Dear Google Wave team:

I live with a family of weasels in rural Pennsylvania.  Please send weasel food.  Also, weasel-sized clean underwear would be a bonus.

If it is not possible to send me these supplies directly, please get me a wave account so I can ask others for these things.

Email is so 2009.
Warmly yours,

Aaron

It was a Sunday.

We spent a few hours at a low-key fair-thingy at the elementary school.  The girls had tons of fun, and played with their school mates.  I amused the Babybot as best I could, playing chase, and doing other stuff on the three-year-old side of fun.

When we got home, some of us were beat, and Babybot nestled with Mommy on the couch.

I began cooking the meat that had been marinating since that morning.   Soon, the fragrances of ginger, garlic, shrimp paste and other spices filled the house.  I cleaned as I went (for a change) .

But I needed more supplies.  Babybot decided he wasn’t sleepy after all, and accompanied me to the Asian grocery store.  He was most helpful, mimicking my bent-over posture as I intently squinted at the Chinese characters on the jars, wondering which jar of dark squishy stuff was shrimp paste.  Though we both hunched and squinted mightily, we never did find that particular item, and we returned with lemongrass and ginger as our only rewards.

With the lemongrass added, the curry simmered.  I cleaned out the pantry a little, moving my two still-fermenting beer buckets from the pantry floor to the basement, where they belonged.  I cleaned the basement a little while I was down there.

I played cards with the seven year old (she was content to teach me the rules of Crazy Eights, if a little miffed that her father did not already know).  I colored with the five year old.  Our medium was colored pencils on coloring book paper (look for our work at any major gallery near you… just ask if they have anything with Strawberry Shortcake)

Later, I called Mommy from the couch to eat with us.  She alone seemed to like it.  In her words, it was one of the best I have ever made.  Kiddies barely touched it… Oh well.

After dinner, I sent her downstairs to watch TV while I cleaned and played and wrestled with kids.  I called her up for goodnight kisses.

Today was an astonishingly beautiful day.

From the quiet beginning:  black tea, french toast, and newspaper, and then yard work, …

…and the trip to the grocery store:  Little Beaver toddled along beside me while the girls stayed in the minivan and listened to Gorillaz.  Oh how he promised he’d work hard and be good holding the package of blueberries.  But I, imagining the terrible mess if he dropped them, gave him the garlic to carry.  And how he held it up high to the first person we passed, proudly and wordlessly showing the stranger how well he bore the precious package (although he did reveal to me “I don’t like gawlick, Daddy”)…

…and the bike rides… They try so hard to make me proud – little do they know I am already overflowing…

…then the smart and savvy stirfry dinner I got to make, using all the leftovers, letting Little Chipmunk help me cook….

…and then Little Fox, smiling brightly, approached me with a plastic bat and a grapefruit-sized inflatable ball and asked me to play baseball with her.  As she gets older, moments like this become more rare and special…

…and then the bath, oh, the bath.  Little Chipmunk and Little Beaver pretended to be monkeys – you know, the one on the movie who bites the guy’s nose – and I somehow pulled them out of the bath in spite of their attempts to climb up my wet arms and bite my nose, and have you ever tried to put a pull-up on a crazy monkey intent on biting your nose (or punching you with foam Hulk fists, whichever he happens to be thinking of)?

And finally, after the last goodnight kiss, a nighttime bicycle ride for Daddy (to punish the thighs for the sins of the belly).  The only spectators were the occasional passing car, and the fireflies on the side of the road, wooing their potential mates with their chemiluminescent tummies.

Now that the day is done,  I do not want to watch TV.  I do not want a beer.  I do not want to web surf or to chat with anyone – I do not even want to stop here, but I know I need to write this down so I might never forget.

I just want to take these memories to my soft bed, and allow my mind to solidify around this day, hopefully holding on to some part of it that I may recall when I am old and sad.

To bed, and to what dreams may come.

There I stood, looking down and staring… unable to comprehend.

Someone had left a big brown pile of doo doo in the middle of the floor.  That someone had also tried to cover it up with a handful of diaper wipes.

I was aghast.  Who could have done this?   Why would someone do such a thing?  It was a complete mystery.

A million things ran through my mind.  I considered running out of the room and pretending I never saw it.  I considered calling the police to help me discover the culprit.

But I paused for a moment, as it occurred to me that I might have enough information to solve the case.

I recalled seeing a certain young man run out of the room a few minutes earlier.  This young man was just learning how to use the potty.  As I recall, he was without pants as he exited the room.  Hmmmm…. Suspicious?  Yes.  But was my case complete?  No.  No jury in the world would convict, I thought.

I approached the boy to confront him with the evidence.  It was then that I noticed the poo on his heel.  Confronted with the overwhelming evidence, he finally confessed.

Epilogue

An hour later, the carpet was steam cleaned, and as good as new. But what about me?  Some crime victims take a long time to heal, and some never ever recover.

I don’t know how long it will be until can wipe the image from my mind.

Please.  I don’t want to be alone right now.

The other day, I happened to need to explain what a torpedo was to my six year old.

After I explained that it was a weapon that blew up boats, she asked “But why would someone want to do that, daddy?”

Instantly, I felt terrible.  How do you explain war, killing, and death to a little girl that plays with dolls?

I lurched past a brief, 20 word-or-less explanation of war, and settled into a more comfortable factual rhythm as we looked up some pictures or torpedoes on the internet.

But my mind was darkened by the realization:  Here is the world I give you, child.  Here is a world made difficult by nature, disease, and mortality.  And oh yeah, there are people that kill for nationality, business, or even pleasure… Good luck.

We lived in our old house, and somehow, one of our children nearly died in a flood, and we had to move out west.  I mean, out west as in dry dusty streets, floating tumbleweeds.  That kind of “out west”.

While living there, we lost a child.  I am not sure what happened, but I think the child got lost, and we and the townspeople could not find the child.

Heartbroken, we moved back to our old house.

As we entered our old house, my wife and I fanned out to evaluate the condition of the place.  I took the basement.

As I descended the steps, memory washed over me, and I clearly remembered the accident that happened before we left:  a nearby river flooded, and one of our basement walls partially collapsed.  Water entered the basement, washing my toddler out.  I swam out and saved him.

It was that event which caused us to move west.

But as I stood there in the basement, I was surprised by the intensity of the memory.  It was as if the mental image was forced on me from something or someone.  It was as if someone was trying to tell me something.

Almost immediately, I knew:  the river wanted my son.  Not only that, but I knew it wanted me to be the one to bring him. It wanted my son, and it had to be me who threw him to the river.

I was anguished, but obviously, my dream self would never be persuaded to do such a horrible thing.

Sometime later, I looked outside, and we saw local municipal workers doing something on the banks of the river.  What they were doing was not important, but I recall that one of the workers slipped on the riverbank in a small mudslide, and fell in and drowned.  As the other workers scrambled to gain firm footing, I saw the ground around them popping with puffs of mud, as if bubbles were erupting from the mud.  The men struggled to find firm earth and avoid the popping ground.

It was not until I saw the blood that I knew that the local townspeople were shooting at the workers.  Somehow, the townspeople had become crazed.

Horrified, I knew it was the river.  It could do terrible things, and it would not rest until I brought it my son.  People would die… hundreds, maybe entire towns, unless I did something.

I awoke terrified.  I awoke feeling guilty because my last thoughts before waking were

how many more people will die if I don’t do it?

I have a problem.  I have a blog which I use for blogging about life’s occurrences.  The problem is that I find I rarely believe my life’s occurences to be blogworthy.

But I have a solution.

For simple nouns, add dramatic qualifiers, comparable to those used in blockbuster movies.  Also, use pictures liberally.

For example:

The Homemade Pizza…   OF DEATH

The Homemade Pizza ... OF DEATH!!!!

See how that works?  Makes something blah seem exciting, right?  I’ll bet you were scared a little.  Maybe a lot if you are scared of peperoni.

Now, try this on for size:

Prepare to feel the terror of…

The Treehouse …

FROM ANOTHER WORLD!!!!

See?

The last time we went away, we took her along with us.  We had to.

She was old.  She could not feed herself.  We were going to be gone for a few days, and she could no longer live by herself.  So, we took her and her life support equipment along with us, and took care of her.  Staying at the in-laws house with our three kids, this was an inconvenience.  But we didn’t want her to die… After all, who wants that kind of mess?

Since then, we have continued to take care of her.  Over time, though, the kids stopped paying attention to her, and we hardly noticed she was alive, except when we remembered to throw food at her.

This time around, as we planned the minutia of our Christmas vacation at the in-laws, we both realized… we did not want to take her.  We decided there, standing in the kitchen:  we would leave Miss Ginger behind.   If she died, we decided, perhaps it would be a blessing.

For us, anyway.

That is how we decided that Ginger the fish would be left behind, without food, for up to 48 hours.  With a cat in the house.

God help us, and have mercy on our souls.

Dear Mr. Truck Nutz,

Today, I had to sit behind you in traffic looking at your oversized nutz.  I was sandwiched behind you for at least 20 minutes, with no escape, no place else to look.

They were large and red, and really really gross.  One hung lower than the other, and they were slightly oblongish.  But in the wrong direction.  It was weird.

Please find some way to express yourself less grossly, Mr. Truck Nutz.

Yours Truly,

Me.

The kids on the playground are running and playing. Molly has met some older kids, around 11, and they have condescended to let her play in their game of chase. I am thrilled because she is normally shy and reluctant to ask others to play, and I feel like crying when I see her so happy in the company of others.

Sammy thinks he is playing, too. He mimics their shouting and squealing , and toddles in the same general direction as the older kids. He seems not to notice that he is largely ignored.

Lizzie is playing with some kids on the merry-go-round.

Eventually, Lizzie finishes her play for whatever reason, and comes over to me on the park bench. She scoots her butt up onto the high seat next to me. She adjusts her blue and white Dorothy-in-Wizard-of-Oz dress which she has chosen to wear today.

She looks at me and smiles, then looks to the playground jungle gym where the other kids are playing.

After a moment, she looks back at me. “Daddy, doesn’t it get boring just watching kids play?”

I explain to her simply that I enjoy watching my kids having fun and playing.

She looks back at the playground and seems to think about this for a second. Then she concludes “So it would be really boring for you if there were no one here, right?”

I agree that yes, it would be boring.

Then, we play that game where she pushes my nose and my tongue sticks out, and I push her belly button and she makes a beeping noise. Shoudlers, cheecks, ears, knees; every body part has a resultant action or sound. This game devolves, as it always does, into me tickling her.

Then, she runs off to join her sister and the older kids in the game of chase.

The sun is setting, and a breeze finds its way to us through the trees and over the soccer field.