Crazy-Pops

Every time we go to Vegas – which is twice a year, these days – we have an award. A Stupid Award. Not “stupid” as in, “let’s give the winner a cheese ball as a trophy,” but “stupid” as in, “The winner is whoever does the most overall stupid things on this trip.” I’ve won it once, when it was just Dukey and I, because I puked in public at a monorail station one morning, but Flod’s won it both the other times we’ve awarded it, for reasons that probably can’t be discussed. Sure, I was in the running, what with my spilling beer on waitresses and dropping gift shotglasses off of escalators and such, but Flod’s ultimately gone waaaay off the charts and taken the prize each of the two times he’s been with us.

Well, I’d like to announce my early candidacy for The Stupid Award, 2006. That’s right – last weekend, I had such a Stupid Weekend that I think I’m easily going to be standing at the podium, talking over the “Please get the hell off the stage music,” as I thank my mother for making me so stupid and accepting The Stupid Award 2006. It all started like this:

First of all, Saturday morning I took my two boys (who I’ll call The Mixmaster and The G-Man) to a “learn to skate” class at 10:40 am the University of Denver ice arena. The Mixmaster has been skating several times and likes it and the G-Man is typically a daredevil anyway, so I thought that would work out well. It didn’t. We got there just before class, because The Mixmaster and The G-Man’s mom had an errand to run prior to class, and their father (yours truly) had failed to sign them up for class because he couldn’t make up his freaking mind about whether or not he wanted to tackle this particular project at this particular time. Anyhow, so we went, with my wife, and we got to DU, and I had to sign the boys up for class and I got them skates and gave them to my wife to get them ready, and then I went to the desk and the people who worked there were a little frantic. Which, given that there were about 180,000 3-6 year olds and their parents running around trying to sign up for classes and put on skates and not kill each other, was understandable. So it took me a while to sign them up. And, by the time I got back to the boys and the wife, they were crying. Well, not the wife, she was just glaring. Apparently, the boys both melted down whilst waiting for me. Great. But I don’t necessarily believe in giving up on things, particularly with children, so I soldiered on. But The Mixmaster, who likes ice skating, absolutely refused to go on to the ice with the 179,999 other kids. He doesn’t like crowds, at all. Fine. I told him, “then you’re taking swimming lessons starting in two weeks, you little bastard!” Then I put The G-Man (who’s almost 3) on the ice with his little helmet and his little ice skates and he just started crying and crying and nobody could console him. So I asked the instructor if I could come out on the ice (I had my skates in the car, just in case) and they said, “There’s a parent-tot class at 10:00 that you can come out on the ice for.” Great. So I cancelled the Mixmaster’s class and signed The G-Man up for the parent-tot class, starting the next week, because I’m not about scrap the entire thing and get the, “Are you sure that was a good idea” scolding from the wife about it. Her glare told me I might get that, and I’ll go a loooong way to prove that I know what the hell I’m doing. Even when I don’t.

So then we went home. And it was a very nice day, the kind of spring day that makes you happy to be alive. And it sure looks like the weather is going to hold, with no more freezing, so I went out to turn on our sprinkler system. I turn it on, start checking things to make sure it’s working, and I notice water all over the place directly under the valve thingy. Sure, that’s a technical term; I’m a sprinkler expert. So much so that apparently I didn’t drain the pipes properly last fall and now I have a busted water pipe just below the valve thingy and it leaks and I had to turn it off. Great. My wife, who’s glaring again, asks me, “Can it be fixed?” “Sure, honey, let me get out my pipe wrench. I’ll go out, pull the piece out and go get a new one.” So I get out my pipe wrench, and I go out to take it apart and the thing is freaking soldered to the other pipes! I can’t fix it! I have to freaking HIRE somebody to fix this mistake. Fantastic. More glares from the wife. Oh, this is going to be a fantastic weekend.

The squirrels think so too, apparently. Just a few moments after realizing that I was probably going to spend a couple hundred bucks paying somebody to clean up my stupid pipe mistake, my wife says, “Do you realize that squirrels are going in your Jeep?” I took the hard top off of my Jeep a couple of weeks ago and am driving around with a “flip top,” where the front part of it flips back, like a sun roof. Because I don’t want to burn The Mixmaster and the G-Man as they sit in the back of my Jeep, but I do like to feel like I have some sort of Tropical Island Lifestyle in the summertime. Mid-life crisis be damned. Anyway, apparently, if you leave your Jeep out on the street in the spring with the flip-top flipped back, squirrels jump in, looking for God knows what. In this case, I hope they like Tootsie Pops. ‘Cuz that’s what I have lots of in my Jeep. So I, under the watchful glare of my wife, go out and put the top up on my Jeep so it’s closed. Can I get a drink at this point?

No, because the fun’s not over. I go out to the backyard to clean the back patio. It’s really a nice day and I’d like to clean up a bit, so I can spend more time outside. So I move all the patio chairs and table and market umbrella off of the patio and I sweep the patio. It’s a flagstone patio, which is a detail that doesn’t affect this story, but I’m just sharing. Anyway, I put the table (it’s a glass top table with metal legs) back and the chairs, and then I go to put the umbrella back in the center of the table, where it goes, and I mishandle it, and it starts to lean over while the bottom of the umbrella pole is in the table and the next thing I know, CRASH! The table has freaking broken. That’s right. A 3 feet by 8 feet glass table has shattered, into a bazillion pieces, all over the patio that I just cleaned. At that point, I sat down, muttered several curse words, and had a drink. Because, really, I’m stupid.

And then on Monday my hockey team lost in our championship game (we got smoked, really, like salmon) and on Wednesday my improv group put on a crappy show – our first crappy show in some time, actually. So, really, I guess it was a Stupid Week. A whole week. Great. Fantastic. Swell, even. I’d like to thank my Mom, for making me stupid, and my sisters, for beating me about the head and face when I was a child, and and and….

# posted by Jeff C. @ 11:16 PM