Tag Archives: Jackson

Hot Wheels

  By Eden M. Kennedy | April 12, 2010 - 12:12 pm | ,
3 Comments

I sort of feel like doing a daily photo again — or a daily something again — for as long as I can keep it up. Given my history, I’m predicting this will last between three and seven weeks.

Jackson is slightly obsessed with Hot Wheels that change color when you dunk them in hot or cold water. My sense is that a team at NASA was trying to develop some sort of heat shield for monkey astronaut suits when they accidentally came up with this technology. They then sold the patent to Mattel and have retired to Coral Gables or Banff and spend idle moments planning to volunteer at the Humane Society, once they’re completely saturated with Internet porn.

  By Eden M. Kennedy | September 30, 2002 - 1:15 pm |
Comments Off

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!

  By Eden M. Kennedy | September 30, 2002 - 8:20 am |
Comments Off

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.

Another List

  By Eden M. Kennedy | September 27, 2002 - 8:32 am |
Comments Off

. . . 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) is an alcoholic. Including you because, yes, Jello shots sucked out of your girlfriend’s belly button “count.”

  By Eden M. Kennedy | September 25, 2002 - 10:50 am |
Comments Off

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.

  By Eden M. Kennedy | September 9, 2002 - 11:30 am |
Comments Off

One of the first things Jack claims to have fallen for was my vastly original record/tape/CD collection. I’ve got everything from Japanese plink-plonk to African hum-hum to Library of Congress yee-haw, as well as a big chunk of stuff so suicidal-nerd-punk that he just laughs at it. The names just kill him, never mind the music. So last night we were driving to pick up a pizza at Giovanni’s (they don’t deliver, we don’t care) and I popped in a CD. Jack listened to it for a moment or two and then said, “Who’s this, The Velvet Steamirons?” “Why, yes!” I replied, “It is The Velvet Steamirons.” (It was actually Coldplay’s first, which is mildly depressive but also relaxingly babylike.) We got our pizza and stopped in the liquor store so Jackson could peruse the beer case and I could browse the porn (man, I thought we as a nation were over Freakishly Big Tits, but I guess I’m out of touch, and as punishment now I’ll get seventy hits from jerkoffs looking for Freakishly Big Tits. THERE ARE NO TITS HERE. GO AWAY. And take the weirdos looking for pictures of forced diapering with you). We got back in the car and, as usual, Jack just wouldn’t let it go. “You can’t fool me,” he said, “this isn’t The Velvet Steamirons, it’s the Pumpernickel Pimple People.” I was trying to make a U-turn at this point and just about ran into a light pole.

The good news is that Sunday night is now Pizza Night, and Jackson likes it with ham and mushroom but he dinks off the pineapple. I’m like, “You liked pineapple at lunch, what’s wrong with it now that it’s warm and has oregano on it?” And I get a look that says, “Pineapple on a pizza? Where do you think we are, California?”

Success!

  By Eden M. Kennedy | September 4, 2002 - 6:17 pm |
Comments Off

After seven months of diligent preparation–actually, it was one month of enthusiastic instruction, followed by six months of half-hearted repetition–I have finally taught Jackson a word in sign language. Yesterday at lunch I asked him if he wanted a refill on his cantaloupe, and he made the sign for “more.” His expression was a little tentative, like he wasn’t sure it was going to work, so I tried to encourage him by completely flipping out. His next sign will probably be, “whoa, mom, be cool.”

Things I wonder about

  By Eden M. Kennedy | September 4, 2002 - 4:53 pm |
Comments Off

1. Again this morning, Jackson walked out of the bathroom with his hair slicked back with gel, smelling of Issey Miyake cologne.

2. Jack’s friend just had all his teeth replaced for $20,000. Each new false tooth is on a titanium rod that screws directly into Friend’s jaw. For as long as I’ve known Friend, who is sixty-something, he’s been walking around with no teeth, and I hadn’t really noticed, he just looked like a dirty old man. Friend used to play guitar in a famous rock band and along with the new set of choppers Friend’s charisma has apparently returned. Or, as Jack puts it, “Oh, now I get it. He’s a handsome motherfucker.” His new girlfriend paid for the teeth.

3. I used to think you could safely go out into the world if at least three of four things — hair, face (with or without makeup), clothes, shoes — were working for you that day. If your mascara-boots-and-kilt combo rocked, it didn’t matter if your dirty hair was tied up in a rubber band. But lately I’ve been looking around and I’m noticing people with not just bed-head, devil-may-care hair but really bad hasn’t-been-cut-in-two-years hair and they just look like shit no matter what they have on, and they look especially ridiculous if they’re wearing makeup. As a matter of fact, a formal faceful of Mary Kay combined with any outfit that you’re not going to wear on television is a real problem. (Says the shoeless, makeupless woman whose hair, which hasn’t been cut in two years, is currently tied up with a rubber band.)

4. I used to work with Another Friend at a local bookstore, and I ran into her at the playground the other day, she was with her mom and her almost-two-year-old son who looks just like Miranda’s cute boyfriend Steve on Sex and the City. Another Friend weighs I’d say well over 200 pounds, but she is more okay with herself than anyone I know. Not just okay with herself, either, but smart and loves life and seems completely unselfconscious. You should have seen her come right on down the slide. I remember another coworker running the registers with her for a couple of hours and then saying to me in disbelief, “I can’t listen to another minute of how great Another Friend’s life is.” So when I’m old and withered and mean from too much yoga, Another Friend will be old and withered and just fine with herself, and I hope she’ll ask me over for tea. I’ll bring the animal crackers.

5. Weleda Diaper-Care butt cream smells exactly like Juicy Fruit gum.

6. I must really be in need of amusement, for I have just renamed my cell phone’s ring tones Vibrator, Frozen Tundra, Whimper, and Bang!

7. Can you spot the irony?

Scenario #1

Me (as we’re getting out of the car, which has been parked in the sun): Would you leave all the windows rolled down a little bit so it won’t be like an oven when we come back?

Jack: Oh, so someone with a coat hanger can come break in?

Scenario #2

Me (as we’re walking in to the grocery store): Would you press the remote thing that locks the car?

Jack (look of weary disgust): Where do you think we are, Compton?

Bonus question: How many miles do you have to drive, and at what speed, to fully cook a pot roast on your engine?