Author Archives: snoozing on the sofa

The three words that best describe you are Stink, Stank, Stunk

Conventional wisdom says wildlife is the innocent victim when people move into the swamps. The animals in our neck of the swamp couldn’t be happier that such a generous species came and built houses for them to live under.

Here comes trouble

Doesn’t matter the season, these guys are always ready to drop in.

The deer love our gardens. Our bird feeders save the squirrels untold time and effort finding 18 square meals per day. The “Little Man who lives under the porch” (probably a woodchuck, though ethnic origins shouldn’t matter) burrows himself into our hospitality often. Field Mice have bunked with our accommodating cat.

life in the suburbs

Then there was this guy, who took a four-hour nap in our back yard last fall.

In February, a skunk set up housekeeping under our deck. We’ve entertained skunks before, but this one was special. Every night it would light up our house with the tangiest batch of squeezin’s we’d ever breathed.

Having repelled its kind before with ammonia-soaked rags, this was our first defense. But when it is 0°F (-18°C) outside, ammonia does more freezing than stinking. Skunks stink grandly at any temperature.

It got so bad it kept us up all night, and some of us puked. My wife claimed it was making her uterus contract, which seemed a stretch, but maybe not.

Animal Control would attempt to trap the skunk for many bags of gold, but for some reason they didn’t feel confident of success. They said it was probably a female, attracting a mate.

That tore it.

It’s one thing to be smoked out of your home by some poor creature protecting herself, but we run a respectable household. She could do her whorin’ elsewhere. We weren’t about to stand idle while Pepina Le Pew advertised booty calls with her Love Potion Number Noxious.

le pew

Get your girl, Pepe, or you’re gonna find your brood a little larger than you bargained for. (Warner Bros.)

My wife had the first whack. “I went out with a baseball bat, but she wasn’t there,” she said.

“You realize you could have got sprayed?” I asked.

Her voice was monotone, the cold, murderous voice of exhaustion. “Yeah, but she’d be dead. It’d be so worth it.”

I bought stuff skunks dislike and air freshener. Lots of air freshener. All the different brands.

I tied dryer bags of Stank Skank’s least favorite things all around the deck. (The air freshener was for us.) My fingers were good and numb by the end, but that was a small price. We put as much noise and light on the area as we could.

It seemed to get her out from under the deck, but lonely boys with time on their hands still came looking for a little stinking tenderness at night. Periodic whiffs of her jilted lovers’ agonies sent us spiraling into Post Traumatic Skunk Disorder.

We built a snow berm around the deck to make it harder to use as a kiosk for their scented love notes. With the help of used kitty litter we seem to be making progress. The attacks are fewer, but I won’t declare victory until we can invite company into our house again.

snow fortress

The arrival of March means our snow fortress is melting. I hope this doesn’t mean a pick up in business for the brothel.

And my wife’s uterus? Someone explained it this way: She was smelling the pheromones of the dominant female in heat. Her body was syncing itself to that lead.

I was a little surprised at how easily my wife rolled over for a skunk. But I felt better when I recalled that she was about to go get her Alpha crown back with a baseball bat. Now that’s my girl.

I’d like to thank all the little people

I’m not good at this.

Blogging Award Nominations are odd creatures. They aren’t given out by some panel of blogging experts, but by individual bloggers as a show of appreciation and support for other bloggers. They are  touching gestures and a means of community-building within the blogosphere.

As a Virgo of German heritage, I’m not practiced at touching gestures. As a Level 1 Introvert, I’m not the best architect of community.

Even so, I am resolved to do my best.

Syracuse-based blogger Mark Bialzcak recently nominated me for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award. Thank you, Mark. I first started reading Mark’s blog because he lives about 90 minutes up the Thruway from where I grew up. I continue to read his blog because he is a great blogger. Being a fine writer can make you a good blogger, but it takes more than that to be a great blogger. Great blogs have a charisma that draws and keeps readers. Mark has a gift for celebrating humanity which makes his blog like a never-ending Super Bowl party. I admire that.

It’s a great honor to be nominated, and I would still be basking in that honor, except that it always comes with homework. This is where the edges of honor become tinged with my laziness. There have been times when award nominations have caught me pressed for time and lacking the inspiration to respond publicly. It’s never been because I didn’t appreciate the honor. I’m trying to do better.

VIBA

The easy part of the homework is displaying the award badge. Done.

As part of the homework, I am supposed to list 7 facts about myself. Let’s see how this works out.

  1. There have been times in my life when I could have vanished from Earth for months without anyone knowing. Now, if I’m five minutes late home from work: Amber Alert.
  2. I am getting close to publishing a new novel, A Housefly in Autumn. This will be my third book of the modern era. I define the modern era as the time after I got my first clue about what it takes to publish decent books.

    Housefly

    It’s my award and I’ll use it to pimp my new book if I want to.

  3. I have one pre-modern era book that I am tempted to take out of print, but my wife claims reading it made her fall in love with me. Maybe I should just take my personality out of print.
  4. I have four unpublished novels, all written B.C. (Before Children). You haven’t made it in the literary world until your “lost” material is published after your death. I’m counting on the posthumous material to put me over the top (so to speak).
  5. I have another blog about reading and writing. It’s tone is generally more serious than this one. So if you think this one isn’t funny at all, you could head over there and not laugh on purpose.
  6. I used to be an avid reader, cross-country skier, and home brewer; now I have three kids and no hobbies.
  7. I’d like to thank all the little people (ages 6, 2, and nearly 1) who made this award happen. And my wife, who while petite in stature, must stand tall in character as the only female in a family of five. Despite the whining you might read from me here, I am thankful every day for my kids and my wife. They have saved me from a life where I could ski off the edge of the world with a book in one hand and a beer in the other, without anyone noticing.

    My Little People.

    My Little People.

For the last bit of homework, I’m supposed to nominate 15 other bloggers. I’m going to fudge this part. I’d like readers to check out these blogs, but it’s hard to visit 15 new blogs in one sitting. So I’m cutting it down to three. These are three of my go-to blogs – the ones I try not to miss. They are smart and funny and heartfelt, but see for yourself.

Also, because they’ve all already posted similar acceptances for other awards, I’m not holding them to the homework part. They are all Very Inspiring Bloggers, and I happily nominate them for this award, but they are welcome to view this as a simple appreciation of their work from another blogger and leave it at that.

Naptimethoughts – A parade of embarrassing moments and a festival of descriptive euphemisms for human body parts.

Ah Dad – English isn’t his first language. From the words he finds to describe the frightening sights he sees at the gym, you’d never know it.

South of the Strait – How does a funny, insightful writer deal with a family health crisis? By tickling your funny bone and tugging at your heart strings all at once.

I’m going to ignore the fact that I cheated and call the homework done now. Sorry I broke the rules, Mark, but as I may have mentioned, I’m not very good at this.

 

The hunter becomes the hunted

A couple years ago, I wrote about how Buster (then a baby) vexed Big Brother (then a four-year-old) by crawling among his play sets and tearing up all his railroad tracks.

And now you may be thinking: “Two years ago? This blog has been around that long? Wow, this guy doesn’t know when to give up!”

I don’t.

Anyway, Buster and Big Brother still fight over toys sometimes. But there are many other times when they play together, and (dare I say it?) co-operate to build things. There are even times when Buster accepts instruction from Big Brother in order to accomplish his playtime goals.

fine art

Working together to create a masterpiece of sibling co-operation.

Buster has no recollection of the havoc he caused to his brother’s play sets, nor of the gnashing of teeth resulting from his destructive ways. As far as he recollects, all of his frictions with his older brother have been honest disagreements between different engineering visions.

This lack of recall must make it especially hard on him that payback is a bitch.

There’s a New Baby in town, and his devotion to wanton destruction burns just as brightly as Buster’s ever did. The sock is on the other foot. Of course, the second sock has been pulled off and discarded, in the tradition of babies everywhere.

Now, Buster is the gnasher of teeth, shouting, “No, Baby, no!” using the same frantic urgency with which it was once directed at him. New Baby does him credit by living up to the very standard of disregard for admonition that he himself established all those forgotten times ago. Lack of recognition, coupled with an uncoupled train, makes it a hollow honor.

sacrifices had to be made

“I’m willing to let you chew on the plastic tunnel if it will save my train.”

I can’t explain to Buster that the unprovoked baby attacks he is enduring now are the same as he used to perpetrate. He can’t imagine that he could ever have been so annoying. Even if he could, it would only make him wonder why Daddy insists on bringing up random bits of ancient history that clearly have no relevance to his current suffering.

Daddy needs to be solving problems in the here and now, rather than telling his old-man stories of questionable accuracy.  New Baby needs to be taken away and possibly housed in a cage until Buster is good and done with his trains. Then, New Baby can be let out to tear them apart, so that when Buster is asked to pick them up, he can explain that New Baby was the last to use them. This is the kind of scenario that Daddy should be orchestrating, instead of fabricating some sketchy moral justification of New Baby’s outrages.

So much for compromise

Appeasement never works.

This house needs some law and order against the depredations of little brothers. At least until Big Brother gets home from school. Then we can renegotiate what little brothers are allowed to get away with.

Never let it be said that Buster doesn’t consider both sides of the issue.

Waiting for a bottle of scotch together counts as family time

An extremely generous friend sent me some expensive scotch. I’m not a big boozer, but I do enjoy a taste of good scotch. And far be it from me to look a gift horse in the mouth. That would be rude.

With a delivery of this nature, an adult has to sign for it. UPS notified me that my delivery would arrive on Wednesday.

If you are a regular visitor, you may know that I am a part-time stay-at-home dad and a part-time worker at a full-time job. If this description confuses you, try living it.

My wife works floating shifts. When she works, I use vacation time and mind the boys. It’s not the perfect situation, but it helps make ends meet.

On Wednesday, my wife had an afternoon shift. When I took over childcare, UPS hadn’t come yet. No problem, we’d just stay home.

At 3:30 it was time to get Big Brother from school. We’d only be gone for 20 minutes, since we were leaving early enough to get a good spot in the car line and could be among the first out. There’d be little chance of missing UPS and its precious, precious cargo.

Leaving our neighborhood, I passed the telltale brown truck driving into it. We were still early, so I turned around. The UPS truck stopped at a house on a cross street from ours. I drove home and parked in the driveway.

The truck didn’t come. I drove down the street. It was parked in front of house at the far end of our street now, heading our way. When I turned around again the truck was gone. I was about to give up when I saw it parked in a cul-de-sac off our street. Who knew we live in a neighborhood of mail order fiends? But I suppose they need their booze too, or their blow-up dolls, or whatever. I returned to our driveway. It was getting late, but surely he would come to us next.

At last, the truck came down our street again. There was just enough time to sign, accept the coveted package and rush off to the school.

Two houses down, there’s a cross street. Defying all logic, the UPS truck turned down that street. “No! You were on our street – two houses away!” I pounded my fist on the steering wheel, as I envisioned myself explaining to the principle why I had abandoned my child at school:

“I couldn’t get here; I was waiting in my driveway for a man to give me a bottle of scotch. No, I’m not neglectful. The little boys were right there with me. We were all waiting for scotch together.”

I grunted a little Chewbacca roar as I drove toward the school. We found our place at the end of the fully developed car line and waited. A 20-minute round trip was a forlorn dream now.

There was a sticky note from the meandering driver waiting on our door. It promised two more delivery attempts. But what if he comes at the same time each day? I have terrible visions of that bottle retreating, unloved, to Scotland. Terrible visions.

Just the right age

UPDATE: The delivery came at 6 p.m. on Thursday. I am happy to report we were able to save this little beauty from the stigma of rejection.