Episode 149: Goin' against my mind

A year and a half ago I started this blog based on two fundamental concepts. First, I had recently become a father and was going to take a plunge in to becoming a stay at home dad. Second, I hated being a newspaper reporter. The mere thought of the job made me want to repeatedly stab myself in the face with a screw.

I was reflecting a few days ago and I came to the following conclusions. First, the stay at home dad thing has worked out well. My kid is still alive and she seems to like me, and I have been supporting my family reasonably well with my bar tending job. My days are leisurely at times, although still stressful, tiring and infuriating as they are for all parents.

Second, the blog has been a relative, regional success. I am not making any money off of it or publishing to thousands every morning, but the 8-15 of you who read it seem to really enjoy it and that is all I need.

So, I stopped and asked myself a question. Why on EARTH are you still a newspaper reporter, Dan? About three or four months ago I was offered a job as a regional editor at a local online news site. I turned it down but, for some reason, decided that I was going to agree to freelance for this same organization. Great. Now, not only was I going back to a job I hated, I was doing it for, like, $150 a week. Think of your least favorite job ever. You were probably a teenager working at McDonalds, or babysitting for some crappy family, or, in my case, stocking the salad bar at Bonanza Steakhouse, learning the ins and outs of sex, cigarettes and the general shadiness of the restaurant industry at a much too young age. Now picture waking up tomorrow with a job offer to return to that job for a quarter of the money. Now take that job. That is essentially what I have done. Idiot.
I started out by doing 4-5 stories a week, stashing away $4-$500 a month in my PayPal account and I was burnt out within three weeks. Now I am down to reluctantly writing 1-2 stories a week and coming up with every excuse in the book not to accept the others.

Before I continue let me describe to you the situation that I am dealing with. I was reluctant to do this before in the case that my editor discovered this blog, but it doesn't appear that he has time to surf the net (Ha) so here goes.

I work for a man named Bob. Bob is a stereotypical newspaper reporter. Lets examine newspaper reporters, editors, desk guys and the like for the moment. The second-best reporter I have ever worked with is a man by the name of Thor Jourgensen. Enterprising, dedicated, energetic, old school. Not the best writer in the world, but it doesn't matter. One day Thor uttered a bit of knowledge that described newspaper employees to a tee: "The newspaper industry," he said. " Is the last haven for the insane and the malcontent." I looked around the room and I realized he was 100 percent correct. There is something wrong with every newspaper reporter. Something embedded in our personalities that has led us down this path to destruction. To a dying industry that offers no reward for a hard day's work other than the opportunity to put our name on the story we just wrote so everyone in a 6-city region knows precisely who to bitch at. Every reporter thinks they are better than every other reporter. None of us like each other, even the ones we work with. But we tolerate each other and operate under, usually, some semblance of respect. I'm better at this job than you and I should be doing that story but, you know what, you're part of the club. We are essentially a clan of trolls living under the figurative bridge of society.

Bob is as trollish as a troll can get. Socially awkward, long winded to a fault, poorly dressed and ugly. One day he came in to the bar to watch a game and have a burger. I told my friend and eternal bartending colleague, Mike who he was. A few minutes later Mike came back from talking to him and asked 'Is he retarded?' "No,' I said. 'He's a newspaper reporter."

I have a tremendous amount of respect for Bob. In his mid-40's with a wife and young son he found himself, like we all eventually do, unemployed. He picked up and moved himself from Maine to the North Shore to take this job as regional editor, leaving his family behind. He calls his wife every night and sneaks off to visit whenever he can. He doesn't want to. But he has to.

Bob is also a hard working so of a bitch. He is entirely Internet based so he has no office. His only employees are freelancers, most of whom do not have anywhere near the experience or writing ability that I do, and he is only allowed to spend so much money on us. He maintains all of the content on the site, some days working 16-18 hours just to keep it current. One Saturday he drove from Maine to Peabody to cover a trailer park fire at 11 p.m., sacrificing valuable time with his family.

I am an asshole. Bob routinely praises my ability as a reporter and my writing. He tells me how he wishes he could give me more work and he is constantly bouncing ideas off of me that he doesn't have time to get to. I don't care. I hate this job. I don't even want to do it anymore, but I don't have the heart to tell him. I just make up excuses, or avoid his phone calls. In reality, most of my excuses are legit. I do work 5 nights a week already and I have Av all day. My options are limited. I told him from the beginning that I needed to work from home on the phone, so I can't be dragging my 2-year-old to City Hall to interview the Mayor.

Still, there are some days where I wake up and say 'not today, Bob' and I turn down any and every story offered. My Pay Pal account is weak. Perhaps if it paid more than $30-$40 a story I would rethink. But, for now, that isn't happening.

One last thing on Bob. I mentioned earlier how infuriatingly long winded he is. Here is an example. He called me the other day and left me a voice mail. He wanted to check up on a story I was working on that involved me interviewing the fire chief. I hadn't heard back from the chief and Bob was angry. Not at me, but at the fact that, as always, he felt his tiny, unknown news site was getting disrespected in favor of the more well established print media. This, of course, is not the case. People hate us equally, the chief was simply busy, as one will find himself with such an important job as fire chief.

So Bob calls and I don't answer because I am tired, a little irritated at the baby and I know that if I answer and have to hear about how the chief was dodging me I was going to be short with him. So, I let it go to voice mail. It is never a good sign when more than three minutes goes by before your cell phone gives you a message notification. I listened to the voice mail and it was absurd. I got the story of his entire day. I got a speech about him getting no respect. He talked on my phone like he would if we were sitting across the table from one another at Starbucks. "Hey Dan, its Bob, wanted to talk to you about that fire budget story. I'm headed to a meeting, I'll be out around 2. Give me a call." That's a voice mail. To make it that much more annoying, he ends it with. "Ok, Dan. Call me back. Ok, bye now." WTF.

So I call him back and he proceeds to again recite the entire voice mail to me in person. I was on the phone for 20 minutes. I don't want to be on the phone with anyone for 20 minutes. Not Bob, not my mom, not Jesus, not Ken Griffey Jr. No one. Anyway, after that conversation mercifully ended I had to, unfortunately call him back. Knowing he was in the meeting I got a little bit of payback and left him an equally as long voice mail. About an hour later he calls me back. I don't answer. In his voice mail he makes it abundantly clear that he doesn't know why I called. Seriously, dude? He never even listened to it. So, I now have to call him AGAIN and recite my whole story. It is at this point that I snapped. I was done. Right then and there. I decided immediately that I'm going back to school. Grad school. I am going to become a master of something. Right now I need to become a master of convincing the government to give me more student loans.

Let's face it. I hate being a reporter and, at 27, I am too old to bar tend much longer. Too many 22-year-old co-workers living the college life. Not my bag. Stay tuned for updates. My plan is to go back to school and write a book about the process. 'Stay at home dad journalist goes back to school, chooses new career, struggles, triumphs etc...' Coming to Amazon.com in, like, five years. Or not. Probably not. I'm really going to school though. I might even buy a back pack. I will not be Bob in 18 years. Three hours from my family and leaving long winded voice mails because I am a lonely, sad, broke journalist.

Being a reporter again is the easy way out. It is the easy way to go when Av goes to school and I have to go back to work. My mind tells me to just suck it up, do it. You're good at it. You have a degree. It will be easy to find a hob. Not this time, lazy brain. This time I'm taking over. I will not be insane. I will not be malcontent.

If journalism is my last haven, consider me beyond savior.

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Episode 148:

Today we have a guest entry. Monica spent most of last week with the baby as she was on vacation. Thus, I have little material and she is ready to go. So, you get a break from my cynicism, hyperbole and random analogies today. Enjoy.

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I decided that I would like to contribute to the blog since home last week on April vacation. I was really looking forward to spending time with Av since I am perpetually plagued with working mom guilt and have often reduced myself into thinking I am fun weekend mom. The child is at an age that I would like to bottle and save. Her hilarity is unrelenting. She is infuriating, annoying, spastic and adorable…sometimes all within the same action. With the weather forecast being less than promising my initial plan of a road trip to a Peace Pagoda and the zoo, didn’t pan out, so I had to get creative.

The family decided on a rainy Tuesday to take advantage of the free admission for Salem residents at the Peabody Essex Museum. I had heard there was a hands-on nature room for kids, so off we went. The room was full of taxidermy creatures and optical illusions. The museum smell was combined with other children’s diapers and petrified animal skins. I opened one discovery drawer to find old dried snake skins, one with ‘guess that animal hide’, and even a tiny stiff star nosed mole, my animal arch nemesis. Despite being all equally disguising, none of these compared the wall of stuffed birds. One thing immediately jumped out to the whole family…a grouping of three eyed owls. What the hell. These do not exist in nature, there was no literature to match up and explain why they had three eyes, and they were just there. All perched and gawking out of their three eyes. It was almost as if the curator was fucking with the patrons. Like, ‘who’s paying attention to this absurd wall of taxidermy birds?’ Like an animal abnormalities version of “Where’s Waldo?” Needless to say, I took a picture and the concept has tortured me ever since. Google it, it isn’t possible.

We had also collected the inevitable wayward child. It happens almost every time we take a trip anywhere. A child who seemingly belongs to no one latches onto me and before long I find myself correcting a stranger child’s behavior, tying it’s shoe, zipping it’s coat, pushing it on the swing, reading it a story, all but wiping it’s ass and putting it to bed. This one we collected at the museum appeared to have a limited language capacity and not realize its own strength. It was a child sized Lenny from “Of Mice and Men.” The child first grunted and joined up for a game of blocks. Av was intrigued and intimidated and I was just annoyed. I looked around hoping it belonged to some super serious museum going mom who would swiftly remove her from the likes of us and we could all commence playing. No such luck. The child continued to play with a box of stuffed chameleons and Av was giving me the ‘wtf who is this?’ look and I had to shrug and play it cool. Eventually it wandered away and we came to the conclusion that it belonged to the over-weight woman behind us loudly talking on a cell phone who occasionally swore while yelling about her dysfunctional drug addicted son or nephew. Go fig.

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The slated day for the zoo was Friday. The forecast was again cold and shitty, like the rest of the week. I decided we would go to the movies. With Dan home “sick,” I was looking forward to a girls’ day at the movie theatre and mall. We arrived a little early for our 10:05 (am!) showing of the Easter film “Hop.” Av seemed so down with the concept. My brother’s fist movie was Ghost Dad staring Bill Cosby. Best. Mine was Flowers in the Attic. (My parents thought I wouldn’t remember/wouldn’t get it. They were wrong.) Anyway, I paid the $6 a ticket and fulfilled my promise for movie popcorn. It has been years since I have gone to the movies and paid myself…so I was kind of surprised by the kid’s popcorn at $5.50. I was not surprised however, by the clientele the movies contains on a weekday morning. Moms with unruly children, buying armfuls of candy and ice-junkies at 10:05 in the morning….good luck with that. Sad looking women with sweatsuits and perma-scowls.

I often feel conflicted about not being a stay-at-home mom…the weekday world intrigues me. We headed down to theatre number one, pricey popcorn and baby in tow, all the while Av is repeating, “don’t spill it mummy, don’t spill it…” I set her up, the chair folding up onto her tiny body, busted out Bert and Ernie and put them in each cup holder, strawed a juicebox and thought this was going to be awesome.


The lights dimmed and the most epic preview for a children’s movie commenced, sending the $5.50 popcorn flying and a clinging two year old onto my lap. “buh-byes! Buh -byes!” literal panic had set in. Did you know the fucking Smurfs were back? Like, 1980s can be both a noun and verb (yeah, I smurfed that) Smurfs are back. Terrifying. They are now in CGI animation. The preview consisted of a human (who WASN’T Brandon Frasier!) opening the box of Smurfs who screamed, then the human screamed, then the baby screamed, dug in her dirty unkempt nails, and demanded to be removed. Awful. In the lobby, the elderly usher and I tried to explain to her that the Smurfs were nice guys and the bunny movie was worth it. She wasn’t buying it. Smurf you, Smurfs. I liked the Snorks way better. Or Thundercats. Or She-Ra, or Jem. Assholes.

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Ok, I'm back. Didn't she do a nice job? I think so. We are back in to the full swing of things this week, for better or worse. The baby clearly has more fun with Monica, but she deals with me because she has to. My week 'off' was nice, even though I was sick for a bit (and I was). It all just reinforces the fact that life would be exponentially better if neither one of us worked. Crackheads have it all figured out. Well, except for the crack part.

Episode 147: Happy 'Annual Catholic Guilt Weekend!'

Here is an absolutely disgusting video of Av playing with her spaghetti. I would file this one under "shit every kid does and no parent likes." Saves her self with adorable laughter at the end.

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Easter has once again crept up on some random, nonsensical spring Sunday and the Easter Bunny excitement at our house has begun. She saw him at the mall, gave him a high five, but didn't get her picture taken. Now tells everyone that she thinks he is a "nice guy." She also understands the concept that he will come to our apartment, hide some eggs and leave her candy in a basket. What all of this has to do with Jesus I am not sure, but, hey, it is a hell of a lot better than getting slapped across the face with Catholic guilt because you ate a Snickers bar three days before Lent ended. Or because you ordered a Big Mac instead of a Fillet 'O Fish last Friday. Fact: The Catholic rule of not eating meat on Fridays during Lent was created by a Pope who wanted to stimulate the sagging fishing industry. OK, I'm done.

I never much liked Easter as a kid. Mostly because it is on a different day every year which means I usually didn't see it coming. It also usually signifies the end of April school vacation, which is a huge downer when your a kid trying to party. My mom would never let me give up things like broccoli or vacuuming the living room for lent. It has to be a 'sacrifice' she said. Here I was thinking that waking up before dawn to go to church every Sunday was my self-sacrificial duty.

Av is very excited about the Easter Bunny and that is fun. We will have a lovely day having brunch with family, eating candy, playing with toys and drinking screwdrivers before noon. After all, holidays are about families, day drinking and over indulgence, right? All things I know Jesus would enjoy if he were to drop in on our Easter celebration tomorrow. Jesus seems like he liked to party.

We will also be enjoying 'Resurrection Tacos' for dinner because Sunday is taco night on Roslyn Street and few things in life make me happier than tacos (really). I'll be dammed if I am going to give up my favorite night of the week because society says I have to eat ham.

One final point of clarification. I am not an atheist. I am also not stupid. Religion is man-made. All of them. Show me the book God wrote himself and I'll follow it. Until then, people should probably just try not to fuck one another over. Don't beat people up. Avoid murder, cyber bullying and racism and try not to cheat on your wife with any 17-year-old runaways and God should be happy. And if he isn't, his priorities are seriously out of whack. HAPPY EASTER!

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This song is about the end of the world. Seems somewhat appropriate in a sick way. Lyrically brilliant. Epic in length and emotional build up. I wish someone in art school would make an interpretive video and post it to Youtube. I don't know anyone in art school. No, Murder By Death is not a metal band.

Episode 146: In which I redisover baseball

It is no secret to anyone that I am a huge sports fan. I always have been. In my younger years when I had more free time to watch games and follow teams I could name you every player on every team in the 4 major sports, how they were doing in a particular year and their career history. As one grows older and starts working there is less time to pay attention. It doesn't help that my girlfriend is in no way a fan of sports, meaning that it is typically not on the TV like it used to be, unless it is a playoff game or she isn't home. I try to follow my favorite teams and I keep very close tabs on NASCAR and football, mostly because they are once a week sports and it is easy.

Throughout all of this I have had to make sacrifices. The biggest of which is the Boston Red Sox. Basketball is my favorite sport both to play and watch, followed by NASCAR and football. After that there is not a lot of time for baseball. It is on every night, the games are long and the season is even longer. I keep tabs on the Sox and little else. Part of the reason for this is because I have found the Red Sox organization and the majority of their fans have become absolutely insufferable in recent years. The organization does nothing but grandstand, release lame theme songs and cater to casual fans with a lot of money. If I have to hear 'Shipping out to Boston' or 'Sweet Caroline' one more time I am going to spoon out an eye. I know the team didn't write these songs, but they have embraced them and crammed them down our throats. Worse, still, is the ownership group represents everything I hate about American democracy. Billionaires with a billion dollar product selling it to the public for twice as much as it is worth because they can. Slap two socks on a coffee mug or a sweatshirt and it is $30 more expensive. Kind of like how a 6-pack of beer is $16.95 but a 36-pack of water is $4.99. America: screwing everyone but the rich every day- because it is your fault your parents didn't birth you in to money so you could start your own business in your 20's.

Red Sox fans are even worse. The true, hardcore fan has been all but replaced by wealthy, band wagoners known around these parts as 'Pink Hats.' They know little about the sport, but it is trendy to go to the games and think the players are cute. On the male side, it is just as trendy to go, get drunk and post pictures of yourself in front of Pesky Pole on Facebook, not actually having any idea that Johnny Pesky is not just some random old man who hangs out at the games. Worse yet are the yuppie Metro-Boston families who use Fenway Park as a status symbol so their shitty, spoiled kids can go back to school with all of their merch and brag to their friends about how their dad paid for them to get to run out on the field before the game. Meanwhile most of the real fans are left scrounging for any ticket under $50 so they can go to one game a year and pay $8 for a beer. All set.

This season, though, has been different. Maybe it is because the Sox loaded up their team, or maybe it is because there have been a lot of day games, but I have found myself watching them again. Today there was a 3:30 start in Oakland and I put the game on while Av and I were playing. I know she has watched a few games with Monica's father when she is over there, but I didn't really know she understood it. Today she must have sat on the couch with me, or played in the general vicinity of the couch for at least an hour and a half watching the game- with excitement. She understands more of it than a 2-year-old should, and she absolutely loves it. For 15 minutes during about the 6th inning today she ran around the house "like a baseball" after watching Jed Lowrie round the bases after a home run.

While all of this was going on I dug up a few relics from the closet. A Wally the Green Monster doll and a giant, stuffed baseball with arms, legs, a face and a Red Sox hat that for some reason I still have in a box from my youth. She calls the latter "Baseball Man" and is currently spooning him in her crib because she insisted on bringing him to bed.

All of this has made me stop and think about baseball. Yes, it can be boring. Yes the Red Sox are run by evil, money-grubbing robots. But the fact is, at least around here, that it brings people together. Generations of families can share in their love of one thing. Something about Av loving a nice, relaxing game of baseball in the afternoon hit my soft spot. I got to explain things to her and remember the first time I went to Fenway Park with my dad. Now I can't wait to bring her. Maybe I am just longing for those long summer nights drinking beer and watching the game, windows open, grill fired up. We're close, folks. Almost there.

Forgive me for the lameness of today's post. I feel sentimental. Here is a collection of kick-ass music to assure you that I have not completely fallen off the deep end.

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Episode 145: Adventures in manliness

I do not consider myself a handy person in any way. I try, sometimes hard, to make it look like I am, but the truth is I am about as useless as a caveman who has traveled through time only to find himself employed as a computer tech support guy.

My knowledge of car repair is minimal. I can replace a brake light, fill some fluids, jump a battery and check my oil. If I am really motivated and I have all of the right tools I can change a tire, but usually I opt to call AAA or drive to the nearest service station. That's about it. Around the house I can screw things in or maybe assemble something from Target, but my services are limited. I do have experience caulking, painting and fixing garbage disposals, but in the handyman world that is equivalent to an accountant being able to change the batteries in an calculator or a barber changing the blade on his razor. Have we had enough analogies for the day? Good.

My biggest regret in life, other than wasting 4 years and $50 grand on college when I could have just learned a trade and got a city job, is being a shitheads from the ages of 8-16, as most kids are, and refusing to let my dad teach me how to fix things around the house or take care of my own car. He tried, I just wasn't interested, and he was too nice a guy to make me do it anyway. Damn.

Today I was asked to clean the mold and soap scum from our apartment. As I have mentioned, our apartment sucks. The landlord lives in Ireland, or California, or maybe Scotland- I literally don't know at this point. Shit brakes all the time and there is still scum from the last three tenants in the deepest of corners. The most disgusting of which is the years of dog hair matted in to the front hallway stairs. I have tried everything short of traveling through time to shoot the dog's mother (time travel reference #2) to get it out. Nothing works. I would love to just replace the carpet, but if I had the money to lay carpet on a stairway I'd have the money to not live here, so it stays. Have I mentioned that I hate dog people?

Anyway, since I was already asked to clean the mold, and Av was with Monica's parents at the aquarium today (LUCKY!), I figured I'd clean the whole house. Despite my general idiocy when it comes to skill crafts, I am an excellent cleaner. If it weren't for my inevitable onset of laziness I feel like I could run with those Spanish ladies in the yellow Ford Focus who clean houses for hire.

I proceeded to dominate the kitchen, living room and both hallways, even picking out the 4-year-old (at least) dog hair from the stairs with my own latex-glove clad hands, thinking the entire time "damn, it smells like I have a condom on my hand." The mold removal? Well, the mold removal was a different story. Let me first start by saying that the mold is gone. The bathroom is immaculate and the soap scum is a distant memory. It was not an easy road, though.

My method of cleaning was a scum/ mold removal product called "Mean Green." The label simply has two evil, mean looking eyes staring at you. I tried to find a picture, but a Google search for 'Mean Green' gives you, in order, a green computer drawing of a falcon, some weed and a kid dressed in combat gear. I am sure if I kept going or changed my search a bit I could find it, but that hearkens back to the whole 'laziness' thing, probably due, in part, to my relationship with the item featured in the second Google search result.

Anyway, the Mean Green worked fantastically on the bathtub, tile and floor, leaving me with only a few spots on the ceiling to tend to. This is where things went wrong. The product is used in a spray bottle, so getting it on the ceiling was tough. I put on a pair of Maui Jim Sport sunglasses (won in a sales contest at the now defunct Athlete's Corner, which my resume says I was once an assistant manager at, thank you very much) and my favorite t-shirt, also won in a sales contest at the same store,( this time for selling Mizzuno running shoes. I rule), and I started to spray.

Needless to say, my favorite shirt is now blue with a million pink spots all over the sides, shoulders and back, and I have probably shaved a few days off of my life with the whole bleach ingestion thing.

*Side note. Bleach issues always make me think of this kid I went to high school with named Chris. The story is tragic. Older brother makes younger brother drink bleach as a funny trick when both are too young to know any better. Younger brother becomes retarded. But Chris wasn't really retarded, he was just really, really, really sllllllllloooooowwwwwww. Nicest kid you will ever meet in you entire life. Life's aspiration to work at Price Chopper (Western Mass represent!) and save $1,000. As of three years ago, which was the last time I was at the Pittsfield Price Chopper, he still worked there. I hope his bank account reflects that. In 11th grade he had a teacher's aid who looked exactly like a character from the TV show 'Dinosaurs.'
I want to make it absolutely clear, I am not making fun of Chris. He was a great kid who got a bad deal in life and made the best of it, whether he is aware of it or not. From my end, I have been terrified of bleach for 15 years because of it.

For all of the bleach I ingested I still feel fine, aside from a weird taste in my mouth, so it is probably good. What wasn't fine was my bathroom walls, which looked like someone spilled white paint all over them from above. See, my bathroom walls are the same random peach color as the rest of my place, except for where the random peach color isn't, which is painted a sort of whitish pink color. In some rooms there are two-tone walls. Tough deal. Anyway, I had no idea how to prevent the Mean Green from dripping down the walls, so it was just a series of streaks. Luckily for me, I have, as most apartments do, a random paint closet that features just the right shade of peach. I was too lazy, however, to get a roller from the store, so I just used a brush and spot-painted it. It looks ok, not great, but it is better than it was before. Plus, it isn't my house, so who cares?

Yeah. I don't do much.

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Episode 144:

This is a slow loris. It is apparently some kind of monkey squirrel. Doesn't move too quickly, hence the name. He has predictably googly eyes and dangerous looking claws. I have somehow managed to go 27 years without knowing he existed. A quick, lazy google search informed me that people keep these guys as pets. There are also a variety of Youtube videos with titles like "Slow Loris with an umbrella," "Slow Loris being tickled" and "Slow Loris waking up from anesthesia." I did not watch any of them.


This is a slender loris. The slow loris' more fit "cousin." Apparently this particular species of monkey squirrel was scientifically classified by a 5-year-old. He appears to be more of a dick.

For some bizarre reason, there are no videos of either one of these guys eating a cricket in the wild currently available on the Internet. There is, however, a clip of just that in an episode of Zaboomafo titled "Fast and Slow." Av saw this today and I watched her little brain comprehend the food chain for the first time. Honestly, it was kind of weird.

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Episode 143:

This is Av in a frog raincoat encountering an inflated Easter Bunny at Acapulco's Mexican Restaurant. Mexican people love Jesus. I'm not sure why. But they do.

Yesterday Av pronounced the word 'restaurant' as 'retihonk.' Which is a very strange interpretation and pronunciation of the word. She also has a very difficult time pronouncing Little Cat's name. She calls her "wedidididi cat." This makes no sense. She can say the word 'little.' "That's the little one." "Big rhino, little rhino" but if you ask her to say "Little Cat" she can't do it.

The language of a 2-year-old can be very difficult to follow at times. She can say things like 'yellow' and 'purple' perfectly. She knows her animals, rhinos, hippos, crocodiles, snakes, giraffes and the like, but she can't quite get elephant right. Elephants are 'akidonks.' She also can't say banana, choosing instead to call them 'beenas.'

I suppose none of this is strange, I just can't get a grasp on why she can say some things and not say other things that are similar/ easier. I am sure some pretentious education or psychology major has some sort of scientific or developmental answer for me, but I don't want to hear any of that. Life is too short to give a shit about science.

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I have been trying to come up with some sore of revenge plan regarding the downstairs neighbors this week. Now that all the snow is gone all of the disgusting crap that their stupid dog left all over the sidewalk is visible again. Just walking out the door to the car is like a minefield. They are so lazy. So, so lazy. I need to get them back. It is absurd at this point. I need to get them back and I need to do it with poop. No exceptions.

I have two cats and a baby. Chances are there is pretty much poop somewhere all the time in my house. Controlled poop, of course. Not just left on the sidewalk for me to step in and mash in to the car floor mats. So I am thinking to setting them up. Maybe putting poop in their mail box. Or smearing it on the handles of their car doors. Mailbox would be sneaker.

Unrelated story. I once had a disputed medical bill I had to pay Beverly Hospital. I lost the dispute so I placed the envelope in the cat box for a few hours, just until it got a cat skid mark on it. Then I mailed it to them. Enjoy your cat poop $90. I also use poop as identity theft protection. Whenever I have a large stack of personal info I have to throw out I will layer it in bags of cat poop and baby diapers. Genius.

Anyway, the point is that there needs to be some poop revenge going on soon. Just because you are stoned and lazy all day doesn't mean you shouldn't clean up after your shitty dog. I know it is them, too. It has to be. There is too much of it to just be random dogs walking past the house. That's it. Settled. Next time the baby poops it is going out of the diaper in to a Ziplock bag. Then, I am going to place that Ziplock bag in a manila envelope and mail it to them. It will be worth the postage. Is that illegal? Probably.

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