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Won’t Stop Believin’
“Dammit,” I thought aloud, grimacing at my phone.
My wife turned her head. “What?”
“I’m 30 on the East Coast. The Facebook ‘Happy Birthdays’ just started.”
She smiled, putting a comforting hand on my shoulder. Having just kissed her own 20s goodbye in November, she’d (understandably) had moments of panic when her day drew near and had been bracing herself all week for a potential flip-out on my part. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.” And I was. I really, really was. But still… “It’s just…It’s really happening, you know?”
“Oh, I do,” she emphasized, nodding wide-eyed. “Believe me.”
My straw sputtered as I downed the last of my drink and clomped the glass back on the table.
“Let’s get the birthday boy another one,” she grinned, rising from her chair. “Or should I say ‘old man‘?”
“Ha. Ha. Make it a double,” I snarked. I watched her as she zig-zagged through the throng of suits and dresses crowding the dance floor towards the bar.
Let’s Get Sh!tfaced, Part Deux Deux
There’s no gentle way to say this–I can smell the difference between my son and daughter’s fecal matter.
I could describe their distinct aromas for you in gag-reflex-inducing detail, but have chosen not to in case you are currently eating, or plan to ever again. (After all, you should never bite the hand that reads you.)
Not sure how many of you know this, but I am a world class dishwasher. This is not due to any concerted effort on my part–I’ve just wound up logging my 10,000 hours since the Twins’ birth, conquering mountains of soiled bottles, Sippy Cups, and high-chair trays on a tri-daily basis.
Every once in a while, I try to fish some of those hours out of here. This one time, I came really close.
Thus, on the morning of the Twincident in question, I had stealthily ducked into the kitchen to knock out the breakfast dishes. Despite both having nasty colds and ear infections, the Twins were in excellent spirits having just been fed, and babbled baby limericks at each other while surveying the playroom toyscape. Since the Twins made their outside-of-Mommy debut, we rarely have more than two minutes to eat human-style at a proper table anyway, so we chose to convert our house’s “dining room” to a playroom, which has worked swimmingly at moments like this, when I can watch them in the next room while still actively pursuing 20,000 hours.
Having successfully sanitized the load’s umpteenth and umptieth items, I Deion-Sanders-High-Stepped from the sink to the playroom threshold.
And that’s when it hit me.
The Wall of Stank.
Willy Wonka’s Fatal Mistake
I was just about to fall asleep after an exhausting day of twin-wrangling.
They’re both crawling now–not full-on, up-on-their-knees crawling, but they are definitely proficient army-style creepers, swift enough to entangle themselves in dangerous twinanigans if I look away for even a few seconds.
Beside me in the bed laid my wife, whose mind was still apparently very much at work, contemplating important career decisions.
Parking at the Castle Grayskull is always such a nightmare.
As I approached the threshold of sleep, it occurred to me that upon entering the dreamscape, my arch-nemesis Skeletor would undoubtedly be up to his usual antics, necessitating a DeLorean trip back in time during which I would need to orchestrate my then-teenage father decking that skull-faced a-hole outside the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance in the Castle Grayskull Gymnasium to create just enough of a diversion for me to hurl the Ring of Power into the Goblet of Fire, so that it could be displayed in a museum where it belongs. But just as I was unsheathing my Light Saber, a voice broke the silence, pulling me out of the Gumdrop Forest and back to reality.
The voice was my wife’s.
If I were Willy Wonka, I would have made a cheese factory instead of a candy factory.
If you had found me just then, I would have been dumb. Because I was dumbfounded. “Huh?” Those of you who are Loyal Readers are aware of my wife’s fascinating pillow talk contributions to our marriage.
“Think about it. There would be all kinds of cheese everywhere–a forest of cheese, a cheese river, cheese wallpaper, Everlasting Cheese-Gobstoppers that never go bad. It would be amazing.”
I weighed my wife’s idea carefully, critically, honestly, and came to a crucial decision. “That. Is. Phenomenal.”
“Right?”
“Yeah. Wonka really dropped the ball on that one.”
"I'll pass on the Cheesy Lifting Drink, though."
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If not, the answer may be cheese.
Thunderstruck Thumb-Suck
I awoke suddenly to sheets of rain tap-dancing on the roof, werewolf-howl wind gusts, and the white-noise hiss of our baby monitor, my wife’s intent yet exhausted face lit by the screen.
“Hey,” she whispered.
“What up,” I yawned.
“He’s awake.” She turned the monitor to display my son in his crib, tossing restlessly. I glanced at the clock. 3:20 am.
“How’s she?”
“Still out,” she replied, just as the monitor toggled to our daughter, fast asleep. My wife dubiously shook her head. “How are you just now waking up? How can you sleep through this?”
“Through what?”
A bright flash lit the room momentarily, followed by thunderclap that literally rattled the house.
She shot me a the-deafening-storm-you’ve-been-sleeping-through-you-lucky-bastard kind of look. My wife is a light sleeper, so she wakes up often at night and sometimes gets jealous of my hibernation-grade slumber intensity, particularly during nights like this.
“Oh,” I answered. “Talent?”
We are in the midst of what Arizonans call “Monsoon Season,” a time during which we are graced not only with three-digit heat, but also higher-than-usual humidity and a wave of tropical thunderstorms, including the most massive dust storm Phoenix has seen in years–or as I learned the day after the storm, the proper term is haboob. (Yes, really. How exciting is that?!) So, with that in mind, check out these pictures of this enormous, mind-blowing, spectacular haboob, from TWO angles!
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While it was incredibly cool to experience (at one point we couldn’t see anything further than five feet out the windows as the tannish fog enveloped the house), the timing was not ideal. The storm hit just as we were putting the Twins down for bed, so despite the soothing simulated-heartbeat jams of their Sound Machines (which I believe are from Miami), the rattling windows, moaning gusts, and our yapping watchdog kept them awake, which allowed them the opportunity to complement the clamor outside with alternating cries akin to dueling guitar solos.
Luckily, neither the storm nor the solos Shook Us All Night Long.
I remembered the haboob experience as the sky paparazzi flashed another photo.
My first thought was: Huh-huh. Huh-huh. Haboob. My second was: Huh-huh. Huh-huh. But my third was: Get ready to hold crying progeny for an hour.
Not that I was hoping for it, but I definitely had to accept it as a possibility. But then, my selfish heart melted when I actually thought of the Twinfants, alone in their beds, waking with a start, never having heard or experienced such a loud, sensory-overloading thing. Recalling my own childhood and how terrified I’d get of lightning storms, I became totally okay with soothing them and letting them know everything would be okay.
I don't know if he's saying "hi" or mocking me.
My son flipped from his side to his back, his eyes wide open, looking up at the camera. I swear he already knows what it is and what it does because all the time I catch him half-smirking directly at it like Dunder-Mifflin’s Jim Halpert.
After a few minutes of silently willing him back to sleep, my wife and I gently high-fived as he found his thumb and sucked it all the way back to Sleepy Town.
“Okay,” I murmured, leaning over to kiss my wife. “Good ni–”
FLASH! (Yes, that is an onomatopoeia that doesn’t actually make a sound.) BANG!
“She’s waking up.”
“No she isn’t.”
“She is.”
Sure enough, there my daughter was, exhaling loudly, whipping what little hair she has back and forth. Now, she worried me even more. She’s a little more high-strung and observant than my son. Her eyes like dinner plates, she has a thirst for life in general and passionately takes in everything she encounters. This curiosity will serve her well, but it also causes her to get easily overwhelmed by situations that overload her senses. Such as bright flashes of light and loud booms.
The whipping-back-and-forth-of-hair phenomenon is credited to Willow Ufgood, who heroically did so while saving a baby from the evil queen Bavmorda.
The back-and-forth hair-whipping slowed to an alert halt at another flash and bang. Her eyes widened.
Oh no. Here it comes.
And then something incredible happened.
She just lost her mind laughing.
And then, in utter shock, so did we.
Each crash intensified her hysterics to a higher, more jubilant octave, rolling mirthfully back and forth as the storm raged on, while my wife and I tried to stifle belly laughs so the three of us wouldn’t wake my son.
Eventually, she tired herself out, found a tasty finger, and collapsed.
My wife and I, on the other hand, were now fully awake from laughing until we cried.
In fact, we listened to the sky explode for another hour, returning fire with overdramatic sighs and obscenities.
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If not, maybe you just need to think of the word “haboob.” Huh-huh. Haboob.
I Need Some Space (The Final Frontier) OR Twin Wars: Episode 1 – Taunt of the Tauntaun
Wife: We need a bigger diaper bag.
Me: Or possibly a pack mule.
Click the image above for a larger, more glorious version.
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Rainy Day Activity!
What is this pack mule carrying? If you can name all of the products in a comment for this post, you will automatically be entered in a chance to win at life, compliments of Twinfamy.com!
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Fine-Ass Print
Relax, O Loyal Animal Activist Reader–this is not an actual photograph. It was Photoshopped without Photoshop using Microsoft PowerPoint. Furthermore, neither I nor Twinfamy.com advocate the actual use of a pack mule for infant supply transport, primarily because parents already deal with their fair share of feces (sometimes even as an oblivious beautifying facial mask) and the addition of such an animal to one’s entourage would undoubtedly provide even more of an opportunity for sh!t to happen.
We also understand your particular offense to the placement of the Baby Bjorn on the fictional, hypothetical mule’s snout. However, it is not Twinfamy’s fault that the Baby Bjorn is coincidentally bridle-shaped and thus looks especially hilarious in this electronic, not-at-all-intended-for-real-life anatomical location.
The Royal We finally agree that despite the stereotypical “stubbornness” perpetuated by Fox News, the mule is a majestic creature who has just as much of a right to wear hemp and make others feel guilty for thinking steak is delicious as anyone. In fact, in the event that a mule actually is stubborn, it is probably for a viable reason, such as the lack of career options aside from doing oppressive humans’ heavy lifting, or the simple fact that their boys cannot swim due to the chromosonal ramifications of having horse fathers and donkey mothers, not to mention the pressures of having multiracial parents in general.
If you’re still upset, fear not. I have prepared an alternate version. Please forget the above ever happened, and see below.
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Alternate Ending
A 500-Disc DVD Special Edition Bonus Feature
Ready? Here we go! Making the jump to LIGHT SPEED…
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Twin Wars: Episode 1 – The Taunt of the Tauntaun
Wife: We need a bigger diaper bag.
Me: Or possibly a pack tauntaun.
Still plenty of room for power converters, and also a great heat source if you're stranded in a blizzard on Hoth.
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Jedi Training Exercise
What is this pack tauntaun carrying? If you can name all of the products in a comment for this post, you will automatically be entered in a chance to win one Jedi training lesson with Yoda, the Jedi Master himself, compliments of Twinfamy.com! Offer does not include travel, and is only valid if you can locate Master Yoda on Dagobah yourself.
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If not, please don’t turn to the Dark Side. Balance has finally been brought to The Force, and you’d just selfishly ruin it for everyone.
