A Moving Experience

We changed houses last week for some reason.

This "moving" as it is called by English speakers is a fool's errand, a goon's deed*, a rube's project if you will--and why wouldn't you (I have more, see below for the complete list).  

To move, here is what you do: take all of the stuff that you have accumulated over the past 37.9 years, pick it up, carry it to some sort of vehicle, set it down, drive for a while, pick it up again, and set it down again.  You follow this process with everything you have, including push pins, and shower curtains, and cans of beans, and sand paper, and wrist watches, and chutes and ladders, and chutes, and ladders, and holiday wreaths, and blenders, and night gowns, and formal gowns, and semi-formal gowns, and business-casual gowns, and casual gowns, and artwork, and toasters, and ... well, you get the point. 

While pursuing my first graduate degree, I did an internship at the Governor's office.  We had to move the governor's staff out of the capitol while the capitol building was renovated.  They brought prisoners from the point of the mountain to do the moving, which, after last week, I think might be a better crime deterrent than the death penalty--there were a couple of moments last week where I longed for the sweet release of death.  Then I realized that moving is the very labor that we who go to Hell will be engaged in--Eternal Packing, as it is called in the scriptures.

The night just before moving day, Buffy and I didn't go to bed.  We just wandered around the house picking up and putting down stuff, usually into boxes.  Buffy went thirty-six hours without sleeping.  By the end of moving day she was staggering like a drunken sailor--a beautiful, sophisticated, golden-voiced drunken sailor.  I actually got a couple of 15-minute naps during the night.  One while sitting on the toilet, and one while taking apart Mimi's bed.  Sleeping on the toilet is never a good sign for how your life is going, and I'm pretty sure that sleeping on a pile of bed parts while clutching an allen wrench is a very bad omen.  Quoth the raven, "nevermore." 

The reason for the sleepless night is because we wanted to be ready for when people showed up the next morning to help us load the truck.  Humankind hate showing up to help someone move only to learn that nothing is packed and ready.  We are afraid of people hating us, so we wanted to be organized and ready.  But, being organized takes forever, and at some point you just have to get it done.  In that way, Buffy and I complement each other very well.  She spent several days (weeks, even) organizing and packing things, then when it was time to just get it done, I swooped in, threw it all in a box, scrawled something unreadable on the box and cleared it the hell out of there. 

So, about 60 percent of our stuff is perfectly organized with labels that say things like, "downstairs living room: board games, children's books, anvils." These boxes practically unpack themselves.  The other 40 percent is in boxes labeled "Swwwfng Room" and "udnstars bdreew."  So, you know, not bad.

The moral of this story is that moving is not enjoyable and that we should all repent so that we are not eventually sentenced to an eternity laboring with the "moving squadrons of the netherworld." 

The End

The rest of the list:

a chucklehead's task,

a yahoo's duty,

a bumpkin's chore,

a moron's pledge,

a simpleton's career, 

a dunderhead's occupation,

jive turkey work,

a doo doo pie's trade,

a dimwit's vocation,

a nincompoop's business,

a bonehead's job, or
a doody pants' line of work.

*a phrase used in the third-to-last episode of 30 Rock.

Blasphemy!

My three-year-old son, Cubby, has become a bit of a handful at church.  Yes, he's the one from this story.

His behavior is mostly my  fault, I'll admit.  In January he left his beloved nursery to start his time as a Sunbeam in Jr. Primary.  I have been (until last week) the primary chorister.  He took the fact that I stand in front of the room and wave my arm to mean that he owned the place, and he would roam around the primary room, draw on the chalkboard, and generally cause mayhem while his teacher tried in vain to rein him in.

Buffy couldn't help because she was not in church for the first month-and-a-half that Cubby was in primary because of Toby's birth the first week of January.  And, like I said, I had to be in front waving my arm.  So, no parents were available to apply the needed amounts of fear and threat to contain the boy.  In other words, Cubby is a free-range sunbeam.  And, this may be the main reason I have been released, well, along with this.

So last week, Easter Sunday, Cubby and I sat in sacrament meeting when he began to squirm restlessly.

I whispered, "Stop, or I will take you home and put you on time out."

"Okay, let's go home," he replied.  He knew, even at age three, that church is often more boring than a time out.  My bluff had been called, and I was caught.

"I was just kidding," I backpedaled, "we need to stay here."

"Why?" he asked contorting his body the way children do when they are overly bored and constricted.

"Because we love Jesus and we want to learn about Him."  I reasoned in whispered tones while wrestling him back on to my lap and into sitting position.

Cubby was not buying it.  "I HATE JESUS!" he screamed.  This is, of course, not what one should yell in church on Easter Sunday.   Screaming in church is generally frowned upon, but if one must yell, one should yell hallelujah or hosanna or amen or gesundheit--it's really hard to make a case for yelling I hate Jesus in a Christian church. 

The universe froze as I, the father of the blasphemer, contemplated what to do.  It didn't take long to decide on a course of action.  I stood, scooped him up, and headed for the exit.

Cubby, sensing that he had found his ticket out of there poured gas on the flame, "I HATE JESUS!  I HATE JESUS!"

All I could think of was, get him out of here before the Christians stone him!  I pulled the boy into my body trying to muffle his blasphemous cries with the child-drool-stained shoulder of my suit coat and speed walked out the door of the chapel.

I didn't stop until we were safely half-way down the hallway.  Then I held him up to look him in the eye, to talk to him about what he'd said.  He looked back at me with his beautiful brown eyes while his adorable mouth delivered a great big grin.

"Cubby," I said, "we can't say that about Jesus.  We love Him."  He just smiled back at me.  His eyes shone bright and he appeared,  to me, to be completely innocent.

He's three.  He is innocent.  I relented.  Wasn't that part of Jesus' atonement?  Jesus has covered the sins and misdeeds of children.  Three-year-olds are not guilty of blasphemy (it's their parents who shoulder the blame at that age...).

Later that evening while serving a time out for an unrelated issue, we heard Cubby knocking on his bedroom door from the inside.  He called out,  "I like Heavenly Father, now.  Can I come out?"

Toby

Oh, by the way, we have a new child. We call him Toby (names have been changed--his name is actually Kunta Kinte). He's two-and-a-half months old now. He's got a monkey nose, a monkey face, and a monkey bum. Actually his body parts are human. I guess what I mean is that he is cute, cute like unto a monkey.

Measurements: 10 lb. 1 oz., 23 inches!, which means--for those of you unschooled in the sizes of human offspring--he was size fifty huge!

Ike, Mimi, Kitty, and Cubby agree with me and Lady Buffington that he is a great addition to the family.  We will continue to feel so until such time that he becomes overly bothersome or burdensome at which time we will excuse him from being in our family, and he will find familial relations elsewhere.  We do not anticipate this happening because we are far too accommodating of new family members during their years on probation, and up to this point have become stuck with them as we have let them all come off probation rather than terminate them.  After probation, the process of terminating family relationships is difficult, so we just put  up with whatever shenanigans we are forced up with to put.

PS Toby smells so good!  He's an angel from heaven with hilariously suspicious eyes.

Pitch

IDEA FOR A SITUATION COMEDY:

Peter Wilson is a professional roof raiser. His roof-raising boss is a high fiver. Peter does such an amazing job raising roofs that one day his boss high fives him so hard that it breaks his shoulder and he has to go on disability. Soon we learn that his career as a roof raiser is over. To make ends meet, Peter finds a job lowering floors.

Meanwhile, his boss feels so bad that he moves in with Peter to be his part-time, after-hours, unpaid house keeper. Peter continues to refer to his former boss and current housekeeper as Boss because he doesn't know his real name.  Peter claims it's out of respect, but Boss suspects there is something else behind it, a speech impediment issue with the letters R, W, and J.

In episode three, Peter's mom comes to visit--played by an actress that the audience is vaguely familiar with (because she played the mom/grandma in several other sitcoms)--and she decides to move in with Peter. She says it's because she wants to help Peter through his injury, but really she is romantically interested in Boss (a courtship arc begins that is later abandoned when Mom gets a better job as a mom on a one-hour drama).

Meanwhile, the floor-lowering business really takes off and Peter becomes a sought after floor lowerer. In the final episode of the first season, Peter receives a check for $114 Million for a floor lowering project he completed in Mumbai. Peter is surprised because he thought the job was for $114.00. At the same time the roof raising industry collapses, literally (i.e., all of the raised roofs since Peter's departure from the company fall down), and Boss is fired.

In the final scene of the season, Peter hires Boss to be his permanent, paid butler. They make plans to move to India where floor lowering is very lucrative. A second season set in India is promised.

The show is cancelled while on hiatus. No India-set episodes are taped.

Re-store-ical Questions: A Storey Storie

What if Walmart only sold walls?
What if Target was constantly being shot at?
What if Costco was a company that only accepted carbon monoxide as payment?
What if Little Caesars only sold small salads?
What if Energy Solutions only made caffeinated eyedrops?
What if the Dress Barn was a place where farm animals go to put on their clothes?
What if Smiths only shod horses?
What if Panda Express only gave train rides to pandas?
What if Del Taco was actually Delta Co, a company that deals with real estate issues in the gulf region?
What if The Dollar Store only sold dollars for a dollar?
What if Dollar General only sold dollars with General George Washington on them?
What if Family Dollar only sold families of dollars (Dad: George Washington; Mom: Susan B. Anthony; Son: JFK; Daughter: Sacajawea; Granddaughter; Sacajawea's papoose)?
What if Trader Joes was actually Traitor Joes and every time you spent money there you were aiding and abetting known enemies of the United States?
What if Subway was an underground train?
What if Reams only sold paper?
What if Zions Bank was a river-front in Israel?
What if Chevron was the offspring of Chevy Chase and Ronald Reagan?
What if Marriott was short for Merry Otter?
What if McDonalds only made Scottish Donalds?
What if Arctic Circle only sold freezing cold rings and spheres?
What if Ross Dress for Less was a place you'd go to see David Schwimmer putting on clothes for Les Moonves?
What if JC Penny only sold coins bearing the likeness of Julius Caesar?
What if Smash Burger only catered to incredible hulks?
What if Jimmy Johns was a place where you go to hurriedly and haphazardly fix toilets?
What if Harmons only sold jokes from Jamaica?
What if Best Buy was actually Best By, an expiration date factory?
What if Barnes and Noble was sitcom about a farmer and an earl?
What if the Apple store only sold macintosh apples and PCs?
What if Sandals Resorts were vacation spots for footwear?
What if Albertsons was an adoption agency for kids named Albert?
What if IBM started out as an attempt by someone named Em to introduce herself?
What if Staples only sold essential food items?
What if there was a coup in the Banana Republic and the representative government was replaced by a dictator, what then?
And, What if Questar Gas was was short for Request Our Gas, and they are waiting by the phone, but nobody calls asking for gas?

Schmeck Shme Schmalls

Merry Christmas!



Here is one more video from Voice Male's TV appearance on kjzz tv, Sunday, December 23, 2012.

What Have I Been Up To? ... Nuttin'

Here's something I've been doing recently. Enjoy!