If you get a Christmas card from us this year, then I have this to say to you: I'm sorry. And I also have this to say to you: Now you have photographic proof that pretty much everything I say about our household is true.
I'm not sure who, exactly, is getting Christmas cards from us. I don't know anymore who Sweetie and I are friends with. I don't even know if we really have friends at all. I think we do; we must, if we're sending them Christmas cards.
The only friends I can think of, offhand, are the friends that we see once every year or so; they're such good friends that we've seen them twice this year, which makes it a big social year for us. But one of those times was to go to Sweetie's high school reunion, where I spent much of the time sitting quietly and reflecting how much the guy Sweetie dated for a week in high school looked like Chris Farley in those "Motivational Speaker" skits, only sweatier and smelling more like old grass clippings than you would imagine anyone should at their high school reunion. So that doesn't really count as a social event, does it? Also, what was Sweetie thinking in high school?
But we must have friends, outside of those two, because Sweetie is getting 40 Christmas Cards made up. When she told me that, I tried to think if I knew forty people, period, let alone 40 people that I'd want to go to the trouble of sending a Christmas card too. The answers are no and no. I don't know anybody who I'd go to the trouble of sending Christmas cards to. I sent Christmas cards out just once; I bought a package of them at Walgreens and got my addresses and spent a Sunday afternoon watching football and doing Christmas cards, and midway through that I thought Now, what the heck is this all about? and I was going to quit but I didn't want to waste the $6 I'd spent on cards, so I soldiered on through -- I'm brave that way-- and finished them up and then never did it again.
I've found that for many social things, if you just ask yourself Why am I doing this? the answer is frequently I don't know and then the next question is If I don't know why I'm doing this, why am I doing this at all, instead of watching 'Invader Zim' or playing Cloverfield with the boys? and the answer to that is to stop doing what you're doing and go watch Invader Zim or play Cloverfield. This tactic doesn't just work on social things, either; it will be equally effective against exercise. Try it out: Start jogging, and then say Why am I doing this? You won't be able to answer the question, so you'll stop jogging and go back to whatever it is you were doing before. If that doesn't work immediately, then follow up with this: It's not like I'm training for the Olympics or anything.
That is the exact method I used to go from being healthy to being, well, me. I used to jog 6 or 7 times per week, 5 or 6 miles at a shot. Then, one day, I said to myself Why am I doing this? I couldn't answer it, so I kept on tying my shoes and stretching and then I said to myself It's not like I'm training for the Olympics or anything. So I stopped stretching, threw on a sweatshirt, and went and got a beer with friends. True story -- and very inspirational, right?Cloverfield, by the way -- and I know my readers are dying to know this -- has slowly mutated into a game that now combines various features of all the previous games and also includes a ripoff of a Sid & Marty Krofft Show, all because Sweetie had the idea of getting Mr F and Mr Bunches a 4-foot-tall slide for their birthday in September, a slide they love; they literally play on it for hours, just sliding. I don't get it; I don't know why it remains fun, after the 10th or 20th or 50th ride, but they love it. They line up to go on their slide.
I even use the slide to cheer them up; every morning, I get the boys out of their cribs and get them dressed and bring them downstairs. It being morning and "Bunnytown" not being on the TV yet, they're usually pretty crabby and don't want to let me get back to the important stuff I have to do (listening to ESPN radio and eating cereal) and they'll get mad and start to cry, so I started something I call "Slide The Grumpies Away," where I pick them up and slide them down their slide and keep doing it until they stop being crabby and start smiling. It usually takes about four times, each. I know it's a bad day if it takes 5 or more.
"Slide The Grumpies Away" helped "Cloverfield" mutate into a new game. "Cloverfield," you'll remember, is the game I play with the boys where I roar and chase them and pick them up and drop them on the couch and yell "Cloverfield." With the slide, new elements were introduced into the game because Mr Bunches, especially, likes to get away from Cloverfield-The-Monster by climbing up the slide and then sliding away at the last instant, so that the monster has to chase him around the slide. But that made Mr F feel that he wasn't getting an equal amount of Cloverfielding because Mr Bunches was getting chased longer, so to equalize things, I invented "Dr. Slider," an evil mad scientist who grabs kids and puts them on his Evil Slide and slides them and then Cloverfield The Monster gets them. To go along with that, I "invented" a song for Dr. Slider:
Doctor Slider, Doctor Slider
He's a madman with an evil slide.
Doctor Slider, Doctor Slider,
He's as crazy as you'll ever find.
It's sung to the tune of "Dr. Shrinker:"
And I think that as long as I keep it in the house, I'm immune from copyright lawsuits. Also, sometimes Cloverfield The Monster doesn't give them "Cloverfields," he gives the boys "The Treatment," which is just like being cloverfielded but instead of yelling "Cloverfield!" as you drop them on the couch, you swing them and yell "one... two... Treatment!"
"Treatment" technically began its life as a punishment; when the boys play in the living room, they like to grab rocks out of the plant and throw them, and to teach them not to do that, I would pick them up and give them "The Treatment," swinging them and then dropping them from about 1-2 feet up onto the couch on their backs.
They still grab the rocks. In fact, they grab them more.
All of which may explain why the boys were particularly hard to control when we took them last night to have our annual Christmas card taken; as I said, I don't send out Christmas cards anymore but I'm led to believe, by Sweetie, that we do in fact send out Christmas cards, and each year we send one out featuring all the kids. Which is how we ended up in the photo department of the local Sears store last night with five kids ranging in age from 21 down to 2, and ranging in temperament from "Why do I have to be here" down to "Maybe if I run really fast and smack into that wall it'll be fun."
That was how Mr Bunches spent the time before we were ushered into have photos taken: running really fast and smacking into the wall. I'm sure he's destined to be a NASA physicist. Mr F divided his time, pre-photo, between playing with the toys and running as fast as he could at me and smacking into me. The older kids occupied themselves by slouching.
Once in the room, we tried to assemble all five kids into some kind of order, which was tough to do because The Boy became preoccupied with the issue of his having homework to do; the only time The Boy is really preoccupied with homework is when you want him to do something like have his picture taken, and as soon as we got into the room The Boy notified us that he had a Spanish test, a Physics test, and also Math homework and Drama homework due the next day. All of which, I'm sure, was assigned that very day. It's been a long time since I went to high school, but I'm reasonably certain that teachers, now as then, do not assign surprise tests.
I did not, though, say to The Boy Well, since you knew about these pictures all week, and since you knew about the tests all week, perhaps you should have studied LAST night for your Spanish and Physics tests so that tonight would be a relatively lighter load of homework and then you wouldn't sulk your way through the photos. Because when I do that, The Boy gets all huffy at the thought that he knew the tests were coming and didn't study, because he definitely didn't know the tests were coming, which in The Boy's case is probably true, given that the most common comments on his report card are Needs To Spend Less Time Being Social and Needs To Pay Attention. The Boy may not actually know what classes he's in, let alone when the tests are.
While The Boy moped about that, Oldest and Middle did their best to appear cooperative by agreeing to hold the boys while not doing much, actually, to hold the boys, and then, when Sweetie or I would say something helpful like Hold the boys, they'd say something helpful like They don't want me to hold them, and they don't want to sit still. Which is where I would ordinarily say "The fact that they don't want to sit still is known to me; that's why I told you to HOLD them." Instead, I just kept grabbing boys and putting them back on laps, like a goalie in the weirdest game of soccer ever.
Sweetie, meanwhile, hung back and tried to play safety, keeping those Babies! that got past me from getting out of the room altogether, and occasionally keeping Mr F from chewing on the cords that led to the camera.
Through it all, the highly-trained, very competent photography professional who was there to ensure that our pictures turned out excellent pitched in by complaining to us that she works 60 hours per week, and offering to hire Oldest. She also then left the camera low enough that Mr Bunches could crawl under it, stand up, smack his head, and be effectively done for the evening.
The three oldest kids were still posed and we kept depositing Babies! onto them in the hopes that at some point the highly-trained very competent photography professional would, you know, take a freaking picture but she kept not doing that; she appeared to require several minutes of motionlessness to ready herself for the complicated task of clicking a button, so we did what we could to keep the boys motionless on their siblings' laps: we gave them cracker-sticks to eat (a snack we'd picked out because it left no smears or crumbs or colors -- it's truly a wonder snack), giving them keys and my business card and a cell phone to play with, giving them sippy cups of milk, jumping up and down, tickling them, making random noises.
All of that did not distract Mr F and Mr Bunches from their mission, which was to be anywhere but in front of the camera and to never stop moving -- but it did distract the older kids and make them laugh and move, so that on the rare occasion when the highly-trained very competent photography professional remembered that she was actually working, and snapped a picture, more often than not, the picture featured an older kid not looking at the camera, or standing up, or remembering that the Drama assignment was in fact a lot longer than they'd previously thought it was so could we please hurry this up?
We were there for forty-five minutes or so, during which time we didn't just wreck the room that we were in; we also wrecked someone else's family photos, when Mr F escaped from the room and went tearing off into another studio where a pleasant-looking little boy without any crumbs on his face or milk spilt in his hair was sitting quietly and posing nicely for the camera, or doing that until Mr F came tearing in there and waving his arms, gleeful at the thought that he'd escaped, and ran straight toward that other little boy, who looked terrified and cringed back from both Mr F and Mr F's sweating daddy chasing him.
In the end, we got two photos to choose from, and Sweetie picked the best of those two, selecting that photo which the highly-trained, very competent photography professional described as the one in which Oldest "looks drunk." But at least she's looking at the camera; The Boy is, for some reason, looking sharply off to his right, so that you see only the top of his head. Mr F is trying to escape and is lunging away from the pose, while Mr Bunches opted to scowl like a gargoyle.
Middle looks okay, though. And for the first time in years, I'm actually looking forward to sending out the Christmas cards.
I might even send one to myself.
Date Quiz:
Want a Christmas card from me? Send me an email with your address to 'thetroublewithroy[at]yahoo.com' and I'll make sure you get one!
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