May I Speak To the Man of the House?

Unknown Telemarketer: May I speak to the person who makes the .... decisions for the household?

me: That's me until wife.imp gets home.

ummm, This is Mr. Bush? Mr. ... Bush?

me: Yup! That's me!

ummm, Mr. Bush, is Mrs. Bush home?

me: nope. If she was, she would be answering the phone to take this call. But she's not, so I am free to answer the call and make any decisions that seem necessary at the moment.

uhmmm, ok. Mr. Bush, I am blah blah blah (insert name and sales pitch and sales item here) and if you take advantage now, we can install it in up to 4 rooms for free!

me: Suhweet!! That sounds great (in this case they were wanting to sell me a digital satellite subscription)!! My brother and my father have those tv's that have the super large screens and are super thin. The picture quality is fantastic! All digital!

so, your brother and your father have ___ digital satellite service?

me: no, no, no. They have those flat screen tv's with liquid digitalized thingimabobsy tech. The pictures are incredible and the screens are like 60"!

and they do have digital satellite service?

me: no! they have cable. I think they have cable. One of them might have satellite. We had satellite growing up but dad took down the dish and installed an antenna, so I think he would have to have cable and the antenna as a backup...Boy, digital satellite and in 4 rooms!

yes sir, that is correct and --

me: and we get free hookup with four digi-liquid-techy tvs with it? Cool! I cannot wait to tell the wife what a deal we got! I cannot wait to get rid of this old tv that runs on cable...

um sir..that hookup is for 4 rooms only

me: I know. 4 tvs. Of course we would want them in separate rooms. I mean that would be pretty silly to have 4 tvs all in one room!

uh...actually sir we would only be providing the hookups for the tvs in the 4 rooms. We would not actually be providing you with 4 new tvs.

me: no tvs?

no sir.

me: if you're not providing me with the tvs, then why would I want to have 4 more rooms wired for them?

uhmmm, well, sir, if you were to buy additional tv's you could then hook them into the outlets in any of the four rooms.

me: yeeees...I see...

uhm, now sir, if I could just verify the information that we have....

me: Uhmmm, you'll have to call back and speak to my wife. She makes all the decisions for this kind of service in our house. Thank you.

Yes, I CAN set the timer on the VCR

In the past few days, the remote has stopped functioning like the 'well oiled machine' it was when purchased two years ago. This generic, universal remote, now runs all of our video/tv equipment and if it goes loopy, we all go loopy.

In the past 72 hours the volume control stopped functioning except for when programmed on tv mode, the dvd players (we have two-one we purchased the 2nd we were gifted approx. 1 week after our own purchase) and the vcr.

On, Off, Mute--much like our control over the imps, were all non-existent. Fortunately I kept the instructions and codes that, once programmed into the remote, would restore our desired dictatorial control over the non-human denizens of the Family Room.

It should have worked. I had the previous codes written down. I have two complete (front and back) sheets of single-spaced, sized 3 font, lists of codes for everything ever made. Four hours after I got home last night, I was still trying to find the one code that would work on one of the DVD players.

'Why dennis,' you might ask. 'Why do you spend so much time with this one unit when you have already admitted that you own 2 dvd players?'

That is a great question. The only reasonable, and therefore honest, answer is that this particular unit is the one that, most reliably, plays all the DVDs we buy/beg/borrow.

I even searched the internet for the elusive codes and could find none that had not already been tried. In total frustration I finally picked up the Owners Manual for the remote (it was open to how to program the codes into the remote) and Turned.The.Page!~

Interesting what material the manufacturers deem worthy to pass on to us, the Consumers. Fascinating Stuff! Really!!

In the time it took to digest the fact that wife.imp shall never be told of the existance of this amazing treasure trove of information/instructions, I had finally reprogrammed all functions on the remote!!

The Advertisement Said It Could be Built in 21/2 Hours

What it actually meant was unless you had an experienced crew of eight, then it really would take 21/2 days to construct the 10x8 shed.

Tonight we have everthing but the trim pieces installed and during this experience I have developed an increased appreciation of the pain women talk about when describing childbirth. Now before anybody starts thinking I am as handy with tools as Tim Taylor, let me say that I had lots of help from my wife, my dad and my nephew.

However when it came to finishing installing the shingles along the upper regions of the shed's roof, I was alone with the hammer (ok, wife.imp stood on the ladder passing up tools etc...). After spending over two hours on the peak of the roof with said peak trying, with amazing success, to split me in twain, I have to wonder how I ever thought Snoopy looked comfy whilst he was sleeping on the top of that doghouse.

Anyway, I absolutely have no problems with any woman saying you have not felt real pain until you have pushed an 8-10 pound bowling ball from between your legs. Because after this afternoon's/evening's task during which, I swear this is true, an 800 lb. building tried to force its way into my ass in some birthing horror story gone awry, I am sitting here more than two hours removed from climbing down off of the roof and can still feel the burning touch of the tile's gravelly surface!

Erectile Dysfunction?

so I was in to see the doc about my bronchitis and thought, 'hey, now is the time to get an informed, non-biased opinion on this matter'

because, after reading all you mommy blogs, I believe that if I would have brought this issue up to the wife the reaction would have been something like...

'What? More? You're not getting enough? Christ Almighty but if you pushed that thing at me even more than you do now, I swear I'll cut it off and feed it to the damn dog! Jeezus! If I had known you were like this before we got married I might have cut it off then!'

So, in the hopes of saving myself a tirade (at worst) or a headache or the EVER popular, 'hurry up and get it over with so I can sleep' sighs, I sought professional medical input.

Not that I'm admitting to any problem mind you. But when one has his butt probed by the man in the white coat, one's perception of his youth begins to waver somewhat. So with all the adds proclaiming how happy 'Bob' is (and be extension, Bob's wife), I wondered would it hurt to ask what the medical community thought of such remedies.

After I explained to the doc that my wife's sex drive was not the issue (yes, she immediately thought since I was asking she wasn't...) anyway, I also stressed I was not having any problems, but I was interested how one perceived an issue. At what line in the sand should a man stop and think, perhaps this is a real problem and not another means to pry more money out of my pocket?

Let's just say that the 30 minute explanation boiled down to Common Sense.

Yes, there is still a reliance on the good 'ole ability of Man (and this is all-inclusive statement for both sexes) to think rationally about an issue and derive a satisfactory and correct answer, without the need for introducing more pills/drugs into the body.

So ladies, if you man is still asking at inappropriate times and not performing at others, then you still might want to keep that 'pet' rabbit handy...

I left the office world behind to get away from this..!

Yes, I have another health related problem. All of last weekend I was suffering from sever sinus congestion/coughing and sneezing and very TIRED!

I left the maze of reconstituted air (re: office work) to avoid this. Fresh country air! Less flu and cold downtime! Better health!

I should have checked the disclaimer more closely to verify if the warranty on Fresh Air and Better Health was expected to expire!

So now the green phlem, sore throat and aching lungs (when I cough) are chasing me back into the doctor's office.

Yea me!

I had hoped that the bad-reaction-to-the-back-waxing body rash and the gee-dennis-didn't-you-think-that-playing-pioneer-and-manually-clearing-that-poison-ivy-patch-would-react-badly-with-your-obvious-allergies-to-said-ivy rash that covered my arms and upper torso would have warned me...

So here I sit, waiting for the doc to walk in and ask me to open my mouth and say 'ahhhh'.

I guess it could be worse. He could be asking me to turn my head and 'cough'.

Recent Events at 'the Playground'

So here at the Playground life has continued to move forward, even though the blog process has been somewhat stagnant (my apologies).

Wife.Imp's youngest sister is stopping by for a brief visit and today I took her out for a road trip (ok, I gave her the keys to my car and told her that she gets to drive me around). Because the one thing I have learned when visiting wife.imp's family is that if you have no means of going out and about, then things can get boring.

SIL brought gifts from the family, of which a baseball hat with an Iron Man logo on it was given to boy.imp. Since getting the hat boy.imp wears it around the house fighting the 'bad guys'. The fights are terrible, with lots of shouting, jumping and falling down. However b.imp always gains the upper hand with a knock-out blow. Which he has to describe to me.

'I hit him in the eye!' 'I hit three of them in the teeth!' 'I hit him in the chest and two of them in the eye!' 'I hit five in a row here!' (this is where boy.imp points to the lower abdominal/higher thigh area of his body and will continue to point there until you have viewed the area of damage and acknowledged his fighting prowess...)

Concerning aging...
I went to my s0mewhat-annual (ok, 1st time in 3 years) checkup today because I felt I had enough info to make the doctor's effort in the examination more than just routine. I have a very nice back rash (the result of a hair-removal waxing--Oddly enough when I found out a year or so ago that I did have hair on my back, I have never been able to put that thought out of my mind. It actually bothered me. I finally pulled the trigger and it barely tingled. It felt like someone had spread masking tape on my back and pulled it off. But the rash kind of puts a damper on repeat procedures), a pain in one of my knees and a phantom ache in one of my arms.

I also had (the first of what is now an annual event (yea me!)) the prostate exam! I am not certain, but I am fairly postive that procedures conducted in the family-care doctor's office should include the patient's continued ability to, oh say, breathe during said procedures!

'You Asked'...

Tony at 'Creative Type Dads' and Diana from 'Stuck in Elmo's World' have inquired as to how I managed such a drastic rash from Poison Ivy.

First let me say that my reaction to contact with the Ivy is nothing new. In high school, on two separate occassions, I had to rub ice on my eyelids just so I could open them to go to school in the morning. I, who burn faster than paper soaked with lighter fluid, would spend weeks at the public pool because the chlorine content in the water was the second fastest non-medical remedy to an Ivy rash I found. The first was using the juice from the stem of a Jewelweed plant. That stuff is a factual miracle in nature!

So knowing my history, one might guess my reaction to being invited to help my sister clear some of her land would be a resounding 'No.'

Instead, I promised to help. So I showed up in shirt-sleeves and dragged vines from trees to be burned with brush pulled out of the ground. It was a lot of fun and, yes, I was aware that the vines, some almost as thick as my wrist, were Poison Ivy vines. Yet, I still wrapped them around my wrist and dragged them to the ground or wrapped chains around them and pulled them out of the trees and lugged them to the bonfire to be burned.

Yes, I am aware that burning Ivy is also not the ideal way of disposal.

Yes, I spent the last 2 weeks with my arms and abdomen covered in salves and lotions. Until I had enough and visited the local family practioner. There I obtained the 3rd most effective cure for this rash.

Now I am merely days and not week(s) away from overcoming this abysmal rash.