Necessary Reprimand

Baby Birds, I can’t believe I am already having to do this, but apparently people have read my post about taters and I have started getting a lot of them lately, and let me tell you, their are definite rules and overall courtesies that go with giving a proper tater to someone. There aren’t many rules, but just a few:

1. DO NOT attempt to give me a tater if you just walked out of the bathroom and are still trying to get your hands dry. I don’t know if that wet touch is from the soap and water you used or if you just peed on your hands. Just don’t.

2. If you happen to have a gigantic ring on your finger like you won the super bowl at some point in your life, please use your none ring hand to give the tater. If you don’t have a non-ring hand….quit pretending you are a Capo in the Italian mob and lose some of the bling. Rings all over your hands were in style back in the cocaine craze of the 1980’s, but since then, evolution has snuffed out those people and now, less is more.

3. A tater is a fist BUMP, not a fist PUNCH. This is not a test of manliness. I am rather attached to my fingers and I use them a LOT. Please don’t hurt the money makers. This rule is for your safety as well. I have rather large knuckles, and if you come in full steam, you might be the one walking away whining about how bad your hand hurts. If you punch steel, you don’t hurt the steel, you only hurt yourself. Remember that, Baby Birds.

I am sure people will find other ways to ruin the tater, and if they do, you will hear from me again. This is too good of a thing to not get it right.

Have a good weekend, Baby Birds. I think next week will be devoted to our many Christmas adventures this year, so check back often next week. You will not be disappointed.

Nylons or Hose??

I wish I could spread the love to all my children on my blog, but some of my kids give me more blog material that others. Here is another one from Donut.

Mega-Babe and I have lately been having an ongoing friendly disagreement on whether you call a certain women’s (or J.Edgar Hoover) apparel “nylons” or “hose.” Mega-Babe tells me that I sound like I am 80 years old if I call them hose, but I disagree. I think a lot of people still call them hose. She should really know me well enough by now to know that when we have disagreements like this, I do what I call “focus grouping” where I ask random people at work or church or just in the neighborhood what they think. I always phrase the question in a way that I do not show which one is my preference because I want an honest, unbiased answer. So far the tally is 11 for “hose” and 1 for “nylons.”

It hurts so good to be right!

Anyway, back to Donut. Mega-Babe and I were discussing this the other day in front of him and of course he wasn’t about to miss an opportunity to be nosey and find out what we are talking about, so we told him the whole thing. Donut’s response was just “I love hose.”

Of course my immature sense of humor kicked in and my mind went straight into the gutter and I actually laughed out loud (which for me is kind of rare).

If you can’t figure out where my mind went, I am not going to tell you. If you figured it out….yeah, funny stuff.

Mmmmm….Marshmallows

Here is a story about Mini-Babe that Mega-Babe emailed to me yesterday. This is what we have to deal with:

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Earlier, I had apparently left the pantry open because I heard Mini-Babe in there up on the cart (We have a little tupperware cart in our pantry that we keep dishes in for the little kids. Sippy cups and things like that. Mini-Babe uses it as her easy access to food on the higher shelves) so I told her to get out of the pantry. She yells back at me “I have marshmallow” real loud.

So I tell her to put them down.

“How come?”

I let her have a couple of minutes down there and when I go get her she has marshmallow spilling out of her mouth and when I tell her that she shouldn’t eat so many marshmallows, she just looks at me and says “It nummy.”

Of course it is.

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I am so proud.

She really is her mother’s daughter. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth.

My Favorite Super-Hero?

I just thought I would relay a conversation I had with Donut last night:

Donut: Daddy, who’s your favorite Super-Hero.

Me: I don’t know, I guess I don’t think about that much.

Donut: Just say Batman.

Me: Batman is lame.

Donut: Wha?!?!? Why did you say that?

Me: He has cool toys, but he’s not really that special. Besides, bats carry rabies.

Donut: What’s rabies?

Me: A disease that makes you mean and foam at the mouth.

Donut: What about Spiderman?

Me: No, spiders don’t scare me, plus his suit is lame.

Donut: I think it’s cool.

Me: Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I guess if I had to pick one, I would pick Superman. I mean, he can fly, he’s bullet-proof, he has super strength, he has x-ray vision, he can melt things with laser beams from his eyes, and can freeze things with his breath.

Donut: Superman is just a show-off.

Me: I bet you wouldn’t say that to his face.

Donut: Show-off (as he strikes the famous Superman pose)

I started cracking up. Of course Donut was pleased with himself too.

Taters For Everyone

I have become a huge user of the “tater” fist bump. People call it by different things, but to me, they are called “taters.” But, what confuses me, and maybe this is trivial, but has the tater replaced the high five or the handshake? Growing up in the south, a handshake meant quite a lot, but you get so many different weird handshakes that it can be awkward. People who want to hold on to long, pull away too fast, pull you towards them like your arm is a rope, shake with just their fingers like they are the Queen of England, crush your hand as if it is a competition or manliness, just put lotion on so the handshake is slimy, or they have really cold hands. The host of awkward handshakes is too many to list, but I do like a properly given, firm handshake. I think it says a lot about a person if they know how to shake hands, but most people don’t. So, it is taters for them. A tater eliminates all of that potential awkwardness. That is going to be my new standard, until you have proven yourself to be a qualified hand-shaker, you will only get taters from me from now on.

I have also never been a HUGE fan of the high five. I kept giving Code Red high fives the other night when we were playing a game and I would put big points on the board to annoy him and everyone else at the table, including Mega-Babe. Seriously, she is EXTREMELY cute when she is annoyed at me. I confess that I annoy her sometimes just because of that.

But I digress. You see, high fives are a “rub it in” tactic. You are at a football game for instance, and you happen to be sitting around fans of the other team, when your team scores, you give high fives as obnoxiously as possible to EVERYONE in the reachable area to rub it in. It is a grown up version of “na-na-ne-boo-boo.”

But taters are a nice quiet way to say “good job” without letting the whole world see. For instance, I have coached Donut and The Bug’s soccer teams for the past few years switching off between them. I have had many instances where one of my players on my team will do something maybe considered a little dirty, but maybe it stopped someone from scoring. I will pull them aside with my back to the parents and pretend like I am telling them not to do that anymore, but in reality, I tell them “good job” followed by a subtle tater. From the sideline, it makes it look like I really got on to the kid but gave him the tater so they didn’t feel too bad about it. Wrong song ding-dong. I want my kids to do whatever it takes to WIN!! Because losing sucks.

I will also quietly give The Bug taters anytime he manages to pull one over on Donut. Donut has had his reign of terror, and now The Bug is old enough and big enough to start getting him back, so when Donut isn’t looking….tater.

Outside of making the decision to send in Seal Team 6 to take out Osama Bin Laden, the coolest thing I have ever seen Barack Obama do was give his wife a tater after he won one of the primaries when he was running for president. A lot of the media said this and that about it, but I thought it was cool. Just a quiet way of saying, “We got ‘em.” Other than that, I don’t like the guy at all.

So what do you think, Baby Birds, is the tater the new hand shake or the new high five? Or maybe a bit of both?

I don’t know how this ended up being my blog post today, but I will go with it.

Happy 2012!!

Happy New Year, Baby Birds!! I hope you all had a safe and happy celebration on Saturday night. As for me and my family, we played a round of cards with Mama and Pa’a and let the boys play on the Wii and then we watched a streaming video of the ball dropping in New York so we didn’t have to keep the kids up until midnight and then try to get them up for church on Sunday. They were still cranky on Sunday, so next year, we are going to watch streaming video from London and then put them in bed VERY early.

On a different note, it dawned on me over the weekend that I had a GLARING omission from my top 10-14 list I posted last week, and sorry Mega-Babe, but this one has to be like number 1b or something. THE ST LOUIS CARDINALS WON THE WORLD SERIES!! And might I add, they did it in grand fashion. I would not follow baseball at all if it were not for my obsession with the Cardinals. I follow them religiously. I don’t care about the Yankees or the Red Sox or the Dodgers or any other team, but when my Cards are winning, it just makes me happy. And the way that they did it!!! WOW!!! I counted them out of the playoffs with a month to go in the season. They had no shot of winning the central division and they were 6-7 games back of the Braves for the wild card spot. Lady Luck was smiling on the Cardinals this year. They ended up winning the wild card spot on the very last game of the season and then went into the playoffs with a mission to kick some tail, and they did exactly that. I love when the Cardinals win. If someone asks me my favorite sports team, it is like Sophie’s Choice, between BYU football and the St Louis Cardinals…I can’t pick. And might I add, it was even sweeter for me that the team that beat the Cardinals for the central division title ended up being cheaters. Mr. NL MVP Ryan Braun tested positive for PED’s (Performance Enhancing Drugs to the head in the sand man). HA HA HA HA HA!!! I knew there was something fishy about the stupid BREWERS winning the central. They are a joke.

But, as I mentioned before, the offseason was met with great disappointment on the heels of this glorious occasion with the retirement of Tony Larussa and the departure of the greatest hitter in the past decade, Albert Pujols. Those really hurt. They can look for a hundred years and they are not going to find a better manager than Tony “Goofy Hair” Larussa.

Now, onto one more note that just struck me this morning. Why is it when you go through a drive-thru to get some food, that they are completely incapable of specialty orders?? I don’t understand this. It really makes me lose faith in the future of our race to know that there are people like this who don’t understand an order as simple as “I want a cheeseburger with KETCHUP ONLY.”

What do I get when I place this seemingly simple request? A cheeseburger (at least they got that part right) with ketchup, pickles, and a load of onions.

So, what is the lesson for today, Baby Birds? Always check your order before you leave the drive-thru window. You will probably have some lady sitting there looking at you like “Why aren’t you leaving? I just gave you your food?” Do not be deterred. Check your order and check it thoroughly, or you will be very disappointed once you drive off.

Also, just assume they didn’t give you any ketchup packets. As soon as they hand you the food, don’t even put it in your car. Open the bag with a flourish and tell them “Ketchup, please.” and continue to hold it open until they dump in a couple of handfuls of packets.

The days of customer service and “the customer is always right” are LONG gone. We are all operating under a new regime now.

Oh yeah, one last LAST note for today. In case you haven’t heard, thanks to the Mayan people, the world is going to end on December 21^st of this year, so live it up while you can. I’m glad they gave us plenty of warning. Don’t believe me? It is an absolute fact that in 2012, the Earth will be pointed at, by far, the most active part of the sun that is notorious for producing solar flares that rip through the solar system at over 5 MILLION miles per hour. One of those suckers hits the Earth and it is goodnight Irene.

So, if you have a lot of money sitting around, you might as well spend it now. You can’t take it with you to the afterlife. If you have so much that there is no way you could spend it all, let me know and I will help you.

Bro-Ken’s Top 10-14 Stories of 2011

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, Baby Birds. How am I doing? Oh, just dandy, as always.

I really try to post every day, but if I don’t, it either means it is the weekend, it is a Holiday, or I am sick. Don’t give up on me. I will be back.

All over the place, every news outlet known to man tries to give their “Top Stories from 2011.”

Well, here are my top stories from 2011. Some of them are personal in nature, some of them worldly and I find them kind of interesting stories. I am going to try to put these in order, but I might not manage because some of the things are toss-ups.

So, without further delay, here is the “Bro-Ken Top 10 Stories of 2011.”

10. Kim Jong Il (the dictator of North Korea in case you are reading this from the hole in the sand you have your head in) died only to be replaced by a Korean version of Baby Huey who just had his lollipop stolen.

Supreme Leader my Dukakis. Someone get Ol Fatty Mcgee a Twinky before he starts crying.

9. This one is fresh off the press, but my BYU Cougars beat Tulsa in the Armed Forces Bowl with a late drive that ate up over 4 minutes on the clock. At one point, BYU trailed Tulsa 14-3, but they came back. The winning play? Riley Nelson fakes like he is going to spike the ball to stop the clock but instead passes to Cody Hoffman for Hoffman’s 3^rd touchdown catch of the day. I listened to it on streaming radio and it was everything I could do not to yell out and start cheering. I’m at work. They frown on that kind of thing.

8. Two in one here:

– We discovered that Mini-Babe is not a toddler at all, but rather a mountain goat with a pension for incredible stealth and ninja like movements through the house. That kid is going to give The Bug a run for his money as far as being a troublemaker. But she is still the cutest thing I have ever seen and I am an absolute sucker for whatever she wants.

– Little Woo started preschool and he is loving it and doing great. I am really impressed with how fast he is learning things that Mega-Babe and I should have taught him a long time ago, but somehow failed him as parents. Keep it up little buddy! Your parents’ self esteem is on the line here.

7. I coached The Bug’s soccer team this fall and they were pretty good. This is his last year of having a coed team, and he has some really gifted girls on his team that I call The Power Puff Girls. But it is the boys who don’t mind playing a little dirty and winning the games for us. The Bug is actually pretty good. He usually scores one or two goals every game, which baffles me because he is NOT fast, but he is tricky and tough and can somehow dribble the ball into a scrum of 7 other kids and come out with the ball on the other side. I still can’t figure out how he does it.

6. I coached Donut for the last time in Soccer in the Spring because he has moved on to competition soccer. The kid really is amazing at soccer. He is easily the smallest kid on the field, but he has no fear as a defensive player. After all the games, the coach would hand out candy awards to the top players, and anytime he mentioned defense, all the kids on the team would just start saying, “Donut (but his actual name),” but for some reason, he rarely got the treat from the coach. The jury is still out for me on his coach on whether I like him or not, but he definitely knows how to coach soccer. Donut’s team was pretty tough to beat. His coach has told me several times how amazing Donut is at having a kid twice his size running at him full speed and Donut will run up ready to take the hit dead on and how the bigger kid will almost always lose the battle and Donut will get the ball. His games are getting really fun to watch.

5. Justin Bieber WEARS WOMEN’S CLOTHES!!! What a wacko. If I had known that, I would have never let Donut get a Justin Bieber haircut a while back.

4. Just like 2010, this has been a horrible year health-wise for me, and this year Mega-Babe joined me on the sick list. More on that later, but I made the decision to get off a lot of the medicines I was taking which is slowly bringing me back to normal a little. I still struggle some, but things will get better. Lets see if I can manage not to reach my out of pocket maximum on my insurance in 2012. I hit it in both 2010 and 2011. I don’t want to go 3 for 3.

3. I am going to throw a few into one here:

– The Japan tsunami, nuclear meltdown, and earthquake. Wow! A tough year for them.

– The series of storms and tornadoes to hit the eastern and southern states and the heartland of America. I mean, Joplin, MO and Tuscaloossa, AL were almost leveled! There were over 300 tornadoes in 15 different states this year. On top of all that, the Mississppi River flooded again destroying thousands of homes and businesses.

– Our troops pulled out of Iraq. Thank goodness. Concentrate on Afghanistan now and let’s get our men home in quick fashion. I would say to bomb them back to the stone ages, but I don’t think they are too far from the stone ages as it is, so that is a pointless statement.

2. Osama Bin Laden, meet Seal Team 6. Seal Team 6, meet Osama….or you can shoot him in the face. That works too. So long sucker. Enjoy your afterlife at the bottom of the Ocean.

1. Mega-Babe is pregnant with kid number 5 and boy number 4. The last bundle of joy to enter our little family, at least he better be a bundle of joy for all the pain he has caused Mega-Babe.

Just a side note here that I learned recently. For some reason, Mega-Babe does not like me telling other people that she is “incredibly pregant.” I figured 7 months qualified as “incredibly pregnant,” but I was wrong. Also, there are still men in this world who do not know that saying to a pregnant woman, “Boy, you’re getting big” is not OK. I even knew that one. I won’t mention any names on the culprit though.

This has been by far the worst pregnancy. All of the other pregnancies were relatively easy, but I can tell you just by watching Mega-Babe, sciatic pain is NO JOKE, and good luck trying to find a doctor who will treat sciatic pain on a pregnant woman. We have been told she has a herniated disk in her back and the pain has been constant for months now. Some days are better than others, but it NEVER goes away. I have been furious that no one is willing to help her. It just makes me feel so helpless that I can’t do anything for her. Finally our family doctor gave her some medicine that has made her a little better, I just hope it keeps getting better. So yeah, little baby in her stomach, I’m calling you out! I’m warning you now! BUNDLE OF JOY!!! GOT IT?!?!?

That’s it, Baby Birds. With that, I will see you all again in 2012. Be safe.

Barely Making It Out Alive (6 days left until Christmas)

Well, Baby Birds, I hope you all had a good weekend. Only 6 days until Christmas, and my shopping was done a long time ago.

Actually, the only person I ever think to buy for is Mega-Babe. Halo always is good about making me feel guilty and getting my kids something and I don’t think I have ever given her kids anything. That’s why Magilla is great. I know I will never get jack squat from him, and he knows he is going to get the same back from me, and we are both good with that. I think that’s how brothers should treat each other. We still love each other.

I should say I love all my siblings, but Magilla is the easiest. No offense to my sisters. It’s a brother thing, which I got to thinking about just last night on a drive home from Mama’s house.

Not necessarily Magilla, but overall, how in the world did Magilla and I ever survive to grow up and be dads ourselves???

Mama lives really close to our house, so when we take the kids back and forth, I have child locks on the doors of my car, so I don’t have to worry about them opening the door, and I can lock the power windows so they can’t roll them down and fall out. Just drive slow and we are good.

I should tell you here that only 2 out of my 4 kids have tried to open the door, and if you know them, it is not hard to figure out which ones. Yeah, The Bug and Mini-Babe. Donut and Little Woo take after their mom, the Bug and Mini-Babe seem to be molded more after my mold. Not in looks thank goodness, they all look like their mother, but in personality. They are RULE BREAKERS!!!! Push the envelope; see how much you can get away with. Donut and Little Woo push it from time to time, but they aren’t the chronic offenders. The Bug one time managed to open the door while we were driving and we managed to stop him falling out. Mini-Babe tries to open the doors every time she gets in my car. I have to be very vigilant about making sure the child locks are on ALWAYS!!

But my parents didn’t worry about that stuff. We hardly ever wore seatbelts and I can remember opening the door of our van and falling out into the street one time. I thought we had stopped….I was wrong. I was just acrobatic and could take a fall or something, I don’t know. But I do look back on my life at all the times I should have….lets use the phrase, met my Maker…but I somehow managed to make it out alive. Most of the time I was with Magilla when these things would happen. It was just an occupational hazard of being his little brother.

I just pray that my wife is a good enough person that our Maker would never take one of her kids due to my stupidity or any other reason.

I hope that’s enough.

Sorry about the curse word laden video from Friday. Mega-Babe informed me that wasn’t OK. Grudgingly, I kind of agree. She is great for me. I have had a LOT fewer brushes with my Maker since I started hanging out with her all the time instead of Magilla. Go figure.

Friday Baby!!

Well, Baby Birds, this might come as a shock to some of you, but I didn’t pull jack squat off my camera last night, so today, you get a corny joke and my favorite youtube video of all time. It is my go to when I need a laugh. I don’t know why…well, I do know why. Its because half the people in the video look like people I am related to.

But first the joke. Keep in mind, I am a funny joke telling FIEND, but I have to be sensitive to my audience, so I tuned it down:

What’s an “ig?”

And eskimo house without a loo

HARDY HAR HAR. I know. Look, your lucky you are getting anything today. Don’t know what i was thinking last night. I knew darrn good and well that I wasn’t ABOUT to go looking for the camera and the USB cord to pull pictures off. I KNOW better.

As I always screen these videos before I post them, be warned that the soundtrack is set to, I think, 50 cent, and though it is edited, it does refer to the slang or biblical term for a donkey a few times in the song. If you are biblical, turn it up, if not, turn it WAY down. Anyway, prepare to Git Down:

Finally a post that had nothing to do with Hitler!

Been a Bad Week

I bet you thought I went into hibernation again, but no. Have no fear, Baby Birds, I just had a really really bad week this week. I could go into all the gruesome details, but it is not really my style to be a COMPLETE open book. Just know that it was awful and horrible and made me wish I was dead more than once, but other than that, it was like a weeklong picnic in the park….in Death Valley, with no water….and no TV.

Actually I did have a TV and I watched a LOT of it.

But enough about me, lets talk about something more cheerful like Hitler and Moonshiners and Sons of Guns and Pearl Harbor and all the other fun shows I watched this week.

For instance, did you know that after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the Secret Service was so worried that there would be an attempt on FDR’s life that when they transported him to speak before Congress to ask them for a declaration of war, they ended up using Al Capone’s car because the government was not allowed to spend more than $500 on a Presidential car and that wasn’t near enough to buy a bullet proof car, but Al Capone had recently been arrested and his car was bullet proof, so they used that. All FDR said was, “Well, I hope Al doesn’t mind.”

Cool stuff. I also learned all about how Hitler came into power and how long it took him to do it. I was actually kind of surprised it took as long as it did. And, the guy that was in charge of spewing Nazi propaganda for Hitler was a skinny little git with dark hair and a club foot. I always wondered why Hitler talked so much about a blonde haired Aryan race when he himself was a darky. Filthy hypocrite if you ask me. Undoubtedly the LEAST of his faults.

I also learned some tricks on the best way to make moonshine. I already knew the basic principles, but there really is a fine art to it that they talk about on the new show called Moonshiners on NatGeo. Ol Tim, Tickle, and Popcorn sure know how to make a fine moonshine, but they better be careful! ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Control) Special Agent Jesse’s gonna getcha!

But my staple I keep going back to is Sportscenter. I don’t know how I watch basically the same episode of something so many times in a row. If I had to hear one more time about Chris Paul being traded to the LA Clippers and how the Clippers are now probably the better team in LA, I might have puked, if I had any food in my stomach to puke up, but I didn’t, so I kept watching.

I can’t believe I am saying this, but I am actually looking forward to rejoining society tomorrow and getting back to work. I know, I know. Maybe all this TV has rotted my brain, but I have not enjoyed myself this week and I just want to feel normal again.

Good to see you again, Baby Birds. I will even put up something new tomorrow if I can manage to get a few pictures off my camera first.

Nighty night.