The HICCUPotamus

by Aaron Zenz

My wife ordered this book off one of those forms the school sends home with our son each month.  I usually try to throw those things away before she can rack up a bill on them, but she beat me to this one.  Forty nine dollars and ninety-nine cents later, we received this book and about ten more.  I'm glad she ordered.

This book is a blast to read.  These kids love the pictures and I love the nonsense rhyming.  There's nothing worse than reading a book that doesn't rhyme, the exception being when a book rhymes but the author doesn't understand rhythm.  If you clap on 1 and 3 at rock concerts, you shouldn't be rhyming.

There is also a fun '80's movie tie-in at the back of the book.  The author gives a "Cast Bio" of the different characters found throughout the book.  If you get a chance, read this book.

The HiccupotamusAvailable at Bigger Books

Missing Link Found?

Some things you can't unsee.

Living in the rural midwest, surrounded by fields, there is no shortage of mice trying to find their way into our home.  There is, however, a shortage of useful mousetraps.  It seems that the only thing these sticky glue traps catch is curious 3 year old girls.

Wal Mart's Latest Policy

It's ridiculous enough that I get carded for buying alcohol when I have all three children with me, but Wal-Mart's newest policy on selling alcohol may be the dumbest policy I've ever heard.  I'm not sure if this is a nation wide thing or just a local chain cracking down, but apparently, if you purchase alcohol now, they want to

Bikini Onesie

Why do I ever bother looking at "Trending Now" on Yahoo's homepage?  Once in a great while there is actually something worth reading like, "God Particle Found" or "Cat Lady Suicide".  More often than not it's celebrity crap like "Casey Anthony Reads Hunger Games" or "Tom Cruise Calls Katie Holmes "Kate".  I'm not making up those last two headlines by the way.  If this is the drivel that most internet users are actually reading, we are not far from an Idiocracy with Luke Wilson as our president.

Parenting Fail

We enjoy taking the kids down to the Alton Riverfront each year to watch the fireworks; the kids love it and it gets us out of the house.  The people that show up are almost as fun to watch, but I'll save that for another post.  But what really amazed me about last night's outing was how so much, yelling, spanking, crying and spandex could have been avoided.

ATTN: PARENTS!!!  Stop setting yourselves up for failure!

Last night we sat under a pavilion, in the park, by the river, near a playground.  (Hooray for prepositions!)  The whole point of us sitting near the playground was to let the kids play while we sat back, relaxed and waited for the fireworks to start.  Some parents apparently had different reasons for showing up so early.  

They demanded that their kids stay put on the grass, amongst the cigarette butts and rusted bottle caps, waiting for the aerial display of lights.  We arrived two hours early (we still didn't find a decent parking spot) thinking the kids could play while we waited.  But, for the next hour and a half, we listened to parents yell at their kids for not sitting still; because they wanted to play.

No zoom was used in capturing how close we were to this childrens' playland nirvana.

Here's an idea: Don't sit next to a playground if you don't want your kids to play on the aforementioned playground.  We're at a huge riverfront park, so you can move a good 150-200 yards away from the playground and you'll save your voice, keep your kids from crying, and you might just enjoy the evening more.  I know I would have.  You deserve to fail.

We bought our glowsticks at the dollar store before hand.  No problems.

The next major parenting fail of the night involved swordplay; a fail that could have been easily avoided by learning how to prepare for the situation.  At just about any outdoor, night-time event, there's going to be some asshole pushing around neon glowsticks, bracelets, necklaces and other Tron paraphernalia.  If you decide it's worth 10-15 dollars to give your children these glowsticks that's cool with me; I don't care.  But please don't spend the rest of the night yelling at your kids to stop fighting.  You just placed a Neon Ninja Turtle Bo Staff in their hands and now you expect them to not use it properly.  I'd have more respect for you if you were taking side bets on which kid would emerge victorious. 

Tron meets Star Wars meets Gangs of New York

At the highest count last night, there were 13 different children running around in front of the playground hitting each other with these light up swords.  As I said, we arrived about two hours early, so between the parenting fails and Padawan training we were thoroughly entertained.  The fireworks weren't bad either.

Don't Paint Your Face With A Screwdriver

This is the rule that started it all.  I'm sure I've yelled out crazy rules to (or perhaps at) my children before, but it takes something like this coming out of your mouth to make you stop and reflect.

About two summers ago we started finishing our basement.  After a month or four of hanging, taping, mudding and sanding the drywall, it was time to paint.  I was about halfway done with the entire basement when I had just finished using up my last can of paint...or so I thought.  I left what I thought was an empty can of paint just laying on the