Half-Life of Half-Crap

Yesterday was half-crappy despite having the day off. The dentist says El-Sea has three cavities one of which requires the equivalent of a baby root canal. SSDiabolique blames bad tooth enamel genes, citing her own childhood cavities and an abscessed tooth. I blame Barney’s (yes, the chuckling simpleton dinosaur) child toothpaste which we’ve been using. We brush her teeth every day, but the dentist says sometimes that aint enough.

Tangent… A long while back I read an article in the Westword newspaper about some whacked-out parents who forced their children to live in a public storage shed. According to the article (here) the family wasn’t struggling and destitute, the parents simply realized shelving their children in a storage unit was convenient. Children naturally trust their parents, so when these kids were told to live in Unit #151 they obeyed. The article’s focus is on 30-year old Jodi who was 9 when her parents moved Jodi and her siblings into a storage unit. It screws with my mind to think that grown adults constantly pull this kind of retarded shit. As a result of this article, every time I feel like a crappy or delinquent parent I just tell SSDiabolique, “Hey, at least El-Sea isn’t living in a storage shed.” That always makes me feel better. It’s all about where you set that “bar” of standards and expectations. I, personally, like to lower my bar when I feel like I’m not living up to my potential. Yeah, I feel responsible for El-Sea’s cavities but at least she’s not living in a storage unit. This “sliding bar” ideology truly makes me feel like a better person than I am. Yeah, I jack off too much at work but at least I produce useful shit from time to time unlike Idiot Boss. Yeah, I forgot my cousin’s parole hearing, but at least I’m not like my cousin who needs a parole hearing. The whole “sliding bar” philosophy is akin to the “surround yourself with ugly virgins so you appear more studly” theory.

After the dentist I got a wild hair up my ass to change the windshield wiper blades on the VW Golf. The old wipers were marvelous at smearing great arcing rainbows of brown across the windshield. While I was able to teach El-Sea six distinct shades of brown (light brown, particleboard brown, refried bean brown, brown, loose stool brown, and near black), I was unable to see the road. As I unsheathed the new wiper blade, I snagged my thumb on a jagged piece of metal and disemboweled it. Despite the obscene amount of blood trickling down my hand and splashing onto the windshield, I couldn’t feel a thing because of the near-frostbite conditions in my digits. After much fumbling I replaced the blades and it was time to put my handiwork to the test. Hopefully I wasn’t going to be teaching El-Sea the six distinct shades of red observed in the windshield blood rainbow (pink, Sunswept Coral, safety vest orange, red, break light red, and Satan’s ass red). Wipers on… clear! Wow, I never noticed how the vibrant dirty hues of urban winter gray could just jump out at you and scream, “Winter is u-g-l-y!” The new wipers worked perfectly, they effortlessly erased all traces of thumb blood and thumb bowels. Unfortunately, changing the wiper blades did not affect the permanently illuminated status of the Golf’s check engine light. A man can hope, can’t he.

We did another couple hours of random errands and finally I got to go home and relax. It was one of those necessary days off, where I didn’t get to chill out with daytime tv because I had too much shit to do. I let El-Sea open her Halloween present. I asked her what she thought was in the newspaper wrapped coffin shaped box. “Bloody heart,” she said. Damn, she is too sharp for me. She unwrapped her Lilith Living Dead Doll, which is freaky adorable with a messy bloodstain over the heart where the doll had been impaled. (This describes my state of mind when I bought her.) El-Sea had played with various Living Dead Dolls at Media Play in September and she still recalled the coffin style packaging. She spent part of the evening making me kiss the ghastly vampire doll and she spent the other part of the evening creeped out by the doll.

Tonight I look forward to trick-or-treating in sub-freezing temperatures. Bring it on! I’m no stranger to the comforting numbness of frostbite; it’s a small price to pay for free candy.

Damn it, now I’ve reopened my thumb wound from too much typing.

There is no pain, you are receding.
...and so it was written, shenry at 10/31/2002 12:59:00 PM.
...and so it was appended with .