Top 10 Things That Will Be Heard During Our 14-Hour Car Ride South

Tomorrow at 5 a.m. our lovely, adoring, sweet little family will sleepily pile into the over-stuffed car and head south from Chicago to North Carolina for Christmas.

Presents will be packed amongst suite cases, games, and high hopes that Santa will make this THE most bestest Christmas EVER!

Me? I’ll be in the driver seat clutching a large cup of joe looking at the open road thinking “bring it bitch! Let’s do this.” And, I’ll have full intent of making the trip in no less than 14 hours.

Come hell or high water, this car will drive into the in-laws’ driveway by 7 p.m.

Want to make a bet? No?

Well, here’s something you can bet on!

The Top 10 Things That Will Be Heard During Our 14-Hour Car Ride South

1) Grayson: “Macy, stop looking at me. Stop. STOP!!!! Mommy…Macy’s looking at me!!! Can we leave her at the next McDonalds we pass?

2) Macy: “Ewwwww….what’s that smell? Eww…skunk.”

Wife: “No dear…it’s your father.”

3) Me: “So, I says to the guy… ‘that’s what she said.’ Hahahahahahaha”

Wife: “honey, I think you’ve had enough coffee for now, mmmkay?”

4) Grayson: “Mommy can you hear this bell ring? If you can it means you ‘Believe’ in Santa.

Wife: “Yes, yes I can.”

Grayson: “Daddy, can you? Daddy? DADDY!!?”

Me: “I believe in the fact that Indiana is the worst state to ever drive the fu..”

Wife: “STOP! No cursing sweetie. No cursing.”

5) Grayson: “Daddy, is it true that Justin Bieber is a horrible singer and just a pawn of a major music corporation to sell a well packaged, innocent looking young man singing over-produced music to the mass general public in an effort to get rich quick?”

Me: “I love you Grayson. I really really love you.”

6) Wife: “HONEY!!! WATCH THE ROAD!!!  You can Tweet later!!”

7) Grayson: “Daddy I have to go boom boom!”

Five minutes after we stopped for Grayson to go boom boom:

Macy: “Daddy, I have to go boom boom.”

8) Macy: “Mommy, where do babies come from?”

Grayson: “Yeah, good question. Where do they come from?”

Me: “Wow…that IS a good question. Honey, where do babies come from?”

9) Wife: “Oh look, a town named Grayson! Let’s stop!”

Grayson: “Really?!!! Cool, yeah let’s stop!!”

Me: “Next person that speaks dies. It’s that simple. Words come out of your mouth and you stop living. Less speaky, more sleepy!!”

10) Grayson: “Daddy? Where is mommy?”

Me: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Grayson: “She’s not in the car daddy. I just woke up and she’s not in the car. Where is she?”

Me: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

It should really be a fun trip! Happy Holidays readers!



A Letter On Bondage To My Son's Future Wife

Dear Grayson’s Future Wife:

I’d like to start this rambling batch of mess off with a big “I’m sorry!!”

Actually, I don’t really know why I’m apologizing. Your husband’s the one that really screwed it all up for you!

Let me start from the beginning.

It was a Fall day.

Grayson’s mother-dearest was working from home and it was a holiday which means your fella and his sister, were home taking full advantage of unsupervised hell-raising.

Much quietness fell upon the house.

This was followed by loud banging, crashing….and yes, crying.

Your man’s mom ran down the stairs to find her daughter wrapped in clear masking tape around her ankles, wrists, and waist.

Words flew. An understanding was reached. In short – no more bondage activities were to “EVER” take place again.

An hour passes and again the wife questions the quietness of the house.

Scared out of her mind to go in search of her offspring, she continues to work with a keen-ear to the sky.

Moments later there comes a predicted slam to a wall, followed by the horrific screaming of the boy.

Leaping from her chair she runs towards the sounds of death only to find your dear husband bound by his ankles and wrists with masking tape. His head was resting uncomfortably against the wall.

“I tried to leap the first step mom but I missed and my head slammed into the wall,” was what the dear boy muttered to the wife.

Ten minutes later she managed to finish un-wrapping your husband from his sadistic bondage get-up before calling me.

I immediately suggested she take him to the ER just to make damn sure his claimed “fuzzy eye-sight and muffled hearing” were just an effort to instigate the wrath of our parenthood punishment on the daughter for wrapping the boy up.

After sitting in the ER for an hour your husband’s mother was met with a doctor laughing his ass off as he read the chart detailing why his next “patient” was sitting before him still chaffed from where the tape was ripped off his skin.

The day ended with Grayson properly scared out of his mind and assuring us repeatedly that he’d “never tie anyone up again for the rest of his life!”

So this is why I write to you today.

This is why your dear husband has not and will probably never come home with silk wrist and ankle ties from your favorite naughty store.

This is why your bed posts will remain unscathed from crazy feel-good games.

But hey, he does enjoy getting tickled, warm chocolate milk, and announcing to the entire room when he’s gotta go “boom boom.” So, there’s that!

Better luck in your next lifetime.

Love,

Grayson’s Dad



Daddy!!! I Really Gotta Go!

My time on the big white throne is exactly how you’ve seen it portrayed in movies about families.

Man grabs newspaper, closes door, finds comfort on the throne, and just as his business is about to begin a knock comes at the door followed by thumping from a little kid jumping up and down and saying, “daddy, I REALLY gotta go!”

There’s four of us in this happy little perfect family and only one toilet in our delightful estate.

The boy never lifts the seat.

The daughter never, NEVER flushes. Even when it’s brown she doesn’t flush it down.

The wifey…well, she’s the smart one in the family. She’s managed to get herself on a cycle that fits perfectly into the times of the day when the kids’ bowels and bladders are empty.

The rest of us are like teenage girls in a dorm suite – we’re all on the exact same cycle.

And me, well…I’ve learned to poop at mach speed.

I can pee, brush my teeth and put deodorant on at the same time.

Nine out of ten times that I leave the bathroom the first thing my kids say before running in is “did you spray daddy?!?”

“My shit doesn’t stink!!!” is what I want to yell, but instead I chalk up another interrupted bathroom moment and just mutter, “yes child-of-mine, I did,” as I hang my head low and stumble away.

Then I think to the future, when the boy becomes…well, not a boy. I think of how the bathroom was my safe-haven, as a teenager, for taking care of “personal deeds.”

There’s something to be said for going into the bathroom in your own home and knowing if there’s anything that shows-up on a blacklight it’s because you put it there, not someone else.

But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

In the meantime, all I ask for is:

• Enough time to poop and play a game of Sudoku (easy mode) without being interrupted.
• To pull the curtain back on the shower and actually have my towel be there instead of wrapped around my wife’s head in the other room.
• To not view my daughter’s “boom boom” floating happily in my toilet.
• And to brush my teeth early in the morning without having to see my son come racing into the bathroom with his miniature morning wood and witness him hose down every square inch of my toilet while screaming, “don’t look daddy I need privacy!!!!”

That’s it…nothing more.