Mutts and Morons...and One Fast Kid

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. We have been busy and when we haven’t been busy, I haven’t felt like writing anything. It seems like we are blowing and going non stop all week. I get up at 5:30 and we put the kids down by 8:30. Throw in church, T-ball, bible study, more T-ball, track meets, T-ball tournaments, homework and Awanas and we get to Saturday, look up, and wonder where in the crap the week went. I know a lot of you feel my pain, so don’t give me too much grief for not having posted in a while.

THREE RING CIRCUS x 2 = GRAVES' HOUSE
With three kids, I can only imagine it will get worse. As they all grow up and become more involved in different activities, we will just become increasingly busier. And as if 3 kids weren’t enough, we…check that…Corey felt we didn’t have enough to do. She talked me into getting some dogs. I guess I should back up a little. We had a boxer, Oskie. (It’s a football term, if you don’t know, don’t ask. It won’t make sense to you anyway.) He was over a year old and was a really good dog. He was a beautiful dog and was great with the kids. But as I just told you, we are pretty busy and we never really spent the time with him that he needed. As a gesture of thanks for nothing, he completely remodeled our backyard. Not so much remodeled as demolished. He chewed up our porch swing along with the kid’s swings. He dug holes in the yard and along the fence. He deposited land mines all over the yard; and made it miserable for the kids to go outside and play. So in turn, we spent less time with him, and he would tear the yard up even more. It was a vicious cycle. Well we finally bit the bullet and found another home for him. (We got connected up with Pick a Pal on Myspace and they hooked us up with a great new home for him) So we were going to wait a while and get an inside dog so the kids would have a pet and would want to play with it. Well Oskie wasn’t out of the house 48 hours and Corey was already on the internet searching for another dog. And it didn’t take her long to find what she wanted. To say it was two hours would be stretching it. As soon as she saw the Wee-Chon, she was hooked. It is a mix between a West Highland Terrior and a Bichon Frise. They are a hybrid dog. Hybrid is an extravagant way to say mutt. So anyway, within moments of discovering these mutts, she located a breeder in Daingerfield, which is about an hour and a half from Texarkana. A few phone calls later, she conned me into agreeing to get 2 of the little half-breeds. I didn’t even get “Whatever” out of my mouth before she and Baylie were in the car heading west on I-30 to Doggytown. Almost exactly an hour and a half later I get a text. “She has 3, can we have all 3?” My response was an emphatic and absolute, “NO!!!!”. We were not getting 3 dogs. No way. Not a chance. It would be a cold day…I’m sure you can guess what happened. My wife can be very convincing. VERY convincing. So an hour and a half later, she pulls into the drive with 3 fur balls that have done nothing but poop and piss everywhere. But the kids love them and my wife is happy. And when she is happy, I am happy. The little turds are pretty cute, I have to admit.

SPEED RACER
Drew started T-ball this year and we have only played a few games. He seems to enjoy it but it’s T-ball, so how does he really know. He bats twice and hangs around second base squatting down and holding his glove over his face while the game is going on. But I think what he likes the most is running the bases. And even more than that, he likes the fact that his coach brags about how fast he is. Well that has gone straight to his head. We were on our way to church the other night we had this conversation:

Drew: Dad will you pull over.
Dad: For what.
Drew: So you can let me out.
Dad: For what.
Drew: So I can run to church.
Dad: Why would you want to run to church?
Drew: Because I can run faster than this car and I’ll beat you there.
Dad: Buddy, I know you can run fast, but I’m not putting you out on the side of the road right now. Maybe another time.

(After church we were going to eat for my sister’s birthday and my mom called wanting to know where we were b/c Texas Roadhouse was going to give our table away) Drew overheard the conversation and the following discussion took place:

Drew: Dad, pull over.
Dad: What?
Drew: Pull over, please. (like I was just waiting on him to say please)
Dad: For what?
Drew: I want you to drop me off.
Dad: Where?
Drew: On the side of the road.
Dad: For what?
Drew: So I can run to Texas Roadhouse so Mammy won’t be mad at me for being late.

He’s not that fast. He is confident though.

CSI MIAMI
Everyday is an adventure in our 1st period PE class. First period is set aside for girl’s athletics. So we get all of the girls who either cannot play or get kicked out of athletics, on top of the already unmotivated group of teenagers who would just assume shoot you as to do a single jumping jack. All together there are about 68 kids in that class. And with girl’s athletics going on, they are using all of the athletic facilities so there is nowhere for us to go. We have no locker room to change in nor do we have anywhere to take them. So we go to the cafeteria. It does give us a chance to talk to the kids and we get some interesting stories along the way. One particular morning, we could tell there was something going on with a few of the girls. There was some serious teenage drama going down. So we called one of them up to find out exactly what the problem was. This girl’s parents named her after the Osh Kosh clothing line. She isn’t very smart but obviously she gets some things honest and there are some things she can’t help. We’ll call her Osh for short. Osh informed us that her best friend was trying to go out with her boyfriend behind her back and she was ticked. She was crying and fussing and carrying on like someone stole her hair weave. I asked her how she knew what was going on b/c she hadn’t talked to either the boyfriend or the girl. We suggested she talk to them first before jumping to conclusions. She promptly told us she was not jumping to conclusions, she KNEW what was happening. We asked her how she could be so sure and this is what she told us. This is exactly what she said. Honestly. I have witnesses. She said, “I ain’t as retarded as everyone thank I is. My granny watch a lotta CSI Miami and I watch CSI Miami, I put the clues together. I know that girl messin with my boyfriend.” I don’t know what was said after that because I had to get up and walk off so she would see me doubling over in laughter.

I SAW RED
Does anyone else use Redbox? It is without question one of the greatest inventions ever. They are literally red boxes that are DVD vending machines. It’s a dollar a day. We have several around town, located at Albertson’s and Wal-Mart. We use the crap out of them. The only problem is that a lot of times, when you get to a Redbox, there is someone with a 3rd grade education trying to operate the machine. My last trip to return a movie almost resulted in my first felony assault charge. She looked innocent enough but I was real close to taking out that 50 year old lady with 6 DVDs and an inability to read elementary directions on the case as to how to return the DVDs. Seriously folks, it’s not rocket science. Make sure the bar code is facing a certain way, press the Return DVD button, insert it into slot, wait a moment and repeat steps for multiple returns. So if you have never used one, you are now overqualified to maneuver through a redbox. There were about 4 people in line in front of me, and saying she was having a hard time would be an understatement. She COULD NOT get the bar code to face the right way. And there are only 2 options! If you don’t do it right, when you slide the DVD in, it spits it back at you. Well she was trying to feed them in one after another and the machine was spitting them back at her. She was cussing the machine and pushing the touch screen harder and harder, as if that was going to make her IQ level raise 30 points to where she can understand the directions. Sort of like when someone you talk to a person who doesn't speak English very fluently, you talk louder in hopes they will understand you better. Well I think she jammed her finger on the touch screen because she resorted to huffing and puffing and looking around saying, “I don’t know what’s wrong with this stupid machine.” Yeah, it’s the machine’s fault. I bet it took her 15 minutes to return her movies. It would have been longer had the guy behind her not helped her get them returned. It’s a great concept but I am going to start carrying a gun to the Redbox. If you’re too stupid to work a Redbox, you deserve to at least get shot in the butt to discourage you from coming back. Just go to Blockbuster. They’ll walk you through the process. You don’t have to do anything that requires you to think. Yeah, it costs a little more, but you have to ask yourself, is a few dollars really worth getting shot over?