Random Esquire

Mother-in-law coming into town this weekend. Good behavior ACTIVATE.

Little Filthy and I are relaxing on the couch. Boss caught a cold so she is resting in bed. She has refrained from giving it to me and is simply passing out samples of it to her kindergarten students.

Did I mention that Boss was a kindergarten teacher? Somehow, someone, somewhere imagined me worthy of a hot, leggy kindergarten teacher. It is one of those things that makes me pause and envy my own life.

And then I am brought back down to earth when I have to chase down Little Filthy as he tries to swallow his own poo before I catch him. The other day, I saw him from a distance in a compromising position. I yelled, “hey!” and a turd fell out of his mouth. Lest you imagine Little Filthy to be nothing more than a walking pooper-scooper/eater, he does serve one extremely important role.

Little Filthy listens to me and not to Boss. Hey, it’s the small things.

I am having a strong craving for lemon drops.

You know what amazes me? Food Network has a few shows that show you how a product is made. Just now, they showed how lemon drops are made. What kills me is how they still have some worker measuring things with a scoop or cup, dipping it into some huge 40 gallon Rubbermaid container, filling it and then pouring it into the mixture. Naively, I just assumed that all of this was completely untouched by human hands…or, at the very least, not so easily at the mercy of someone who may or may not be able to keep count of how many cups of sugar they’ve added to something. How does the product remain so consistent?

We need to stop watching Discovery Health channel. Three words: toxic epidermal necrolysis. Try a yahoo image search. Jesus. This woman’s skin just…sloughed off. There was a lot of yelling involved as we watched which worked Little Filthy up into a snit. Now we’re watching maggots put into an open wound. Watch enough of these shows and you start to think it’s a medical miracle to be healthy, period.

What the hell is going on here? It’s 7 and we decided we had to change the channel or risk never eating again. The Learning Channel has a movie on called “The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off.” He has Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB).

This reminds me of a conversation I had in the office with a co-worker. We saw a pregnant woman and my co-worker said to me, with complete sincerity, “I wish I could have a baby.” My co-worker is male. I said, “Like, have a baby or have a baby?” He said, “Have a baby.” It made me want to hit him. I told him so. For some people, biology provides a natural limit to their stupidity.

Little Filthy just indulged himself again. I did not see it happen. Suffice to say that there was circumstantial evidence, all of which pointed to the inevitable conclusion that my home is guarded by a fecalphiliac. I’ll have to sit down and talk to the boy.

In most other respects, he’s a good kid. With the above noted exception, of course… along with his unwavering addiction to the bathroom trash can which holds such temptations as used kleenex. He once escaped the bathroom undiscovered after raiding the trashcan. I would not have known but for the pantyliner stuck to his foot.  This was not the first time and is entirely likely not to be the last. He was punished. He didn’t care. He’s a junkie and junkies don’t care what it takes to get their next hit.

Wait until your mother gets home, Little Filthy.

Boss and I watched a news magazine television show about a week ago. They did a piece on e-mail spam. This woman received an e-mail with a rather graphic picture of a young lady riding a horse, so to speak, along with some promotional materials for a website I’ll refrain from mentioning. The recipient of said e-mail was very upset and the reporters in the show decided to track down the very individual who sent that bit of spam. Their quest took them into Canada, out to Las Vegas for an online porn convention, and back to Canada where they eventually had lunch with the offending man and confronted him with a mobile phone so he could apologize to the woman to whom he’d sent the e-mail.

They spent all that time, energy, and money finding the person who hit the send button and then asking him if he thought what he did was wrong. Let me get this straight. You have a picture of a woman having sex with a horse and your story is about the guy who sent the e-mail? This is the point at which you’ve really lost touch with your audience. I don’t want to know if he thinks it’s okay to send spam. Go find the girl sleeping with the horse. I mean, you’ve got a picture of her. It’s bound to be easier than finding some anonymous pervert trying to make a buck off of other anonymous perverts. This woman thinks it’s okay to have sex with animals. Go find her because I want to hear what she has to say for herself.

The media is rubbish.

Boss just reminded me that Little Filthy has engaged in coprophagia as recently as within the past week. Right. Not so picky.

Boss is a picky eater. Not the kind of picky eater no one wants at their dinner party. “Then we can do the strawberry mousse…wait, Terry doesn’t like strawberries, right? Okay, never mind…” Those picky eaters aren’t much of a leap from the allergy kid. Probably having the allergy kid over for dinner is worse because the consequences could be more serious. Feed a picky kid a peanut and you maybe get a wrinkled nose but God forbid you give the allergy kid a peanut. So sensitive. No one likes that kid. No, like all good picky eaters, she keeps it more or less to herself socially and simply picks at things.

Out for dinner on Friday night, as Boss struggled with the menu, the server intuitively asked her “Oh, are you a picky eater? So am I.” And then she pointed at things on the menu that she likes and explained that she likes them and maybe Boss would, too. I don’t get that. I mean, picky eaters aren’t interchangeable. I’d know if someone swapped out the Boss for just some other picky eater. I’m not saying I wouldn’t be fooled for a little while but I’d figure it out eventually. Especially if they gave me someone who ate pork. Boss doesn’t eat pork. She’s graduated from pork.

It’s actually rather lovable because it so clearly makes her so unsure of everything she orders. Yesterday morning at breakfast, she said, “I’ll have the French toast?” She had a look on her face like someone on Let’s Make a Deal who just had to choose either Door 1 or Door 2, has made a decision and is now awaiting the outcome. No, that’s not accurate. More like the princess/tiger doors. French toast was fairly simple as there aren’t many variations. However, more complicated menu items are like offers to which she responds with a counter-offer. Example. Menu states: Beef burrito with black beans and rice with chihuahua cheese sauce. Counter-offer: Red bean burrito with sauce on the side. She must be a good negotiator. They normally accept.

On another food note, Little Filthy had watermelon for the first time today. He was quite impressed which isn’t saying much. Little Filthy isn’t a picky eater. Earlier today, he ate rabbit out of a can.