Don't Wake Daddy

So . . . writer's block day 5. Welcome.

It's 5:15 a.m. The coffee's brewing. A mix of espresso beans and French vanilla beans have been through the burr mill. Water is currently soaking through the heavily laden filter. The black juice of the gods is on its way.

Much better.

So, yesterday I took a beating at the hands of Sonwun. He won four out of five games of Don't Wake Daddy. It's a board game. And, hopefully, a subliminal message for the future.

For SAHDs and SAHMs with kids in the 3-5 year age group, I recommend this game. It involves colour recognition, number-recognition, counting and a spring-loaded "daddy" in bed.

The premise is that the kids must make it from their beds to the refrigerator for a snack without waking daddy. Along the way are obstacles, such as squawking parrots, screaming kitties, a television set and other noise-making, potential daddy-waking stumbling blocks. (These things don't actually make noise, by the way, they are just spots on the board.)

16 cards are dealt at the beginning of the game, each representing one of the obstacles. When you land on an obstacle, and have the matching card, no big deal. But if you don't, you must push the alarm clock button a number of times matching the spot on the board. After X number of clicks on the alarm clock, spring-loaded "daddy" wakes up and his sleeping cap goes flying. Sonwun loves that.

Anyway, good game if you've got kids in the right age group. I also like Candy Land for the same colour-recognition, and counting reasons.

Oh, and neither one requires batteries. Super bonus!

And, as much as Sonwun loves to play Wii tennis or Mario Kart, he is always up for a board game. Right or wrong, I'd rather see him playing board games. Don't know why, but I'd guess it's because, having grown up in the video-games-are-the-devil era, I was a little brainwashed.

Everything in moderation, right?

Anyhoo, it's Friday. Garbage day. Playgroup day. Neomom's last shift for this cycle.

I'm actually looking forward to Playgroup more and more these days. I'm getting to know the moms, they seem to have accepted my hairy, unshaven presence and will even engage in conversation when we're not chasing our toddlers.

I also need to return my books to the library, our Batman videos to Blockbuster and pick up a few things at the grocery store.

Happy Friday all. Enjoy the weekend!

Cabin Fever

Well, Happy Monday!

I'm afraid cabin fever is setting in. And it's only January.

But it all kinda got kicked into high gear when Neomom was away for three days last week, two of which were supposed to have been days off.

There's been snow on the ground since mid-October, it's been too cold to be outside most of the time, the boys are going a little nuts and if I have to play one more game of Candy Land, you may just find me running through the Gumdrop Pass with a rifle, on my way to the Peppermint Forest to hunt for Lord Licorice, cause he pisses me off. Miss a turn my ass. YOU miss a turn.

But, um, I digress, or something.

In an effort to stave off the insanity and excitement of laundry, shopping, dishes, cleaning, laundry, shopping, dishes, cleaning, I've read the two books I got for Christmas. One was a James Patterson novel (entertaining as always) and the other was Andre Agassi's autobiography, OPEN.

Agassi's book was interesting and very readable. And, thank goodness, it was not a whiny celebrity, blame-it-on-everyone-but-yourself kind of thing. It just came across as a description of a part of one man's journey through life. Yes, a somewhat extraordinary life, but with the same common, base problems as everyone else.

We've all got obstacles to deal with, we've all got to find the tools with which to overcome the obstacles. Some of us have bigger obstacles, some of us have better tools to deal with them.

I don't want to spoil anything for any of you who might like to read it, so I won't elaborate a great deal. Overall, good book. Very readable and very interesting to me, one who was a big tennis fan during much of Agassi's heyday.

That being said, as with any celebrity autobiography, I would now love to read the autobiographies of the folks mentioned in Agassi's book, just to see how they interpreted the same events and time frame. Just want a more complete picture.

Well, that's all I've got for today. More laundry to fold. Oh, and the Mini Pops? Those annoying prepubescent kids who are recorded singing popular songs of the day? I hate the commercials for their CDs. It just seems one step down on the white-trashometer from the child beauty pagents. One more commercial of them dancing and singing songs they can't begin to understand, and I'm gonna put my foot through the TV. That, or whoever's responsible for them will join Lord Licorice on my hit list.

Happy Monday.