Ohmmmmmmmmmmm.....Ohhhmmmmmmmmmmm............

Lance Armstrong won 7 Tour de Frances (Plural? Tours de France? Tour des Frances? Tour de Franci? Who cares. Let the French complain, "Ohh, stoopid Amedicans. Caant even pwonounce ouwr pwurals. Dey aw soo stoopid. Wif zer beleafz dat dey aw zo vedy much beder zan uus!") with only 1 testicle, but he had new blood each time he did it. Roger Clemons and Barry Bonds broke all kinds of records, but they had steroids to help them out. NASCAR drivers can go over 200 mph, but they have cars helping them out. (Okay, the cars are doing ALL of the work, so maybe that's a bad example). But the point is, all of these great accomplishments were achieved with some degree of cheating involved. I bring this up because I may or may not be in the middle of pulling off the greatest achievement of my lifetime. I think this might be my white whale. My swan song. And it's taking every ounce of self control to accomplish it without cheating. It would be so much easier to just cheat and get it over with. But I'm staying strong. Even if it is going to cost me my sanity. Or Racheal's sanity. Or everyone in the house's sanity.

Of course, if you've read this blog at all, you could have guessed that I'm talking about doing a social studies project with Cole. He has a project to do on Leif Ericson (Spelling? Leif Ericson? Leif Ericcson? Leif Erikson? Eh, who cares. Let Sven and the Nordiques complain, "Yaa, fer sure. Oudin pronuncin Leif Ericson wrongin. Nyurgen Flurgen.") He's had over a month to do it, it's due this Friday, and we've spent 742 hours on it. That may be an exaggeration, but I'm pretty sure it isn't. Anyway, he couldn't have picked an easier explorer? Columbus maybe? Magellan? That guy from Man vs. Wild? I mean, Columbus has got a whole freakin day! There ain't no frazzlin Leif Erikson day, I'll tell you that. But that's beside the point. I honestly think I could've gotten the stupid cat to do this project faster than Cole. Or even our new pet spider.

I should get Racheal and Keith to figure out
if this spider can hold a pencil

It's gotten to the point where it is taking Cole longer to do this report, than it took freakin Leif Ericcson to discover Newfoundland. I probably could've taken Cole to Norway, shown him Ericson's house, retraced Leif Ericsson's steps, and embarked on a Norwegian cruise by now. Can you tell how frustrated I am? Maybe this will explain the frustration a little more.

Do you ever go pump your gas? But maybe you want to clean out your car a little while the gas is pumping? So you rig your gas cap in the handle to keep pumping gas while you're cleaning out your car? But as soon as you walk away, the pump somehow stops pumping? So you've got to keep going back to set up the gas cap back in the handle? And it works for a second? But every time you walk away, it stops again, and it becomes completely useless? Well magnify that frustration by about 7 katrillion, and that's what you get when you help Cole do a project.

If it were up to Leif Ericson to get Cole to do this report; and he knew back then how hard it was going to be to get this done, I'm pretty sure he would've said, "Ehh. Nevermind. Let someone else go out there and discover the new land. It's pretty cold out there anyway."

And I could've finished the report for him a few thousand times by now, but I'm not going to cheapen this moment. I'm not going to set myself up for a situation a few years from now when the news media gets wind of this, and my social study project integrity is questioned. That would be like Lief Ericson using Jay-Z's yacht to travel to Norway.

During the course of working on this project, I think he's spent a total of 37 hours looking for a pencil, sharpening his pencil, and asking questions about longitude. I mean, this kid is a stall genius. I haven't seen stall techniques this amazing since I had to go number 2 in a Mardi Gras port-o-john. And I'm getting so frustrated that, in order to calm myself down, I'm imagining myself back to that peaceful time. Right there in that tiny little square of piled up poop. Ahhh, things were so much simpler then.

On another completely random note: This morning on my way to work, I saw a halfway homeless man (Halfway homeless is a technical term describing someone who is most likely homeless, but could just be a crackhead) limping on the side of the road wearing a Reggie Bush jersey. Is it a pretty good indicator that your 2nd overall pick is a bust when you immediately expect the homeless man to stop walking forward, take a few steps back, dance around a little bit, and then fall down in traffic? And another question: How did he come about getting the Reggie Bush jersey? Did some fed up, disgruntled Saints fan throw it in the trash? Or was this guy a productive member of society in 2005, and the Reggie Bush jersey purchase served as a catalyst for a downward spiral series of really, really bad decisions? I would've stopped to ask him, but I was scared that my expectations of his answer were probably a little too high.

The Nausea From Spinning Around in Giant Strawberries
Ain't Got Nothin on The Pain of Leif Ericson