Sunday, September 30, 2007

what happens in vegas,

stays in vegas

so i can't tell you a damn thing!

hahahaha just kidding. some observations from vegas that hopefully will help you piece together my weekend:

lately it seems when i fly that pilots take off and land like the terrorists are right there on the tarmac chasing them. i actually put my hand up on the seat in front of me upon landing in vegas cause i thought i was gonna bounce my head off of it.

sit at baggage claim in vegas for any length of time, and you will see more fake plastic hotties than you could ever imagine. at the same moment you are scorning them in your head for clearly being "high maintenance" you will simultaneously be a little turned on.

if you buy a bukowski book at the start of your layover and finish it before you board the plane, that layover is too long. (i have to say, as an aside, i am just not sure what all the raving about bukowski is. i think burroughs is better. i will have to read one or two more to give him a fair chance.)

should you worry if the announcer says "the flight will be delayed another hour because it was struck by lightning on the way here and we have to check the plane out."? nah, life's too short.

i have decided that vodka gives me a really nasty headache in the morning (or early afternoon actually).

if you are going to take several cabs and shuttles while in vegas, just quit being a tight git and drop the guita on a rental car. i figured it out, and i spent about half of my budget nearly on shuttles and taxis. i had a shuttle driver from the eastern bloc, a shuttle driver from the dominican republic, two taxi drivers from africa, and a latino from the bay area.

i am not a fan of the flashing lights and loud noises in vegas. not a big fan of gambling, either. i know, i know, "what the fuck were you doing there then, darth?"

that's easy, drinking with friends.

vegas is open 24/7, but if you walk through the casino of your hotel at about 4 am, you will see the very flotsam and jetsam of humanity.

meeting friends at baggage claim sucks ass. i miss the days when one could stand near the gate into which one's friend was going to fly. it was easy, simple, you found your friend rapidly, and you could hug and whatever else without getting jostled or having to keep one eye out for your luggage. ("i think i see you. what are you wearing?" "a blue dickies work shirt." "oh, it's not you then. do you see me?")

flying hungover is not much fun.

posting about your trip to vegas whilst still feeling the aftereffects of too much alcohol and too little sleep is much harder than you would think.

prop job planes (i think the proper term is "commuter flight") were designed by the devil in a special room in hell. you bounce, pitch, and drop suddenly less on a rollercoaster.

puking in your friend's hotel room toilet whilst the party rages around you on your last night in town in your hottest dressy duds is easily the most singularly solitary experience, ever.

getting the texts back from your friends, "glad you are home safe. definitely good fun. we were worried you would miss your plane." is wonderful.

seeing your smiling kids, and lovely wife after a debauchery-filled weekend and a hungover flight is the most beautiful and special thing in the entire universe.

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Thursday, September 27, 2007

the latest on barking mad


here it is. the addition of the most recent work. too tired today to pony up a proper post, and had a rough rough day yesterday with the kids. leave tomorrow for vegas, so hoping to decompress there and will tell you all about it when i get back on sunday or monday.
darth sardonic
p.s. i realize my posts lately haven't been up to my usual snuff. i guess i just haven't been as inspired of late, but give it time, i will have it all back for you, o my droogs and only friends, soon.

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Tuesday, September 25, 2007

I-90 to I-25

so, we got the florida job.

at this juncture, there is a bit of administrative stuff to tend to, and then we will probably be traveling cross-country sometime in january or february.

we love road trips, as a family. we like seeing new things and venturing forth into new territory. we like making fun of town names, cars we pass, and road signs. these kinds of trips afford me a cornucopia of witticisms and observations to jot down here for you, the beloved non-existant readers.

tomorrow or the next day, i should have a pic up showcasing the latest on my tattoo.

this weekend, i go to las vegas for a few days to meet some of my friends. i asked one of them if i would be a complete dork if i ended up wearing kinda dressy (but still punky) clothes the whole weekend. she told me, yes, i would. i started trying on what i wanted to take, and since one outfit made me look like a jw knocking doors, i scrapped that one in favor of my carhartt jeans and a dickies work shirt. but i still have a pair of smart pants and a shirt that will definitely fall under the category "putting on the clover." yeah, i am just a bit excited.

little else is happening at the sardonic household. the wife is back at work, and things are kinda back to normal.

well, as normal as we can all be, heh heh.

darth sardonic

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Thursday, September 20, 2007

simple truths

no one likes to be judged. everybody judges others.

i should be balancing our checkbook right now.

i can leave the house with cookie-monster blue hair, piercings and a few tats on full display, wearing my dickies workshirt with the nametag that says "loser" and my pin-up girl all-stars, wallet chain swinging, looking as mean as i can, and some sweet old grandmotherly lady will still smile at me and ask me if i would be so kind as to tell her how to get to the wal-mart and boy, my young men sure are cute.

thank you, krissie, for reminding me that i am decent-looking. i appreciate that (i think you said something along the lines of the full package, hahaha, anyways), everyone loves to hear from others that they hold in regard that they look good. the majority of people do not love to hear they are good-looking from creepy folks whose footprints are pressed into the mud outside their bedroom windows. most people don't think of themselves as "hot" or "sexy." people who do think of themselves as "hot" or "sexy," i find, are complete bores to be around and have all the personality of a vacuum bag. i also find that i might see someone i find attractive, spend an hour or two talking to them, and then subsequent weeks getting to know them, and somehow or other, they go from "attractive" to "hot and sexy" in my head. personality goes an incredibly long way for basic sexiness of a person in my opinion.

we have bought a second car. despite my repeated venomous and heated declarations to the contrary, i will be returning to the inner circle of pepperoni hell and dragging people's pizzas around in my hat and stupid shirt, at least until such time as we toddle off to florida (the wife is, as we speak, videoconferencing with the fella in charge of filling the vacancy by way of interview), and this necesitated another vehicle.

it goes without saying, of course, that we did not buy a benz. quite the contrary. we purchased, with cash, a '97 kia sephia with a dented front and hood, a relatively newer engine, a back door that won't open from the outside (and the wife won't let me even take the panel off to see if i can fix it as a result of all the door-latch issues we had with the fucking prelude--although i am sure this particular issue is simply a rod that has fallen out of place), and one missing hubcap.

buying a car with cash has been, in my experience, a crap-shoot at best. here, for you reading pleasure, a brief list and description of a few of the cars i have purchased with cash:

the first car i ever owned, babe the blue ox, a '75 volvo station wagon. no stereo, one fender off-color, reverse went out on the tranny a month after i bought it.

a '73 volvo sedan (yes, i had a thing for volvos. no, i wasn't very bright). banana yellow, and smelled slightly of petrol inside. tranny gave out a few months after i purchased it. went to junk it, and found that the seller had never changed the title over to himself from his father-in-law, and therefore i could not get a title for it in my name. i removed anything with my name on it from the car, parked it a short distance from my apartment, put the keys in the ignition, and left it. it was still parked there when i moved a few months later.

an '83 chevy cavalier. my buddy s bought this car for less than $200 from an insurance auction. he put a new front clip on it, that actually more or less matched, and got it realigned, and drove it for about a year. then he decided he wanted a motorcycle. he sold me the car for $500, which i paid in two payments, and even helped me put in a new cd player. i drove the sweet bejesus out of that car, replaced the starter, and sold it for $500 several months later when i moved. for all i know, they are still driving it.

an '83 toyota tercel, the beaster. oh, this thing was a piece of work. front was extremely dented. driver door was dented. back was dented. i mistakenly thought it was charcoal gray when i bought it. after cleaning it a bit, i discovered it was actually a light blue. the carpet around the stick shift was pocked with cigarette burns, and the interior looked as if someone had put an m-80 into a two-liter bottle of coke and set it off inside the car. i replaced the tires and back struts (any time i went over a big bump, the back tires would slam up into the wheel wells with a horrible noise and large sections of tread were burned right off the tires as a result), and did little else to it. i covered it in stickers: nofx, the mighty mighty bosstones, and one that said, "your proctologist called: they found your head" and drove it like jehu constantly in the harsh alaskan winters. two years later, when i moved, i sold it for $500 to a young guy who needed a cheap second car. again, that kid is probably still driving the beaster around.

we'll see how this one shapes up.

darth sardonic

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Wednesday, September 19, 2007

you love me, you really love me...

hahaha! if you've spent any time reading and paying attention to this blog, you know i kinda get all "aww, shucks" when i receive awards.

this is usually as a result of not feeling worthy to receive the award and/or seeing many others around me that i feel would be much better and deserving recipients.

but this time, i think i might actually be able to get behind my own worthiness to receive this particular accolade. (no, no, don't worry, i am not going to let it go to my head, heh heh.)

cause i am, i spose, in my own inimitable manner, an awesome dude. not in the way, say, all of krissie and bel's hot guys are, or in the way that tyler durden is, or david beckham, or tom cruise (sorry, snickering behind my hand here at my own little joke), or whoever else. but when it comes to fixing a broken toy (i reattached g.i. joe's arm with strips of duct tape just yesterday. i know, i know, my white trash self coming through, but it was really the only way, i don't think it would've worked if i had tried to bolt it back on even), or lavishing my kids with praise (and sometimes tongue-lashings), or being a solid friend with big shoulders to cry on and big ears to listen and simultaneously slow with opinions and judgements, and knowing when it is my time to shine, and when to fade back and let others shine, i would imagine i am an awesome dude.

now, i know, you are all staring at your screens, thinking, "oh my god, did darth just lavish a little praise on hisself? i must run out now and prepare for the armageddon." worry not, o my beloved non-existant readers, and close your mouths (sitting there with your eyes wide and your jaws dropped looks so silly, hehehe), and put away your 72-hour survival packs, cause i try to be self-aware, and i realize that while i usually talk myself down considerably in here (because it is fun, and nothing makes people laugh quite as much as making fun of yourself about the stupid shit you do that turns out to be the same stupid shit that everybody does) i actually know my strengths and weaknesses.

and, if nothing else, i am an awesome dude for the plain and simple fact that i aint full of meself, y'know?

now, five more deserving recipients. hmmmmmm...

this may appear to be a cop-out, or the easy way, but you know what? i think everyone in my pals list is a deserving recipient, cause let's face it, if you are in my pals list, it's cause i want to read your blog on a regular basis (and because you read mine on a regular basis, and thank you so much for that, i really appreciate it), which means that, for me at least, you have something worth saying. and that, o my beloved and fair non-existant readers, is really saying something when there are literally thousands of blogs out there, and furthermore, makes you, the official non-existants, and members of my pals list, awesome dudes. so if you read this, consider yourselves awarded, cause you deserve it! and if you have already received this award, well, stick a gold star by it, or whatever.

and it is a free country, so if you choose to respectfully decline (or ignore altogether) the award, you won't find any argument from me, hahaha.

darth sardonic

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Monday, September 17, 2007

(And the Sublime style is still straight from Long Beach)

i knew that when my wife returned, i was going to want a weekend with her alone, and i knew she would prefer to have that weekend alone somewhere along the coast.

so, before i even knew exactly what day she would be returning home, i picked a safe weekend on the calendar, did my best puppy-dog eyes at my mom (convincing her to watch the boys for an entire weekend is fraught with danger), and booked a hotel.

and friday, when i brought no. 1 home from school, we loaded up the car, and headed for long beach (washington, not california--driving to long beach, ca for the weekend would be kinda like trying to fit a month into a week).

the drive down 101 was pretty, jaunting merrily between weyerhauser fields (some wooded, some logged), and small burgs advertising oysters and crab and antiques ("why are there always an overabundance of book stores, antique stores, and ice-cream parlors along the coast?") until we pulled into long beach, and found the hotel where we would be staying.

the room had a kitchenette, a "view" of the ocean ("see that brown ribbon along the horizon? that is the ocean. since we are seeing that from our window, i would imagine that counts as a 'view'."), a balcony, and wonderfully large windows that allowed in maximum sun, or in the case of this weekend, cloud-filtered light.

friday night, we had a wonderful meal at a little bistro we found in nearby seaview, then back to our room for some "relaxing".

saturday morning, we had appointments for massages and facials at a local day spa. i have never had a facial before, and it was actually very nice, and i was informed that i had a wonderful complexion (i always thought of my complexion as iffy at best) and great skin (again, never imagined myself as one that a professional might refer to as someone with "great skin").

my wife and i are huge fans of oyster shooters, and after our spa visit, along with walking on the beach and checking out the local shops, we made it our goal to find a place that had oyster shooters.

it was, i believe, easier for candide to find his way into el dorado than for us to find oyster shooters in long beach.

now, here's the thing. this is the coast. god alone knows how many mountains of cast-off oyster shells we passed on the way to long beach. as i said to my wife while we sauntered down the main street trying to find anyfuckingwhere that carried oyster shooters, "they should be chucking them out into the street. we should be walking past the entrance of a place and literally get hit in the face, followed by 'oh i'm really sorry, it's just that we have so many damn raw oysters that we have to dump them into the gutter.' we should overhear homeless fellas complaining, 'not fucking oysters on a half-shell again! i keep hoping someone will toss out a steak or a salad or a damn hunk of bread, but it is always fucking oysters on the half shell.'"

(i am extremely witty in my own head.)

we finally settled for a restaurant, out of sheer exhaustion and starvation, that had, at best, mediocre seafood. one does not come to the coast for steak. or salad. or mediocre fucking seafood! one comes to the coast for fucking oysters on the half shell, and dungeness crab (well, in our neck of the woods, anyhow. i imagine at other coasts it may be lobster, or king crab (i ate my sides out with king crab in alaska once. damn, that was fun), or some other thing, but along the oregon and washington coast, it is oysters, goeducks, and dungeness crab).

we vowed to do better at dinner, and headed for the beach.

after a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo(whew, i almost need a break from typing how long the walk was, which reminds me of the huge break i needed after completing the long walk)ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong walk along the water, the waves attempting to crawl up and entrap our feet, the gulls mean-mugging us, thinking we were there to steal their beached fish and kelp and baby jellyfish.

at dinner, we went to a restaurant we hadn't made it to previously, and that was named, appropriately, the crab pot. after a bit of a wait, and a more-than-largish gin and tonic, we found ourselves replete with oyster shooters and enough dungeness crab to choke a dozen donkeys.

sunday, we woke up sluggishly, dressed slowly, showered languidly, and checked out of our room. we drove lazily home, and found, much to our surprise, that grammy hadn't killed herself or ripped all her hair out, the kids were happy and not overly sugared-up, and the house was not only still standing, but relatively clean as well.

a wonderful time was had by all.

darth sardonic

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Friday, September 14, 2007

random and sundry and miscellany

my wife and i agree that after wwiii, all that will be left will be the cockroaches, and keith richards, ozzy osborne, and cher, all of whom the roaches will worship as gods.

for all my pissing and moaning while she was gone and i was lonely (and extremely horny), i ought not complain about having her back, heh heh, but i wish my wife would pick up after herself, hahaha! other than that, things are well and good. and yes, we did. lots. (cause i know you are wondering, you gutterminded little non-existant readers, you.) and it was great. reference the previous post, which is, of course, about that, and about everything else as well.

"do you, y'know, blog about, ummmm, i mean... do you blog about us?"
"no, silly, geez. i blog about the kids, stuff you and i say and do, things that rub me the wrong way, or make me laugh, but you and i still have family members that read this stupid shite, for fuck's sake!"
"ok, just wanted to make sure."

the kids are back in school. wooo fucking hooooo! this gives your droog and only friend darth a chance to rally round the forces as it were and reboot, recoup, relieve. no. 1 is in kindergarten, which he more or less enjoys, despite a monster meltdown that resulted in me damn near dragging his fucking (screaming and yelling and fucking lippy) ass all the way to school and depositing him in a (fake) crying heap on the floor, where he milked it for all it was worth (and more) for several minutes while i glowered and pretended to be a hot, single prince who had never had kids, and who is a rock star on top of all that.

i was able, without any problem whatsoever, to take myself and my children up to wait at the very gate where my wife would magically appear, and subsequently nearly kill herself diving under the zip-line barriers to hug her little cherubs and myself, and cry and cry and cry. she cried more than me, though we all know for a fact that i was crying, cause i can't even fucking pretend within the scope of this blog that i didn't. but surprisingly enough, not a fraction of the amount that she did, and an even smaller fraction than what i expected to. hmmmmm, odd...

and now we are adjusting to the new normalcy. and seeing into moving to florida. yes, florida. that's right. yes, you did hear me correctly. well, if you will give me a sec, i will... damn.

the wife has been offered a special-duties job in florida. and, after much urging and coaxing from me, she applied. and now it looks as if she is very high in the running for this job, and we might possibly be traveling cross-country to relocate ourselves to the atlantic coast. are we excited? well, if the amount of sites i keep seeing on the computer that my wife has left up of realty in florida, and other travel-related kinds of things are any sign, nope, not in the least.

darth sardonic

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Tuesday, September 11, 2007

o, happy day

oh, bliss, bliss and heaven. ...oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh. ...like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship,...

o frabjous day! callooh! callay!

but there is also a wild extravagance, a mad gaiety, a verve, a gusto, at times almost a delirium.

this is perfect.
nothing can compare to this.
it is instant and it is profound. this is what has been missing from me my entire life.

in order: anthony burgess, a clockwork orange, lewis carroll, jabberwocky in through the looking glass and what alice found there, anais nin, preface to miller's tropic of cancer, and augusten burroughs, dry.

coming soon, a proper post by yours truly.

darth sardonic

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Wednesday, September 05, 2007

tomorrow, tomorrow

i love ya, tomorrow...

today is no. 1's first day of kindergarten. he was so excited that he took a fraction of the time that i thought it would take to get ready, and we ended up at the school ridiculously early. oh, how lovely, these days that are markers in my children's lives. oh, how funny that i am the one that has the trouble letting go, hahaha.

the house is clean. the beds are made. there is nothing left for me to do but wait. and wait. and wait some more. but in less than 28 hours, i will be holding my wife.

and bawling, you can fucking bet money on it.

this is the to-do list i made when she left:

TO DO THIS SUMMER:

1.) fix flower beds/plant more flowers (done)
2.) organize shed (done)
3.) organize shelves dining room (done)
4.) go through kids' clothes (done)
5.) go through my clothes (done)
6.) get stories published (ummmm, i didn't even print any up to mail off)
7.) finish novel (i might've opened the word document once or twice to look at it)
8.) finish recording songs (i learned a bunch of new covers, does that count?)
9.) get no. 2 potty-trained (done)
10.) sippy cups disappear (done)
11.) binkies disappear (fuck yeah, motherfucker--errr, done)
12.) clean up itunes (so, i have to admit, i was never quite that bored)
13.) hang mirror (done)
14.) organize dvd's (done)

now, the funny thing about that list (other than when my mom said, "how do you plan to do all this when i have so much for you to do over at my house?") is mostly the only things i didn't accomplish were related to my creativity. i just did not have the energy to do alot of creating. i'm hoping i get it right back after she comes home tomorrow.

tomorrow.

yes, that is fucking-a right, tomorrow. and my kids are still alive, and i am almost sure there are a couple small shreds of my sanity hunkered down in a foxhole somewhere.

so i will leave you, the beloved non-existants, with that for now, and lord alone knows when i will return here to post again, but i will most definitely be back.

darth sardonic

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Monday, September 03, 2007

and we never forgot...

i need to get something off my chest:

i am watching the majestic (brilliant fucking movie, if you haven't seen it, run out and rent it now. right fucking now. it's jim carey's first completely serious role, and fuck me gently with a chainsaw sideways if he doesn't pull it off in spades. i would liken him to jimmy stewart in this movie. but i digress), and this movie, of course, makes me cry. and shit, who knows? i guess i need it. but while i watch it, i keep thinking about wwii and our current little shindig, and i can't help but wonder what the big difference is.

then it hit me: we are not invested in our current wars (yes, wars. the us is currently fighting in two countries still. we only hear about iraq, but our sons and daughters are still dying in afghanistan as well). oh, i mean, i am invested, i am so fucking invested that sometimes it feels as if someone has pulled my very entrails out of my stomach and gone sifting through them looking for gold. and there are many like me, and i end up talking to them in chats, and here and there around base and post, and i see my own ache and longing and melancholy staring right back at me as if mirrored in their eyes.

but we, the country, we are not invested in the outcome overseas. no one is asking us to cut back on sugar. no one is telling us we have to make our tires last longer cause our boys need the rubber to win the war. no one is asking us to do our part to aid the war effort. no one is telling us to grow a victory garden. no one is asking us to buy war bonds. shit, our very president urged us to go out after 9/11 and go shopping, for fuck's sake! and if companies haven't latched onto this as an opportunity to make a fast buck, then i am one blind and stupid motherfucker that should be clubbed like a baby seal, cause i see so many "support the troops" magnets and bumperstickers, and flags, etc etc etc.

we used to be proud to say our sons were serving. we gave each returning soldier a hero's welcome. then we got jaded, somewhere around the vietnam era. i try to tell every vietnam vet i see thanks. they didn't get the welcome home that the boys from wwii got. but they were doing the same thing, serving their country.

as the troops are doing now.

i remember watching george bush senior on a tv in argentina, overdubbed in castellano, and wondering if some of my friends were on their way to the desert then. i even joined the air force after i came home from south america, and still managed to miss any real action (i hadn't been doing my job long enough to have been included with the small handful of dentists and assistants who went to bosnia to do dental work on the un troops there), i felt like the midnight oil song, forgotten years. i hadn't been asked to sacrifice. none of my friends had died on the field of battle.

that never stopped me from appreciating the ones who have gone on before, regardless of what war, police action, conflict, or offensive they might've been called to.

and now, i am sacrificing, o my droogs and beloved non-existant readers, though for only a couple more days (well, till the next round, where i will do it all again), and i want to send out a reminder to those who maybe don't really think about what's going on "over there": our sons and daughters are still dying. this thing isn't over. it might very well be a long time before we can actually call it "over", before our sons and daughters are no longer dying on desert sands far from home.

and if we might take a moment, maybe just a couple seconds each day, when we turn off our tv's, and our computers, and our ipods, and our video games, and we launch a momentary prayer heavenward that our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, husbands and wives might all return home safe, and sound. that a peaceful end might be found to this conflict.

but most importantly, o my beloveds everywhere, that we vow that we will not forget.

we will not forget.

darth sardonic

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split lip and split tongue...

i am putting my foot down. i refuse, unless it is by my choice, to share my meals with my kids anymore. my youngest could've consumed 20 bowls of cereal, but when i sit down with cottage cheese and fruit, he desperately needs some. i could sit down with a plate full of crawling live bugs on top of rotted fish-flesh, and no. 2 will ask if he can have a bite, over and over and over again.

someone please explain to me how today's skate punks can wear jeans that fit tight everywhere but the ass. how does that work? the jeans look painted on, till they turn around, then you suddenly have this odd urge to show them where the bathroom is and pass them a can of oust on their way there. we did this in the 80's, except that our jeans fit tight everywhere, and we appeared to still have complete control of our colon.

when you are wrenched violently from your bed sooner than you wish by the sounds of your lovely children fighting and crying and wailing in the back yard, if you wish the noises to stop, do not, and i mean do not spray them with the hose. if you want them to quit fighting, it works perfectly. if you want quiet, it sorta has the opposite effect.

which brings me to my next question: how is it that my oldest can come in from outside fucking soaking to the skin damn near every fucking day, but i spray him just a little with the hose, and all he can talk about for the next twenty minutes is how i got his shirt wet?

apparently video games on disc taste good, and little-kid teeth marks cannot be buffed out or filled like scratches. when q gets back, i owe him, along with a new controller (well, at least one, probably two) a couple of games as well. i will also tell him to never leave a game console with us again, as we don't really deserve it.

today is no. 1's 6th birthday. he was born 6 years ago on labor day. today, it is again labor day. us yanks tend to have barbeques and such on this day. i will be doing some cleaning and battling with the kids and drinking too much coffee, most likely, and little else today. we will celebrate no. 1's birthday at chuck e. cheese's (shitty pizza, and more video and arcade games than a simple mind like mine can even comprehend) when his mom gets back.

in just TWO MORE DAYS!!!!!!!!

fuck yeah, felt good to say that.

darth sardonic

p.s. jamie's blog has disappeared. considering what she was going through, this makes me a bit nervous. if anyone has any info, it would be greatly appreciated. thank you.

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