Me, writhing in pain trying to remove my pants and begging my wife to help.
Wife: "Well aren’t you the special butterfly!"
Category: Cathy
From the mouths of babes
Cathy: "Doug, practice your breathing please."
Best wife e’vr! Without Cathy, I’d be on the floor all blue in the face.
From the mouths of babes
Cathy: "Spit the cat out."
From the mouths of babes
Wife: "May I buy kitten food?"
Me: "If I say no, will it go away faster?"
Apparently, that was not the correct answer.
Spider-Evan
Yesterday we took Evan rock climbing at The Climbing Center in Knoxville. He is a natural! Once attached to the rope, he shot up the 40 foot walls without fear. Understanding that his next handhold could be discovered by straightening a bent leg seemed intuitive to him. Noah made it up the wall twice before feigning to hunger. Cathy only had her hand sucked into the ATC (brake) once. My supple skin only lost a few layers of epidermis due to belaying. We had a blast!
From the mouths of babes
Evan, 7 years old, talking to Mom: "I thought Daddy and I were still cleaning the garage today. I’m his best helper."
I love that boy so much!
Evening goal – relax
I really wanted to have a nice relaxing Saturday night to clear my head and find some extra happiness. Oh, of mice and men! Slow FTP. What could I do? Naturally, run to the steamed broccoli drive-thru. While at the local Chinese buffet, struggling to understand what the staff was trying to say, my phone buzzed with a panicked child, "The bathroom is flooding! Come right away!" I reply, "but I’m not at home." The ten year old quandaries, "where are you?" My head explodes, picturing a naive child talking on the phone, a wife unknowingly cleaning in the basement, while rivers flow through my home. All was well. The flood was bad. But our saving grace, were the tampons for they absorbed it well.
From the mouths of babes
Tommy: "We need a kitten."
Me: "No we don’t."
Tommy: "I’ll take good care of it."
Me: "When you have your own place to live, you can have a kitten."
Cathy: "If you clean the litter box for our cat every day for one month, you can have a kitten."
Tommy: "Yea!"
Me: "Make it six months."
Cathy: "One month."
Me: "I don’t want another cat!"
12 days later, Tommy: "12 days and I’ve cleaned the litter box every day."
I think I have roughly 18 days to build Tommy a small apartment near Amy’s clubhouse.
Wednesday
I cannot improve upon Cathy’s Pulitzer Prize worthy post. Do read!
Air conditioner doubles as fire starter
Our air conditioner has died. Last time it died was in July/August of 2007 and the temperatures were so hot that the insurance company paid to house us in a hotel for the 9 days of the repair. This time the weather is bearable and the repair is quicker. However, this does not come without drama. While the repairman was checking on the outside unit, he asked me to throw the 30 amp breaker at the inside unit. When I did, the breaker box erupted in flame and threw a shower of sparks. This small breaker box (holds a 30 amp dual pole breaker and a 60 amp dual pole breaker) does not currently attach to our wall so I was holding it in my hands at the time. Very exciting!
Apparently the breaker did exactly what it is designed to do. After opening the box, not a wire was burned. No insulation melted. I just received a light show. I can imagine that if I were to dissect the breaker itself that the innards would be melted sludge.
So, the breaker kept the house safe. Now, the big lesson I learned: Don’t ever tell the wife there was a fire inside the house!
From the mouths of babes
Cathy: "Get off the Internet! Clearly!"
While Cathy was away, the boys played!
Cathy went to visit Sarah in New York City. The grandparents basically had Amy and Evan for the entire trip and Noah for much of the trip. That left Tommy and me at the house alone. Tommy, like Freakzoid, gets sucked into the Internet so I basically had the house to myself for duration of her trip minus the time I spent for clients and the time I spent juggling at Boo at the Zoo. So what happened in that time? The yard had a major cleaning of the junk which had been accumulating for a decade. The house received a sweeping and mopping. Then there was this surprise for Cathy:
Creating experiences for your child is parenting
cathymccaughan Oct 16, 3:51pm via TweetDeck
Cat Stevens on the XM and 9-y-o chirps: "I remember this song from the big rally in DC. Let’s do that again." #colbert
From the mouths of babes
Evan, 6 years old: "Can I go next door and go swimming?"
Mom: "Were you invited?"
Evan: "No, I’m going to ask."
Mom: "That would be inviting yourself and is wrong."
Evan: "So can I go see if they will invite me?"
Mom: "No. That would still be inviting yourself."
Evan, stomps off exasperated: "I’ll just go stick my head in the toilet!"
Evan, from the back of the house: "Quit laughing!"
Happy Anniversary Cathy!
Ten years ago today and after nearly two years of dating, Cathy and I were married at Gatlinburg’s Ye Ol’ Tyme Photo Boothe and its been one grand adventure since then!
This has the best decade of my life beyond any shadow of a doubt!
