Surlyburly

What sort of man willingly leaves 65 and breezy and dives into three days of 100-and-fuck? A devoted father, that's who. Enduring a heat wave like this would be hard enough without knowing that, so very recently, I was a tourist yokel shivering in short pants.

Now that the light bulb in God's EZ-Bake Oven has finally dimmed, we are emerging from our slack-jawed torpors and considering all sorts of wacky, life-affirming activities. Like venturing outdoors, and speaking in complete sentences.

'Twas not always thus. The in-laws have a couple of ACs in strategic places, so the six of us often found ourselves in the same room, staring at the same grimaced faces, grunting at the overfamiliarity and resisting the urge to squeeze ourselves into the fridge. Tempers have flared, garments rent, teeth gnashed. Not our finest hour. (Relived in a constant loop, 72 times.)

There have been two saving graces; the first is our new rental car, a total Grey Poupon wannabe. It is one bad-ass vee-hicle, and we have dubbed it the Bontley, because it desperately wants to be either a Bentley or a Bond car. Black leather seats, fake burled walnut, all that crap. It is also bulletproof and shoots Stinger missiles from its headlights.

The second is the local children's science museum, which is totally cool. (And by "cool" I mean Super-Nerdy-Goobertastic.) It has a perpetual motion machine, giant Tangrams, water tables, an optical illusion center, and on and on. It also has a station that lets you perform a fake weathercast in front of a green screen. Robert got up there and, as sure as I'm sitting here, he started waving his arms around and said, "This area will be icky, and this area is all farts." I was laughing so hard some guy offered me his inhaler.

In keeping with this theme, we also found a Human Noise Piano that plays sniffles and burps and farts instead of notes. I think we were there for about 45 minutes, annoying the hell out of the staff at the cafe next door. But oh, how we needed it.

We had been cooped up, roasting, making our own gravy, and snapping at each other like cornered coyotes. And nothing takes the edge off the dog days, I've learned, like using a keyboard to belch Chopsticks.

Comments

[tuckova]

I was going to try and find the parts of this that made me sit up straight, starting at approximately "God's EZ-Bake Oven" and going on down to "cornered coyotes" but then I thought I might just as well re-post the whole thing as a comment. Which I think is not done.

So instead: Oh, well done.

[Lisa]

I want that piano!

[El Charolastra]

a kia?? A KIA?
Ikea?

[Mollywogger]

Ooo! Ooo! Did you find the stairs that plays different notes when you run up and down them? That's fun. How about the mummies? And the tornado machine?

[foodmomiac]

Too bad you didn't hit the museum last year. They had a vomit machine. My daughter still talks about it. It was fabulously disgusting.

[Katie]

We enjoy that place as well. My oldest could spend all day in the water table area.

[sanders5]

a vomit machine? vomit? no, really?

Okay, well ... I WANT to feel sorry for you, but we can't even breathe for the heat and humidity when we go outside. Of course, I chose this place to live (S.Texas) so I'll stop whining now.

I was looking forward to Blogher b/c I was told CA was cooler ... um, no. Then, off to Chicago, which I was told was cooler than CA ... um, no. Now that I've left both places, I believe the heat has abated. Not here. That is just my luck.

[LOD]

Hey Foodmomiac!

Drat: I missed you at BlogHer, and Moxie was especially intent that I find you. I did, however, enjoy test-driving your husband's sweet two-seaters. I'll keep those in mind for the upcoming mid-life meltdown.

Double drat: I missed the Puke-o-matic 5000. That would have been a wonderful third ring in the wonderfully cathartic Scatology Circus.

[Mark]

High comedy -- while the rest of the country was baking, here in the melanoma capitol of the the world in Phoenix, we had a veritable cold snap -- almost a full week of temps under 100, which for us in July is a little slice of Heaven on earth.

Also -- which children's museum are you talking about? I've lost track of where the heck you're at by now!

[dajamama]

There are many kinds of laughs. There's the pee-your-pants laugh, the being-tickled-mercilessly laugh, the embarrassing-moment-pass-off laugh, the sheer-joy-in-your-toddler laugh. And tonight, you introduced me to a new one:

The late-night, bleary-eyed, reading-too-many-blogs, half-grunty laugh.

Thank you, LOD.

~~
PS - The other night I saw one of those ubiquitous crime shows and the "bad guys" were this pseudo-Satanistic anarchy-loving gang of misfit teenage boys, and their gang name was Lords of Darkness. They had spray-painted "LOD" all over their lair and all I could think of was your blog. Except now there's been some kind of weird contamination or cross-pollination in my brain or something, because when I see your acronym I keep thinking "Lord Laid Off Darkness-Dad."

[liz]

oooh! Science! And farts!

[Shannon]

I hope you were able to get his little weathercast on film or something. I'm still laughing.

[Papa Bradstein]

Giant Tangrams?

So. Cool.

Love. Tangrams.

[Spain Dad]

"And nothing takes the edge off the dog days, I've learned, like using a keyboard to belch Chopsticks."

Now there's something quotable. Well done.