Looky, Daddy!

In Which I Distract You with Funny Pictures

Oooh, look! Mastheads! Thirty totally un-antisemitic mastheads! Cute children! No uneasy laughter here! Except maybe the ice cream one, which kinda freaks even me out a little.

Anyway, you sent them in and up they went. I compiled all thirty September mastheads onto their own page. And here are last year's. Enjoy, peoples of all backgrounds and beliefs!

One More, Since You Asked

I'll Stop When Someone Admits These Are Funny

Tell me these are funny. Then I'll stop.

They only take about two minutes to make. I can crank out a ton of 'em.

See if I don't.

And By Babies, I Really Mean Babes

It still happens, sometimes: People send me pictures of their kids. I don't know what they are thinking. I mean, I don't send you pictures of mine, right? Sure, I might post a few here now and then, but I'm not forcing you to look at them, am I? It's your choice. And frankly, given the astounding amount of stuff you can look at on-line, I am astounded that any of you choose to come here at all. I certainly wouldn't.

Last year, just to deal specifically with this problem, I instituted the Month o' Mastheads. And now it looks like it's time to do it again. For the rest of August, I invite you to send me pictures of your kids for the next month of Looky, Daddy! mastheads.

For the month of September, each day will have a new masthead. If you want you kid to be one of them, send me a picture. Be warned, though: September has a mere thirty days, which means thirty mastheads. They will fill up fast, so don't dawdle. For format, I ask four things: 1) Higher resolution is MUCH better than lower. Don't shrink the photo or send me one from your cell phone. 2) I will try to make a masthead out of anything, but close-up shots are really not good for a banner. Action or distance works best. 3) I reserve the right to manipulate and edit the photos for fun and/or humor. Or at least what passes for humor around my house. And 4) if you want me to attribute the photo to you or include a link to your website, tell me so explicitly. Otherwise I'll simply post it and leave it to you to out yourself in the comments should you choose.

So that's it. Send in your photos to lookydaddy at gmail dot com and off we go. (Because my spam filter is a wee bit aggressive on attachments, I'll reply to each submission with a quick email. If you don't get an acknowledgment from me within a day or so, send it again, this time putting "Penis Enlargement" in the subject line. Somehow those emails always tend to make it through.)

UPDATED TO ADD: Holy crap! What were you guys doing, sitting there next to your computers, pictures all queued up just in case someone wanted them? Have those submissions been waiting in your drafts folder ever since last year? Whatever it was, I have the sad duty to inform everyone else that all thirty days in September are now spoken for. Now you may all go back to your regular schedule of not sending me any email. And I'll go crawl back under my rock for another year.

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Hello? Melbourne?

There are so many other things I'd like to be telling you about right now besides, you know, The Puking. But The Puking it is.

Only Kathryn and I are left.

The past 108 hours have played out like an art house horror film, with enormous bursts of energy and gore punctuating long, painful hours of mind-numbing tedium. First Victoria, then Sharon, and now Lila-- all have succumbed to the calls from Australia (Melbourne!), leaving Kathryn and me to eye each other distrustfully, knowing full well one of us will be next. We have a $10 bet on who will puke first. I plan to win and then use her money to buy myself a Webkinz.

In the meantime, if you like, you can see pictures of my girls and me before the flu tore us apart here, and if your Japanese is better then mine, you can even read a little about us. I personally gave up after I read "Veteran Housewife of Three" in the title.

Further Updates as Events Warrant

So I'm back and I'm probably more than a little rusty here. I certainly don't how to begin this post, a post I've been stressing about for days now, so with your consent, I'll begin with a warm-up exercise. It's something that I do at least once a day, sometimes multiple times, as a  kind of centering activity, a refocusing of my mental and emotional energy. It is, of course, apologizing to my wife.

Dear Sharon,

I'm sorry for implying that you were somehow behind my decision to take a break from posting. You had nothing to do with it. And now you may stop beginning all of our interactions with, "Not that I want you to blame me for this in front of your rabid fans, but..." Furthermore,  now that my break from blogging is over, you may also stop constantly interrupting me with, "Isn't there someone online who would rather hear this?" Please accept my apology and thank you in advance.

Your husband,

Brian

So it's March. March 1st. Four days from when the state of Texas, among others, holds the primary which may finally decide the Democratic nominee for President, something that completely blows my mind because, in case you haven't thought of this, asking Texans which Democrat they prefer is a lot like asking my daughters which leafy, green vegetable they prefer. If the ballot has "Neither" as an option, we may never get a candidate. Still, that we are nine months away from the election and already both parties are limited to candidates despised by Rush Limbaugh makes me feel even more optimistic about my country than back in January when Starbucks announced it would be closing one hundred stores. It's a good time to be an American is what I'm saying here.

February was a blur of activity here, and by activity I mean the flu. Jesus Lord, for almost the entire month the flu pounded this family down into a kind of subhuman, Morlockian existence, capable of nothing more than grunts, whines, and watching Dora the Explorer. My wife, Sharon, was hit hardest of all, and at one point she spent over 42 hours in bed. I timed it. 42 hours and 37 minutes, to be exact, at which point she rose from the bed and promptly passed that heinous virus on to me.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm making a phone call."

"Brian, it's 5 AM. Who are you calling?"

"You."

"What?"

"I'm calling you. Hold on. Damn, I got your voicemail."

"Why are you call--"

"Shh! Hi. It's Brian. Listen, I've got the flu and I'm not coming in today. Could you do me a favor? I'm supposed to be in an all-day meeting with the three kids in the other bedrooms. Can you cancel that for me? Just tell them I'm not coming in. Thanks. You're a doll."

But, of course, I knew that if I took a whole month off of blogging and all I had to show for it was a 103 degree fever, some chills, and an achy joint or two, there would be hell to pay come March 1st, so I also watered the Chia turtle.

Because that's how awesome I am.

Everybody Out of the Pool

I've said it before: My wife hates blogs. She really, vehemently hates them. It is a hatred that she and I shared right up until the time I started writing one. And while writing a blog has made blogs-in-general somewhat less abhorrent to me personally, it has only made The Mom's hatred of them stronger. Which would make our dinner conversations awkward if we ever had dinner conversations.

I started this blog in 2006 because of a Microsoft Word document. When I chose to be a stay-at-home dad, I entertained the idea of spending all my anticipated free time writing a book about the experience. Don't laugh. If you are a stay-at-home parent then you understand, and if you aren't, go find one and ask them what outside activity they had planned to do when they chose to stay at home. We all had grand aspirations, every one of us, fools that we were.

So my grand plan took the form of a word processing file. Whenever something interesting happened, I stole a minute and wrote a few words about it into the file. Poop on the wall? Into the file. Projectile vomit? Into the file. Poop and projectile vomit together? That could be a whole chapter! Into the file! As the weeks and months passed, it became clear to me that a book would not be forthcoming for a while, but I kept adding to the file, albeit my entries grew shorter and came with less frequency. I never kept the document open longer that it took to add a new entry, and I certainly never reread what I had written previously. That was reserved to sometime in the future, when I had more time.

Then, about 18 months ago, for some strange reason, I stopped and read what I had entered over those many years, and it should come as no surprise to you that it made no sense whatsoever. It was like reading every fourth word of the diary of a non-English speaker with an astounding case of Tourette's syndrome. "Spit up shirt wife break," was one line. "damn pj school me damn DAMN!," another. Sometimes the words did come in complete sentences, but with no hints as to why they were written at all: "The eighth graders at TC Wileman Junior High had to take a class in spelling." I'm sorry, but what? Spelling? Where the hell was that going?

After reading my bizarre document, I knew I needed to do something better or all of these memories would be gone faster than you can say, "a beer and a shot." The next day I started a blog.

And today I end it. Well, not end it, per se, but I am taking a break. A month off, let's call it. A short month: February. Just to collect myself and get a few things done that I've been putting off for a while.

And to have less awkward conversations with my wife about what I did all day.

See you in March.

Dead Inside

It's been exactly one week since we moved in. And exactly four days since The Mom left for California. Still no phones. Still no Internet. Still no nothing that isn't packed away in boxes with labels that must have made sense at the time but are now totally incomprehensible.

Still just one adult for three kids--three kids who are wildly excited about the new house and all the new wiring to touch, hot water spigots to open, boxes marked "fragile" to climb, and beds to jump in. Jump in but not sleep in, I'm sure you noticed. No, we are way to excited for sleep. Way too excited.

I'm dead inside. Go someplace else. Find your humor elsewhere.

I recommend DadLabs.

Is "Minions" Too Much, My Minions?

So I haven't been actively promoting my Weblog Award nomination. Sure, I mentioned it, and I put up a little button, but I haven't told you to vote, have I? I haven't told you to vote once every twenty-four hours, have I? I haven't told you to rise up, my minions, and smite the Internet with your collective force, have I? Have I?

Well, now I have.

And in other contest news, today is the last day for haiku, so count those syllables and post away!

My minions.