youtube cooperated this morning, so to those of you who have been withering, waiting for a video of my favorite baby toddler, i present this totally uneventful snippet:
oh, yeah and i cut his hair. you didn’t even notice, did you? i had to do it before joey took him to a barber shop, or worse: great clips, fantastic sam’s, or some other haircutting convenience store. anyway, as you see, he still has plenty of curls, just none halfway down his back or in his eyeholes. also, that eggo looking thing in his hand? that’s an ahfoo.
i remember as a child finding a particular series of commercials oddly satisfying. an unseen hand would push a vitamin through the sealed top of a can of kal kan pet food, which made the can of pet food incredibly nutritious and good for your pet, i guess. anybody remember this? i have no idea why the image was so appealing or why it would still be so accessible after 25 years or however long it’s been. i thought of it earlier today when i saw danny taking the crayons from his easel and running over to the dog crate. more curious to know what he was doing than afraid of what might happen, i just followed him to see what was up. the dog crate has a zipper you can use to zip up the top, or i guess leave the top open for a more commodious, california feel for your pets. he had unzipped it just a little bit, and he was pushing the crayons through the little hole. the dogs have grown accustomed to any number of daily outrages, so they didn’t even blink when it was raining crayons. anyhow, watching him do that it was just like watching those old kal kan commercials, and i kinda wanted to push a couple crayons through myself. that is all. i bet you really want your 45 seconds back.
1. having dogs make me feel like a mean, mean person. also could be that i am a mean, mean person.
2. db relentlessly chants: bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah, which, depending on the situation and inflection, could mean any of the following: bye bye, poo poo, boo boo, bubble, spongebob, ball, pow! or heaven knows what else. [edited to include pow!...how could i forget?]
3. my sister danyelle said that in the captain happytrunks picture, db suddenly looks like joey. agreed.
4. i still have not left for stuportarget.
5. i stole from the wii remote for batteries for db’s bubble gun (see #2 above)
6. db can blow his own bubbles (see #5) which is endlessly gratifying for us both.
7. it is 87% humidity outside, and i think 95% inside. my face is glistening with summer sheen.
8. i hear lots of toys are on sale at target.
9. i know why the mommy-cut. i’m shaving my head, then going to stuportarget.
10. are you seeing an ad for goat cheese right below this post? i am. we’re going to be rich.
here is danny at swimming lessons. as you’ll note, he is not in the pool. and why is because i can’t really take his picture and him be in the pool at the same time. see how that works? different agencies would have some things to say about that, i feel. what with him being utterly unable to swim and all that. so, you’ll not see him swimming here, but you will see him in his swimming trunks holding a truck, with a pool behind him. we have but one swimming lesson left, on tomorrow. he seems mostly on board with the whole swimming idea….mostly. though some days not really at all. but some days, he’ll cooperate by jumping off the side, letting me put his head under (right after i put mine under, of course, getting a mane full of luxurious chlorine), and going down the slide, right into the water. wheeeee.
i am aware that there are actual problems in the world, like hunger, tyrannies, natural disasters, and bad haircuts. so forgive my petty rant here. and i’m sure that i’ll have to explain the situation to you, as you all undoubtedly live in civilized households, far more technologically advanced than ours. meaning: you have garbage disposals. um, yeah, not so much here. no garbage disposal. i’m not even kidding. so, this means that all the noodles, produce stickers, cheese bits, and other oversized food particles all have to be removed from the sink by hand. this also means that whenever anyone comes to visit, the number of said particles expands exponentially, because everyone else in the world has a garbage disposal. and reasonably, they assume that i must, too, since i appear to have all my teeth and we have running water and a fine stable of motorized vehicles. so then naturally, i must have a garbage disposal, and all excess food belongs in the sink. false. wrong. incorrect. because all those oversized food particles that everyone has been licking and ultimately deemed unfit to eat? it’s my job to remove them. i am the official filth nugget remover. don’t get me wrong; though it is true that i am the official filth nugget remover, occasionally (read: when i start stomping around the kitchen and steaming from the ears) my darling husband will lower himself to remove the filth nuggets.
his willingness to stoop to help his cinderella stops at the dog turds, though–i am the official and sole dog turd collector. i have asked joey, more than once, to please assist on poop patrol, just once, so i don’t feel so all alone in protecting our child’s feet and mouth from canine excrement. he agrees, but never gets around to it. in a very non-confrontational manner, i recently asked ‘why is that?’ he said, ‘i grew up in a trailer park, and then i moved to a house where a dog was tied to a post right outside the front door. i don’t even see dog turds.’ and you know what, i’ll accept that. BUT YOU CAN’T NOT SEE THE FILTH NUGGETS. a sodden quarter-waffle flung itself onto my forearm just the other day, begging to get away from the rotting spaghetti noodle and the rancid strawberry hull. oh, but now i’ve grossed you all out. here’s the silver lining that will allow you to make it through your day: i guess in the grand scheme of things, my low station in life as sole turd collector and official filth nugget remover could be worse. i could be sporting a mullet while i gather my abominations. oh, god, i think i just threw up in my mouth a little.
with the harsh summer elements of ultraviolet and chlorine on the rise, now is the time to be very careful with your product choices. anyone who has had the misfortune of using my and danny’s bathroom is very familiar with the vast array of product choices available. if only i spent as much time cleaning the bathroom as i do gathering product, my bathroom wouldn’t be quite so terrifying. at any rate, i’m raising a careful consumer who likes to know not only what kind of hair performance each product promises, but also just how many monkeys’ eyeballs any given bottle represents. he can read the fine print already.
you know, it’s not that nice to have favorites. it hurts peoples’ feelings if they’re not it. for this, i am sorry, uncles billy, vincent, keith, and larry (only to name the uncles proper on my side). my favorite uncle is my uncle jack. he is my father’s older brother, by a decade. as far as i know, he’s everybody’s favorite uncle, probably even people to whom he is not related (i’m looking at you, leigh anne). he’s just one of those guys, everybody loves him. people name their children after him (here they are together: john davis colson III and jacqueline davis colson IV).
he does things like round up his wife and grown child and half-grown grandchild and bring them from alabama to georgia for his great-nephew’s first birthday party. at all the big moments for me and my three sisters, he has always been there.
at this moment, uncle jack could be better. he has quite recently been diagnosed with extensive stage cancer. an ugly one. [note: originally i had this linked to something different, that i mistakenly thought he had. fixed now, thanks heather.] we are heartbroken all, and hopeful at the same time. i know he would want me to mention that this ugliness has drawn him closer to God, and he feels blessed beyond measure in each moment of each day. a big pile of us (two of my sisters and three of our kids) went to visit the alabama colsons last week. though we showed up immediately after uncle jack and my sweet aunt linda received what had to be some of the most frightening news of their lives, they were so happy to see us, and so gracious. we all had peanut butter and banana sandwiches together. oh, we love him so much it hurts. please God, heal our uncle jack and leave him with us….we need him. now you pray for him, too.
on this father’s day, joey didn’t get a new camera (although this defies our financial strategy, which is: buy cameras until we go broke). or the new video game that he wanted (something about indiana jones and legos). or the bottle of patron silver i had every intention of getting him (all the better to make me mojitos with). what he did get was to spend this weekend at the races, with his brother jacob. he’ll be racing the car upon which he and his son are sitting in the above picture. i know that he is dreaming of the day when danny can endure the 12-hour (or longer) stretches in the georgia summer heat that racing at atlanta dragway requires. one day when our lovely can be relied upon not to do things like climb every vertical structure, try to steal every vehicle he encounters, and poop in his pants. joey loves being a father alright, but when he can take him racing, that’s when it will be good times, and it will be worth all the punches to the face and nads that danny never fails to bestow upon him.
in related news, recently i read a post about life advice that made me glad i did something right for once. the advice is attributed to maggie mason, and it goes like this: “when i was single, i decided i wouldn’t marry a man unless i could be proud if we had a son who turned out exactly like him.” i’m not going to say that i had anything this cohesive in mind when i decided (pretty much on sight) that joey would do just fine for a husband, thank you very much. however. if my son turns out exactly like his father, i will be so proud that nobody will even be able to tolerate me, and y’all won’t even read our blog anymore. it’s a chance i’ll take. happy father’s day.
The subject of this post is probably one of my favorite lines. For the readers that don’t know my background, I have lived in Georgia all 28 years of my life. I have had many opportunities to experience redneck culture in more ways than I can share in this post. My grandmother watched wrestling and carried a shotgun because she could; my first car didn’t have reverse or a heater but it had a CB radio; my Dad could fix anything with wheels, drink beer and kick your ass all at the same time.
Yesterday Danny and I took a trip to the auto parts store to pick up some car parts and beef jerky. With the 5pm hour arriving (dinner time for Danny) I decided to go to the closest auto parts store instead of my regular store that is further away. We arrived to find that they had a large trailer with Grave Digger (the big monster truck) on display. The truck was attached inside a large enclosed trailer, and at closer glance was merely only half a truck. Nevertheless Danny enjoyed it, while I proceeded to stab my eardrums out after hearing Bad to The Bone replay 15 times.
Check out the pictures and the video below. I love how he dances to the beat of Bad to the Bone.
Please feel free to share any redneck experiences that you might have had in the comments.
the little man that lives in our house, pees on all our stuff, and bites our toes is beginning to earn his keep. he is overwhelmingly adorable, almost all of the time. case in point: when i go to his room to retrieve him from his crib, he passes his entourage over the crib before he’ll be picked up. big doggy: check. little doggy: check. and this morning, he also wanted to make sure that each member of his entourage had a pacifier before we could leave the room. he takes good care of his people.
speaking of his people, last week his cousin aidan came to visit. danny followed him around like he was jesus, as i may have let slip out loud a couple of times. right before it was time for aidan to go home, he said something like: ‘danny is an angel.’ i debriefed aidan one last time that it was a metaphor, that he is not jesus, and that people will get upset if he intimates that he is jesus. we’ll see how that works out.
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