The King-Sized Padded Room........

Do you know the difference between crazy and eccentric? Eccentric people know that they're a little bit off. Crazy people have no idea they're crazy. That's where I think I am right now. I'm like 99.5% sure that I'm not crazy. But there's that 0.5% that makes me feel like I'm having a Leo DiCaprio moment from Shutter Island, and I'm just lying to myself about my sanity.

Now at the same time, I know Racheal is crazy. I know she's crazy like I know the earth is round. I know she's crazy like I know Grey's Anatomy should've ended 4 years ago. I know she's crazy like I know Snooki is orange. But now I'm pretty sure her craziness has worn me down and rubbed off on me. So since I'm pretty sure I lost my sanity, and they say that whenever you lose something, you should retrace your steps to find it, I'm going to retrace the events of tonight in order to try to find my sanity.

(Tonight, 11:00)

Rach, to me: Hey, I don't if you want to do this now or not, but can you change the light bulbs to black lights?

Me: Which light bulbs?

Rach: All of them. Oh, well, I guess you can do it tomorrow.


(Tonight, 10:15)

Me, to Keith: Hey, can you come help me get something out of Racheal's car?

Keith: What is it?

Me: A sink?

Keith: A what?!

Me: I'm pretty sure it's a sink. And an end table. Why? Is that weird?

(Tonight, 9:30 pm)

Rach, to me, on the phone: Hey honey. I need you to come to Big Lots.

Me: What? Are you serious?

Rach: Yes, we bought some stuff that won't fit in my car. And they're closed now. And I need your truck.

Me: You're being serious?

Rach: Yes, honey. Why are you being so weird about this?

Me: So you went to Big Lots, and bought too much stuff....again?

Rach: Are you coming? Or not?

Me: (flabbergasted and speechless on the phone)

(Tonight, 8:45 pm)

Scarlett, to me: Where's mommy?

Me: She went to Big Lots.

Scarlett: What time is she coming back?

Me, kind of to Scarlett, kind of to Keith: Well, they close at 9, so I would guess some time after that---Well, actually, she'll probably come home at 9:15, but she'll end up sending me back out to Big Lots to pick up some furniture or something that wouldn't fit in her car while the old ladies that work there give me dirty looks because I made them stay at work late. (Because that actually happened).

(Tonight, 8:00)

Rach, to Kristin: Oh my God! Is today September 24th?

Kristin: Yeah, I think so.

Rach: Oh crap! C'mon Kristin, let's go! Get your stuff! We gotta go!

Me, thinking that, judging by her reaction, Rach has to go stop an assassination attempt on the president or something: Rach, what is it?!

Rach: I have a coupon to Big Lots that expires today. And if I don't use it now, I'll never be able to. C'mon Kristin. Honey, you got the kids. Love you!


And that's the last thing I remember. Is that crazy? Am I crazy? Is Rach crazy? Is Keith crazy? There's only one thing that I know as I sit here being forced to watch the season premiere of Grey's Anatomy....this show definitely should've been canceled 4 years ago. And because I know that, I know I can't be too crazy.

And by the way, I love my wife and all her craziness. If she weren't so crazy, I wouldn't have anything to write about. And I'm not just saying that because I know she can kill me in my sleep.

The Not-So-King-Sized Unwanted Guest…….

Well, you guys did it. You’ve complained about my lack of blogging long enough for me to do something about it. You’ve convinced me to come back. I’m not positive, but I’m fairly certain that this is exactly how Brett Farvrer must feel every fall (other than the severely painful loss to the Saints, of course). Anyway, I'm probably a little rusty, but here goes:

One morning last week, I was woken up by the sound of Jaxon whimpering from what I thought was his room. Aww, probably a nightmare. Well, sort of. But I went to his room and he wasn’t there. Now as a little background, Jax has a habit of wandering around in the middle of the night. He’ll climb in bed with Rach and I, or Cole, or Scarlett, or Uncle Keith, or Opossum, or whoever. He’s not picky. Anyway, I followed his quiet, heart-breaking whimper into our bathroom. I assumed that he either couldn’t make it to the bathroom in time, or was having trouble putting his underwear on. I mean, what else could it be?

So I picked him up off the floor, “Jax, what’s wrong?”

And then he went into full fledged crying mode, and the only words I could make out were, “My Pee-Pee! My Pee-Pee Hurts!”

I gave his nether region a quick once over, but it was early and my eyes didn’t work quite yet. Then Rach called out, “Bring him over here. Let me see.” So I brought him over to the bed. Another thing you should know about Jax is that he protects his private area like it’s Fort Knox. He’s always been like that. I don’t know why. He’s even like that in the bathtub. He’s like a bear protecting his cubs. I don’t particularly blame someone who makes it their number 1 priority in life to not getting hit in the balls. Anyway, you can’t anywhere near that thing without 3 forms of identification and a notarized letter from somebody important. But anyway, we try to convince him to let us look, but he’s not falling for it. He’s squirming around like a fish in a boat. So we get him to hold still long enough for Rach to see something on the side of Hoo-Hah, She said, “Oh, I see it. It’s like a cut or something right there on the side. Do you see that?......Oh, wait. Is that?.....No, that’s not a……..holy crap, that’s a TICK!”

And sure enough, right there on the side of his twig, (not the berries), was a HUGE tick. If my memory serves me correctly, it was about the size of a quarter. Just kidding. But the thing looked monstrous on his poor little fella. So then we had to try to convince Jax to let his mom use her extremely long fingernails to pinch this parasite off of his pecker. Not an easy task. Finally I had to hold down his legs while Rach pulled the tick off. It was absolutely horrendous. Rach managed to get the whole thing out of there, (the tick, I mean), on about her third attempt. Which was pretty amazing considering Jax was moving his legs like one of those ‘Super Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Men’. It was pretty serious.

And apparently, Rach has seen too many episodes of House, or ER, or CSI, or Outbreak, or something; because she made me go get a ziplock baggie to keep the tick in. She wanted to send it off for tests to make sure that it wasn’t carrying anything like Lyme disease, or some other serious disease that hasn’t been invented yet. I guess that the intent was to store the tick in the plastic baggie just in case there was a crazy outbreak, and we could then formulate an antidote using the infected tick blood. I mean, who hasn’t heard that story before? Because otherwise, we’d have to spend a good 45 minutes in the middle of our make believe movie retracing our footsteps to find the exact tick. And it’s a good thing that the tick didn’t bite Scarlett. Because you know what they say, when you have a son, you only have one tick to worry about, but when you have a daughter, you have to worry about the rest of them. (Sorry. I know that’s bad. But hang on, I’ve got one more ridiculously bad joke).

So the next day, we were checking on Jaxon’s affected….um…..area, and before we even had a chance to look at it, he was already saying, “No, it’s better. You don’t need to check it. I checked it already.” Seriously, it’s like Fort Knox. And it should be protected, otherwise you’d have every other Dom, Tick, and Harry coming after your junk. (Okay, I’m done.)