Introductions all around

If you see Luke Skywalker, Jedi and Princess Leia
out on Halloween night, remember their Daddy likes chocolate.
Milk Chocolate. Dark Chocolate is for losers.

Also dear readers, let me introduce you to Mr. Fluffy Kisses and Jo. The Boss Lady bought the pumpkins and I helped with the carving but the whole pumpkin naming thing? That was ALL the kids.

Neither of us are creative and/or stoned enough to come up with pumpkin names like that...

Jo on the left, Mr Fluffy Kisses on the right.

Why I needs me some wedding ring

Yesterday we replaced my lost wedding ring. Several people commented about not needing a ring to signify the marriage. And though that is true, not wearing a wedding ring just does not work for me. I had just about rubbed a raw spot on my ring finger where my old ring used to rest.

When we got married, we had the pastor stop the wedding and we brought the kids down front to the altar/stage. The pastor then did a children's sermon about the importance of marriage vows and the special significance of wedding rings. The only picture displayed in our house from the wedding is of that moment, with the kids all sitting near the bride, looking up at her in awe. In that moment I realized that I was lucky enough to to get to wear my about-to-be-wife's ring.

Add to that the time my wedding ring kept me from breaking a finger. I was moving a washing machine into our first apartment. I got my hand stuck between the washer and the wall. And though many guys have lost fingers due to catching a wedding band on something, I still think the ring kept me from breaking my finger. Almost instantly my knuckle swelled several times it's normal size and my ring would not slide over it for a month or more. So it was stuck in place. Until I finally got it re-sized last fall, it was a tight fit over that knuckle.

True, if I hadn't been wearing it, maybe my knuckle might not have swollen and stayed sore to this day. Maybe though,it really is metaphor for our marriage. Sometimes the things that are right take some effort and it might hurt a little.

Or maybe it should just be a reminder for me to take off my wedding band before moving heavy appliances. Either way, I like the new one and I still know that I am lucky to be wearing it.

$13 a year for wedding ring rental and maintenance?

isn't too bad is it?

I figure it this way, A dozen years ago, The Boss Lady To Be and I spent a whopping $88 on my wedding band. I wore it continuously for somewhere near 12 years and 5 weeks. I only took it off for a few days last year and we spent less and $20 to get it re-sized. Seems like some skinny guy used to wear it. And the fat guy wearing my skin did not like the ring cutting off his circulation...

Today I replaced the missing ring with a new silver band from James Avery.

The only other jewelry I ever wear is a silver acorn pendant that I have had since college. It came from the same store, so it should be a good match for my new $50 band.

All told, The Boss Lady is into my rings about $160. And considering that it is ME she is keeping, some might say it is money well spent. And all the rest of you guys can just be quiet.

Irony or escape clause?

The Boss Lady might be off the hook. After a dozen years, she might be a free woman again. I have lost my wedding ring.

You see, I am certainly a Jedi level mis-placer of things, so it it kind of hard to believe, but this might be the first time that I lost my ring. Probably because I never take it off.

Anyways, the ironic part is that I noticed my ring missing while we were playing at the park this morning. Right after I found a nice silver ring and I had asked all of the moms in the park if they had lost that ring.

I was trying to decide if I should leave the silver ring on the bulletin board, or leave a note and see if the owner calls in a few days. I decided to leave the note since I was sure the silver ring would disappear from the park memo board in short order.

As I was looking in my car for a pen, I noticed my ring was gone. Since I have been in 6 states in the past week, I am thinking that unless it is in the wife's car, it would be a miracle to find my wedding ring now.

Now it is tough decision time for The Boss Lady. Buy another $100 ring for AtHomeDaddy, or just put a stop to the madness and make a clean break...

Giving in to the lazy

The Talker has asked to be dropped off at school, instead of having to suffer the highest of kindergarten indignities, being walked to class by dad. And little sister. Oh the shame.

The school has a drop off line. The 5th grade Safety Patrol help open the car doors and wish each student a welcome to school and then remind parents to drive slowly on campus. I guess it is a good system. But I am worried about using the drop off lane on a regular basis.

Not because The Talker can't handle walking from the driveway to his class. His is the third class inside the building. By now he could find it while sleep walking. I know I have...

And that is the point. When I walk the boy to class, I have to be dressed and I must to have gotten the girl dressed, too. But I bet I could get through the drop off lane in my pajamas.

Even on the days we walk in, I don't worry too much about how I look, what is the dress code for work as a stay at home dad, anyways,but I do give in to peer pressure and try to have The Princess dressed and her hair brushed out.

Now that The Talker wants to use the lazy-dad's lane, I bet The Princess and I are heading to school in 'jamas and without even thinking about a hair brush by the end of next week. Three days a week we have to get dressed for her school, but not until after we get home from elementary school drop-off.

So thanks to the boy having a great idea and letting me further my lazy dad image in the neighborhood.

Trip Recap #1

I was going to work up a nice long post with excruciating detail about my road trip and camping trip in Alabama and Tennessee but now I think I'll break it up into smaller posts. Check back in a few days for the rest of the story.

I left town last Wednesday morning to head out on my road trip to Northern Alabama. Nothing too exciting happened on the road. The windshield got hit with a boulder and has two nice divots out of it now, but it never cracked. Since I was in The Boss Lady's car, so it is her problem, now!

After driving from 8 am until 9:30 pm, I stopped for the night in Meridian, Mississippi. Back on the road at about 7 am Thursday morning, it was raining like heck and the clouds were REALLY dark. Once I arrived in Huntsville, I found out that I spent most of the day driving in a tornado watch zone. THAT explains the really nasty looking clouds...

While I was cruising through Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, I kept a list of the roadkill I saw. Looks like deer are a lot smarterer than raccoons, not nearly as many of those guys on the roadside. Maybe in my next post I'll give you the full body count.

Once I hit Huntsville, Alabama I cruised around town for a while. I thought I was waiting on Rick to finish up work for the day or for Terry to arrive in town. But she was already in town and he happened to be right down the street buying the last of his camping supplies. Once we all caught up at Rick's house, the fun started pretty quickly, with Maria hanging out in the driveway with us for a few hours.

As far as the rest of the weekend, you can just use your imagination. Actually, your imagination might not be crude enough. So use my imagination to see what we did, OK?

Or you can just wait around I'll get to it sooner or later. Unless your name is George Dickel. 'Cause you aren't invited to the rest of this party, so take a flying leap, old man.

Home again!

Vile, unspeakable, awful things happened in the Tennessee woods.

I'll tell you all about it later.

Made it to Alabama

No real excitement from the road except one rock-dinged windshield, one stepped on cigar, a pair of crappy sunglasses that flew out the sunroof and lots of rain.

So much rain that Maria stayed in the car the entire trip, so I have no good pictures of her to share. Yet.

Hanging out for a while until Rick gets finished up at work, then the fun will begin for real.

Gone like last yesterday's wind

I am hitting the road in about 45 minutes for my drive out to Alabama to go camping with Rick and his gang. I need to be almost 900 miles away by 4pm tomorrow. Tonight I snooze somewhere between here and Meridian, Mississippi.

Taking the DS Lite with me just in case I decide to check in from the road. But if I don't then I'll post up again on Monday night or Tuesday morning.

Blog ya' later, skater.

Pack this!

I don't know if I have mentioned it before, but repetition never stopped me from telling a story...

The most useful job I ever had was loading freight into the belly of airplanes. Sad, isn't it.

Anyways, loading the plane was pretty straightforward. Take the boxes and make them all fit into the plane. The trick? Trying to fit square and rectangle boxes into a space with no flat surfaces. The plane walls and floor curve. Something about aerodynamics... So you have to get creative in how you stack everything in there.

And why does this skill I learned 17 years ago help in my present day life? Because who else do you know that could pack everything needed for an almost week long road trip into the trunk of a VW Beetle? There is even space to spare, without having anything in the passenger compartment. I am the pack master. BOW TO ME!


Heck, I was able to load everything so efficiently, that I decided I had room for a co-pilot. Yeah buddy! Maria will be making this trip, too.

I have been unintentionally hoarding Maria for a while. I just haven't had a good chance to pass her back off to The Law Talking Guy since he hid her in our shower while we were gone on a weekend trip. So instead of leaving her in his yard, Maria will be making some emailed appearances at his house (and maybe his office) first. I bet he would love to have a picture of Maria crossing the Mississippi river for his wallpaper.

RSS feed? Maybe!?!

I don't use RSS or Atom feeds when I read blogs. So I had never even looked at the settings for blogger's site feeds. Anyways, after a reader asked about RSS feeds, I went over to feedburner and burned a feed.

I think it is set up properly. But I am not sure. If anyone is having trouble using feeds on this blog, let me know and I'll just give up and put things back the way they were...

Anyways, want the feed link? Here you go,

http://feeds.feedburner.com/athomedaddy

I need a vacation from all this time off

The Talker was sick and home from school Friday. We all stayed home from church this weekend. Now The Princess is home sick today. So I have missed two work days in a row.

Add to that I will be missing work Wednesday, Friday and next Monday since I'll be heading out to 'Bama in two days. 5 days of missing work in a row! Almost two work weeks. And that adds to a good thing we don't have to live on my income.

Anyways, the girl and I are going to try to defeat the last of this evil fever today. If she turns our like big brother, she will be feeling fine by lunch time and bored by 2:30. Which is all well and good because I don't want to get stopped at the Alabama border for bringing a third world contagious disease with me.

Sunday I packed up my backpacking gear. All I need to do is pack up all of my food and my share of the group gear, and I am good to go. But I still need to pack my clothes for the days on the road and pick up a new set of cheap sunglasses. After all, I am planning to make good use of that sunroof this trip.

The final sign that the road is calling, I sat down just a few minutes ago and loaded up the MP3 player. Looks like it will be another Texas music road trip, with Bob Schneider, Edie Brickell, Guy Clark, Albert Collins, Willie Nelson and Lyle Lovett leading the charge. But don't worry since Billy Joel, Alan Jackson and Tracy Chapman all made the cut, too. And I don't think any of them are from Texas. Heck, even U2 and the Cowboy Junkies are present, so I have the international music scene pretty well covered, too.

Gambling with another guy's coupons

I had a big time flashback to my childhood this morning.

When I was sick and missed school, which was rare, we would go to the Dr's office. Then we would hit Hilley's Pharmacy for whatever was ailing me. THEN, and only if the Dr decided that there was real sickness AND mom had heard a minimum amount of whining, we would get to go to Mott's 5 and Dime.

One of my favorite things at Mott's was the mystery grab bag. $.25 or maybe $.50 for a little brown paper sack that was stapled shut. Sometimes a small toy, sometimes candy. Seldom worth the price. But always awesome! If I remember correctly, they even had specific boy and girl bags...

Flashing back to before my flashback to my own childhood...

The Talker and I headed down to the Pediatrician's office because of his nasty sounding cough. Grabbed a 'scrip for some antibiotics and we headed out. No shots. No hassles.

After that we went over to Toys 'R Us and planned to cash in a coupon for a free Hot Wheel. The Talker took .0000043 seconds to find the car he wanted. A Brown Buick!?! Hey, at least it is a Grand National. WITH a pop up hood, thank you very muchly.

As we were wandering to another part of the store, I noticed the Hot Wheels Mystery Car. Hanging there with all of the cool palm sized hot rods. Just calling our names.

Notice, the plastic is black, so you can't see the car. Thus the gamble.
It might be a crappy car or worse, one you already have.

The Talker latched on to the idea of picking up a mystery car to go WITH his freebie Buick. It was great fun listening to him guess what kind of car might be inside. His best guess, "a golded hot rod with green windows and a big ol' motor sticking out". And even though it wasn't that one, the gamble paid off. The boy got a cool car out of the mystery box.

A rocking early model VW Bug Convertible

With the coupon, we spent $1.07. At Toys R Us. Walked out of there with more than $18 in change from a $20 dollar bill. So I think that makes us the biggest winners of the day!

Now we are moving on to convert the living room rug into Pirate Lands. So we be seeing you buccaneers later. Arg!

Chillin' like villians listening to Bob Dylans

He lasted longer than I thought he would. It took more than a month, but The Talker finally succumbed to the germ-fest that is elementary school. The Princess went to work with The Boss Lady this morning, so he and I are hanging at home, fighting off the remnants of a fever.

My goal for the day is simple. Not TOO much Play Station 2 time for The Talker. After all, he is sick and he needs to save his energy. For watching TV. And napping.

What else are you supposed to when you are a 5 year old with a fever? Seriously. I have no idea what to do with a sick school-aged kid. I even had to ask The Boss Lady if I should call the school. Turns out that I should have, but she already had done it...

So The Talker and I are headed for Star Wars/Lego Land/Cars the Movie Zone (AKA his bedroom). I guess we will start playing in there and see what happens later.

Some of the greatest things started as accidents...

Discovery Channel's Top 10 Accidental Discoveries.

Number 11 should be my double post from yesterday. I have no idea why it posted twice, but it may have just been destiny for you guys to get a double dose. Hope you loved it . Twice.

Just in case you missed it, or skipped it twice, here we go again...

I think I am allergic to these people

Allergy season is in full force here. Everything, including the wife and kids, seems to make me sneeze at this time of year. Add to that, The Boss Lady came home with Pink Eye last week and everything is turning up roses. Damned pollen producing roses that make people sneeze...

Tomorrow is The Talker's first school field trip. So this morning on the way into school he wanted me to teach him the Best Day Ever song from SpongeBob. I only knew one line, so once the girl and I got home, I found it on YouTube. Now I'll be singing this wonderful little tune all day long.



Hope it gets stuck in your heads, too.

As far as the rest of the stuff, the wife may or may not be contagious. But she ain't pregnant. Yeah for pink eye. The dog may die if it turns out he dug up my little tree on the patio and the kids are doing fine.

All because they don't have goopy eyes and they were asleep when the tree was slaughtered.

And the biggest news of the weekend, The Talker and I figured out how to do backflips off of jumps on Tony Hawk's Project 8. After hours of virtual flipping, Our thumbs are a little tired and we now have vertigo.

So it may indeed be the Best Day EVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER!
Everybody sing along...

I think I am allergic to these people

Allergy season is in full force here. Everything, including the wife and kids, seems to make me sneeze at this time of year. Add to that, The Boss Lady came home with Pink Eye last week and everything is turning up roses. Damned pollen producing roses that make people sneeze...

Tomorrow is The Talker's first school field trip. So this morning on the way into school he wanted me to teach him the Best Day Ever song from SpongeBob. I only knew one line, so once the girl and I got home, I found it on YouTube. Now I'll be singing this wonderful little tune all day long.



Hope it gets stuck in your heads, too.

As far as the rest of the stuff, the wife may or may not be contagious. But she ain't pregnant. Yeah for pink eye. The dog may die if it turns out he dug up my little tree on the patio and the kids are doing fine.

All because they don't have goopy eyes and they were asleep when the tree was slaughtered. So it may indeed be the Best Day EVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER!

Everybody sing along...

What better place is there for Jedi training

than jumping around on rusty truck parts in the backyard? Here are a couple of quick videos I shot while the boy was entertaining himself in the backyard. At first I thought he was Kung Fu Fighting, since that is his new favorite song.

Anyways these are grainy since I was hiding in the house and shooting through the windows and solar screens...

F this!

Today is The Princess' Show and Tell Day. And I think I'll blame my horrendous night's sleep on our inability to settle on an item that fully represents the letter F.

Since there are 8 other girls in the class, we skipped over the easiest choice, a flower from the yard. I also decided against sending the girl with a baggie full of flour. No need to be investigated by Child Protective Services today. Fart in a jar also didn't make the cut.

See what happens when I work on too little sleep?

So our final choices? Flanders or a flashlight. I'll leave it to you to decide which one actually made the trip to school.

Go White Boy! Go White Boy! GO!

We get to see sweet dance moves like this every time The Talker hears a good beat!

Is that your dad?

This is a question that The Princess hears every school day. Some kid will see me outside with a group of kids and will jump in to ask. Since I am working at the school, the kids see a lot of me, but not always with The Princess at my side.

Tomorrow The Talker will start hearing that more often, I bet. I will be spending the morning helping out with some landscaping right outside his kindergarten class. So the boy is bound to notice The Princess and I hanging around the kindergarten wildflower area. Why oh why don't they just call it the KINDER-GARDEN?

How did I get rooked into this? It is all about Marge. They want Marge to be up there to help haul brush and trash to the dumpsters across campus. And never wanting to miss on a chance to show off Marge, I agreed to help out.

Also, next week I am planning to help chaperone the first field trip of the year. Since I don't have to plan the trip or organize the transportation, I have no idea where we are headed. But I bet we will have fun while we are there.

And in other family news, the dog is still alive, the wife isn't pregnant and the cars are not in the shop. I think that about covers it.