Honea Express

Archive for the ‘Poop’ Category

One had an accident. One had on purpose. The old dog craps on the floor before she even knows what happened. My eyes are sinking into dark, black bags.

There is madness in the rhythm and a rhythm to the madness. I wouldn’t recommend dancing to it. It will cut a bitch. But it has a good beat.

Such is life that is lived around me.

Sometimes the truest photos are those you throw away.

Sometimes I drop nonsense and pass it as knowledge.

Days are filled with screams and laughter and the running where running is not allowed but really, who the fuck cares? Run, rabbits, run. Don’t listen to your old man that has forgotten what makes you perfect. Every morning I am one more day away from remembering what you feel. You are wiser than I will ever be.

Today is Monday and that means nothing to you. The same games and mischief that you left in the hallway will greet you there. Sunday was just the day with the paper. Monday is an extra cup of coffee raised in the distance – a machine that you recognize by the back of my head.

Play your games and tip-toe past me. I’ll call you on your shit. I am a stereotype. Smile when you are up to something, I’ll likely go easy on you.

Monday is but a second of screen time, but that doesn’t make it any less important.

Be yourself. Act. Don’t let the credits stop you. Sometimes there are out-takes at the end and that just might be the part that really hits home.

I never should have started the fart games. It was bound to backfire. I should have known better, but I couldn’t resist. Pulling of one’s finger is a long, time-honored tradition in pseudo-civilized society, and one might argue that the passing of it is indeed innate.

The boys are good at it. Too good. One fart led to another and now we all have pinkeye. Damn the pillows.

Now, I’m no doctor, but if pinkeye can be passed by gas in the movies, it must be true. Hollywood is about the only thing we can trust anymore.

The boys have the worst of it. They woke yesterday with crud in their sockets and went to bed with their eyes caked shut like Rocky after a dance with Clubber Lane. They just laid there, begging to be cut.

Tricia and I woke up this morning with little nuggets of carrier monkey poop in our respective eyes. I fear we may have it, too.

I passed her in the hall at 6 in the morning, her eyes were red and puffy. “You have wife eyes,” I told her.

She ignored me.

Damn, “30 Rock” sure is funny.

She went to work, hoping she didn’t have the highly contagious ailment. I made coffee and started cleaning.

The boys watched Elf through swollen eyes and made the complaints of children who are suffering. Now and again I’d hear a laugh emerge from their den of disease followed by the weakened shouts of exhausted pride.

“He farted!” was their constant cry.

It made my eyes itch every time.

Read about our other adventure from last night at DadCentric. It doesn’t involve farts.

I should probably start with a warning. This is gross. Are you still here? I wasn’t kidding.

Okay, I’m over warnings.

I was making breakfast, as is my want, and it was a Sunday like a Sunday is supposed to be. There was a fresh batch of coffee being pressed by the French and the Times was waiting patiently for me on the floor. The comics were getting antsy. Especially Marmaduke. I swear, that dog can’t sit still for ANYTHING.

There may have been music on, or it may have been the sweet, sultry tones of Shannon Sharpe waxing poetic on football and the demons that haunt it. I wasn’t really paying attention.

In case you’re wondering, the gross part hasn’t happened yet.

I was standing at the stove and I glanced towards the playroom that sits adjacent to the kitchen. I saw a naked baby butt and heard something about poop. I stepped through the door to investigate. I didn’t see any poop.

“Do you have to go to the bathroom?” I asked. I decided not to wonder why I was seeing naked baby butt instead of the diapered baby butt that had passed me just moments ago in the kitchen while I was preparing myself for something gross that still hadn’t happened. It was Sunday and thinking was for the workweek.

“Outside,” was the answer.

“You pooped outside?” I asked. Stranger things have happened. I walked to the door and looked into the yard. “I don’t see any poop.”

“Here,” he said, with such a calm sense of knowing that I was inclined to believe him.

I glanced to where the here was and noticed a piece of poop on the ground. There was also a piece in his hand. He pushed open the door and he threw it outside.

“Poop outside,” he said, and he was right.

I went back into the kitchen and washed my hands even though I hadn’t touched anything. He was sent to the bathroom for a more thorough scrubbing.

That part wasn’t really important. I just threw it in to scare you off. Besides, what’s the point of your kid throwing handfuls of crap into the morning air if you don’t share it with people that can’t take a hint.

It was still Sunday morning. There was still coffee ready to be enjoyed and a paper waiting to be read. Marmaduke was beside himself.

I had been cracking eggs into a mixing bowl. There were three yokes, milk and asiago cheese involved in the project. It was all so promising.

Seriously, this is your last chance.

I cracked the next egg and watched as the yoke and white fell into the bowl, except that there wasn’t any white. There was red.

The egg was full of blood, red strings of sadness stuck in the thick of the matter. Suddenly Sunday seemed much more grimacing, darker and cruel. I held my breath and closed my eyes as I dumped the contents of the bowl into the garbage disposal and then ran to the bathroom convinced that I was about to be sick.

I wasn’t. I wasn’t sick and I wasn’t hungry, not anymore. I fixed my coffee, made sure I saw diaper, turned up Shannon Sharpe and opened the paper. Marmaduke was right where he should be and I almost smiled as he jumped, covered in rain, through an open window. It wasn’t funny, just like it always isn’t funny, but it was the way it should be, and slowly my Sunday came back into the light.

“Poop,” I wrote, chuckling to myself, “is the new smurf.”

I was leaving a comment at Jonathon’s, and needless to say I was rather pleased with myself. I mean, come on, that’s smurfing brilliant.

For those unfamiliar in the way of the Smurf there are a few things you should know to fully appreciate just how brilliant I am.

a) The Smurfs became extinct as a people due to the fact that there was only one female among their entire population and she was a tease.

b) Due to living in a mushroom the Smurfs were constantly hallucinating, paranoid and possibly impotent.

c) The Smurfs, and this is the only point that actually pertains to my comment, had a knack for replacing random words within their vernacular with the word “smurf.” The word “smurf” could mean anything, a verb, adjective, adverb, and to a lesser extent a noun, unless said noun was an actual Smurf- for instance.

Enter poop.

Kids, it seems, are much like Smurfs, but instead of smurfing everything with “smurf” they prefer to work in a different medium. Poop.

Much like the above link to Jonathon’s blog, my life is filled with poop where I don’t want it. Literally and figuratively.

“What do you want for lunch?” I’ll ask.

“A peanutpoop and jelly sandwich,” they’ll reply, laughing.

“Don’t smurf around, I’ll make you a damn peanutpoop sandwich and you’ll eat it.”

-or-

“Where do you want to go today?”

“To the poop.”

“Seriously, the poop? What’s that, a store?”

“No, the poop!”

“The park?”

“The poop! The poop!”

“Do you have to go to the bathroom?”

And so forth and so on. Poop, it seems, is the new Smurf. And smurfly, I think it’s pretty poopy.

But it gets old.

Whit Honea, you just spent 4 days at Disneyland! What are you going to do now?

Um, go back to my crappy life I guess.

Except that my life isn’t all that crappy, despite it being just like this article that Phil sent me. Basically, I’ll be dead by Tuesday.

Actually, my situation is even harder than those mentioned in the article, minus the death part, due to the fact that I have two kids to care for the entire time that I’m working- and I won’t even go into my bracket. Save your pity, send cash.

It’s easy to get caught up in our own drama and forget that other people have actual problems. Sometimes reality sets in and I’m humbled or ashamed or drunk. Other times I just let my shit pile up until it topples like turd Jenga. I won’t apologize for it, though I should. I won’t because it is a fault that most of us share and I don’t want to guilt you into doing likewise. We all make amends at some point. Most of us.

So we were at Disneyland and it was good. I had my laptop and meant to get some work done, but decided to spend time with my family instead. That doesn’t mean that my mind didn’t wander to ideas for The Disney Blog, or that I didn’t spend our nights of early retirement sipping wine and reading about a rebel child’s journey to rebel mom. I almost walked a step out of my way when I overheard someone say that Ben Stiller was there, but chose some private time with Stitch and Minnie Mouse instead. It’s all about priorities.

Which leads me to the problem with Disneyland: Children. As you know, I love kids. I have a couple myself. I love Disney, that’s why I just sold a freaking kidney to take said brats kids there. The problem with kids at Disneyland is that they are over it. They are over-stimulated, over-exhausted, over-hyped on sugar and over the collective last nerve of all parents within a two park radius. Of course they make up for this by being so full of cuteness, awe and magic that we tend to forget how tempted we were to leave them with Stramboli just moments before.

The trouble comes from the fact that they are so wrapped up in their own experience that they forget they are just the best part of a team. They forget that their parents also love Disneyland and would be all sorts of happy to share everything with them if they could only manage to ask without screams and tears. It’s not like people take their children to Disneyland to showcase their own ability to discipline and threaten them in front of winding queues filled with impressed parents making mental notes. That’s what soccer is for.

I’m not even talking about my kids, per se. They were excellent about 90% of the time, which is honor roll material. I’m talking about the idea that is kid and all that it implies. I’m sure your kids are great, too.

Regardless, we’re home and we’re broke and we’re tired. Life is normal and it’s all good. Relatively.

Oh, did I mention that my children were eaten by Pluto and Goofy, respectively. The ride home sure was quiet.