Macy won't sleep...

It's 5:10 in the morning on Monday, May 25. Memorial Day. A holiday. No daycare today. I get to sleep in. What better way to celebrate this privilege than by waking up early and writing about it! It was Macy's idea, actually, so I can't take full credit.

It started Friday night when Jack and I camped out in the backyard. Surely you remember that. If not, just scroll down and look at the pictures. I'll wait... As I said in that post, I did not sleep epically well. As a result, Saturday was a blur. I was irritable and fun, no doubt. On Sunday we went to Betsy's mom's for a barbecue and I bought a bike at a yard sale. I know, right? A yard sale? On Sunday? Cuh-razy! Anyway, I bought a bike. Then I rode it a bunch and got all sweaty and sore. It didn't take long.

On Thursday (out of order, I know... deal with it), our garbage disposal stopped working. Timely and sensible me decided that last night around midnight would be the best time to finally take a look at it. The diagnosis: I don't know crap about garbage disposals. We're calling someone to take a look at it. But we can't call them out today unless we want to pay a ridiculous emergency holiday charge. Which we don't. So we won't. Call them, I mean.

Anyway, I finally got to bed last night around 1:00. I fell asleep (I'm guessing) sometime around 1:30. Then, around 4:00 or so, Macy woke up crying. Betsy sat up with her for half an hour and then came into our room, where I lay in a half-doze, and tagged me in for my shift. Here I sit in my daughter's room writing this while she races around her room, oblivious to my pleadings, dragging out all of her toys. And at this unbearable hour I am reminded to thank my children's aunts, uncles, and grandparents for buying so many loud toys. Their kindness WILL be repaid.

Roughing it

I went camping last night with Jack in our backyard. He's never been camping before and I wasn't sure how he'd do, but he really enjoyed it. We had a campfire and made s'mores and looked at the stars and watched a movie on my laptop. Just like the settlers did it.

So, here are my camping pros and cons:

Pro- You step out of your comfort zone
Con- You end up being very uncomfortable

Pro- You get to roast marshmallows
Con- You have to eat bitter, charred marshmallows

Pro- You get to light a big fire and stare at it, occasionally feeding further bits of fuel into it as the night progresses
Con- Your wife frequently pokes her head out the backdoor and reminds you not to burn the house down... although this event isn't exclusive to camping

Pro- You get to put up a big tent and wrap up in sleeping bags and blankets
Con- You have to evaluate what you can't live without for the night and then realize, too late, that you forgot something and when you call your wife to ask her, your voice dripping honey, to bring it out to you, she just hangs up and refuses to answer her phone for the rest of the night, no matter how many times you call and then you're forced to get up go get whatever you forgot yourself (not based on actual events, just a hypothetical situation)

Pro- You get to sleep in the open air, experiencing the glorious morning, straight from the factory, so-to-speak
Con- Birds wake up early

Anyway, I'm not an outdoorsman. I'm barely an indoorsman. I have gotten soft in my old age and I don't feel bad about it. What I do feel bad about is my back, which is stiff, sore, and aching from sleeping on God's Mattress, which is how I will forever after refer to my backyard.

Spousal abuse 2

I'm sitting at a friend's house writing this. Why? Because I have a cut and a bruise on my right eyebrow. Why? Because my wife threw a set of keys at me. Why? Because she is unstable. And because I asked her to. And because she thought I would catch them. And because, as previously stated, she is unstable.

T-Ball

I am not what you would call a sports fan. I played two seasons of little league baseball, which I hated, and then I wrestled for half a season in the eighth grade (I broke my wrist and couldn't have been more thrilled). I took one painfully embarrassing year of phys. ed. in the ninth grade (it was required) and I have since watched something like two dozen sporting events, very few of them with any kind of enthusiasm. I am pleased to announce that early signs indicate that my son will be following in my footsteps. At tonight's t-ball practice he introduced himself to his coach as "Luke Skywalker" and then pretended to fall asleep. His t-ball bat is a lightsaber and his mitt is perpetually on the wrong hand, not because we bought him the wrong glove, but because he doesn't care. When picking up the ball he first cleans any stray blades of grass from the ball's surface and then hoists it daintily betwixt two pudgy fingers. While running around the bases he was lapped by one of the team's two girls. I can only assume that they will one day marry.

Watching him practice was like going back in time and having an out-of-body experience.

new computer = new computations

I got a new laptop today. I'm pretty excited about it because now I can blog all I want and Betsy can't kick me off.

I have to go now. Dinner is ready.

Spousal abuse

My wife just threw a loaf of bread at my face. I'm preserving the loaf of bread (which has a distinctly Matt-shaped imprint on it) which I will share with the courts of Indiana.

Today was... interesting. Jack's preschool had a May Day picnic, complete with a dance around the Maypole and the kids all dressed in a springly manner. All over the yard were displays of artwork and there was a very soothing sort of music floating around the place. The smell of hot dogs and hamburgers permeated everything. Also, it rained the entire time and the school staff hurried around to everyone explaining that they were keeping an eye on the radar and the rain would end soon and the day would NOT be ruined. Lies.

Also, my computer took the Dump of Death last night and I will be purchasing a new one just as soon as I can. Which could be a while.

Free stuff and Latin.

Okay, so kind of a big week... and a half. Busy, anyway. Here's why.

What you see here is a 52-inch HD television that was given to me FOR FREE by my new best friend, Missy, my next-door neighbor. It has been banished to the garage because it has inspired screen-envy in our other televisions which has triggered the release of high-octane, testosterone-charged television programs which Betsy and I feel are wholly inappropriate for our children. Cock o' the block, kind of stuff. You know how men are.

So I have literally spent every free minute of the last four and a half days reorganizing our garage, which, you may remember, was already a mess due to a fairly successful garage sale, to make room for this glorious beast.

On top of the garage work I have been trying to get used to our new Fios service. We have a ton of new channels and a new DVR setup to figure out, so that's sort of fun and irritating.

And, finally, LOST! The season finale was last night and it was... pretty good. I don't feel as emotionally invested in this season as I have been in other seasons. It seems like they took all this time pushing the rock to the top of the hill and now the rock is rolling down the other side of the hill bouncing and crashing and smashing the whole forest down. There seems to be a great lack of detail. Anyway, it's the best show ever and they could do the final season with Ewoks and it would still be great.

And, being a total Lost nerd, I went to the trouble of finding out "what lies in the shadow of the statue." If you watch the show you'll know that Richard answered this question for us, but he had to be a pretentious douche and he answered it in Latin. So, I Googled it and it seems that some other pretentious douches translated it for us. He said, roughly, "He who will save us all." So... there you go.

Busy, busy, busy...

I've got a lot going on right now, so there may not be any posts for a bit. Sorry.

The new girl...

We had an ultrasound today. For the baby. The one in Betsy's womb. The one I TOTALLY PUT THERE!

Anyway, we both thought for sure that it was a boy, but we were both wrong, which is no big deal. At least, that's how Jack acted. He went with us and after the initial "It's a girl," he just went back to playing his Gameboy (which is actually MY Gameboy, thank you, very much). We're pretty excited to be having another little girl. Little girls aren't quite as malicious as little boys, not until they start school. And little girls, as far as I know, don't pee on everything. The mechanics are just all wrong. So, I guess we're pretty excited.