Thank you, Oprah, I haven’t laughed this hard in a while.

Read on to see why this is timely…

Last night I regressed back to my inner five year old (while arguing with a ten year old, of course). We were having one of our too-frequent shouting matches, which lately seem to come up over the littlest thing, and I was doing a really shitty job of controlling my temper. The boys had been playing for a couple of hours in their room, and doing OK with it, but somehow my younger son was suddenly screaming bloody murder and clutching his eye. I went to investigate, and he said his older brother had thrown something at him.

(now, the details, aren’t really important. There is plenty of finger pointing when a couple of kids get too excited, of course, and this is nothing new at our house, I’m just sorta setting the stage here)

I asked him to apologize for hurting his brothers eye, and of course he said that he had been called names, or kicked or something - it was a long list of grievances.

I blew up. I said something along the lines “I’m sick of y’all screaming at each other and fighting all the time!” Or, I may have screamed it. Lead by example, much? One thing leads to another, and I soon have a boy throwing Playstation games around like frisbees (careful not to throw any of his favorite games, only others). The PS2, by the way, is a frequent point of conflict with me, this isn’t the first time we’ve fought over the toy.

So, I decide to be the grown up and grab the game console itself, and stomp out of the room saying “you won’t get to play this for a while!”

Ha! I showed him. Neener, neener.

Then, to show I meant business, I threw the thing onto the tile floor and watched little official Sony pieces fly all over the place.

Such. the. fucking. grown. up.

Things got quiet after this. I sat there, brooding, on the couch, rationalizing that they really do spend too much time playing games, and any time I try and limit it it blows up in my face, and how my wife has pretty much hated the damn thing since she bought it for me years ago, etc. etc.

Then a little later I did the math on just how big an investment we have, if games average $30 each we’re talking easily $2,000 in games, plus controllers and memory cards and a Guitar Hero guitar and - and - and - and…

Well, fuck.

Anyway, this is a long and rambling bit to show just how childish I can be, and just how far I’ll go to have My Way, and so y’all will understand when you hear my son scream that he wants to kill me. He’s learning from the best how to throw a temper tantrum.

And my middle child announced, while we’re sitting in the back of church, “Dad, there are nineteen people here with a bald spot on their head.” I glare at him. He continues, “No, really,” pointing now “One, two, three…”

Don’t you wish you were me?

So why don’t you just back the hell off?

Kthanxbai.

I took her shoe shopping, and not only was she a total diva (refused to even try on anything at Payless) but she had to get shoes, with laces.

Because she can tie shoes now. Really, she can.

She’s four, people.

Also? She can count to thirty without any help. Why? Because of those temporary tattoos where you hold a sponge or wet paper towel on them until they come off the paper. In other words, she’s learning advanced math (for a four year old, at least) because she has too many tattoos. If that isn’t grown up, I don’t know what is.

I’m almost to the end of my Hal Higdon Spring Training, two weeks left, so that means I need to get cracking and plan out the next step. Should I shoot for a half marathon, or a ten K?

I have no illusions that I am a fast runner, no, and I’m worried enough about my joints to not push it, because I am definitely a fat runner. I’m about 265 right now, which is 100 pounds over where my doctor wants me. Yeah, I’m workin’ on it.

I also turned 43 today. Another yay. Feels an awful lot like 42 (emphasis on ‘like.’)

I was at the wholesale store today, getting vanilla, and there was a girl struggling with a bag of sugar. Okay, it was a 50 pound bag of sugar, but I was already there so I said “You want some help?”

“It’s stuck or something.”

It wasn’t, it was just heavy and at an awkward angle for her, but after I dropped it in her cart she was extremely gracious. It was almost funny, I’ve never seen anybody that happy to get a bag of sugar before.

I mopped the floor this morning, so it’s nice and clean for at least a couple hours. My dogs, cats, and kids are already plotting to mess it up again, I can just tell.

Oh, funny thing yesterday. We were outside and my daughter saw her friend, our next door neighbor who is a couple years younger than her. They were getting in their car, so she ran over to say hi. (remember, she’s only four). When she came back, she said, matter-of-factly: “They’re going to a wedding. He’s gonna marry someone.”

And as cute as that is, she also says “marry,” in the cemetery sense, when we drive past a graveyard she says “Is that where people are married?”

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Read this, wherein she quotes from here.