What's his deal? (Seriously, I want to know.)

Genuine Conversations with Small Offspring

"Is today tomorrow?"

"Uh... Today is tomorrow for yesterday."

"Is today the poo party?"*

"Today is the pool party."

"Oh... yeah."

* What exactly would a poo party entail? I shudder to think.

Louise and June, Magazine and Seventh

I Love It When You Call Me...

Some of the neighborhood kids have taken to calling me "pops". Hilarious, I love it. And even hilarious-er and I-love-it-er, Louise has picked it up and will now, in all seriousness, say, "Hey, pops, can I...?"

Vivent* les Brusiers!

flyer by Mary T.**

And the bi-weekly*** shenanigans come again. Thursday, Circle Bar, 8-10 p.m. Be there, or be un-circular. (Literally. Hah!)

* Appeasing the Franco-purists. (Sorry, Craic-y.)

** What's better than acting like an idiot? Having somebody take a photo of you acting like an idiot and turning it into a flyer. (But revenge will be mine.)

*** Does "bi-weekly" mean every two weeks or twice every week? (I mean the former.) If it means one, what means the other? So many questions.

Schoolin' School Schooled!

You'll have to forgive the recent lengthy silences here. My brain is undergoing a dizzying conceptual supernova as Schoolin' School puts me through the paces. I feel a bit like Spock in whichever Star Trek movie that was, when he somehow becomes a child again and is on that planet and somehow undergoes a hyper-accelerated re-growing back into an adult. (Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Help me out here.)

Every day, I enter the classroom with my head still spinning from the day before. (Think Linda Blair/The Exorcist.) And each day, I leave at the end knowing a world of stuff I didn't know that morning. (Thursday and Friday we underwent "crisis intervention training", learning how to dodge punches, disengage from bites, and the like. Fun, fun! They don't teach that in Computer Geek School.)

But I'm catching up. Plenty more blogging to come.

Chip

My uncle, Chip, died early yesterday morning (he had been ill for many years) and was interred today. I'll play the accordion tonight in his honor. (Note: This is the same tomb my grandfather and several previous generations are buried in. Burials are a cozy business in this town.)

Through the Eyes of a Child... and Another Child... and Somebody Else

So, our Ernie K-Doe's Mother-in-Law Lounge debut was beaucoup fun. Antoinette has done a lovely job of dolling up the sideyard. But of course, as is the way of such things, it all ran late. (We arrived at five-thirty and were the first ones there. Despite my claim of food starting at five, neither the food nor the P.A. showed up until well past six.) The girls were the only kids, and as the grown-ups talked too much, they grew grumpy and antsy. So I played a parental-ace-card: "Here, use the camera."

The results are below, taken by some jumbled blend of the two:


The aforementioned K-Doe-Auto-Icon. Later in the evening, he and his two pet stuffed dachshunds—I don't think they were real stuffed dachshunds—were wheeled outside to attend the festivities. Actually, I took this one, but I couldn't leave it out.


There were numerous brightly painted toilets being used (or on their way to being used) as planters. The girls found this very amusing. By Louise.


They were also very amused by the brightly painted charcoal grills used as planters. By Louise.


And they liked the pink flamingo. By Louise.


The grandpa, up close and personal. By June. (Side note: The Mother-in-Law Lounge is just down the street from the house where my dad grew up, a lovely grand old double gallery, which is sadly now on the verge of collapse. So, it was a curious circle for him, this bit of rejuvenation in a stretch of bust-out neighborhood that he'd left a half-century before.)


Somebody (I'm looking at you, June) really liked the pink flamingo. By June.


The band plays as the sun sets over the I-10. We didn't have enough mikes, so all backup vocals had to be hollered. (Good thing I'm a country boy. They don't call it Possum Holler for nothing.) You will note that, in addition to having the world's biggest head, I also have the world's biggest mouth. By June.

Vive K-Doe! Vive les Brusiers!

So, it's late Friday afternoon. You had too much fun at the Bruiser Family Jubilee the previous night at the Circle Bar. You survived work. Now it's easing into the weekend, and you're stupid and hungry. What do you do?

You come see us again at the Friday Night Fish Fry at Ernie K-Doe's Mother-in-Law Lounge!



Food starts at 5 p.m.—fried fish and sundry sundries. We start at 6 p.m. There will also be sno-balls (which can easily be converted into slo-balls with a shot-of-sumthin'-sumthin' administered by Antoinette K-Doe, herself*).

Fish + Bruisers + K-Doe = fun!

* Ernie will also be present, albeit in his life-sized post-corporeal (re)incarnation. ("If I was a bird, and you was a mannequin, what would we do? Well, I guess we'd... uh... plan a kin?" No. What else rhymes with "mannequin"?

Schoolin' School

I started schoolin' school yesterday, the first of many wobbly steps on the road to teacherhood. It was great. I've always liked school, and I think I'll like schoolin' school extra-a-bunch.

Vive les Brusiers!

flyer by Mary T.

The usual nonsense. See you there.

Mon Dieu!

I mean, who knew?



I don't think I'll ever be the same. Life—such a mad, grand, mysterious thing.

Piece of the Pie

Today was my last day as a highly skilled software engineer. Next week, I begin my new career as an unemployed teacher-in-training.*

Whooooooooooooh!

Moving on up. Piece-of-the-pie, here I come.

* Tomorrow, I take the gals to the grandparents in Virginia for a brief metamorphic interlude between incarnations. (The gals will stay on for a full week, enjoying the splendors of the country, before being chaperoned back. Sarah and I will spend several days remembering what it was like to be people unencumbered by small, sentient responsibilities.) Catch you on the flipside.

Charles' Place. Outback Steakhouse it ain't.

"Did I Just Say That?"

The other night, as Sarah was drifting off to sleep, she proclaimed:

"I can't believe how many blank pieces of toast I had!"*

She paused. She paused some more:

"Did I just say that?"

Indeed you did, my dear. Nor is this the first such statement to bubble up from the jumbled recesses of your somnambulic brain. (I don't think I ever mentioned the "I don't talk to blueberry muffins very often" episode. Curious that so many of Sarah's nocturnal blatherings involve baked goods.)

* I can believe it. Put a stack of blank-toast in front of Sarah, and it'll be gone before you can say, "Pass the blank-butter, please." (Actually, that's kind of hard to say. Try it.)

Why do used tires always congregate?

Bo Diddley

Bo Diddley died today. He was on the shortest of my musical-hero-short-lists. He'll be missed.

Piss-Bucket

The other morning, I was being crotchety. Sarah called me a:

"piss-bucket"

"Piss-bucket," I like it. In fact, I liked it so much, it cheered me up, and I (mostly) ceased to be one.*

* Though, in my defense, I think "piss-bucket" was a bit of an overstatement. Perhaps "piss-cup" would be more accurate—maybe even "piss-demitasse".

Fifth African Baptist Church