Atomictumor

Through an odd twist of fate, tonight saw PigpenJuicebox and I alone for the evening.  MastaG went out with Realtorchick (with whom some, um, business transactions are rolling) to some Christmas parade way the hell up in Kingston, and the Lady had to work.

When he got off the bus today, he said “I had a hard day”.   He’s been an interesting nut lately, and I’ve felt like he and I are reaching a crossroads of sorts, where he’s growing, or evolving, or something, and I’m not 100% sure which way the whole things going.  Not that I think he’s going rotten or something, hell, he’s 5, and the sweetest boy who ever walked the earth, but of the two kids, it was always MastaG that I related to more, Juicebox is a Mama’s boy.  I think, if thought patterns are hereditary (and hell, they probably are, being that its mostly caused by fatty tissue and a tangled up christmas light knot mess of nerves), then my oldest inherited mine, and my youngest inherited GAC’s.

Which kinda puts a bit of a crimp on me, for obvious reasons.

But I’m digressing.

Hes gotten to the whole “being sneaky and doing what it takes to get what you want” point, and in his case, what he frequently don’t want is

a) to go to bed

b) to go to school

c) to do anything that, well, he doesn’t want to do

and the way he’s been achieving that needful has been by pulling the old “dad’s screwing up his youngest son’s childhood card”.  It can be something like crying at bedtime because he’s afraid to be on his bunkbed.  The same bunkbed that he spent the previous 3 hours playing on prior to bedtime, without a problem.  Or that he needs a light on in his rather well lit room, when he never needed it before (this one started prior to moving, for all those who think they’ve got it figured out).

Sometimes its hitting us with the old “everybody at school calls me names” trick.  When I press him for names, tho, I just get “everybody”.  He didn’t have a problem giving me names of who was, say, the leader, or who sat beside him and across from him at lunch, or who was behind him in line, or all the kids that he’s tickled to see outside when he heads into school.  Nope, I’m convinced that the boy’s trying to snow us.

I haven’t had a chance in a while to get some good one on one time with the boy lately, so tonight I had a good opportunity for that.

(now that I’ve wrangled myself back to the point)

We left Realtorchicks house, and the boy was hungry.  I suprised him with some “Old Mcdonalds”, which is that evil place with the big ass yellow M of doom.  The kid loves the place, he’s five, give him a break.  We had supper, and then we had ice cream, and then we played on the playground.  Spent a good 2 hours in that place,  and had a great time.

After that, as we were going over to the petstore, the boy called me all sorts of interesting names and tried to steal my hat from the backseat.  Now, this is after, lest I forget, his insistence that he drive, which ultimately had me outside the drivers door holding the keys while he sat in the drivers seat and went “broom broom broom”.

Interesting names:

• Donkey
• Reindeer Donkey
• White Hippopotamus
• Snowflake Hippopotamus
• Reindeer Hippopotamus
• Snowflake Reindeer

I’m sure there were more, but it was a short drive.

So, we got to the petstore to see the Ladyfriend, and he wandered all up and down looking at the lizards and toads and ferrets and all the little critters that completely captivate the imagination of my imaginative 5 year old boy.  He got to touch the snakes.  He got to watch the fiddler crabs fight over a dead fish.  He did not, alas, get to watch the snake eat a rat (a highlight of his day, seriously), because they had already been fed.  Bummer.

After that, the coup de grace, a trip to Walmart to buy Shrek 3, which was the plan since being at McDonalds, where the evil little nazi happy meal toy was a Shrek toy.  They weave a tight little web, they do.

So, par for the course, we left Walmart with Ratatouille, because it was on the shelf right next to Shrek, and we both agreed that it’d be more fun to watch tonight while waiting for MastaG to get home (where the hell IS that kid anyway???)

We were doing so well, so well, until we got to the thrice damned gumball machine on the way out the door, which ate my last quarter.  As I was walking out explaining that sometimes machines break, and don’t do what we want them to do, he was already getting into a little bummed out mood.  Not fussy, mind you, but the sullen little pouty Juicebox that comes out when life just doesn’t give him what he wants.

By the time I pulled up at the house, 5 minutes later, he was asleep.

Still is.

I’ve had a good morning. We all had the morning off, and it was one of our firster times as a family, fixing oatmeal, drinking coffee, relaxing while the kids played videogames. Relaxing.

Thats good stuff.

Yesterday, poor Ashley Paine, a 13 year old on the way home from school, was run over by a bus at a major intersection here in town when she fell off her bike into the path of the big ass bus wheels. I heard about it when I went to wait for Pigpen to get him yesterday at Eave’s house, when it was just rumor mode, but she had been stuck in the traffic and saw something on the news about it afterward. When the kids got home from school, October and Spotz were talking about it, as they heard rumors from school. When I went to Realtorchicks house to pick up MastaG, she was talking about it.

Apparently Netmom knows little Ashley, she’s a friend of the family.

She’s listed right now, according to the latest reports, as being in unstable and critical condition.

I’m thinking of her parents, who had a normal Friday evening turn into a hellishly surreal nightmare, as their little girl was flown by helicopter to a hospital with an unknown and dire future.

I’m thinking of the bus driver, making the last run of the week, a driver who apparently had been driving for years, and who is evidently blameless in the accident, waking up Saturday morning with this in her head.

I’m thinking of the 28 kids on the bus, middle schoolers, just like Ashley, and what they saw, or heard, during the wild minutes that the bus was stopped, who were feet away from calamity.

I’m thinking of poor Netmom and her youngest daughter (I never can get those damn greek numbered names right, I’m thinking its Delta or whatever).

I’m thinking of last year, when my life was a hellishly surreal nightmare, when I was thinking of pressure inside a loved ones head, and the weird way that the brain just barely has enough room to fit in that hard ass skull, and how amazingly fucked up it can get when theres trauma up there.

I’ve held my kids and my fiancee tight today as I prayed to myself, both for peace, grace, and strength for these people who are living things that nobody should live, and for thanks, that I’m surrounded by the love and beauty, without pain, without fear, without doubt.

Ashley Paine.

As I washed dishes last night, Spotz asks:

“Mom, do ticks have nuts?”

I turned to look at him.  “Um…what?”

“Do ticks have nuts?”

“Uh…what exactly do you mean, Spotz?”

“Mo-om, ticks!  Do ticks have nuts??”

At this point, he reached into a bag of candy and produced a Twix candy bar.

“You know, Mom, ticks!”

“Ohhhhhhhhhh.  Twix.  No, Twix don’t have nuts.”

***

That reminds me, though.  We’ve not had much luck trick-or-treating in the past few years.  It seems that every year, fewer and fewer houses are giving out the goods.  Are there any secret Oak Ridge neighborhoods out there that are excellent for trick-or-treating?

So, sometimes I create my own problems…

They look pretty easy, right? No real problems, huh?

Working at home for 3 of the past 4 weeks with one or both of them, no problems right? The eye twitch must be from something else?

Its an intricate camouflage.  I’ve found at least 4 things in the picture that either provoked crying or yelling. Wanna guess what they are?