Anyway, the point is that with smart phones and iPads and all of that other crap Steve Jobs was planning to overtake the world with it seems like you could get 40 percent off a four slice toaster on Amazon while you were waiting in line at Bed Bath and Beyond for the $20 throw pillows- or whatever the Hell it is people wrestle each other for in Black Friday lines. It would be the ultimate Christmas shopping modern technology multitask event! But, if the Internet wants its own special door buster deals day the Internet can have it. Because the Internet can do whatever it wants. Case and point: This.
Or this.
Or this.
And, if you fast forward to 2:12 of this episode of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood you can watch about three straight minutes of Fred Rogers struggling with a cat. Do it, television friend. Trust me, it's totally worth it.
This discovery was made as I was attempting to educate Avelyn on exactly how unnecessarily convenient modern technology has made her life. These days when some little puke wants to watch his or her favorite TV show they can just pester mom and dad until they find it on Youtube or log in to their depressing, little-used, child-centric Netflix account to play it instantly. When I was a kid I had to wait until the show came on at its scheduled time, and if I wanted to watch TV right then I was stuck with the nightly news, or David the Gnome, or Northern Exposure. (That's how I always knew I was up really late, when I would sneak downstairs and my mom would be watching Northern Exposure. I think it came on at 10.)
One day, a little bit annoyed and bitter after a morning full of arguing with Avelyn over watching TV on my computer, I decided I would teach her a lesson of what it was like when I was a boy. Way back in the grainy, discolored late 80's and early 90's when all we had were Fred Rogers and Sesame Street and we had to walk to school up hill both ways and pick berries on the side of the road and sell them for the five cents it took to buy dinner at the local market and, well, you know the rest. You know what? We were damn happy with that, too.
So as she was begging me to On Demand an episode of 'Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood,' which is an absolutely unwatchable spinoff starring a totally inaccurate depiction of one of the characters from the Land of Make Believe on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, I decided to take her back to her roots. I sat down and forced her to watch a full 26 minute episode of Mr. Rogers, which you can see above. By the time it was over I was asleep and she had closed the computer and gone off to watch paint dry or stare at the floor or pile up mounds of dirt for stimulation. Seriously, Fred Rogers was a sweet man who seemed wonderful when he was the only show in town but, DAMN was that shit boring.
Luckily for me she does not care for Daniel Tiger, either. In the old show, when he was a puppet, he was a misbehaving, ferocious lion who caused trouble and lived in a tree. In the new show, the computer animated Daniel is a gigantic pansy. He walks around with a back pack all day long and sings lame little songs about turning things that make you sad in to things that make you happy. Totally unrealistic. Like, kids get sad. Let it happen. That's life. Kids that don't have sadness and disappointment grow up to have their hopes and dreams immediately crushed by adulthood. (Then again, most of us grow up to have our hopes and dreams crushed by adulthood, but that is beside the point.) Also, the plot lines are totally unrealistic, most real kids don't get sad about getting their favorite shirt dirty or messing up an art project. They get sad because their cat dies or they run full speed in to a door knob and bump their heads. What do you want them to do? Take a Vicodin and enjoy the day? Cook the dead cat and make 'chicken' fried rice? Shut up, Daniel. The songs aren't even good. He always talks about how he feels "disappointed" and then has to hug and talk it out with his parents. Whatever. I don't know why any of this matters. Don't watch that show. It sucks.
I'm not really sure where that rant came from, but there it is. In other, more relevant news, we celebrated our last peaceful Thanksgiving ever this year. From now on we will be dragging around two children, one of which will be guaranteed to be throwing some sort of fit every year. The day was lovely, although I am not a huge fan of Thanksgiving as a holiday. The turkey and fixins are not any of my favorite foods and I usually just end up really tired and bloated by the end of the day. But, I'll take the mid-week vacation. I do like the feeling that the whole world stops for a day. Although, IHOP is open, and that is a tradition I will be instituting every Thanksgiving going forward. Banana bread french toast? Yes, please.
Av is also now in a very tolerable age when it comes to Christmas. She is very excited about the season but she is still too young to ask for anything of substance as a gift, so we end up saving a lot of money and she isn't too much of a dick about wanting things yet. Among her requests this year are: A tiny doll-house-sized tuba, a doll that eats and poops, stuffed animal friends and crafts. She loves crafts.
It is also nice this year that she can pretty much do everything on her own. Eat, sleep, poop, talk, get dressed, play- these are all things that, when she wants to, she can do independently, which makes holiday shopping, travel and gift giving much easier. My absolute biggest anxiety over having another child is that when he comes I am once again going to have a human being that can do nothing for itself. I do not miss changing diapers, manual feeding or having to pick up and carry a child everywhere. Monica is the exact opposite. She cannot wait to do all of these things. This should make for some pretty easy doling out of responsibility when the little guy gets here.
Still struggling for blog topics, my goal for the remainder of this week, by request, will be to craft the memories of the nightmare trip to Mexico Monica and I took in the summer of 2008, the details of which seem to bring great joy to everyone but us, in to words. More to come.
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