Glitter Bitches!

Glitter is evil.

A year after the wife and I moved into our first home she invited a former roommate to visit.

A day later we’re throwing a neighborhood bash in her honor. Beers are flowing. The grill is smoking with orgasmic fumes of cooked dead animal flesh.

I’m hanging out in a chair, laughing, trying to be funny, and enjoying many a beverage.

That’s when it happened.

I look up to see the wife’s former roommate standing before me, unnaturally interested in the rambling mess spewing from my distorted lips.

Then a pause.

Then, she screams “glitter bitches!!!!” as she unleashes two handfuls of glitter all over every inch of my person.

Head to toe, in my eyes, up my nose, in my mouth, contaminating my beverage….everywhere….glitter.

It was absolutely brilliant. The fact she even waited more than 24 hours upon her arrival to pull this award-winning prank made it even that much more respectable.

Since then, I’ve had an undying hatred for glitter.

Almost three years later we moved after two ankle biters graced our presence. Upon opening a couple boxes we still found glitter.

Fast forward to the X-mas holidays of 2011….

I finish volunteering in the boy’s 3^rd-grade classroom holiday party and take a slow jaunt down to the daughter’s 1^st-grade class to see if the wife needs help wrangling the little bastards around Ole Saint Nick projects.

When I walk in the classroom my sights lock immediately on a gaggle of desks jammed together in a U-shape. Kids on one side. One lonely, helpless woman on the other.

And in-between…glitter hell.

The kids’ activity was to turn a cup upside down, cover it in glue, throw glitter on it, and BAM!!! an ornament guaranteed to hit every household trashcan the second it’s pulled from the book bag.

Everything around me blurred as I watched on the kid taking handfuls of glitter and dumping it on the kids head next to him. Another was putting handfuls in his pockets. Next to him a girl sneezed, wiped her hands across her face leaving a fantastic handlebar mustache of glitter.

Volunteers throughout were completely ignoring this one table, hurriedly making themselves look busy as glitter overtook the station like a sand storm.

It was absolute and total hell on earth.

Being the jackasses the wife and I are, we jumped in to help as best we could. And glitter has re-entered our lives yet again.

Bad things happen in threes, or so they say. The third time glitter overtakes my life, it better damn well be in the form of dollar bills, strippers, or Goldschlager.

Do they even make that shit anymore?

A New Sexual Vocabulary

So my parenting alarms have been on high alert recently for some reason.

I think it’s because the oldest little bastard is nine now. He’s at that age where he starts learning things at school, which he brings home and kindly unleashes on to our seven-year-old daughter.

But for some reason all things related to sex have me feeling like I’m a sweaty crackhead in the middle of an intervention fumbling with my fingers, looking around paranoid as shit at everyone and everything near me.

Driving in the car the other day Kings of Leon, Sex on Fire came on and the boy’s singing the lyrics.

And I’m cringing, holding the steering wheel tight as can be as I hear a rare silence from the back seat. And all I can imagine is what’s going through his head….

Boy’s Head Thoughts:

“Oh look, something shiny. I should make a fart noise right now. Wonder if I have a booger? I really hate my sister. I wonder why my penis is bigger than my dad’s? I should ask for a play-date for the 438^th time today. Hey….this is kind of a cool song. Sex? What’s sex? Let me ask…”

Thankfully that question never came out.

And then there’s the bedroom situation in our humble abode. Three bedrooms literally on top of each other.

You can hear EVERYTHING.

So we deck each room with fans to cut down on hearing the boy snore. Hearing the girl fart all night (not kidding). And to eliminate any sounds of the wife and I having our monthly “relations.”

But at the end of the day, our door still doesn’t lock and we have no idea what’s happening in the hallway on the other side of it.

I guess I could pipe Kenny G. into the hallway to force them to wear earplugs. I could set trip hazards connected to pots and pans. Or we could just move our location to the basement next to the cat litter box.

So many choices…

Regardless I’m fearful because I feel the older the kids get the stealthier things will need to be.

I’ll never forget coming home as a teenager and hearing one of my parents have relations with a step parent. It was one of the most horrifying experiences. So I exited the house, re-entered and slammed the ever-living-shit out of the door just to make damn sure they knew I was home.

I cock-blocked the hell out of them and don’t regret it to this very day.

So maybe the best thing to do is to retrain ourselves and the responses we have to sex to sound like we’re having the most interesting conversation in the entire world.

So as my curious little bastards stand in the hallway they hear their mother emotionally saying:

“That’s sooooo curious!!”

“OH MY GOD!!!! I remember that time too!”

“Yes, yes, YES!! We can take the kids to Disney World if they stay in their rooms at night!!”

Or hear their daddy grunting:

“Oh, oh, oh those shoes match your outfit perfectly!”

“Yes, keep doing that to your hair cause it’s beautiful.”

“Oh my god I think I’m going to come to your holiday party this year!!”

But in reality we all know the real new retrained phrases will be:

Wife: “Are you done ironing your clothes yet?”

Me: “I’m sorry, I thought I’d last longer than that at scrabble.”

How Santa Will Make My Son An Episode Of Intervention

It’s the holidays!

And you know how I know?

Because everyone’s becoming just a bit more of an asshole than they normally are. Even the kids! Hell, the dog has even gotten into the holiday spirit by gnawing on the strap of my man-purse I carry to work every day.

He’s never done that before!

Ahhh the holidays. When people pepper-spray you for buying video games at half-price at a Wal-Mart instead of doing what you should normally do at Wal-Mart….bring your best camera and search for great pictures to upload to www.peopleofwalmart.com.

I found a catalogue over Thanksgiving weekend the daughter had taken a liking to. Upon opening it I thought, “oh cool, she’s circled a few things in……oh…oh she’s circled everything in here.”

The son is still an incredibly devoted believer in Santa. Which sucks for two reasons…

1) It’s gonna break his heart and be rough as hell on him the day he finds out that fat bastard is really his MILF mom tossing extra un-wrapped gifts under the tree late at night while his drunk dad stands naked next to her whispering loudly, “just look at it…I’m making it look like helicopter blades!!”

I can’t help but see an episode of Intervention 20 years from now when my son’s all cracked-out, crying on national TV saying his addiction started when he learned Santa wasn’t real.

2) He thinks he can get whatever in the hell he wants. All “I gotta do is ask Santa!”

It’s like a huge middle finger being jammed in our faces when the boy asks for an iPhone, we rightfully say no, and he responds with that. It makes me want to out Santa right then and there.

But then we wouldn’t get away with my favorite phrase which keeps him in line, “really? You’re gonna give your sister a swirly in that toilet while Santa’s watching? Wow man…you’ve got balls of steel.”

Then there comes the wife. I procrastinate. I’ll occasionally look at commercials showing other rock-star husbands blowing the socks off their wife with cars, jewelry, vacuum cleaners and more. I can’t afford a new car, the wife sells all the jewelry I buy her and I might as well cut my own throat before buying her a vacuum cleaner.

So I wait. And wait.

And wait.

Until a couple days before Christmas and decide to fight the crowds. Bitching the whole time about finding no place to park, the long lines waiting to check out and the check-out ladies being rude because I had the gall to actually purchase something from them today.

I bitch about not being thanked as I hold the door for some jack-wad whose arms were full and mumble angrily to myself as I get stuck in endless shopping traffic.

And it’s at that last stoplight that I realize….the holidays and I need each other. Like my future cracked-out son needs his drugs, I need the holidays to be angry about something. I thrive off the rush of anger that I got on December 22 and 23 when I’m last-second-shopping for my wife. It makes me feel alive. It makes me…

LOVE THE HOLIDAYS!!!

My Son Is Al-Qaeda

I’m pretty sure my kids are terrorists.

But never at the same time. No….one always has to be America.

I can only break it down to you as though I were the inter-web-machine-thingy.

So let’s say I’m Twitter.

On this particular day the boy is Al-Qaeda and the daughter is America.

Twitter lay in bed thankful to be at the top of the food-chain in its household as it enjoys the silence. The fan is turning as it should to drown out barks from the incessantly annoying beast that lay caged below. Twitter’s bride is asleep next to it kindly keeping her nighttime breath-funk from darkening its nostrils thanks to the “Great Wall of China” pillow barrier she’s built between them.

And the little bastards sleep. Life is good…

But that’s not what Al-Qaeda has planned for the day.

The boy wakens. There’s no haze on the brain, delay in reaction or hesitation in what the goal of the task that lay ahead contains.

He MUST create chaos and disrupt order!

Taking the last step from its Ikea-built loft onto the cold November wood floor, Al-Qaeda stops to listen for the lay of the land. The sun is not up yet so its senses must be keen.

The humming of fans and calm feeling of peace bring a smile to Al-Qaeda’s face as it tip-toes slowly from its room towards America’s lair.

Standing eerily at the country’s doorway Al-Qaeda contemplates… “shall I pounce or douse the toilet and floor with my urine first?”

Al-Qaeda chooses to give the bathroom a thorough golden shower first. But it’s made a mistake because it has yet to realize it cannot pee without slamming the lid down upon completion.

That is when Twitter’s senses become awakened and keenly aware something is afoot!

Twitter immediately turns his eyes to the closet mirrors and watches as Al-Qaeda slowly and methodically makes its way towards America’s doorstep. Twitter tweets, “I see something #alqedaisgonnafuckshitupyo”

America lies peacefully sleeping, clutching its soft, pink blanket.

Al-Qaeda’s brain shuts down. Rationale escapes. There is but only one thing left to do.

Pounce America and make it cry!!!

And with that Al-Qaeda unleashes itself running full-fledged, uncontrollably towards what will end in pure hell just as Twitter swoops in from behind with a “occupy my daughter’s bedroom quick!! Terrorists!!”

But it’s too late.

Al-Qaeda lands solid on America, crushing its dainty hands below. A scream bellows from America.

America has been crushed…but not for good…because Twitter is there to rally the masses.

The wife comes crashing through the door, tossing Twitter aside and grabs Al-Qaeda by the arm.

“What is your problem boy!?!!! We’re sleeping, your sister’s sleeping and your dad’s standing over there tweeting like a douche?! GO TO BED!!!”

Al-Qaeda slowly sleeks away to its cave. America rolls over in its fuzzy blanky calmly going back to sleep. And, the wife gives Twitter a death-look as it tweets, “wife just rocked a whole batch of awesome parenting. Now off to snuggle with her and sex away the night!!”

This….this is just a small moment in what is the life of being parents of two organizations who want nothing but the utmost harm done to the other.

*Editor’s note

Dear Government:

My son is NOT actually Al-Qaeda, nor does he have any affiliations with Al-Qaeda or even know what in the hell it is. Please do not kick down my door, steal my computer or put me in any situation in which Matt Lauer must interview me following a segment in which he “investigates” whether Kim Kardashian’s ass is real or implants.

Love,

Me

The Call & Repeat

I've written before about how our family has a "safety call." Actually it's just a reason for us to be obnoxious in public.

If we can't find each other we just simply scream "cuhcaw!!!" at the top of our lungs until the other person yells it back.

But recently I've taken it upon myself to create a "party call." You know, when you're on the dance floor and some dude is all "oooha oooha," and then everyone repeats it back to him.

Well, no matter where I am with the kids, they seem incapable of not repeating that sound back when I make it.

I give you, Exhibit A:

I'm Insane...So I make My Kids Insane from WhyIsDaddyCrying on Vimeo.