Welfareloser's Blog

of course, while we were on vacation, MonkeyBeef managed to get an ear infection. luckily, a friend of ours, TheDoctor, happens to be a family practice doc in our hometown. it’s a little surreal to take your kid in for a “doctor’s appointment” with a guy whose ass you regularly kick at scrabble, whose mom is still owed a replanting of tulips that ate shit under your husband’s car at 2 AM one night in high school, and whose semester of being your college roommate culminated in a 4 AM trip to the emergency room for morphine-resistant abdominal pain that almost resulted in exploratory surgery until he started farting and felt much, much better. (yeah… never gonna let you forget that one. suck it!)

so PositiveRoleModel called him to discuss the little man’s case of motherfuckerism, and TheDoctor told him to bring him to his office first thing in the morning.

TD: you know where my office is, right?
PRM: ken’s pizza.
TD: we don’t serve pizza anymore.
PRM: why the fuck not?

so we arrived at the site of every awesome birthday party we ever went to between the ages of 5 and 12, and apparently, it smelled strongly of “motherfuckers who are going to poke around in my ears, and possibly give me a head CT,” so MB started wailing the minute we walked in the door.

PRM: why is he crying?
me: probably because they took out the damn jukebox for the nurse’s station.
PRM: yeah, i’d be pissed if i couldn’t get my skynnyrd on, too.

so the visit started off with TheDoctor shaking our hands, which was very professional.

TD: here, look, i’m going to look in mommy’s ears now!
me: it won’t help. he still hates you.
TD: whoa! i can see your daddy on the other side!

yep. it’s pretty surreal to entrust the health of your offspring to the guy who used to like to go to the wendy’s drive through and loudly demand mcnuggets and whopper juniors in a german accent, but apparently the guy actually knows what he’s doing, because MB felt much better one day into the 12-day course of antibiotics TD prescribed!

the big temporary display of the season was “dinosaurs come to life.” the coolest part was not the animatronic dinosaurs:

or the newly researched dinosaur voice simulations:

or newly theorized dinosaur feathers and hair:

or the fossilized dinosaur bones:

the coolest part was the fossilized dinosaur poop, which you call “copralite” if you want to get away with talking about it at school.

then we had to build all the cool shit in the physics wing of the building. there’s the replica of the st. louis arch:

and about 20 other structures to engineer:

then it was on to the planetarium wing, where we spent a good 15 minutes just listening to the kids name about 400 topographic features on the planet mars:

then we watched “mr. hubble’s universe.”

MonkeyBeef had already gone home with my parents at this point in the day, which is good, because i don’t see him laying down and holding still for this for an hour. in fact, he only way SpazMonkey pulled it off was by falling asleep.

then we wandered around the star charts, replica space stations and ships, and interactive astronomy quiz games of the planetarium:

…until closing time. seriously. they had to kick us out. luckily, we bought a family membership to the science center, which was about the same price as tickets for all 6 of us for the day, so we’ll be back. and, bonus! the membership is also good at 400 other science museums throughout the country, so we’ll be using it in the lincoln, nebraska and the denver science museums on our family vacation in july.

i i read in the university newspaper on monday that there was a lottery for tickets to obama’s big “yay, we passed the healthcare bill!” speech here in iowa city. 11,000 people registered, and 750 of them were randomly chosen on tuesday night to get a pair of tickets to the speech. one of them was PositiveRoleModel.

of course, since he lives under the rock known as “residency,” he was unaware that i had submitted his name and cell phone number to the ticket lottery. so as i was lugging my gear out the door to get to fencing practice, i heard him answer his cell phone.

PRM: hello? … this is WHO? … mmmmkay. fucking-

me: DUDE, if that is obama tickets, you shut the fuck up and say YES!

PRM: i mean, great! where do i pick them up?

so i picked up the tickets the next morning, and then figured out that, between MonkeyBeef getting home from school at noon, his language therapy appointment at 1, the other boys’ early dismissal at 2, there was no way on god’s green earth i was going to be able to go unless i could find 2 babysitters in the next 24 hours. so i gave my ticket to a friend, but the planets aligned for PRM, and he was actually able to go.

me: it says you can’t take backpacks, liquids, knives, or guns.

PRM: oh HELL no. them socialists ain’t takin my damn gun away!

me: god IS on your side on that one.

PRM: guns and teabags, woooo!

me: it doesn’t say you have to wear pants.

PRM: i’m gonna be on tv!

me: OO, you know what you should do? go in there with your shirt buttoned wrong, one pant leg ripped off below the knee, your belt around your nipples, zipper down and pockets out, flip flops, and coffee spilled all over your shirt.

PRM: no; coffee, ketchup, and poop.

me: and when the secret service drags you out of there, you can scream all the way that it’s discrimination.

PRM: Y’ALL ARE DISCRIMINATIN AGAINST AWESOME-AMERICANS! WOOOO!

one is “things that taste better with bacon salt on them,” and the other is “things that taste better with chocolate chips in them.”

we got a check in the mail today for $4283.82.

me: i’m too lazy to take it to the bank and get cash for it, so you’re just going to have to throw this on the bed and roll around naked on it.

PRM: nah. here. gimme.

he shoves it down the front of his pants and vigorously scrubs it around.

me: it’s going to be hard to make money off that picture on the internet.

PRM: whatever. is my dick bigger yet?

the teddy bears’ names are Gravity, Samus Aran, and CutieSquare.

not pictured: Eris, Dysnomia, Orbital and Dysprosium.

they have issues.

MonkeyBeef has officially accepted the existence of his baby cousin. He has, in fact, progressed from telling me “hand off baby!” to sharing what he still remembers to have been his toy, and even showing him how to make wierd faces in the mirror.

so a while back, i was in the car with just EvilGremlin, and he asked what the bumper sticker on the car in front of us meant: “IT’S A CHILD NOT A CHOICE.” well, shit. he’s 10. he’s a very smart 10. he already knew that pregnancy absent modern medicine was the deadliest thing known to woman, and that it was still moderately dangerous even with modern medicine. he already knew that i narrowly missed bleeding to death after MonkeyBeef, needed two surgeries to repair the damage, and wouldn’t be having any more kids. so i explained what an abortion was, the reasons why women might choose to have them – their own mental illness or drug addiction, for example, or a situation like mine, where another pregnancy would almost certainly mean my death. then i explained why some people were against the idea of abortion unless the mother’s life was in danger, and some people were against it no matter what, and why it was such an intractable argument, with high emotions on both sides.

i thought i was doing a pretty good job of explaining the whole thing until he asked me why the hell i thought it was okay to be telling this to a ten-year-old. according to him, “you’re too young for that” was the correct answer to his question.

so the other day, on the way to the park, the twits saw one of those stupid political yard signs that was screaming in all caps “ABORTION KILLS CHILDREN.” (fuck you very much, by the way, to the dumb bitch who felt compelled to share that with anyone who wants to walk to the park. i’ll be sure to get you on every porn catalog mailing list, so you can fear letting your children walk to the mailbox for the next 18 years.) they, of course, wanted to know what abortion was, and why it killed children.

the twits are incapable of accepting “you don’t get to know that,” which is why, if you ask them for the definition of “abortion,” they will now explain that that’s when you wash down a pack of pop rocks with a diet coke.

because FUCK that. anyone who thinks its “wrong” to lie to your children just doesn’t have children that are old enough yet to understand why lying is, in fact, an AWESOME idea.

little mr. language therapy has a little talking/singing touchpad laptop thingy with these big-ass cartridges of various favorite kiddie characters. it is truly innovative educational technology, utilizing the newest breathroughs in child brain development, such as “searing annoyance” and “maximum decibels.” anyway, there’s a winnie the pooh cartridge that discusses the weather and the seasons. it’ll identify objects when you touch them. in the autumn scene, one of the objects it’ll shout the name of is “acorn.”

for a while, when playing with it, he’d argue with it. it’d say “acorn,” and he would say “peeniss.” he’d push the button a half-dozen times every time he was on that page, under the assumption that if he corrected it enough, it’d change its mind. he eventually conceded that standoff; now when it says “acorn,” he follows up with “acorn! no peeniss.” also, a mushroom is no longer just a mushroom, it’s a “mushwoom! no peeniss.” and, just to prove his genius on all matters phallic, diaper changes often include the information “peeniss! is no mushwoom, no acorn.”

i think we can expect great things from the doodles in the margins of his future homework.