Dear Lila and Victoria,
It's an impossible task to sum up 2007, the year you were both two. You started being two on January 1st and you didn't stop until December 31st. That is an insanely long time to be two years old. So instead, I'll just tell you that strawberry cake with chocolate icing was an excellent choice. Thank you.
Love,
Dad
Look at this face:
I saw that face last weekend at the Met. It is the face of a man in torment.
The face belongs to Ugolino della Gherardesca, someone you may say you know if you are a liar. And why is Ugolino's face contorted in such a way? He's gone camping.
No, not really, but close. Here's the whole statue:
Legend has it that, in 1289, for the crime of high treason, Ugolino was imprisoned with his children for nine months. They eventually starved to death.
I spent an awfully long time standing in front of this statue the Sunday before last, while Kathryn pulled on my hand saying c'mon, c'mon! It spoke to me in a way that I knew art could, but had not experienced until then. I'd probably have stood there longer, but despite the piece containing no fewer that five penises, it didn't hold Kathryn's attention for more than a few minutes, and she came very close to dislocating my shoulder before I finally turned away.
According to Dante, the most famous reteller of Ugolino's story, Ugolino was the last to die in the cell with his sons. As his children died, they begged Ugolino to eat their bodies, and before he himself died, he did.
It gets worse.
Ugolino's afterlife is spent in the ninth level of hell, eternally trapped in ice, with only his head free, which he uses to gnaw on the skull of the man who imprisoned him with his children in the first place.
I knew none of this when I saw the statue at the Met, and I'm not really sure why I feel compelled to share it with you now. Perhaps it is my way of saying that, while our family camping trip last weekend had its share of challenges, at least we weren't trapped together for nine months until we died.
And if we had been, I doubt I'd have waited that long before eating the kids. Hell, I came damned close to eating them Sunday morning when I realized I had left the eggs on the kitchen counter back home.
My dad wants to know if Kathryn ever runs out of words. The answer is no.
For the past two weeks, Kathryn has been in Texas, staying with my parents, and not running out of words. My mom loves it. My dad has duct-taped two pillows together and wears them as a hat. I can't blame him; two weeks is a awfully long time to experience raw Kathryn, a creature whose energy level is only exceeded by the volume of her normal speaking voice.
Every summer since we moved to New Jersey, Kathryn has spent a week or two back in Texas with my folks. I believe this arrangement was originally suggested by my wife as a way to get her hands on our expected inheritance a few years early, figuring that one week with Kathryn could shave up to six months off the rest of my parents' lives. A good plan to be sure, but I'll never see any returns from it as my exposure to Her Royal Webkinzness means I will be dead before I finish this post. Add in the twins and I actually died during childbirth. My own.
So for two weeks my oldest daughter and all her words have been holding high court in the wilds of Waxahachie, Texas, or as my sister-in-law called it once, the Hollywood of the Strip of Land Between Dallas and Waco. For a while Waxahachie looked like it was going to have a solid career in movies, with a few filmed there each year, even a couple of Oscar winners. Most of the films were period pieces, except for one when, for a few fun weeks, my family and I sat out on our back porch in the evenings and watched David Byrne film True Stories at the house across the creek.
None of my family ever made it into any of these movies, but that is not to say we all escaped the camera's loving eye. All four of us once appeared in a particularly delightful and lighthearted commercial for an industrial herbicide. The members of my family, along with three-quarters of the rest of the town, were each paid ten dollars to march through the town's square in a mock parade, singing the theme song of a chemical developed to keep grass from growing in lettuce patches. Again and again we marched, singing what might have been the only theme song ever written for a known carcinogen, and I'm not sure any of us were troubled by it. I know that I was not. Even if you had pulled me aside and described to me in detail the specific ecological effects of this particular product, I still would have sung along, because ten dollars could buy me THREE STAR WARS ACTION FIGURES, and I would have stepped over the bodies of thousands of dead song birds for Star Wars action figures.
My brother was featured in a close-up, the camera zooming in on him as he smiled a smile that told us the eradication of unwanted broadleaf grasses from our lettuce fields was the but first step in our American battle for dominance over all things natural, a fight that continues today. For this, he earned himself an extra $10 which I feel certain he blew all at once on a box of Verbatim floppy discs.
Not too much has been filmed in Waxahachie lately, and certainly nothing was filmed there in the past two weeks, for which I am relieved. Because if Kathryn had somehow made it in front of the camera, I know how she'd have spent her ten dollars.
And it wouldn't have been to buy herself any more words.
The Mom was out of town for most of last week, but the twins more than made up for her absence by screaming. Before she left, The Mom took Kathryn aside and asked her to lend a hand around the house which Kathryn happily did, interpreting "lending a hand" as "talking about Webkinz." It was a good time.
In other news, this website has begun to see a trickle of spamming comments, the usual porn stuff--grannies in nylons, nubile teens, and the like, in the archived posts. Right now it's just a few a day, nothing beyond my capacity to delete, but if it increases, I might have to institute some kind of anti-spam measure for comments. I apologize in advance if that has to happen.
There were many things that I was not prepared for when I started this website, not the least of them being how much free swag people would offer me, "to review for my readers." Mostly I get offers for books, assuring me my readers would love to be informed about these important and life-altering works. My favorite so far has been a book about a dad who lost his job and found himself at home with the kids. The email promised me I would appreciate reading the author's unique experience as he, a man!, entered a woman's world. Oh, boy, would I! And when I read the words "uplifting" and "powerful" I knew that this would be the book that could change my life.
I could not delete that email fast enough.
Actually, I deleted the one that began "Dear [Insert Name], Love your blog!" even faster than that.
But every once in a while I get an email offering me something that I might actually want. And I'm torn. Part of me is like, Whoo boy! I could really use one of those! But the rest of me knows I have no intention of actually informing any of my readers about it. Seriously, could you imagine anything more out of character for this site than for me to write a few paragraphs about how clean my teeth feel after I use the new Oral-B® Triumph™ with Smart Glide™? The first and only rechargeable toothbrush to combine best-in-class cleaning and gum care with a wireless display to promote optimal brushing habits? The product Popular Mechanics called the "smartest toothbrush ever"? The one that will be available at department, retail, and specialty stores in September? And looks like this?
I mean, that would just be weird, wouldn't it?
Really, I want to know if it would be weird. Cause that toothbrush looks pretty sweet.
Nah, nevermind. I'm holding out for the next generation of Wii.
For three days I have been wracking my brain, plying it with alcohol, chanting upon mountaintops, and eating peyote buttons to come up with something really funny to say about this picture, something that will make it appear as if I'm posting it for a reason other than that it's the cutest friggin' picture you'll ever see.
God, I'm getting soft.
