Sleeping is my 9 to 5...

this morning (and it is early still here), i went upstairs to wake up no. 2 to get ready for school. i'm not fully caffeinated yet, but take the nice and pleasant approach:

"hey, hey buddy. it's time to get uuup."

i rub his back softly with the flat of my palm, and he stirs and he rolls over. with half-lidded eyes, he asks, "why you wake me up for?"

"cause it is time to get up and get ready for school."

"we don't have skoo on saturdays n sundays."

"what day is today?"

he scrunches up his eyes in thought, tilting his head, and taps his temple with one index finger: "lemme check my brain. hmmm."

several more seconds of this method-actor bit, while i smile and try not to laugh outright, and then:

"fursday."

"so get up and get dressed."

i think it might be a very good day, o beloved non-existent readers (a new non-existent, and avid spellchecker, has informed me that all these years i have been spelling it wrong. how bout that? she also informed me if i spelled it wrong again, she would throttle me. violently.)

and a phrase for today that we don't use nearly enough: make hay while the sun shines.

darth sardonic

catch these moments as you would moonbeams...

i've gotten some hours back at work. at the same time, i am still in school and winding my way towards finals followed by the summer semester.

friday night, as the antibiotics for licking the sinus infection that had been stomping a mudhole in my ass for over two weeks were starting to kick in proper, s the drummer came over with s the fill-in-while-my-real-guitarist-is-gone guitarist, and we jammed a bit on some songs with the intent of recording them.

things were going along swimmingly, and i was into it and jumping some.

until i did a jump and my knee exploded into a blinding flash of pain shaped like a darth sardonic and i crashed onto the floor in agony.

the funny thing is that neither of my counterparts realized i had fallen out of the frame for a full 40 seconds after i did it. (a buddy of mine watched the clip over and over, trying not to laugh when i go from jumping to sprawled out on the floor, and then announced "they don't quit playing for 40 seconds" cool, thanks.)

pain etched on my face like the erosion of a cliff face, i am on the floor trying to keep playing the bass part though i don't realize that i have dropped my bass on the cable, and bent it to a point where the contacts no longer meet, so nothing is coming out.

we stop playing, i get a different cable, pop motrin, one-legged drag a chair over, and we play the song again, me seated with one leg draped over the arm, an angry look on my face (it is actually a mix of anger (at myself), concentration (on the bassline and away from the firepit that is my knee socket), disgust (again, at myself), and pain--but on the video clip it just looks like i am pissed.)

then i put my leg up with ice on it while we rewatch all the clips. i actually feel a shadowy empathic flash in my knee at the moment i see myself go down on the tv.

the next day, i am stiff and sore, but the swelling is down, and we take the kids to kennedy space center.

we are all fascinated by the rockets, launch modules, the space suits, the shuttle explorer. we watch an imax movie about the trips to the moon made by nasa, and at the end as i look into the stars and the fanfare plays around me i am almost choked up by the sheer vastness of space and the universe, and just how fucking tiny and insignificant we really are while simultaneously fighting so hard to leave something behind.

today, as i am thinking, "my kids would make job fucking kick a puppy!" alkaline trio's "jaked on green beers" (more commonly known as the goodbye song amongst the smaller of the sardonic household) comes up on the stereo, and myself and no. 2 sing along lustily at the top of our lungs, unanimously agreeing "Now all I have left is this heart in my chest,/Your dishonesty helping me cope./I hope this is goodbye." and that it is the coolest song ever.

not much later, as i am making a sandwich to help me get through my autocad class without starving to death, and the boys are watching "schoolhouse rock," no. 1 dashes into the kitchen and says, "this is our favorite song!"

and simultaneously, we burst into: "conjunction junction, wha-hat's your functiooooon?" as i even throw in some disco finger points that would make mr. travolta proud.

yeah, my kids might be hellions, but was i so different?

man i love my family.

darth sardonic

if I give you everything you'll ever need...

...and it all comes down to/your half smile, country mile, angel child

no. 2 seems bound and determined to continue on his "learn fake spanish through the language menu on your favorite movies" deal, as no. 1 and i were forced to watch "the fantastic four: rise of the silver surfer" in a version of spanish that seemed to be a meld of mexican and spain spanish, that actually cracked me up because they used a word which in spain means "to grab" and in argentina is one of the most vulgar and offensive ways of saying "to fuck."

no. 1 explains to me at length how the "chopper janner" he created with his legos will cut through trees and is also equipped with lasers and crystals and a gun, so that the driver, "qantas" (who's cover is the ceo of a major australian airlines apparently) can shoot the "villians" ((a tangent: it's an odd turn of events that my son has gone from referring to the ones who end up dead in all his play as "bad guys" and switched over to calling them "villians." strange. and as far as i can tell, it happened as quietly and incrementally as the holocaust. wish i could trace this shift to some one thing. anyways...) oh, and why exactly do the "villians" have to end up dead? really. i mean, he watches superman, spiderman, batman. these guys don't kill anybody. they beat fuck out of 'em, yeah. i'll give you that. some of 'em probably wish they were dead. but still. again, anyways...) as he travels at high speeds across some fantastical landscape that exists only within the brainpan of my oldest child. i am momentarily sidetracked from the demostration of how the saw arms swing out by no. 2 stomping up and down the stairs, a goofy smile on his face as his head bounces around like one of those springy-necked dolls and says, "dolopo atto. khee ganam? apodo dolodo."

i got yet another chuck palahniuk book from the library (i am working my way through all of them) and was laying in bed reading it when i realized my wife was no longer watching tv and all the lights were off but mine.

"you going to sleep?"

"yeah, baby."

"what time is it?"

"ten-thirty."

"holy poop!" i say, and slap the bookmark into my book and shut off my light (ten-thirty is late for us old farts who spend all day mentally and physically wrassling two overactive boys).

my wife is cracking up.

cause somehow or other, i managed to say "pooewuph" or something along those lines.

"did you just turn french in the middle of that word?"

now i am laughing.

"no, i just kinda messed up the pronunciation!"

"it's like when you say 'jewLAH' instead of july." making fun of the redneck way i say the seventh month sometimes when i am not thinking about it.

"i told you, my dad was from texas!"

"jewLAH."

"july, july, july."

"pewup!"

we have both graduated from snickers to all-out laughing, in bed, in the dark, which i am pretty sure counts against you if you were making a case for your ongoing sanity.

we are cracking up now over completely silly things that aren't really funny, but we are already on a laughing jag, so what the hell, right?

i laugh so hard and fast i am not actually making any sound, just sitting with my eyes squinched together and my mouth open and my shoulders rocking, the tears rolling down my cheeks.

my wife on the other hand, is snorting between guffaws. her face approximating a grimace of pain almost, tears welling up in her eyes in the corners next to her nose as she winds down to a "*snort* kahee, tahee, tee hee."

i have said it before, and i will say it again, o my beloved non-existant readers: i am one lucky motherfucker. truly blessed. somewhere, somehow, i did something right.

cause i have the fucking coolest fucking family ever, and there aint no two ways about it.

darth sardonic