God, I hate homework. I thought I was all done with that nonsense when I got out of college. Turns out, no.

Once you have kids, homework starts all over again. This time–joy of joys–you get to start from the beginning. When your kid brings home a tough assignment you wonder to yourself, was I doing this work in 3rd grade, 5th grade, 8th grade–whatever? I am sure we were, but I don’t want to do it again.

Today, my 5th grader–10-years old–was give the assignment to write a full-page essay on Nationalism and why people develop it after a war.

So we discussed Nationalism. We discussed it a lot. Then she discussed it with her father. Where she got stuck was the fact that she had to write an entire page about it. I told her to use lots of words, but really I don’t know if I could fill an entire page about Nationalism and I’m a professional bullshitter. I have to write 55,000 of them by May 15th.

It turns out, I don’t like 5th grade. I don’t even remember that I was especially fond of it the first time around.

The Sisters have been super-duper crabby this week.  We had lots of complaints.  Lots of them.  Ava’s car was  in the shop, Amy had banner issues (don’t ask), and the BofNF is an endless source of frustration. We will say that we’ve debated the issue of children long and hard over the last several days and we decided they were a bad idea. There have been a whole host of other problems we don’t have time to get into here. Trust us, aint nobody got time for that.  But – here’s the funny stuff you do have time for:

1. Ben & Jerry is obviously God. Have you seen the new Ben & Jerry’s flavors? Oh sweet heaven. The concept is two complimentary flavors with a “core” down the middle of gloriousness. Our favorite flavor is Hazed and Confused – chocolate and hazelnut ice cream with fudge chips and a hazelnut fudge core that tastes like Nutella. Another one has chocolate and peanut butter ice cream with mini peanut butter cups and a peanut butter fudge core. We’re going right now to get some bigger pants. There’s nothing else to be done.

2. So a tiger walks into a bar… Seriously. A man in Illinois was charged with reckless conduct and possession of a dangerous animal when he walked into a bar with a tiger cub on a leash. It seems that he’s the owner of a ranch full of bears, wolves, and, apparently, tigers. There is some rumor that it bit someone. We don’t believe it. We have every reason to think that a leash trained tiger would behave itself in a bar. We’d also like you to note that all the charges were misdemeanors. Misdemeanors don’t even go on your permanent record.

3. Does it make us mean that we hope there’s a curse? A couple in California were walking their dog and stumbled upon 1,427 coins dating from 1847 – 1894. All uncirculated and in mint condition. Some of them are so rare they’re worth a million dollars a piece.  All in all, it is expected they’ll fetch over TEN MILLION DOLLARS. All of this in rusty cans buried under a tree in their yard. We helpfully pointed this out when we sent our children into our own back yards with shovels, but they complained anyway. Ungrateful.

4. Best movie review line EVER. This is the headline of the movie review for Son of God–“A Jesus story with a nod to gore.” That’s it. That’s all we have to say about this. It’s plenty.

5. Good for the girl friend. A moron from Florida – of course, Florida – had a spider tattooed to his face. Why? you ask. Why would someone do that? The answer is because he’s a moron. His girlfriend broke up with him over it. Brava! How many stories have you heard of stupid women who put up with this bullshit? Yea! mystery woman from Florida

Hello, I’m Rickey.  My full name is Mr. Ricochet Zula.  I don’t have a middle name because my mother got out of hand with that when she named her human children and the girl who lives here, being one of the recipients of said middle names, put her foot down.

Thanks to my cousin Joe, over at Amylynn’s house, I was chased down and this red bow was placed around my neck.  Did you catch that?  My neck.  The part I use to breathe through.  Now, I’m not saying anyone was trying to kill me but how does it look to you?  I immediately tried to remove the offending article to no avail.  I went to get the boy who lives here (his middle name is Tiger, I swear, blahahhaaaa) to help me but my crazy staff grabbed me and took this photo.  Do I look happy?

Will someone call the authorities, please?

P.S. Joseph here. I wanted to let you know that I am still wearing my very studly green bow tie and I still look quite dapper in it. Rickey is clearly being a very dramatic pure bred. You know how they are.

Sassy stayed home sick from school today. I dreaded getting The Bandit up and ready to go because I knew there would be whining and such once he found out. He would plead to get to stay home, too. But, no, he got up and we goofed around just like usual. He got dressed and put on his shoes. I fixed him some breakfast and made him a lunch, gathered up his backpack and we went out to the car with no complaint.

It wasn’t until we were actually getting into the car that he seemed to notice his sister wasn’t with us. I explained that she’d had a rough night and was staying home sick.

“Oh great,” he said and slammed the car door.

I thought, Oh, here we go.

“What am I supposed to tell all her weird friends?” he asked.

Every morning as soon as I pull up at the drop-off spot, my car is launched upon by a gang of fifth-grade girls. There is a great deal of squealing and hugging. The boy finds this almost unbearable.

“Tell the first one that she has joined the circus to be the bearded lady,” I suggested.

He giggled.

“When the next one asks, tell her that Sassy has dropped out of society to run the motocross circuit.”

There was an amused snort from the back seat.

“Finally, tell the last one she got married and moved to Las Vegas to live with a band of tattoo artists.”

“This stuff is good,” he told me and I was pleased to have provided some amusement. “Can I really tell them this stuff?”

“Sure,” I said.

“They’re so stupid; they’ll believe me.” He left the car with a gleam in his eye.

That, Internet, is OK parenting at it’s best.

My father had a stroke several years ago. He’s doing pretty well, but he’s a very different man than I grew up with. One thing that’s still the same is that he’s funny – whether he intends to be or not.

This weekend was My Honey’s birthday and on Saturday night we all met my father and mother for dinner at The Cheesecake Factory.

After a short wait, we were seated in the bar area, which was very loud. To be fair, though, that restaurant is really loud everywhere. Just awful acoustics. The service was slow. The food was good. All things were normal.

And then Pop said he was going to the bathroom, that his stomach was upset. No big deal, right? Especially since we were seated not twenty feet away from the bathroom. He says, and it’s true, that he could get lost in a phone booth. Still, he’d be fine.

He was in the bathroom for a long, long, long time.

We sent in The Bandit.

He returned and stated that Pop was fine and he’d be out soon.

Then nothing for a long, long time.

We were waiting for the check and the return of Pop so Sassy and I, and My Honey and The Bandit went to the bathroom as well. Mom waited at the table for everyone’s return. Sassy and I got back, but still no Pop.

So Mom and Sassy and I waited and waited and waited, and no men returned from the bathroom.

Finally, after what seemed FOREVER, Honey and The Bandit came back. Without Pop.

“He’s not in there,” My Honey said. “We waited forever. Every guy came in and asked if we were in line and we said, ‘Nope, we’re waiting for Pop.’ We assumed he was in the big stall.”

He said they hollered over the door. Pop didn’t answer, but that’s not unusual. Pop never hears anything. Whoever was in there kept dropping stuff in a very Pop like manner so they just assumed and waited and waited and waited.

So how surprised were they when a young man came out.

The Bandit said, “Hey, you’re not Pop.”

So now we’ve been waiting for maybe 20 minutes for Pop to come out of a bathroom he apparently hasn’t been in for God knows how long. We had no idea how he could get past us since we WERE SITTING RIGHT THERE.

“What do you mean he’s not in there?” I asked.

“He’s not,” My Honey repeated. “I was going to peek over the wall, but it was a damn good thing I didn’t. I can just see the police charging me with some sort of pervert offense.”

Turns out when Pop left the bathroom, he made a hard left instead of going straight, and went down a different aisle. When he couldn’t find us he wandered out to the parking lot to see if we were out there. Everyone was reunited, no big deal.

Of course my suggestion could be considered less than helpful.

“Well, while the police were here arresting you, they could have helped us find Pop.”

We hope you have your cowboy boots on because it’s La Fiesta de los Vaqueros down here in the wild west. If you need help in the hat department, check out number two below. So our town is full of cowboys and golfers down for the Matchplay tournament. The whole thing is really rather surreal. At any stop light your bound to find three team Lexuses (Lexi? Lexie?) and an ancient Chevy. Also, don’t try to go to a steak house this weekend. It’s an exercise in frustration and waiting. Read funny things instead. Might we make a few suggestions…

1. Now we don’t know what to think. There was a bit of news this week that the Sisters found heartening, but then there came a rebuttal and now we’re not sure how we’re supposed to feel. It was reported that there is a predicted clown shortage because the old clowns are dying off, and young people seem to want a job that doesn’t terrify people. Perhaps we were all a bit too hopeful. The clown people insist that there are plenty of clowns and we should all just calm down about it. How can we calm down? How? We were relieved to know that perhaps there is an end to the terror. This was probably all just a nasty trick by the evil clown conspiracy to lull us into a false sense of security so they can roll up on us in a clown car.

2. In case you want to be a star or a park ranger. Parrell Williams is auctioning off that ridiculous hat from the Grammys. Amylynn thinks it’s absurd. Ava likes it, but surely she’s just saying that to irritate Amylynn. She does that a lot, by the way. So if you’re interested in buying an incredibly stupid hat that makes you look like Smokey the Bear then you can pony up the $10,501.00 that it will take to beat the current high bidder.

3. Coffee always makes us hot. A brilliant ex-male stripper of Spokane, Washington has opened a coffee shop called Hot Cup of Joe that has your coffee made by a shirtless barista. A male shirtless barista. One with a six-pack. We’re all in. That will be two large breve lattes, no foam please.

4. They found him in the least likely place EVER. So a family was driving around Detroit, looking for a nice neighborhood to live in (we recommend Illinois) and they found Bigfoot. Seriously. They saw a giant, hairy seven-foot tall monkey-man with a human face climb out of a second story window. Not that that description could be of anything other than Bigfoot. So now the speculation is that Sasquatch is squatting in an abandoned house. Try saying that five times fast.

5. Our new budget balancing plan. A woman and her mother in Florida went to jail for stiffing a restaurant on their lunch bill. They told the cashier at the end of the meal that the restaurant could give them a free meal and go to Heaven, or charge their credit card and go straight to Hell. We’re totally going to try this, and not just at restaurants. We’re not so hateful of places that give us food, but the gas station seems like a likely candidate. We absolutely HATE paying for gas. Perhaps instead of threatening them with Hell we’ll damn them to Detroit.

Someone did the nicest favor for me and I’ve been trying to come up with an appropriate thank you. Ava and I went to an antique mall today at lunch to see what we could dig up. We didn’t find exactly what we were looking for, but we did see plenty of very odd stuff.

We encountered this pathetic fellow way in the back of the store. We vaguely remember him from our childhood. He’s a piggy bank (or a puppy bank :0)). No word on whether or not he’ll perk up if you give him any money.

Then we could not be more surprised to run into a life-size bust of Pope Pius. He was a mere $900.00, which we think is a steal if you’re feeling a little low on guilt. What a lovely surprise to find in your foyer, eh?

This fellow was just lying around waiting for us to shriek upon discovering him. He still had all his feet and was easily six feet long. Ava would not try him on for you.

As best as we could tell, this is NOT the Portrait of Dorian Gray, but if you hung above your mantle we’re certain he would scare you just as much.

This might possibly be the ugliest thing we’d ever seen. It was a giant gold framed Christmas tree formed with groupings of obnoxious costume jewelry. This was both a sin against fashion and art. And just to prove that we obviously have no idea what the hell we’re talking about, a woman walking along behind us found it quite attractive.

This beer Stein was the size of a gallon of milk. Please note the swastikas. You can hardly miss them. It’s labeled Nazi Pottery Pitcher and was set to go for $200.00 AS IS. What it would cost new makes us shiver. Under what circumstances would this ever need to be manufactured?

Finally, we present to you what we’re calling Emo Shoes in Leather. We don’t know why anyone would need to have shoes with  weird Emo kids on them. Or why they would spend 45.00 on such an item.

I’m behind on the book I’m under contract to write.

As a consolation prize I give you some of my favorite all time crushes.

Humphrey Bogart so young here.

One of the most handsome men who ever lived.

Not only one of my favorite movies of all time, but also two of my biggest crushes.

Remind me to tell you sometime about the time I crashed a political party to meet Robert Redford. I was fifteen. Good story.

I was in a very fine mood yesterday. We were off work for the President’s Day holiday, but the children and My Honey had work and school anyway. Don’t feel bad for them as they have Thursday and Friday off this week instead.

I dropped the kids off then went to my favorite restaurant and enjoyed some free wifi and an omelet with the best bread in town and wrote a bunch of pages. Then I ran an errand or two before heading to Starbucks to drink a latte and write a whole bunch more pages.

Then I went antique shopping because I could.

By the time my family got home I was in a jolly mood. So good in fact, when I found my daughter alone in the kitchen, back conveniently to me as I came in the room, I took the opportunity to pants her.

Ava didn’t know what that meant. Here is the definition from the Urban Dictionary for any of the rest of you living in a vacuum. Or perhaps you didn’t have siblings or a slightly manic mother.

Anyway, this happened to Sassy in the kitchen. She stood there in her pink underpants with her shorts around her ankles and asked, “Why?”

I shrugged. “Why not?”

“You’re weird.”

“Yes,” I agreed. There is really no dispute. “Don’t feel alone. I do it to your father all the time in here.”

See, everyone thinks this is funny

I can’t help myself. Anyone who wears sweatpants in the kitchen with their iPod on deserves what they get.

She tried several times to accomplish a pantsing of her own with me. Bwahahahahahaaha. It never worked out for her.

A. I’m not stupid enough to wear elastic waist pants.

B. I’ve gained weight and my pants are too tight.

And you all thought dieting was a good idea.