Episode 167: Potty training SUCKS and the mystery of the dead frog

Since becoming a father there have been certain landmark events that I have been anticipating, expecting and in some cases, dreading. The terrible-twos, for example, was something I felt like I was going to be ready for. But it seems that the terrible-twos is just a myth. In reality, it is the terrible-threes that come up and bite you in the ass. Two-year-olds are still sweet and naive, but when they are three they are smart enough to manipulate you, they can communicate much better and it is a lot harder to pull a fast one on them. Also, they still think the universe revolves around them so the second things don't go their way they freak out. Not much fun some days.

Worse than the occasional attitude and melt down, though, is potty training. I knew potty training wasn't going to be fun but, shit, it is worse than I ever expected. We have been well in to it for 3-4 months now, so it is getting a lot better, but for a while there I was contemplating the pros and cons of sending her to kindergarten in diapers. There was a period of time in the first few weeks where I was covered in some sort of fecal matter at least once every single day. Some days you have to scrub pee out of the carpet. Other days there are screaming, cryinf fits on the bathroom floor. I've had to plunge dozens of baby wipes out of the toilet and fill countless grocery bags with poop-covered paper towels, underwear, pull up diapers and clothing. The only positive to that is if you don't have a paper shredder you can hide all of your personal documents inside a bag of baby shit and no one will pick them out of the trash and steal your identity.

Since we have started the potty training we have received all sorts of advice from 'don't force it' to 'stick her in the car seat with no underwear on.' We came in somewhere in the middle. We got pull ups and Thomas the Tank Engine underwear, bribed her with gifts and candy and eventually she has gotten better about using the toilet. The thinking behind the underwear was that she would not want to pee on Thomas' face. That was a bit ambitious, as she didn't really seem to care at first. The best is when she just comes up and says "Daddy, I just peed in my Thomas underwear." Well, at least you owned up to it.

I think the worst part about it at this point, now that she is pretty consistent about going, is that a three-year-old going to the bathroom is not like an adult or a teenager going to the bathroom. If you are eating dinner or doing some work or cleaning up you can't just let her go alone. At first we would be reading book after book after book on the toilet. It has gotten a bit better in that sense, she can pull down her pants and go by herself, but you still have to drop what you are doing and wipe her ass and make sure she washes her hands when she is done. You have to examine the poop and pretend it is so great. Empty the pee out of the musical princess potty in to the regular toilet and constantly try and stop her from sticking her finger in her ass. It is just a lot of time spent in the bathroom with other people's excretion. That is what it comes down to.

Also, I have found that I no longer get any privacy when I have to go to the bathroom, either. She is always busting in like the Kool-Aid man, telling me that it stinks in there or making references to my 'dinky.' Before you have kids you think about a lot of things. One of them is not what term you will be referring to genitals as during potty training. We have come up with 'dinky' and 'crotch.' Sweet.

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About six months ago Monica came home with a few of those tiny aquarium frogs they sell for a few dollars at Pet Smart. Thinking they would live a week or two she got a cheap tank and gave them to Av as pets. Well, all this time later, they are remarkably still alive. Or at least one of them is anyway. But the second one did not die of natural causes or weird frog tank disease. The details of its death are, in fact, shrouded in mystery.

A few weeks ago I was doing some picking up around Av's train table and glanced over at what I thought was a little plastic frog. Av has a lot of those toxic Dollar Tree plastic creatures. Lizards, farm animals, dinosaurs, etc... but the more I thought about it, the more I started to question if I had ever seen a frog in any of those bags. I took a closer look and realized, to my horror, that it appeared to be a petrified aquarium frog. Immediately, I jumped to the conclusion that it must have been Little Cat. That stupid dickhead probably got the top of the tank open and caught one. But upon further inspection- I picked it up with tweezers and examined the corpse in the bathroom like I was on CSI or something- there were no signs of trauma. No gashes, tooth marks, missing limbs. It was, in fact, a perfect, in tact frog corpse.

My next thought was that it must have been Av. Maybe she tried to catch one and took it out and the poor little guy just died. But Av is a squawker. She rats on everyone for everything, including herself. She would have said something about it at some point. Plus, I was afraid to ask her because I did not want to draw attention to the dead frog and have to have that conversation with her, either.

My only other theory is that the guy jumped out of the tank at a time when one off us had the lid off and was refilling the water. He jumped out, found himself lost and disoriented and made it as far as that corner of the living room before he finally died. One thing is for sure, he was there for a while. Which makes it even more strange that Av didn't notice him.

One final theory is that one of the snot-nosed kids from Av's birthday party did it. Maybe the one that threw up all over our living room carpet. I hate kids.

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Saw the Black Keys at the Garden a few weeks back. Disappointing set list and a whole lot of new fans who have never heard the real Black Keys, but otherwise they brought the freakin' house down. Very pleasantly surprised at how good they sounded in an arena. Dan Auerbach is still the man. These are arguably the best two songs of the night. Followed by some Gary Clark Jr. just because.

Episode 166: Man, when you threw that bag of chips at her you just, just, you just crossed the line, man

Thought I'd share a work story today, just because. I have a few posts in the works this week so, time willing, you will have some new material to enjoy.

When you see three dudes walk in to a bar dressed in sombreros, ponchos and fake mustaches a half hour before last call on a cold night in February as a bartender it is only natural to look at them and wonder which one you will be kicking out first, if any of the three are still sober enough to serve at all. I was presented with this exact scenario on Saturday night. The answer is "the fat one in the middle."

Now, I wouldn't say that I like to throw people out. Usually if I do it means they have done something to piss me off, but a lot of times I look at it as an opportunity to let off a little steam and usually see something hilarious ensue. People who get kicked out of bars rarely take it well, but where I work the anger never gets physical. Most of the time people just swear at you and say funny drunken things. We have one particular neighborhood crackhead who is permanently banned from the premises. I like seeing him, because that always results in a hilarious crackhead confrontation. Last time he took a header down the front stairs. Fun fact: For the first two years I worked there I thought he was a woman. Until one night he told me to "suck his dick" and I said "Wait, are you a dude?" And then he swore at me and called me all sorts of names, accusing me of wanting to have sex with him and this and that as I laughed him out the door.

Depending on my mood and the type of shift I am having, adversity such as seeing sombrero kids stumble in can be dealt with in a variety of ways. Bad mood nights I am apt to just go over there with no intention of entertaining their antics, rush them to the point and most likely determine that they are shitfaced and tell them I am not serving them. Other days I will engage them a little bit, give them the benefit of the doubt and maybe end up getting them a beer if they seem like they won't cause trouble.

Now- I should say that I do this with most guests, sombreros or no sombreros. I guess I should probably not think of it this way, but I do. I see someone come in and immediately jump to conclusions about what type of person they are and what type of service they are going to get from me- and usually I am right on. Quickest way to piss me off? Answer the question "Hi, how are you tonight?" with "Let me get a menu," or "What kind of beer do you have?" Last time I checked, neither one of those are greetings. I am not a robot, nor am I your servant. I do not like to be spoken to like an asshole.

Anyway, on this particular day, we had been having a few bad money nights in a row and we were starting to get a late-night push that we hadn't experienced for a while. So, when the other bartender, Rachael, and I saw the Three Amigos come in we were ready to at least entertain them and see if there was some way we could take some of their money. I had had a bit of an angry episode earlier in the evening due to an incident involving a trash-talking coworker, so I think Rachael was keeping the health and safety of others in mind when she volunteered to go wait on the three poncho hombres. By that point in the night I was no longer pissed off, but it is always nice to play it safe when dealing with my fragile psyche. This is one of the large reasons why Rachael and I are a successful team- personality evaluation and an understanding of one another's emotional limits.

So, she headed over and talked to them and I kind of just lingered behind to make sure that they didn't try and anything stupid, as many drunk men tend to do when dealing with a woman bartender. In retrospect, serving the three "Mexican" kids was probably not the best idea but, like I said, we needed money and they ordered a few of our most expensive beers and said they wanted to try and order some food before our kitchen closed. I went over and joked around with them a little bit and as it turns out they had been asked to leave another bar down the street. Good move not mentioning that until after we gave you beer. They were probably on the cusp of 'do not serve' territory, but no one was slurring or getting loud and they were respectful, so I let it slide.

We actually had a lot of people come in from that other bar down the street around that time. One woman described the scene as being a bunch of "wide-assed college sluts assuming the position on the dance floor." I never really understood the appeal in that. Even when I was 21-22 I never really enjoyed the whole 'club' scene. I mean, once in a while there would be some good looking girls there, but most of them are just rubbing up all over each other while their muscle head dude friends pumped their fists and let the black lights take them to drunk land. But- I digress.

At this point, I have three drunk kids dressed as Mexicans, eating $60 worth of food sitting at the bar and they are cracking me up. Specifically, the fat guy in the middle was giving me a good laugh because his fake Mexican mustache kept falling off and he kept trying to"sneak" Cheetos from his pocket. Now, there is absolutely no rule against eating Cheetos at the bar. I can't think of very many situations where I would see someone whip out a bag of Cheetos and not be ok with it. "Ok, buddy, no orange fingers at the bar. Company policy."

Still, guy was looking around and fishing Cheetos out of his pocket like Napoleon Dynamite eating tater tots in class. A few minutes later I was doing something else and looked over to see that fat sombrero kid had dozed off. This is a no-no. Sleeping at a bar is one of the quickest ways to get tossed out, and I have a pretty quick hook, especially of I don't know you.

We do have one guy I'll tell you about real quick, we call him 'Sleepy Pete.' Sleepy Pete is your average bar regular. He usually hits somewhere else first and comes in to our place late night. He is old, fat and super tall- like, 6'7. He is loud, animated and most likely a huge liar. He always has some story about fighting off thugs or picking up hot blondes or punching out transvestites. The female employees hate him because he usually makes offensive comments. You know, "do the curtains match the rug" type stuff. He also tends to doze off at the bar. Hence the name. Now, he usually gets sort of a pass because I know who he is and he very rarely causes trouble. Still, if I see him sleeping, I wake him up. And I'm not nice about it. I throw shit at him, spray him with water, hit the bar with a broom handle- whatever it takes. Many a night it has become a game among other patrons to try and wake him up. Sleepy Pete.

I did not know the sleepy Mexican kid, though, so I went over to his friend and said, very nicely, "Listen man, you gotta wake your buddy up or I'm gonna have to toss him. I can't have him sleeping here, you know?"

The friend understood and apologized, saying "he had a few too many shots tonight, I think." So, I took his beer and replaced it with a water. I told Rachael he was cut off and went about my business. Now, fat, sleepy kid didn't notice right away because he was dazed, drunk and sleepy, but a few minutes later I heard him ask Rachael something like "Wait- so I can't have any beer at all?" I came over and was going to explain to him what the deal was, but before I even could his buddy told him he got cut off. His response was probably funnier if you actually saw how drunk and in space he was, but I'll describe it anyway.

First, you have to understand how slow this guy was moving. He was at the end of the line drunk. The final stage before sleep or, if he was with a woman, disappointing sex- then sleep. Like, every movement was deliberate and slow because he literally had no energy left. He was by far the most drunk of the three kids. Think of your drunk uncle- everyone has one- on Christmas eve after ripping shots for three and a half hours telling some story about why he got fired from the post office or how the electric company screwed over his father 45 years ago. Fading in and out of the conversation, looking at his hands and spacing out. That was this kid.

So, he gets the bad news from his friend, looks up at Rachael and myself who are both in front of him, slowly slurs something along the lines of "Well, fuck you. See if I ever come back here again," reaches in to his pocket, fumbles around for a few seconds, pulls out a three-quarters full bag of Cheetos- one of the 99 cent big grabs- and slowly lobs it in Rachel's direction. Now, when I think back I remember the bag as if it was traveling in slow motion because it seems like it took 45 seconds to get to her, but it had to be pretty quick because she never even raised her arms. She just kind of looked down as it softly bounced off of her chest and landed on the ground. It made the weakest bag crinkle sound when it hit her too. It was like when you get really upset and storm out of a room, but when you try to slam the door it is spring loaded and doesn't close. I think only three Cheetos fell out of the bag.

After the toss he got caught up in his chair and fumbled around while he looked for his coat. I probably would have burst out laughing if his friends weren't immediately apologetic and afraid I was going to toss all of them. In reality, I wasn't even going to throw him out at the moment. I was just going to laugh at him a little bit. I think Rachael was a little pissed at first, because she did tell him she should "punch him in the face" but even then, she was laughing a little bit, too.

What ensued from there was, in my mind, some of the most hysterical drunk friend lecturing that I have ever heard. At first, the fat kid tried to prove a point and leave. He walked outside like three or four times an came back in, probably afraid that I was going to yell at him. I wasn't. At this point, I just needed to make sure that he wasn't about to drive a car or that he wasn't going to take a header in to the water across the street. His pals told me there was another group of them at another bar and he was probably going to meet them. Clearly, he was not allowed in to that bar because he came back. I eventually told him he could stay, he just couldn't drink, and he settled back in. At this point, his friends started to lecture him on his behavior. Among the highlights"

"Dude, you have to apologize to them, that was just, I dunno, man, we're all just trying to have fun and you have to go throwing chips around."

"Man, when you threw that bag of chips at her you just, just, you just crossed the line, man."

"Listen, man, if you don't apologize, I don't, I don't think we can chill next Friday."

"Who do you think has to clean that up? Hey, man, he'll clean it. Do you have a broom? Dude, he's gonna get you a broom, just clean it up." (Again, three Cheetos hit the floor. Not exactly a mess.)

"It's just disrespectful, dude. You don't throw stuff at people, especially women."

"Don't let it end like this, man. We've had a good night. But you had to throw those chips."

And so on. Eventually, they convinced him and he actually apologized to both of us, individually. He blamed it on Tequila and Dr. McGillicuddy which, if you think about it, is actually a pretty good excuse.

Now, I admit, if he had been in that bar three hours earlier when I was pissed off, none of this would have gone so smoothly. But at that point I was in a good mood, and it didn't hurt that his friends were cool. Maybe that story doesn't translate to this medium, or maybe you just had to be there. But I kind of can't stop laughing every time I see those Cheetos hit Rachael's chest in my head. I never want to forget that.

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Episode 165: Nothing happens outside my window. Except for silent racism and elitist spying.

We have lived in the suburbs for about six months now, and I am still undecided as to how I feel about the whole situation. As a kid I grew up in a middle class, middle of nowhere town that featured a ghetto, regular houses and little else. When I moved out to the coast after high school, we lived in a place with similar demographics, renting apartments on the outskirts of the ghetto for years. Now we have moved to the 'modest' part of an affluent suburb, which is still nicer than any other neighborhood I have ever lived in, minus the short time I rented a beach side house with a few of my friends after college. Even then, that neighborhood had a good amount of apartments and small housing complexes.

Where we are living now can best be described as a Dennis the Menace neighborhood. Big houses, big families, a lot of neighborly waiving, kids playing in their yards behind fences, people walking their dogs and landscapers blocking the roads. Sounds nice, right? Ehhhhh, I'm not so sure.

Let's look at the differences between living in the sort of ghetto and living in the legit suburbs.

Neighbors: In the ghetto, our neighbors were families, mostly ethnic, some college kids, a few single people and a rooming house down the street. This meant there was a variety of experiences on a daily basis. It was loud. Really loud. There were lots of parties. College parties, ethnic celebrations. There were bagpipes and fireworks and, every once in a while, something that could be gunshots. There were a lot of domestic disturbances, kids playing in the streets and stray animals. One time, we heard passionate sex coming from a Honda Civic outside of our bedroom window. For hours. On Christmas. My favorite activity was to sit in front of my window and just watch the weirdos walking back and forth down the street.

In the suburbs, neighbors are friendly. Too friendly. Accusingly friendly, even. In the ghetto, aside from the people downstairs and the girl across the street who I work with, I never spoke to anyone. I didn't know most people's names. Every once in a while I would talk about the weather with the old man who stole our recycling every Thursday, but that was it. In the new place I am forced to talk to someone every single time I go outside. There is Kim and Tom next door or Bobby across the street or super fit cop man a few houses down, or Bob the retired guy behind us. Someone ALWAYS has something to say. And it is never just 'Hello'. Remember the clan of 15 Portuguese Hell Freaks that lived upstairs from us when we first moved in? They have been replaced by a small yuppie, Christian, home school family. They are very nice and very quiet, but they talk to me. A lot. I'm sorry, I don't want to talk to you. Leave me alone.

The day that I moved in across the street Bobby asked me 1,000 questions about myself. I know it was because he wanted to do a background check. Every single person in this neighborhood is white. There are some Hasidic Jews across the street, but that is about all the culture that we get. Sitting in the window and people watching is boring. Every once in a while I'll see a MILF walking a dog, but even that is rare. Usually it is just some professional white guy walking to the train station with a briefcase or one of the old people on the street waiting for a ride. Great. Reeeeal interesting.

This is also one of those neighborhoods where people knock on your door and try to sell you Girl Scout Cookies and magazine drives. Kim and one of her suburban soccer playing, Girl Scout daughters came over yesterday to deliver the boxes that I awkwardly ordered a few months back. How do you say no? "Hi, neighbor, do you want to buy some cookies?" "No, next door neighbor that I see every day, I don't. I'll pass. I'll disappoint your Old Navy kid and make sure you go home and tell Tom how much of a dick I am." No. You have to buy the damn cookies. So, I bought the damn cookies and they got delivered yesterday. I opened the door and realized that the front hallway was covered in laundry and shoes and old mail. Great. Now the community newsletter will mention our messy hallway. And let's not forget how awkward and socially inept I am. I am not good at making friendly neighbor conversation so we just look at each other in awkward silence until one of us says something about the weather. About the only good thing that came of it was that I was able to learn their last name so I could Facebook stalk them. Yes, I LOVE to Facebook stalk. Make your pages private, people, because I WILL find out what TV shows you like and what music you think is awesome. Sometimes I go on epic Facebook journeys that take me from page to page to page until I am looking at Jane Smith from Nowhere, Arkansas who works at Dr. Jones dental as a receptionist and loves to watch Hell's Kitchen and listen to contemporary Christian music. Wait- I think that lady may have just moved upstairs. Looks like I need to find out her last name. I digress.

Let's talk about the police. Police activity in the ghetto is high. Cruisers drive down the street hourly. They patrol, they scope out, they keep watch. About twice a day they are called somewhere for some reason. Domestics, street fights, illegal fireworks, warrants etc... On fun days, detectives show up and raid houses or arrest serial home invaders. This may seem frightening to some, but the way I look at it is these people live in my neighborhood, they are not going to rob anyone in my neighborhood. You don't break in to your neighbor's house, you drive to the rich part of town and steal TV's and diamond rings from people who don't recognize you. The best part about living in a high crime area is that the police largely leave people like you and I alone. They aren't concerned with me unless I do something to warrant them showing up at my house, or forget to move my car on street cleaning day.

In the suburbs police have absolutely nothing better to do than try to bust people driving through town for trivial, irrelevant traffic violations. I have documented my experiences well and they have not gotten any better. I still get tailed home twice a week. I still see endless amounts of poor souls pulled over all over town, probably just trying to get to work and not realizing that the speed limit on every street is negative four miles per hour. But- don't worry, no matter how fast you were going they will just say it was over 45 mph so they can jack up your ticket another $200. Oh, and don't appeal because no one wants to hear it.

This is one of those communities where people go on vacation and ask the police to 'watch their houses' while they are gone. You know, just in case a black person might wander by or a teenager decides to cut through their yard while he is skipping school. You know, important stuff. Gotta have a police presence. Your tax dollars at work, folks. Police hang out at the Dunkin Donuts inside Stop and Shop and gossip about town issues. About once every seven years something happens that gives the department a few days of notoriety. It is usually something that happens in other communities every day. Like one of their ball-busting traffic stops turns up 25 guns and a kilo of cocaine in the trunk or somebody gets caught diddling his balls at the library. Then they go on the news and justify pulling every third person over because, hey, that one guy had guns and coke in his trunk that one time. Thus, we pull over everyone who runs a yellow light. GOTTA KEEP THE OLD PEOPLE SAFE, FOLKS!

I think there was a murder-suicide a few years ago. That doesn't count. That is a completely unpreventable and unsolvable crime. No one has ever pulled someone over, or checked a neighbor's house and said "Phew, good thing I did that. That guy was about to go home, shoot his wife and then blow his brains out." Case closed on that one.

Honestly, when I lived in the ghetto I never worried about much. But now that I am in the suburbs, I keep a crowbar under my bed. This is where people go to break in to houses. Don't break in to mine. I have a plan. And it involves you not leaving. I've always wanted to make a citizen's arrest. I will crowbar you, put a knee in your neck and yell "THIS IS A CITIZEN'S ARREST" Then I will call super fit Robo Cop from down the street off of his routine traffic stop and he will read in his police manual what to do when arresting someone for something not traffic related and take your bloody head to jail.

Next, utility vehicles. In the ghetto, it was not uncommon to see one or many of the following work trucks on our street. Verizon, Comcast, Dish Network, Roto Rooter, appliance repair, exterminators and delivery vehicles. Also, about three days a week, every week, someone had a UHaul moving in or out of an apartment somewhere. In the suburbs this is an area of great improvement. Here, the majority of street blocking vehicles are landscapers which, while loud, are largely harmless and always leave the house smelling like fresh cut grass. If a utility guy comes, he typically parks in someone's driveway or out of the way. Also, I am pretty sure everyone on our street has a cleaning person but us. Either that or we have a large population of old Spanish women selling vacuum cleaners door to door.

Finally, there is cost of living. Yes, apartments in the ghetto are similar in cost and not nearly as nice. However, utility costs in the suburbs are ABSURD. Like 40-50 percent higher. Even stupid shit like on street parking passes. In the ghetto they were free. In the suburbs they are $30 and you have to give the police the registration number of, not just your car, but that of every single car in your household as well as anyone else who uses the driveway to prove to them that you really "need" the parking pass. I actually risk a ticket by parking on the street just because I don't want any of those bastards knowing that much information about me. And why is it
$30? That makes no sense. It should not cost money to park in front of your own house. For some reason, everything in this town costs money. I am half expecting to get a bill next month charging me for my family's air consumption.

Don't get me wrong, there are some nice things about living on this street. It is pretty quiet, my apartment is very nice, we have a very friendly mailman. We are around the corner from the ocean and, if the neighbors cooperate, I don't have to park on the street. I have a grill and a bird feeder, both things that I have always wanted. I just think I am one of those people that needs to live in a secluded area with a big yard and lots of woods. And no neighbors. I REALLY don't like having neighbors. Like, at all.

What this all comes down to is me needing about $2 million. I won't even quit my job. Just enough to buy a modest house- I don't even need to build one, just buy one that is secluded. Use the rest to go back to school, put my kid through school and teach myself how to restore muscle cars. There are plenty of billionaires out there that spend their money on garbage. You won't miss $2 million. Don't buy a gold-plated lion statue this week. Tell your girlfriend that you can't afford a new Mercedes for her and your wife this year. She'll understand. I'll even work for you. Shit, I'll get your name tattooed on the back of my neck like an advertisement. Just, please, make it so I don't have to talk to my neighbors anymore. Is that too much to ask? I don't think so. I mean, I don't have cancer. My house didn't burn down. But I do have a job. And a college degree. And I pay taxes and I'm not on welfare. At some point someone should be rewarded for living life the right way and getting screwed out of an honest living by society.

How was that? Convincing?

Stalker update

Rock teeth is still stalking me. He texts me several times a week and frequently shows up at work to 'check in' with me even though he never orders anything. In speaking to others, it appears that he does this to other people as well and is known around town for loitering in bars. Loitering. That's the word I'm going to use to kick him out next time I see him. It is getting to the point where I might have to murder him before he murders me. I'll probably get away with it. I'll just have to obey all traffic laws on the way to bury his body.

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