Another fun thing about living in Southern California is that the ground is moving all the time. You don’t hear about it on the news, nobody runs out their front door screaming “Earthquake!”, you just get used to things happening like what happened to me about 30 seconds ago when my desk just swayed a little to the left, and then it swayed a little to the right, and for a second I thought it was me because I didn’t eat much for lunch and I’m still working on a Mountain Dew, and also there’s a guy here re-enameling our bathtub and even though most of the toxic fumes are being pumped outside maybe a little is sneaking in and making me dizzy? But it isn’t. It’s the Earth. It’s always moving.

I realize that I did not try hard enough in the previous entry. I had all sorts of opportunities to finagle some witty tangents out of “blow” and “goo” and “Krust” and I just didn’t make the effort. If I had made the effort, you know, to please someone who just tumbled onto this site without any previous love for the Boogermuffin and his swanky sweater collection, it would probably have ended up being all curse-filled and hard-bitten with veiled references to porn stars in a totally unnecessary effort to hook those busy blogsurfers who get turned off when they think they’ve found a site filled with baby updates and recipes for homemade play dough* so they don’t stick around for all my deep poetic insights and hoary reminiscences about my first pair of ice skates. So really, maybe it’s better that I cut it short and made some phone calls and took Jackson to watch me change my car insurance policy instead of finely crafting a blog entry to appeal to an imaginary 24-year-old cubicle-dwelling male who’s pretending to work, because I certainly don’t need one more asshole looking for kiddie porn to Google me up and then hit the bricks when he doesn’t find what he’s looking for, resulting in another false hit on the old site stat meter. So if that’s what you came looking for, why not go make some play dough instead? Use some food coloring! It’ll take your sweaty little mind off things for a while.

*Homemade Play Dough

The secret ingredient here is cream of tartar. This recipe makes play dough that is not grainy like uncooked play dough and keeps for a long time.

4 cups flour

1 cup salt

4 cups water

4 tablespoons oil

1/2 cup cream of tartar

Mix all ingredients in a sauce pan. Cook and stir over low/medium heat until play dough is completely formed and no longer sticky. Allow to cool slightly before storing in an airtight container or zip lock bag.

Adding a package of unsweetened KoolAid will make it smell good, too. Enjoy!

Perhaps one good thing has come out of Jackson’s week-long snotfest: I finally taught him to “blow.” Sometimes, if I have a handkerchief, he even lets me wipe the goo off his face. If I’m driving, though, he’s on his own. Hence his new nickname, Krusty.

click

And I’d like to say, thank God for Kegel exercises.

. . . because paragraphs are for pussies.

1. My deodorant has “100% vegetarian ingredients.”

2. License plates I have known recently:

(a) IAN VAGN = normally I can coax some meaning out of even the most truncated platespeak, but this one has me stumped.

(b) IXLNJOY = how nice for you.

(c) OH2B49 = “Oh, to be 49″? This used to be on a Cadillac, now it’s on a Volkswagen Bug, so I assume the owner is regressing. Next it’ll be on a Big Wheel.

(d) IMIN2GI = “I’m into . . .” Gastrointestinal tracts? Galvanized iron? Your boyfriend’s in the army?

(e) MYCTPRS = I finally had to ask the plate owner on this one — it’s on a Mercury Cougar — can you guess? “My cat purrs.”

3. Jackson is “Jackson” to those outside the family unit, “The Nut” to those within the family unit, and either “Booger!” or “Muffin!” when addressed directly.

4. As soon as he realizes someone is in the bathroom taking a big nasty dump Jackson/Nut/Boogermuffin! runs on in, makes the sign for “toilet,” and as the offense is being flushed away he waves and says “bye-bye.” Sometimes he’ll blow a kiss. No one taught him to do this.

5. I always thought that if you had no more than three drinks a day you were not an alcoholic. This is a belief I clung to: three drinks no matter what — holidays, weddings, wakes, surviving a tornado — three drinks and into bed. Then Jack saw a TV show that said if you have two drinks a day you’re “at risk.” So pretty much everyone I know (except for the ones in AA, natch) is an alcoholic. Including you because, yes, Jello shots sucked out of your girlfriend’s belly button “count.”

Fun things to do while both you and your one-year-old are sick.

1. Pin him down while he flails around and try to wipe the snot from his nose with your shirt.

2. Lie on your back on the floor all afternoon while he runs in and out of the room, occasionally bringing you:

(a) a bar of soap with a bite taken out of it

(b) a dirty sock

(c) a can of lighter fluid

3. Invent new sign-language signs

(a) Turn on the Yankees game and get him to raise up his arms every time you say “Jorge!”

(b) Get ready for the upcoming basketball season with signs for various hoops slang like “put the seed in the hole!” (will no doubt be vaguely pornographic)

4. When he gets cranky in the grocery store, take him out of the cart and let him run around the feminine whosits aisle pulling all the “personal foam wash” products off the shelves. Then don’t put any of it back.

5. Go online while he naps and order a Michael Graves Beechwood Banana Hanger.

6. Give him a bunch of cold medicine so he conks out so you both can sleep, sleep, sleep.

Ah, the first day of Fall. Nothing like celebrating the new season with deathless poetry.

Leaf Whiz

by B. Henderson

the color

of the leaves

is like

fluorescent cheese.

the kind that squirts out of a can. pfffft.