her head commensurate with G$’s. I think she sensed that I was about to do so, because she shut up rather abruptly. I noticed that the security officers were now standing and watching us so I told her thanks for nothing and that we’d be leaving. She had the gall to ask me to sign something or other but I told her that she could keep her papers and I wasn’t signing anything. I’m sure she thought I was as much of a dick as I thought she was a slut, but she wasn’t blowing a vacation day in the ER with a wounded kid.

We left the St. Clare shithole and drove 25 miles to Cardinal Glennon. There was one person in the ER. The nurses immediately doted on G$ the second we walked in to register. They really know how to take care of kids! We were taken care of within an hour. Cleaned and glued shut just like that. I don’t know why we didn’t just go to Cardinal Glennon in the first place since it’s the best children’s hospital for hundreds of miles. Live and learn I guess. We’ve been parents for nearly 10 years now and this is our first gaping hole injury.

The sad part is that even though I don’t believe I caused that much of a scene, I felt bad for taking my frustrations out on the nurse at the front desk. I truly love nurses as a people. It’s not this woman’s fault that the hospital emergency room caters to any dickhole who claims to be sick with the flu. It’s a Catholic hospital I think, so they do what they believe Jesus would do. I believe Jesus would help a child with a head wound first, but I’d have to read the bible to verify that. While she could have done something to help clean the kid’s wound at least, it’s not her fault that every asshole with a cold was coming to the ER for treatment at the same time.

Going to the ER and causing a bottleneck for people with legitimate emergencies is just the way of many non-working, lazy people in this country. We don’t work, but we should have the same access to health care as anyone. I agree! I do. But, you should also have to pay for it like I do. I pay for it with huge bi-weekly chunks taken out of my paycheck, and then through copays and coinsurance (whatever the fuck that is) and then with mysterious bills that keep getting sent to the house. It never ends! Meanwhile, many of these people who use the ER as their own primary care doctor will never pay a dime for their treatment.

Anyway, it pains me to say that Cardinal Glennon is an SSM facility. We LOVE Cardinal Glennon nurses and staff. We’ve had nothing but great experiences there and will drive past 50 St. Clare’s in the future to take the next kid to the hospital for “emergency” treatment.

My money is on G$ being that next kid again.

Posted in Family, Parenting, Uncategorized | Tagged emergency rooms, health care, injuries, kids, St. Clare Hospital | 9 Comments

Some helpful new year’s resolutions to make you less of a douche…

Posted on December 31, 2012 by donofalltrades

Last post this year, I promise!

I’ve long stopped kidding myself into believing that I have the wherewithal to stick to resolutions made in good faith at the beginning of each new year. Certainly were I able to do so, I’d not have this second chin resting on my tie knot right now.

While I may not stick to my resolutions, I still like to make them so that I have goals to shoot for or so that I can berate myself for failing yet again. Self-loathing and mockery can be healthy. If you can’t call yourself a worthless piece of shit, then you shouldn’t be calling others names either.

With that, I resolve, right here on the internet, to keep my second chin from spawning a third chin by shoving less cream cheese and beer carbs into my gullet. I also resolve to continue to point out stupidity, oftentimes in my own life, right here on this blog that three people read from time to time. That’s ok though, the writing is for me, not you!

Though my resolutions won’t change the world, as a way to help make the world a better place, here are some resolutions and/or actions that you should try to help make you less of a total douchebag.

Get a fucking job, people! It’s funny that Cousin Eddie has held out for a management position for years and years, but it’s not so funny in real life. This isn’t for hard working folks who’ve lost their jobs. That sucks. I’m sick and tired of watching my tax dollars wasted on lowlifes who don’t work because they’re lazy. There are healthy teenagers right here in the City who get “crazy checks”. What the fuck is a crazy check? There are no jobs so menial that you can’t do it and do it proudly. How a person can sit on a couch all day and do nothing for more than a couple of days is mystifying to me.
Hey fat, ugly, nasty people, become less fat and ugly! There’s nothing worse in the world that a fat, ugly human being who has a terrible personality (i.e. is mean!). Look, if you’re a horrible person, at least make it easier for me to tolerate your existence by looking decent. Nice looking people get more slack in life, so it’ll benefit you to get off your rascal and start losing some weight. If you’re like me and know that you won’t be able to stick to a weight loss resolution, then change your personality. Be nicer to assholes around you like I am and you’ll be more enjoyable to have around.
Use your blinkers. Uh, those aren’t options on vehicles people; they all have them for a reason. I’m less likely to pull my pistol out and shoot your tires if you’ve used your blinker before cutting me off. The signal gives me a head’s up to secure my beverage and tell my unbuckled toddlers to hang on, daddy’s gonna have to brake real fast!
Hey sexy man, sweatpants are for working out in your basement and should never be worn in public. Not even to go get your mail.
Hey sexy lady, spandex are for that woman over there who just finished running 13 miles because she felt bad for having six shreds of cheese on the salad she ate for lunch, not you. Just because they make them in your size doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Some people have weak stomachs you know. And Jesus Christ, if you’re going to subject us to it, lose the panty lines. Even I know that.
If your kids are dickheads, it’s probably because you’re a dickhead too. Even if you can’t change your ways, make your kids act like they’re civilized. You’re the parent; it’s your job. It can be done, but you’ll have to turn the volume down on the tv set for a minute to talk to them about working hard in school and not being a fucking bully towards kids who are smaller or different than they are. It’s difficult to accept that your kid probably won’t grow up to play a professional sport, I know, so maybe convince them to learn to read and be kind towards others just in case they’ll need those skills one day.
Drink more water. I just read this is good for you and it sounds easy enough to commit to, so I think I’ll add this one to my list too.
If you can’t afford to tip 18% at a restaurant, then you can’t afford to eat at that restaurant. Tipping really isn’t optional, douchebag. Your server is making $3 an hour plus tips. If she doesn’t get the plus tips part, then she can’t feed her children. This means you skinny black guy with disgusting fat Asian girlfriend whose ass crack is always showing and who always comes to eat at a certain restaurant stoned out of their minds and pays the entire bill with coins. Really? Your bill is $17 tops and you pay in nickels? I hate you both. If the service is that shitty, then tell the server’s manager that he or she sucked, but you still need to leave 15% just to be the better person. Waiting isn’t necessarily as easy as you think it is, if you’ve never done it. We all have off days. If you tip a server who knows they sucked, then they’ll feel worse for having sucked than if you leave them nothing and validate her shitty service. Does that even make sense?
Drinking is fun. Happy hours are fun. Go to more happy hours and have more fun! But don’t get drunk and drive home, that’s not fun.
If you’re playing Words With Friends, don’t take six days between plays! I probably had a sweet next play planned, but completely forget about it after too many hours have passed. If you’re my friend, then it’s not like you’re doing anything better with your life.
The little white man on the electric signal means you can safely cross the street. If you’re walking across the street with the orange hand showing or not at a signal at all, I’m not slowing my car down so you’d better hurry across. I mean it!
When somebody is crossing with the little white man as their guide, you have to yield asshole. I’m sure you’re driving someplace important, but you can wait four seconds for the pedestrian to do his thing properly.
Hold the door open for others, especially women, children and the elderly. My dad would slap my head if he caught me not doing so. He’s nearly elderly himself and still does it. Shame on your parents for not making you do this. My nine year old daughter does it without being told for God’s sake.
Hey asshole, that nine year old girl just held the door open so you could walk into the building without having to exert any effort. Remove your cell phone from your fucking head and tell her thank you! We yell “You’re Welcome” at people who don’t thank us for holding doors for them too…try that, it’s fun.
Chew with your mouth closed you disgusting fuck.
No loud burping in public, that’s also disgusting. You’re not seven years old.
Say “bless you” when somebody sneezes.
Smile at strangers. If they smile back, then you’ve probably made them happy. If they don’t then tell them “well fuck you too.” You tried.
At least once next year, give some time or money to a charity. $5 even. You’ll feel better and really not have had to do anything except maybe bypass one big mac meal you were going to use the money to buy.
When you see a police officer at the convenience store, take a second to tell him or her thanks for doing what you do. Even if you don’t mean it, you’ll make them feel better about doing their thankless jobs and maybe even cause them to do it better the rest of that day at the very least. Don’t be jealous if the clerk doesn’t charge them for their cup of coffee. You have to pay because you’re not going to be the one who comes running when some bozo high on PCP tries to rob the place at gunpoint later that night.
Turn your cell phone off in the movie theater. Jesus, that they even have to remind you is sad. You’re not the CEO of a fortune 500 company. You can be untethered from your phone for 90 minutes.
Play with your kids. I’m guilty of not playing with mine more than I do. I guess I’ll try harder to do this next year too. I remember playing with my old man, and your kids will recollect these times fondly later in life too.
Try to have a sense of humor. Life is too short to be such a stick in the mud all of the time. Quit being such a baby and laugh at yourself. If not yourself, laugh at that guy over there wiping fried chicken grease onto his gray sweatpants because he’s too fat or lazy to bend over to get the napkin he dropped on the floor.
Worry less about what other people think about you. Who cares? I haul my family around in a minivan for God’s sake. I have no more pride. Look, I like people to like me, but they have to like me for who I am, cursing, drinking and all. Not everyone will like you; just deal with it. I have a three year old who doesn’t understand this yet. It’s hard to explain to a three year old that some kids are just dickheads because their parents are dickheads and that he should spend his preschool time around kids who do like him instead of trying to get that little M-hole who doesn’t like him to play with him.
Read at least one book this year. That way you can say you’ve read a book this year. If you’re a man, have your wife read that Fifty Shades crap. I’m not sure what it’s about, but trust me, you’ll be glad she read it!
Don’t be an asshole at the ballgame. I don’t know when it became ok to yell profanities and spill beer all over the people in front of you, but it’s not ok to yell profanities and spill beer all over the people in front of you. It’ just a game asshole and you’re embarrassing yourself in front of your kids while ruining the experience for other people and their kids. We didn’t pay $100 plus dollars to watch you make a spectacle of yourself. If you can’t handle your alcohol without being an asshole, then stay home or drink after the game. You’re a loser and next time, when I don’t have my kids, I may drag you out of the stadium in front of your kids myself and beat your ass.
Go to the zoo! If you’re near St. Louis, we have the best zoo in the country as far as I’m concerned. It’s freakin’ free! Teach your kids about the animals as you’re walking through exhibits. The information is right there, you only need to read it to them. They’ll be fascinated and think your dumb ass is smarter than it really is.

That’s a pretty good start to make you a more tolerable person. Of course, it’s only my opinion and not exhaustive of all the fine things you can do to help make this world a better place. Try to use your peanut sized brain for something other than as an alcohol sponge. Believe it or not, I try to do so sometimes.

As 2012 was a presidential election year, we got to see our ugly sides exposed. There was much hatred spewed about the left and the right and good versus evil. Some people unfriended their friends because of their political differences. That’s just stupid. If you like a person you can’t decide that you dislike them suddenly because you learned that they feel as though gay people should be treated the same as other human beings while you still find it appalling that they ever let women out of the house to work or vote.

At the end of the day, who gives a fuck? I live in the same house with people I don’t always agree with and it works out just fine. Cdawg thinks Spiderman is the greatest superhero ever. We all know that’s stupid and that Superman would kick Spiderman’s ass anytime, but I still love Cdawg in spite of his misguided opinion. I let him love Spidey and I don’t try to force him to think that Superman is the best.

If talking about certain things gets you so riled up that you become enraged at people who disagree with you, then don’t fucking talk about those things with non like-minded people, or maybe it’s you who needs to step back and take a look in the mirror. I generally hate the actions of others, but not the person. While I’m not naive enough to believe there aren’t evil people in the world…..there really are, I know that most folks would do right when given the chance. Don’t be such a tightass with your ideals. Maybe have an open mind and try to find some middle ground with a friend you disagree with instead of just shutting them out of your life because you’re an opinionated asshole.

I’m a political waffler so I don’t have this problem. I can change my opinion from one day to the next. That’s probably aggravating to a lot of folks, but tough shit. I can be swayed with a lucid, logical, intelligent argument. If you can’t even listen to the argument then I think you’re more of a crybaby prick than I am an indecisive pantywaist.

Play nice with others in 2013. I probably won’t, but you should. It’ll make you a happier person.

Happy New Year, my three readers!! If you have any thoughts about how I can be a better person, or just to tell me how much you’d like to punch me in the face, feel free to let me know via comment below!

Posted in Humor, Parenting, Uncategorized | Tagged jerks, New year resolution, self improvement, tipping, tips | 22 Comments

One man’s trash…

Posted on December 31, 2012 by donofalltrades

We were surprisingly lucky to sell our old South City house a couple of years back with minimal fuss and for right about what we asked for it. The same day it went online through a realtor, we had a buyer. It was a nice little house for where it was, so I wasn’t totally shocked, but the market did sort of suck at the time (and still does, no doubt).

It helped, of course, that President Obama was giving money away to first time home-buyers and this particular house was perfect for first timers. Selling a house, well, I guess selling an older house, at least, is much more of a pain in the ass than I had anticipated it would be. Aside from having to clean the place up to take pictures, we had to be ready to leave whenever somebody wanted to come look at the place and there was always something that needed to be fixed or rigged to look as though it were fixed. I bought it from a retired City firefighter who spent five decades trying to save every dime he had, in part, by doing repairs he clearly didn’t know how to take on, all by himself. There was a whole lotta duct tape and spackle in that house that I’m sure was far from code-worthy. That’s partly why we were eager to sell it to the first person who came to look at it.

Nobody in this little cat and mouse game between buyer and seller quite knew the other sides’ position. We were pretty desperate to sell, but I don’t think they knew how desperate we were, because we’d have taken far less than we did for the house. They apparently liked our house and didn’t want to lose it to another buyer, but we didn’t know how much they wanted it either.

Part of our offer to “sweeten the deal” for this young couple was that we threw in all of the appliances, including the upright freezer in the basement. It would all stay with the house. While the offer sounded good to a young couple without funds to purchase appliances for their new house, the reality was that the appliances weren’t anything great (they weren’t terrible either) and the freezer in the basement was never going anywhere by my doing because I had promised the Angel of Death that he could take my life had he ever caught me even thinking about removing that thing from the basement.

The wife and I have seriously considered divorce one time in our lives (that I’m aware), and that was the night that we crammed that brand new, upright freezer down our narrow stairway into the basement. Never have the words “mother fucker” or “cocksucker” been uttered so often by otherwise sane human beings.

We combined all of our knowledge of physics, geometry, religion, logic and brute force to get that cocksucker down those stairs! At one point it was elevated off the ground, wedged between the walls with wife at the top of the stairs and me at the bottom, both looking at this thing like “now what the fuck do we do?”

I just knew at that point a fire was going to somehow spontaneously break out in the basement with me trapped at the bottom of the stairs blocked from the only exits upstairs by this God forsaken freezer box. In my head I could hear the wife sprinting away and screaming she loved me behind her uttering “fuck this shit, I’m outta here!” to herself. That may have been while she was pregnant and pretty far along so with Ace, so that didn’t help anybody’s mood for sure.

Anyway, we managed to vaseline that thing down the stairs somehow and that freezer and those other appliances stayed in South City when we moved. That left us stuck needing at least a fridge for the kitchen in the new house, and of course, a beer fridge for the garage. As we are not descendents of the Rockefellers, and our new house purchase was destined to make us even more miserable financially than we already were, I left it up to the wife to find us a deal.

One of her most valuable wifely assets is her ability to find deals on most everything. Well, everything except that minivan she bought while I was at work one day. I think she’d agree that she got it in the rear end on that one!

She found our fridges by doing what has become a favorite undertaking of ours – searching wealthy areas around St. Louis on Craigslist! Holy poop the nice stuff people are willing to get rid of! The fridge we have in the kitchen of our new house came from a doctor’s house. He didn’t like his perfectly fine $1500 stainless looking fridge so he bought a gigantic walk in number for his ridiculously huge kitchen and this one was just sitting in his four car garage doing nothing. We scored it for $300. It wasn’t quite 2 years old at the time for God’s sake. The other one came from a couple in Cottleville who didn’t feel like taking their fancy garage fridge to Colorado with them. They bought 60 acres or some nonsense like that near Fort Collins (it’s a bonus when strangers tell you about their lives while you’re dragging their crap into your pickup truck) and wanted to take as little as possible with them. This fridge was in their stand alone garage, which was nearly as big as our former house! At least they had it plugged in and were using it. I think they let the maids keep their lunches in it or something.

We also recently bought one of those expensive wooden playground contraptions from a hoity toity family in Ladue (old money). Moving that thing was a colossal clusterfuck, but the deal was too good to pass up, said the wife!

While we were there trying to figure out how to move this thing because the dumbass homeowner wouldn’t let us onto his newly asphalted driveway with our truck and trailer, Sally Moneybags was kind enough to put her glass of wine down for a minute and ask my wife about our daughter, Ace. It turns out that she had sent a shitload of clothes to her sister in California because her sister has some kids a little younger than hers. Well, apparently her sister is a cooky bitch because she proceeded to send all the clothes back with a note indicating which styles of clothing were acceptable (I never heard of Dior or knew there was a Jr. Armani brand) for her to send in the future, were she so inclined. Geez, you’re welcome, bitch!

: Sure, we’ll take your pile of crap!

Who does that? You live on the other side of the country; just keep the fucking clothes and burn them or give them to Goodwill, if you hate them that much. Sending them back to her sister was a real punch in the cooter, as far as I’m concerned.

We, on the other hand could give two shits if our children walk around looking like little homeless people. The kids don’t care either at this point so we were happy to take her clothes off her hands. In fact, we gave her our number and told her to feel free to call us if she found herself needing to unload anymore of her daughter’s hardly worn clothing in the future!

I’m sure that Ace has worn quite a few new items of clothing in her 9 years, but she’s also worn (oblivious) clothes that have come from perfect strangers her whole life too. The boys even more so since they’re boys and nobody buys them pretty things to wear like they did for Ace. Little G$ may never wear a new item of clothing in his life outside of the sweet clearance jacket we scored at Target from Santa!

A coat from Santa. Were he not 1, I’m sure he’d say THAT’S a real punch in the cooter, right there!

Posted in Family | Tagged craigslist, hand me downs, kids clothes, Parenting, second hand | Leave a comment

Merry Christmas underprivileged upper-middle or lower upper class family!

Posted on December 20, 2012 by donofalltrades

Christmas is the time for giving! From time to time, I like to throw my pocket change (not quarters though!) into the bucket of the Salvation Army bell ringer and scoff at those who walk by giving nothing as though I’m some sort of everyday philanthropist.

Unfortunately, it is also a time for family. Not just the family that you’re stuck living with every single day of your life, but your extended family. Aunts, uncles, grandmas, cousins, second cousins…you know, people God chose to bond you with by blood even though you would never have picked them to be a friend were you given a choice. Oh, God, you funny rascal. Wonderful!

My family is mostly great, but we’re also mostly white trash (you’re white trash, Aunt Peggy, don’t fight it!). We all live paycheck to paycheck, we like our beer and wine, our St. Louis Cardinals and to be left the fuck alone by everybody else in the world.

We also cling to tradition as though it’s as necessary to our being as oxygen.

One such tradition that won’t go away is the dreaded Christmas List! Oh, that freakin’ list! It’s become like the Christmas Elf that won’t stay on the shelf …It was cute and fun for a while, but now it’s just another chore that has to be dealt with.

Current wives who were excluded from the precious list when they were only girlfriends (you weren’t family then bitches!) wish they could be excluded again! Like the forbidden fruit of Eden, it sounds great, but once you’re in, you’re fucked. There’s no getting off the list.

Were there a vote by the adults in the family as to whether or not to keep this list going, my guess is that the results would be somewhere around 96% against doing the list, 3% for doing it, and 1% who don’t give a fuck either way.

Unfortunately, like United States politics, it’s not what the majority wants, it’s what the loudest, most annoying people demand that rules. We carry on with the list to shut these people up (you know who you are).

I can’t even explain why I hate the list so much. Part of it is because there are five us having to buy gifts, so that’s $100 out of my pocket right there ($100 divided by $11.99 per 12 pack = 8.34 12 packs I could have had instead). Aside from that, I see some of my cousins once a year, if that! I don’t buy gifts for my coworkers and they’re with me nearly every day. We work together, we go to lunch together, we get together from time to time outside of work, but they’re not on my Christmas list. I know more about the lives of these coworkers than I do about most of my cousins.

This year, my wonderful aunt living in Connecticut has my name. Yes, this is the same aunt who blessed us with the Elf on the Shelf book back in 2007. She texted me wanting to know what I wanted for Christmas.

I’m a nearly 40 year old man with a wife and kids. What I need or want can’t be had for $20, so in light of the tragedy not too far from her home in CT, I told her to just donate whatever she was going to spend to a Backstoppers type organization or to something for the school/families. I thought that would be nice, plus then I could scoff at those who have given nothing again!

Instead, I got the following email:

Hi All:

Ok since I believe poor P got backlash from all the Family grinches (including myself) about the gift exchange (albeit it could have been sent earlier), I think maybe in the end, the Family should feel a little better about themselves on Christmas morning. When contacting J/T/Me about presents, all said they needed nothing but to do something good with the money. Of course I was going to ignore this and was headed out to shop for some probably silly gift that no one needs. I happened to see on TV a little news clip about people doing just random act of kindness for each other — opening doors for others – buying strangers in line a cup of coffee, etc. People were doing these things and then tweeting about it so it was becoming contagious.

So I know we all feel very sad and our hearts are broken after last Friday’s tragedy. Maybe we all just need to start being nice to one another as well as others….. I decided to go to Wall mart and pay off a layaway of a family in honor of all of you who wanted your gift to be that of helping others. I picked a family with children and toys — it was randomly chosen but the woman helped me make sure it was a family with children. So on Christmas morning you won’t have an extra “bad t-shirt” to open but a child may have a little bit more food on their table for the kindness of a stranger and hopefully that family will pass the good intention on to the next person/family and then to the next……

Merry Christmas Family — good job XX– if you had not been tenacious in making us all take off our “Bah Humbug” attitudes, that family would not be getting the surprise gift from strangers.

Much Love —

PS — this includes the gifts that were suppose to go to G from D and me from T.

Merry Christmas

Aunt

At first I thought, what a great idea! I’m all for doing nice things for strangers. I hold doors open for people when I go into a building and I give a courtesy wave when people let me over in traffic. I’m nice like that!

Then I thought, good God, how far does my aunt (they have a little bit of money) have to drive to find a place where she believes “poor people” shop? Well, it turns out there’s a Walmart not but five miles away from her city. Notice my aunt spelled Walmart Wall mart, that’s how often she shops there.

The city she lives in has a median income of $171,806 per household, according to one source. Towns nearby are similarly situated financially. Holy Fuck! The median income where I live isn’t half that!

Then I recalled that WE used to put stuff in layaway!! My mom did it all the time at Kmart and by no measure were we poor or needy.

Layaway is a convenience for some people, not a necessity. I’d use layaway today and I’m certainly not needy. I’m not rich or even comfortable depending on which week of the month it is, but far from needy. It’s plausible that a wealthy person put a bunch of crap in layaway at Walmart for her snotty rich kids or grandkids and was going to send one of her house servants to go pick it all up later on.

I may have just helped buy Christmas for a family better off than my own. If that’s the case, Merry Christmas stranger, I pray you aren’t a total asshole!

Hopefully, you appreciate the gesture and do pay it forward as people have been saying.

Posted in Family | Tagged christmas, layaway, pay it forward, walmart | 13 Comments

Jane from Omaha, your lasagna sucks and you’re an unhelpful dumbass!

Posted on December 18, 2012 by donofalltrades

As I am the bitch of the house, cooking is one of my duties. I don’t mind doing it, but I suck at not following a recipe. I like the explicit ingredient list followed by the comforting instructions that I assume were written by somebody who knows what they’re talking about and has made the recipe many times before.

This pisses my wife off at times, because when I’m missing even a single little ingredient, she has to stop at the store on her way home from work to bring it to me. She seems to think you can substitute ingredients, but I say NAY NAY to that!

I understand that we all have different tastes, some better than others. I am no snobby gourmet, but there are people in the world who eat at the Olive Garden on purpose and think it’s wonderful. I’m not one of those folks either! Those people have no class or taste and their recipes are to be avoided. When you have terrible food and service, you give the people all they can eat of something so they don’t care about the terrible food and service!

I’ve had more luck with recipes that have both good ratings and lots of reviews. When hundreds of people have reviewed it, it’s generally a good sign that the recipe is pretty ok.

One of the things I’ve noticed about reviewers that drives me bonkers though is that there are fucktards who give the recipe 4 or 5 stars and then explain how they’ve substituted 98% of the ingredients for something else and then cooked it a completely different way than the original recipe said to do it! That’s not the same recipe, asshole!

I understand that some people are diabetic or whatever and need to substitute an ingredient or two for something similar in taste, or that some people are health conscious (God I hate you people) and insist on using low fat whatever in their dishes instead of what tastes good so that they’ll live to be 85 instead of only 83. Those two years crapping your adult diaper in a nursing home are surely worth a lifetime of depriving yourself of delicious food!

Those people are fine. It’s people who go overboard that I want to kick in the vagina.

For example, were I wanting to cook my family a nice lasagna and checked the reviews of a lasagna recipe for suggestions, it would not surprise me one bit to find that Jane from Omaha, Nebraska has written the following:

My family and I just love love love this lasagna recipe! We live in the middle of nowhere, so we can’t get our hands on ricotta cheese (even though Jane apparently has internet

Hey Jane from Omaha, your kids are cute but stupid!

access?) or some of the other ingredients, so I made some substitutions. I was all out of Italian sausage, so I doubled the beef. My family likes the meat not to be all crumbled up, so I packed the meat into patties and used American cheese in place of the exotic cheeses I couldn’t find at the Wally’s IGA up the street. I realized that I was also out of lasagna noodles and sauce, so I used ketchup and bread because carbs are carbs, right? We like our buns room temperature, so I added those at the last minute. So I took the meat and cheese and cooked it for 30 minutes and then added more cheese after cooking. I didn’t have parsley to put on the lasagna, so I used lettuce instead. I put the patties between the buns to complete the lasagna and served it with french fries. It was delicious. Thanks for sharing this lasagna recipe!

No, thank you, Jane, for being an unhelpful dumbass and wasting 4 minutes of my life!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged comments, cooking, family, recipes, reviews | 10 Comments

a poem about the Connecticut tragedy.

Posted on December 15, 2012 by donofalltrades

I’m not a poet or fancy writer or anything, but writing makes me feel better. Everytime I started to write my thoughts about this Connecticut tragedy, it went all over the place and didn’t seem like something I could do justice to.

Instead, I tried my hand at a poem that sort of has my thoughts in it.

——————————————————————————————-

Your presents still wait there under our tree

The ones you were so excited to see.

It breaks my heart to see them now

And to know after Christmas that’s still where they’ll be.

Your teacher died too, with you in her arms

She wanted so badly to keep you from harm.

She didn’t have to do that, she could have run

But she cared for you and your friends and ignored her alarm.

Had our tragedy been cancer we’d be crushed for sure,

But at least with cancer there’s some time and hope for a cure.

You were taken so violent, so sudden and fast.

There was never a hint at this pain I endure.

Your little brother is asking when you’ll come through the door

God he doesn’t know yet that he’ll play with you no more.

He wants you to see where the elf is right now.

He’s in your brother’s room under the bed on the floor.

This family is broken and will never be the same.

My stomach feels so heavy, my heart beats so lame.

How a person could look into your sweet little eyes

and shoot you in cold blood is a mystery, a shame.

We’ll never forget you, we couldn’t if we tried.

Your memory will strengthen me and you’ll be my guide,

Through a life that’s emptier but has to be lived,

Because that’s what you’d want and for you, I’ll abide.

Posted in The not meant to be funny stuff, Uncategorized | Tagged Connecticut shooting, poem | 2 Comments

We’ll shelve this elf yet…

Posted on December 13, 2012 by donofalltrades

In a somewhat fitting aside to yesterday’s blogged about nonsense, Ace went and lost a tooth at school.

In addition to her unwavering faith in Santa Claus, she still expects the tooth fairy to leave some jack under her pillow in exchange for her fallen chompers.

Unfortunately, the wife and I had forgotten that the tooth fairy was supposed to visit last night. Had I remembered, I could have snuck some loot under her pillow at 6 o’clock this morning while I was sneaking in there to move the stupid ass elf that we also forgot about again.

Fortunately, I’m the Navy Seal of sneaking around the house. I’m in and out of rooms like a Ninja! You learn such skills when failure means G$ will awake and scream into the baby monitor for the next two hours of the night.

The elf was extracted and relocated without a glitch, but, as I said, I was unaware that operation tooth fairy was supposed to be undertaken as well. This oversight led to holiday related lie #87.

“My tooth is still under my pillow,” said the sullen little believer in magical beings…

I could feel the change in my face right away!

While the lies normally just start spewing from my mouth without my having to think first, I was stumped by where to take this trainwreck.

My more adventerous side wanted to start into a saga about the Tooth Fairy having a romantic relationship with an elf (not Rocco, but they all look the same!) that turned ugly when this naughty elf started leaving his post at night to go stalk the tooth fairy until she got a restraining order.

Because they all look alike, I was going to tell her the judge ordered all Elves on the Shelf to stay 500 feet from her, so of course, when a child loses a tooth during elf season, something has to give. In this case it was the tooth fairy who decided to stay away. She promised mom and me that she’ d make it up though.

That sounded ok, but then I was afraid she’d pick sides and I didn’t want her to hold it against Santa that one of his minions was a psychotic jackoff, plus there’d be questions about what judge got to rule in this matter and was it some magic jurisdiction someplace and who were the attorneys and it was becoming a mess in my head.

Instead, I went with the simpler explanation, which is that two magical beings can’t be in the same structure (whose definition can be interpreted many ways – be vague when you lie to the children folks) or there’d be an explosion. The neutrons are neutral you see and the electrons aren’t so if the one’s electrons intermingle with the other’s protons (use big words to confuse and distract them) hey, are you listening to me? Good, see, they’d cause a huge explosion, see there? Good girl.

I was glad she didn’t ask why Target doesn’t blow the fuck up then with all the elves in the same place, even though I’m sure it could be plausibly explained that they don’t become magical until they’re released from the box for the first time or something.

Then we said the tooth fairy left us a couple of bucks out in the mailbox and that she could get it from there and she’d get the tooth later.

“How”, she asked.

“How what?”

“How did she tell you that the money was in the mailbox?” she asked mostly non sarcastically.

I don’t know how she told us, Ace, she sent mom a text or something, now shut up and go get the money from the mailbox now because daddy needs it to ride the honkey bus!!

Posted in Family, Parenting, Uncategorized | Tagged christmas, elf, tooth fairy | Leave a comment

Christmas…we’re sorry jesus.

Posted on December 12, 2012 by donofalltrades

Christmas used to be a kickass time of the year to me. All year long I was mostly well behaved enough that I knew Santa was going to come and leave me some booty under the tree.

I was always good enough to get most of what I wanted, but almost never good enough to get exactly what I wanted. I guess you had to be really, really good to get the Mongoose bike with mag wheels. I was only good enough to get the Team Murray bike with spoke wheels. It did have a number plate though. The REALLY cool remote control cars came from a hobby shop, whereas mine came from Radio Shack. Geez, my friend Mark got all C’s and a D on his report card and he got the Mongoose! In hindsight though, I do appreciate that Christmas wasn’t something my parents could easily just pull out of their asses to make happen, especially 30 years ago.

My God, they had to actually go to a store and fight crowds to purchase gifts! That was during the Reagan years when everyone had money to spend so they were all at the mall, asshole to bellybutton! Amazon was still decades away from making Christmas shopping at the mall a thing of the past for many of us.

At some point, I stopped being the recipient of Christmas joy and became the provider of that joy. Imagine that, me spreading Christmas fucking joy!! Wonderful! I guess that’s one of the many prices we pay for having kids.

The absurdity of what Christmas has become hit me a couple of mornings ago when I noticed Ace and Cdawg were both up before me and sitting downstairs at the island while I was getting ready to catch the honkey bus to work. This was very unusual, as normally Ace is still drooling on her pillow and Cdawg is upstairs pestering his mother while she’s trying to get ready herself about whether or not he can play the Wii when he gets home in 12 hours.

Then Ace says, pretty matter of factly, “Dad the elf hasn’t moved in three days.”

Oh that stupid fucking elf!! Just the thought of it makes my butthole pucker anymore.

We got the Elf on the Shelf five years ago, before it was mainstream enough that I’d ever heard of it (not that I’m cool, so it’s not surprising). A beloved, I guess trendy aunt sent it to Ace as a gift in 2007. Nobody ever knew what it was so it stayed unopened in the box for several years. The elf never made an appearance in the old South City house for sure, but for some reason we opened it last year and half-assed moved it around a few times. Ha ha ha the kids liked it, sort of.

Well, those few times apparently opened the floodgates to a new, undesired tradition. It’s bad enought that I feel obligated to get my fat ass up on the roof to hang lights from our 2 story house, but this is too much! It’s all I can do to remember to put pants on before I leave the house everyday, let alone having to move this elf every night!

The elf was apparently unpacked last weekend with the Christmas lights and trees. I didn’t know the elf had been out for several days, but there it was, on the shelf over the fireplace, laying face down on the mantle where he’s apparently been, unbeknownst to me, for several days. I assume Ace knew it was there, so why did she wait several days to ask about him?

The night before this elf inquisition, we had finally gotten around to reading the story to the kids for the first time ever. It all made sense after I read the story. “Where will you find me? Over here or there or what?” asks the elf? God I hate you elf! I’ll find you in the shitter once these kids move out of the house!

Well, we read the book and Ace wanted to name her stupid elf Rocco because, if it already had a name, nobody could remember it. It was Jack or Buddy or something. I wanted to name it A-A Ron so we could ask “Where are you right now, A-A Ron?” while we looked for him each morning. Lol, that joke will not be funny by the time I post this, but it made me chuckle. We went to write Rocco in the book where you’re supposed to put its name and we noticed that my aunt had the book signed by the author and illustrator (probably at an FAO Schwarz in NY City), so I didn’t have the heart to write in it.

Without missing a beat, I began to explain to Ace why the elf I knew nothing about had been on the shelf, unbeknownst to me, for several days. At some point in the middle of my convoluted lie to explain why Rocco hasn’t moved in days because JoJo (the dog) has been sleeping downstairs by the fireplace instead of in mommy and daddy’s room for some reason and if the dog sees the elf moving and barks, the elf becomes paralyzed with fear and its magic flies out of its ass and into the dog’s mouth and then JoJo would be responsible for reporting back to Santa but she’d have to walk so it really wouldn’t work and JoJo can’t have more than 4 years of life left, etc. I looked at Ace and wondered if she was fucking with me.

She’s 9 now and a very mature 9 at that. She’s never asked about Santa or questioned where or how her toys wind up under the tree on Christmas morning. She may be like I was. I never cared, but I believed and never asked until I was 29 years old! SOMEONE brought gifts, so why question where they came from and risk an end to the gravy train?

Because the wife and I are either lazy or just suck at being shifty, or because we have 57 things to do the second we walk into the house with these kids, we often leave Amazon boxes in the foyer where the kids practically trip right over them when they come into the house. Ace asked the other day what was in all of the boxes. Sigh, more Christmas related interrogation….well Ace, Daddy has been eating a lot of cookies and not exercising lately so he’s developed diabetes and some of the boxes are my new medication. Some are more cookies and others are homebrewing materials so daddy can make beer.

“Oh, can I have some cookies?” she asked.

“Hey, I just told you daddy has diabetes for the first time and you want to know if you can have my cookies?!! Daddy could lose a foot or die you know!” “They’re disgusting sugar-free medicine cookies that you wouldn’t like!

The pouty face…

“Sorry Dad” she said, and made me feel like a douche, while making her pouty face. I hate the pouty face!

We’re having an argument about her priorities in not caring about a disease I don’t have (I don’t officially have it, but who knows really?) that I had to lie about to keep up with the lie that Santa brought the gifts that are in the foyer, not the FedEx man! Merry Christmas!

If I’m remembering my PSR lessons correctly, Thou Shalt Not Lie is one of the Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses to share with the people so we would know how to behave and find our way to heaven!

Instead of celebrating the birth of sweet baby Jesus, who was apparently born in a barn because the inns were full, even though there was no Christmas travel yet because, duh, Christ hadn’t been born yet, the holiday has morphed into the current clusterfuck we call Christmas.

How ironic that there is really no greater conspiracy to lie (commandments people!) than there is at Christmas. These poor babies are led to believe that there’s a fat man who enters their house through the chimney and delivers presents that he hauls around in a sled being pulled by flying reindeer…lol! Can you imagine the first person who thought this up? Apparently, somebody in his group wasn’t stoned when he heard it and took the idea and ran with it. Probably someone who owned Walmart stock.

That’s fine and dandy, but this great Christmas lie oftentimes has to be reinforced by smaller lies and it never ends.

Ace recently entered a drawing through her orthodontist’s office to win an iPad. I told her I hope she wins and she told me that it’d be ok if she didn’t because she’d just ask Santa for one. What the fuck!? Next thing I knew, without thinking, I’m weaving a story about Apple controlling certain rights in Japan and how getting titanium to the North Pole is very difficult, and that even though Santa himself is very much magical, his duties are limited to delivery. He is not able to interfere in production because that’s for the elves…you know, the little people who work or volunteer or are born into servitude at the North Pole? Well, they don’t have magical powers and can only work with what they have, dear. iPads require titanium and that’s too hard to get.

I don’t know that ANY of that is true!

Sadly, it doesn’t even require effort anymore. I lie or make shit up about Christmas as it comes to me just as naturally as I breathe and then keep lying to reinforce the previous lies validity! Then I have to share the lie with the wife so she’s not telling contrary lies that make us both look like we’re really lying! It’s pretty sad, really.

What may be sadder is that there’s a good chance that Ace knows we’re full of shit and is taking our nonsense to school with her and holding court with other fourth graders comparing outlandish lies their parents told them the night before to carry on with this Santa farce. Can you imagine?

Ace: “my dad said he had diabetes and that the boxes were medicine!”

Sally 4th grader: “OMG STFU No Way! Your dad is retarded! Mine told me that the gifts with my name on them in their closet are for poor children named Sally 4th grader and not me. Whateva!”

Screw you little girls!!!

Not too far-fetched, really. These kids are smarter than we give them credit for and Ace has an iPod touch.

It’s entirely possible that she’s Googled Christmas and uncovered the fact that mom and dad are Santa Claus and is letting us carry on with our lies because she’s a big meanie! In that case, she’s lying to us while we’re lying to her and that’s just not right! After all, lying is against God’s commandments!