Welfareloser's Blog

you know how sometimes your arm falls asleep when you’re sleeping? yeah, so my arm fell asleep so hard i couldn’t feel it at all. like, i had no idea where it was. so i tried to move it, and was not aware of anything happening. i looked down, and in the usual tangle of naked body parts, found PRM’s arm about where my arm should be, and assumed mine was underneath. so i pushed his arm out of the way, and my arm wasn’t there. so i started reaching around with my good arm, and just before i decided i was in an episode of the x-files, i found my dead arm thrown up over my head. i had to pick it up with my good arm and drop it onto my torso like a slab of meat. i didn’t panic, thinking that since i’d never *heard* of anyone doing permanent nerve damage just by sleeping on something funny, it’d *probably* be okay. i was relieved when the pins and needles started, though. also? i was WIDE awake. better than coffee!

it took months of training – and by “training,” i mean “putting my hand on the boy’s forehead when he tries to walk the wrong direction, followed by a three-strikes-and-your-ass-goes-back-in-the-stroller rule – but MonkeyBeef finally, as of a month ago, does a pretty decent job of staying by my side when walking in public. so, having built up a critical mass of gift certificates that i wanted to spent soon so i could stay the hell OUT of the mall long before black friday and the month of shopaholism that follows. i hate the mall. i hate shopping in general. but sometimes life’s path leads to the mall, and you have to follow. that’s some wisdom, yo. point being, i went to the mall last month, and i let him walk on his own for the first time.

if you’re imagining a cute little toddler holding his mommy’s hand and smiling shyly at passersby, you fucked up. wipe your imagination clean, and start over.

first off, he will not hold my hand. he’d rather plant his ass on the ground and screech than go somewhere he wants to go, if getting there entails holding my hand.

also, there’s really nothing shy about his grin. his grins tend to hover more along the “shiteating” end of the grin gradient. like when we passed another kid who was stroller-bound? oh, yeah. shit-eating supreme grin with a cherry on top. i actually had to drag him out of the way of several strollers that he was hell-bent on holding up with his “ha-ha, your lame ass is in a stroller!” dance, which apparently is only meant to be performed directly in the path of an oncoming stroller.

just because he walks with me (mostly) doesn’t mean that he walks at anything resembling a reasonable pace. he’s 2. he has to stop and check stuff out. the light coming in through the skylight, every metal power-strip cover on the floor (they all taste the same so far, but his research is far from completed), the 25-cent candy dispensers (there’s always a stray jelly belly on the floor underneath them) and the soda machines (when pushing buttons fails to yield the bubbly candy drinks, try head-butting! it doesn’t work either, but is apparently abstractly satisfying.)

also, there’s a whole world of new sounds at the mall. have i mentioned that the boy, at 22 months and counting, does not speak? he does hum, though, and i’ve caught him trying to whistle, a trick EvilGremlin just learned and is determined to teach him. he also imitates dozens of other sounds. on our toddler-directed walks through the neighborhood, he picked up at least 4 distinctly different birdsongs that he can imitate. he imitates the sounds of the voice-activated r2d2 that patrols our kitchen. he imitates the sound of his hand squishing into a bowl of mac and cheese. when driving, he imitates car horns, the whine of 18-weeler brakes, the beeps of a garbage truck backing up, and the different hums of the wheels on different surfaces.

at the mall, we had to stop to imitate the sound of popcorn popping, teenage girls giggling and squealing, hamburgers sizzling, a window-squeegee squeegeeing, and high heels clacking on the floor.

then there’s the abercrombie and fitch store. i never would have set foot in an A&F in my life if not for my kids. all four of them have been irresistibly drawn to that goddamned store in at least 3 different malls over the last 9 years, and this mall and this boy are no exception. i’m not sure what it is, but some combination of ginormous posters of hot naked models, overpowering cologne, dim lighting and pounding techno-pop draws them in and makes them want to boogie, while i stand there not shopping for overpriced already-destroyed clothing in vanity sizes from 000 to 2.

and that’s not even the mortifying part. that’s NOTHING. the mortifying part is that, after an hour of letting the boy tear ass around the mall, pick out a cookie at the kiosk and a book at the bookstore, we made it to victoria’s secret, where i had a couple of “free panty” coupons. i’m used to being embarrassed by my kids in that store (which is why i went when the other three were in school, to avoid the “hey mom, what’s THAT?” and “I HATE THIS STUPID GIRL UNDERWEAR STORE! and “don’t you have enough underwear?” and, my favorite, “do they really make ladies big enough to fit in this thing?”) so we walk in. he’s doing good. he gets a little ahead of me, but doesn’t seem to have any ill intent… he approaches two women who are checking out some flimsy garment on a rack… and before i realize i need to stop him, he lifts his hands and delivers loud, hard smacks to each of their asses. and then continues on his way. the two victims of his assault, who looked around to see what had happened, seemed reassured by the stature and clumsy walking skills of their assailant. they smiled indulgently, probably thinking the poor little dear was just careening through life as toddlers are wont to do.

i, on the other hand, saw the scrunched up nose and bucky teeth of his shit-eating grin that very clearly announced that those ass-smacks had nothing to do with groping for balance.

PRM and i gonna have some words about setting examples and shit.

turkey, spicy mashed sweet potatoes with shrimp, sweet potato biscuits, blue cheese biscuits, herbed spaetzele with cheese, brussels sprouts wrapped in bacon, pecan pie, apple cider, and some extra chairs around the table.

that’s about all i gots to say about that. though i should mention that the kid who “lost” the wishbone breaking, DramaQueen, seemed even more excited than the kid who won. and he’s keeping his wish a secret. i should probably be worried.

the kids have been begging to have another peeps war. i keep peeps on hand in case inspiration strikes, and hadn’t gotten around to doing anything with them for a while, so we had several seasons worth of peeps.

so first they wanted a castle cake. made with soda. if that sounds wierd to you, you didn’t grow up in the 1950s, when 7Up cakes were popular. of course, they wanted to use dr. pepper, so i dug out a recipe for a root beer float cake, substituted dr. pepper for the root beer, made a few other changes, and after 45 minutes in the castle cake-pan, we had “santa’s castle.” then it needed to snow (powdered sugar) and mountains (cotton candy.)

then they busted out the chicks, rabbits, pumpkins, ghosts, stars, christmas trees, and snowmen. of course they needed weapons… twizzler cannons. that shoot m&m bombs. as they developed their story, it turns out that the OG peeps chicks were pretty pissed off about all the imposter peeps, and had a genocide planned. they infiltrated santa’s castle by sending their secret weapon, the genetically enhanced robo-chicks, inside of the giant trojan chocolate eggs. the robo-chicks easily took over the castle, allowing the legions of clone chicktroopers to march across the land and lay waste to all who opposed them.

there can be only one.

sucka.

the battle raged for a solid two hours before the scene got eaten. and, yeah, the cleanup was a little rough. but after a bath, MonkeyBeef’s face was no longer 8 shades of colors god didn’t make, and everyone slept pretty hard… though EvilGremlin looked like he was still plotting mayhem in his dreams.

i asked him what he was doing. he said he was octobering.

i didn’t really have any follow-up questions to that one.

so one of DramaQueen’s favorite songs is “red-haired boy.” after requesting that i play it on the banjo for him, and then on the fiddle, he requested that i also play “green-haired boy.” i told him i didn’t know that one. he hummed it for me. i told him i sucked at playing by ear. he told me he’d get me the sheet music. half an hour later, he presented me with this.

he then proceeded to hum it again. i tried to play something approximating what he hummed. he shook his head sorrowfully and told me i’d better practice.

the caramel is coffee-flavored. it’s awesome. you need it.

chocolate: awesome. caramel: awesome. peanuts: awesome. nougat: eh. taking the nougat out of a snickers and replacing it with peanut butter: genius.

fatboy eggnog ice cream sandwiches. do i need to explain this? okay, then.

hehehehehhe. PositiveRoleModel came home to find these sitting on the kitchen counter next to a bottle of godiva chocolate liqueur. and started cackling.

PRM: uhhh… okay. that’s going to involve-

me: MyEvilTwin.

PRM: obviously. i was going to say that’s going to involve me holding your hair back. and cops.

me: yeah, that’s some really thick-walled candy. it’ll outlast my ability to drink from it, that’s for sure.

so a thug named MonkeyBeef has figured out how to reload the nerf gun. of course, he has not yet discovered the folly of staring into the loaded gun, but that will come with maturity. and scratched corneas.

click for the movie.

i’ve never been particularly good at a sport, at least not without a lot of work. in some cases, i’m pretty bad at a sport even with lots of work. so i expected to be especially bad at fencing, since it requires planning several moves ahead, like chess, and i have yet to meet someone who can’t beat me at chess (including EvilGremlin.) thinking, reacting and moving quickly are also important, and i am nothing if not slow.

our two-month beginner’s class has ended, and we’re now allowed to show up to the club’s open fencing on tuesday and thursday nights. the open fencing is cool because we use electrical equpipment. on top of your regular protective gear, you wear an electrical jacket (a lame) and a body cord, plugging one end into your weapon and the other into a scoring box. thank god for the awesomeness that is the hawkeye fencing club – $40 a year in dues, and i can use $1500 worth of equipment from the club armory instead of buying it myself.

the club is mostly the members of the college competitive teams, but also some kids from a local mennonite boarding school and their instructor, some high-school kids who have been training (and competing) for years with one of the local bad-asses, and a handful of baby boomers who look deceptively like nutty professors instead of the national champion USFA fencers that they actually are. it’s a great environment to learn the sport, because everyone is really motivated to teach. and the next two months are going to be pretty beginner-free due to finals and then a long holiday break, so it’s basically going to be two private lessons a week with some of the best fencers in the state, all for the low low price of parking my car on campus for two hours.

so my first open fencing session could have been a fluke. my second session could have been chalked up to everyone pulling their punches because i’m just a beginner. but after four sessions of electrical fencing in which i completely spanked, stabbed, and generally dominated, i will allow myself to declare that, somehow, i FUCKING ROCK at fencing. as you may have noticed, this has given my ego some godzilla-sized license to ill.

i always beat other beginners, usually 5-0, occasionally 5-1. when i fence an experienced competitor, i tend to lose 5-2 or even 5-3. and i’ve watched this happen every time i’ve gone up against an experienced fencer… after i score my SECOND point, the expression on my opponent’s face changes from “hey, not bad!” to something along the lines of “oh HELL no.” and then i get stabbed HARD. i LOVE the fact that the real fencers don’t pull their punches on me like they do for all the other beginners. my right upper arm is covered in bruises, some pretty spectacular. when the tip of a foil is about 1/4” diameter – with a shock-absorbing spring-loaded compression tip, no less – and some of your bruises are the size of a baby’s fist… you’re getting hit pretty hard. but hitting my upper arm doesn’t score a point, so every bruise means i parried perfectly. woooooo! also, it means i need to upgrade my protective gear. next purchase: a good plastron.

calling a bout, especially a foil bout, is tough. you can’t just look at the lights on the scoring box and yell out the score. you have to call out each move, by name, made by each of the fencers, that led up to the point being scored (or missed), including every clash of blades that indicated a change of right-of-way, since you can’t score a point at all unless you have taken right-of-way. i was pretty proud of myself when, during a bout with a nutty-professor-type saberist, we wound up in such an ungodly blade-lock that went on for at least half a minute, neither one of us giving up, twisting our blades around and around in an attempt to break past the other’s blade and score, that by the time he finally stabbed me, the very experienced fencer who calling the bout – a guy who can call out “halt! attack from the left, no; parry-riposte, no; remise, yes; score is 2 to 1!” without blinking … couldn’t say any more than “uuuuh… well, the final action was a parry-riposte from the right for a point.” i think that means i’m doing okay.

have you noticed i’m excited about this? this is up there with fly-fishing, playing the banjo and violin, playing scrabble, and playing video games. actually, it may even be on its own level of awesomeness above that tier, just below the highest tier of awesomeness (the “sex and eating” tier.) i originally thought that i would gravitate toward the sabre, with its large target area – basically, you run at the other guy and bash him over the head; not a whole lot of thought needs to go into it. or maybe epee, in which you don’t have to worry about right-of-way, meaning you can score on your opponent any time and any way you want. but i’ve surprised myself by really starting to dig the finesse of the foil – the elaborate rule structure of right-of-way, the small target area, the careful footwork. i’ve been reading up on technique and strategy. i’ve been showing up for every minute of open fencing, identifying my weaknesses. i’ve been beating the poop out of my target every day, working on my point control, my footwork, my speed and accuracy. i’ve been watching bouts on youtube to try to get the hang of calling a bout. i’ve been DREAMING about fencing. these dreams also involve aliens and black helicoptors, but i fight them off with my awesome powers of fencing. anyway. i’m just sayin. i’m digging the fencing.

i can’t wait to start competing in USFA tournaments – as soon as i can afford to purchase (and repurchase, as it breaks) electrical fencing equipment. that’ll unfortunately have to wait until PRM has finished his residency. not a problem. all i can say is, three more years of practicing in my basement hallway on a homemade target of drywall covered in an old blanket with a cheapo foil is going to make me a total badass. some people look forward to finally finishing residency and getting paid a real salary because it means they can buy a big house, a nice car, an awesome vacation… i’m thinking my extravagent purchase is going to be some top-of-the-line leon paul stuff. including my own electrical scoring equipment and piste for the basement. and because fencing is a side-scrolling game – the competition surface is 17 meters long, but only 1-1/2 meters wide – that leaves plenty of room for the stripper pole, a requisite in the game room of every member of the neuveau riche (as any episode of MTV cribs will show you.)

also? awesome drinking game. fuck darts.

i’m thinkin maybe THEY DON’T.