A lot of time...

Has passed since my last entry. At least for me. What have I been doing?
Well, last week-end, Jen's family had their Family Reunion. It was small this year, as the younger generations tend to not go very often. It usually a pain in the ass is why. This year was no exception, but I had a lot of fun despite myself. The Reunion is usually held at beautiful Lake Murray, near Ardmore, OK. The reason is because half of us live in Oklahoma, and the rest in Texas, so we just meet in the middle. Lake Murray is very beautiful. There is camping, a Marina, and a Resort on site. It was one of Roosevelt's public works projects during the New Deal. It has not been updated since, and the maintenance has been lackluster. It is what I fondly refer to as "Jank City." We asked them on the phone if they had a couple of cribs they could throw in our room, which they did, and tried to charge us $10 a night for, which would have been $60. I let them know as nicely as possible that that was a crock of shit, and they waved the fee. This was a good thing, because both cribs were of the old fold-up variety from the '50s and didn't have any of their hardware attached any longer, and would completely collapse once more than a half a pound of pressure was applied. The first time it happened, all I did was put a pillow in it. Classy.
The wonderful thing is that children don't care about shit like that, and there were a lot of kids in attendance. Jackson's time was monopolized by his cousin Jaezie, who at almost 4 years old, is like a swarm of bees. It is as though she was raised by wolves. He sister Lenzie is awesome. At 9, she's smart and witty and wise beyond her years, which makes Jaezie that much harder to figure out. Jackson seemed to start to have a good time as soon as we implemented the "Hands to Yourself" rule, which made everybody happy.
Anyway, the weekend was filled with swimming and Grilled food and Smores and running around and tired kids and fits and evil breakfast buffets* and was actually quite relaxing even though Jen and I really didn't sleep much.


The best part was our trip to Arbuckle Farms. This is a place where old (and I do mean OLD) zoo and circus animals go to live out their days eating food out of wax cups held out of car windows by timid housewives and scared children. What a magical place! It was more fun than I thought it would be, and a lot less pathetic. The animals were friendly and only the ostriches were dicks, but in my experience, most birds are dicks. Since we rarely went over 10mph the whole time, we let Jackson sit in the front seat, so he could see everything. He had a BLAST.
Flickr set here.

The rest of the weekend was anti-climactic, to tell you the truth. We left Monday morning, but next time I'm leaving Sunday night, and sleep in my own bed.

Tuesday and Wednesday, we kept Gavin, the son of our dear friends Brandon and Gretchen, as his usual babysitter had a death in the family. They are about 6 months apart in age, and entertained each other better than any adult ever could. Wednesday night, Scarlett stayed the night so her mom could go clubbing, to mixed results. She's a sweet kid but has some problems. Mainly due to having little or no supervision most of the time. She kept us up all night screaming because apparently sleep is where the clowns eat you. That was fun. Jen had her up and dressed and out the door as soon as the call came, at 7:00am.

So that's about it. That's what I've been doing.

Go away now.

-JP





*
"Is the oatmeal instant, or do you make it?"
(blank expression)
"It's instant but we make it."

In which I tell you about my week-end.

So it is all sudden-like summertime here in the south west. We hit 91 degrees a little while ago.
The good news is that we didn't get the hot until after the weekend. The weekend barely cracked 80, and was awesome because of it.
Friday Jackson had been asking Jen all day to go to the play area in the mall. He loves that place. I think it smells like feet. While in the area of town dedicated entirely to commerce, we decided to get me clothes. I was going to wait until I lost a little more weight (26 lbs so far!), but the fat clothes weren't cutting it, and I seem to have hit a wall in my weight loss for some reason. It may be that since Joey goes down at 9:00 now, I wasn't able to use the exercise machine while I watch the Daily Show like I was before. More on that later. So we got me some clothes that would be good for work, but also light enough for summertime. Rock. We also went on a fruitless search for a Sit and Stand stroller which allows two kids in one contraption. Everyone was out, which was a bummer.*
We were going to watch The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford when we got the boys to sleep, but when we realized it was 2 hrs, 40 min long, we decided against it.
Saturday was a big day. I put together a crib we procured for Joey, as he is out-growing the bassinet. This has the added advantage of being in his room rather than ours, so I get to exercise during the Daily show again. We then split up for a while, Jen taking Joey to do some grocery shopping, and I took Jackson to the bank. His piggy bank was over flowing and he got to put it into the big machine, and he thought that was awesome. All the cash went into his savings account, except for a few bucks for him to pick out a toy with. All he wanted was a hot wheels car, so he got a little bag of candy as well. You know what that is? That's bonding, mofo.
After naps and what-not, we started gearing up for the post-mother's-day-barbecue. Jen's sister came down from the City with her little boy, and Cousin Ryan came down from Stilly accompanied by his new girlfriend. Prior to the meal, Jen's mom found us the stroller we wanted at a place that sells baby stuff that we totally forgot about. yay! We ate a bunch of meat and pasta salad then decided to go to Mayfest. We had a grand time eat Mayfest, except that the Lemonade guy we went to first was a total dick. We wandered around, watched Larkin for a while and went home. All the kids fell asleep fast. I think a lot of the adults did as well.
Sunday Jen made an awesome brunch. Pappa B and Nana came over,and we all visited and played with the kids. We spent the after noon lounging around Jen's parent's house, and I fell asleep watching Temple of Doom on the sci-fi channel. We made a pizza, and Jackson almost fell asleep at the table, as he had no nap and had just gotten out of the hot tub all relaxed.
We went home, and I mowed the lawn while Jen got the kids in bed. We then watched The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford , which was really good, if a bit long. A stellar cast in that one.
Then sleep. Well, a little sleep. Jackson has been waking up a lot lately. I don't know what that's about.

-Powers out.






*I am so old.

A shopping spree, houshold projects, and a death.

Okay, so been a while. I had to play a lot of catch-up at work after the Denver trip. In the meantime, spring finally showed up, the Avs got their asses handed to them by the Redwings, The new season of Doctor Who started, and a new Portishead album came out. One of these things is very good.
So this week-end, we took Jackson on a shopping spree. He shot up a few inches over the last two months, and everything he owned magically didn't fit any more. So we went to the Mall, and to Target, and made him try on a bunch of stuff, when he just wanted to look at the toys. It took all day, but I think we have sufficiently clothed him for the remainder of the summer. He got a Hunk and and Iron man shirt, so that's cool. I'm glad I'm allowed to pick things out every so often. ( I bought him his first comic book while in Denver, a Spider-Man one-off meant for a younger age group. I read it three times on the plane ride home.)
We also attended a graduation party for our friend Craig. It took him 6 years and three schools, but he finally did it. He got a degree in History, which he will now use to be a Carpenter. Go, Craig!
Sunday, we did a whole mess of projects around the house that have been building up since we moved in. We painted the living room, replaced the sink sprayer which was leaking, fixed the bedroom toilet, which had broken in the dead of night about two weeks ago, causing it to refill loudly, and take forever when it did. I also put up some shelves in the living room, which still need to be stained, and I fixed the two holes on our fence that we obtained during the last big storm. It is actually, technically our neighbor's fence. I would have just waited for him to fix it, but he's in a rental, so he doesn't give a shit. But since the dog from two houses down was getting into our yard through various holes in fences and picking fights with our dogs, I decided to just hop the fence and repair the holes with whatever that guy had lying around.
Also on Sunday, my ex-step dad David died. For those of you who know me well, you know that he was the reason I moved out when I was 15, and the source of most of my bad self-esteem and neurotic behaviour. I am having a hard time trying to figure out how I feel about that. He had been sick for quite some time. A fact that I was unaware of until my mom told me while I was in Denver. And now he's dead. I don't know if I really needed to talk to him about anything, or if going to the funeral will bring me any kind of closure. I'm pretty sure I made my peace with all that a long time ago. What I do know is that there is some sort of emotion there, I just can't lock it down. For good or ill, and even though I haven't had any contact with him for 17 years, he had a strong impact on my life. The funeral is on Friday, and I don't know if I'll go yet.
Okay, Debbie Downer. Lay off.

Everybody have a good week!

-JP