TJ’s Blog on a Log with a Frog

Actually, it’s “Catch-up/Brewings”… but that’s not as funny (I know…. like Ketchup Brewings is).

 Anywho, I have not died, dropped off the face of the Earth or moved to a hippie colony/coffee bistro in Seattle.  I’m still here… letting the rants form and brew in the twisted imagination I have to put out and brighten your otherwise humdrum-piss-poor-excuse-of-a-day!

 Being interested in keeping connected and observing the other wierd shit people come up with… I have a MySpace page.  If you don’t know what MySpace is… I would suggest that you get out from under your rock more often.  By the way,  you can find some of the blogs here on that site, along with some of the fun videos of TCO there.

Anywho, being the social site it is… it is sus

On to the more pleasant parts of the Christmas Holiday Season…. watching your child get more and more excited about Christmas every day. 

Without fail, TCO will always ask me before I tuck him in for bed, “Is it Christmas tomorrow?”  My son is at the age where he realizes new things about Christmas everyday.  His latest thing is, “I have to be really, really good… because Jesus and Santa Claus are watching!” 

And you know, that’s the best way to look at Christmas….. through the eyes of a young child.

 TJ

 This is something that I received from Brother Jamie, a close friend that is just getting ready to come back from Iraq. Even though he says that this isn’t completely accurate, I would say that it’s pretty good, all things considered!

——- 

Since my
time in Iraq is quite limited now, I thought I would
spread some funny about it.  Most of this is
based on truth, but dramatic liscense has been taken
to improve the humor!  Enjoy, this will most
likely be the last Iraq thingy I
send!!

How to Prepare for a Deployment to Iraq

1. Sleep on a cot in the garage.

2.Replace the garage door with a curtain.

3. Six hours after you go to sleep, have your wife or
girlfriend whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight
in your eyes and mumble, “Sorry, wrong cot.”

4. Renovate your bathroom. Hang a green
plastic sheet down from the middle of your bathtub and
move the showerhead down to chest level. Keep four
inches of soapy cold water on the floor. Stop cleaning
the toilet and pee everywhere but in the toilet
itself. Leave two to three sheets of toilet paper. Or
for best effect, remove it altogether. For a more
realistic deployed bathroom experience, stop using
your bathroom and use a neighbor’s. Choose a neighbor
who lives at least a quarter mile away.

5. When you take showers, wear flip-flops and keep the
lights off.

6. Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and dump dirt on your head.

7. Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it on “HIGH” for that tactical generator smell.

8. Don’t watch TV except for movies in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch and then show a different one.

9. Leave a lawnmower running in your living room 24 hours a day for proper noise level.

10. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.

11. Once a week, blow compressed air up through your chimney making sure the wind carries the soot across and on to your neighbor’s house. Laugh at him when he curses you.

12. Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in the other side of your bathtub.

13.Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a saltine cracker.

14. Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator. Then serve some kind of meat in an unidentifiable sauce poured over noodles. Do this for every meal.

15. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off,
jump out of bed and get to the shower as fast as you can. Simulate there is no hot water by running out into your yard and breaking out the garden hose.

16. Once a month, take every major appliance completely apart and put it back together again.

17. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for five or six hours before drinking.

18. Invite at least 185 people you don’t really like because of their strange hygiene habits to come and visit for a couple of months. Exchange clothes with them.

19. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.

20. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass
through one of them.

21. Keep a roll of toilet paper on your night stand and bring it to the bathroom with you. And bring your gun and a flashlight.

22. Go to the bathroom when you just have to pass gas, “just in case.” Every time.

23.
Announce to your family that they have mail, have them
report to you as you stand outside your open garage
door after supper and then say, “Sorry, it’s for the
other Smith.”

24. Wash only 15 items of
laundry per week. Roll up the semi-wet clean clothes
in a ball. Place them in a cloth sack in the corner of
the garage where the cat pees. After a week, unroll
them and without ironing or removing the mildew,
proudly wear them to professional meetings and family
gatherings. Pretend you don’t know what you look or
smell like. Enthusiastically repeat the process for
another week.

25. Go to the worst
crime-infested place you can find, go heavily armed,
wearing a flak jacket and a Kevlar helmet. Set up shop
in a tent in a vacant lot. Announce to the residents
that you are there to help them.

26. Eat a
single M&M every Sunday and convince yourself it’s
for Malaria.

27. Demand each family member be
limited to 10 minutes per week for a morale phone
call. Enforce this with your teenage daughter.

28. Shoot a few bullet holes in the walls of
your home for proper ambiance.

29. Sandbag the
floor of your car to protect from mine blasts and
fragmentation.

30. While traveling down roads
in your car, stop at each overpass and culvert and
inspect them for remotely detonated explosives before
proceeding.

31. Fire off 50 cherry bombs
simultaneously in your driveway at 3:00 a.m. When
startled neighbors appear, tell them all is well, you
are just registering mortars. Tell them plastic will
make an acceptable substitute for their shattered
windows.

32. Drink your milk and sodas warm.

33. Spread gravel throughout your house and
yard.

34. Make your children clear their Super
Soakers in a clearing barrel you placed outside the
front door before they come in.

35. Make your
family dig a survivability position with overhead
cover in the backyard. Complain that the 4×4s are not
8 inches on center and make them rebuild it.

36. Continuously ask your spouse to allow you
to go buy an M-Gator.

37. When your 5-year-old
asks for a stick of gum, have him find the exact stick
and flavor he wants on the Internet and print out the
web page. Type up a Form 9 and staple the web page to
the back. Submit the paperwork to your spouse for
processing. After two weeks, give your son the gum.

38. Announce to your family that the dog is a
vector for disease and shoot it. Throw the dog in a
burn pit you dug in your neighbor’s back yard.

39. Wait for the coldest/ hottest day of the
year and announce to your family that there will be no
heat/air conditioning that day so you can perform much
needed maintenance on the heater/ air conditioner.
Tell them you are doing this so they won’t get cold/
hot.

40. Just when you think you’re ready to
resume a normal life, order yourself to repeat this
process for another six months to simulate the next
deployment you’ve been ordered to support

—–

Whether you do or you don’t agree with why we’re “at war”, support the people who are there in this. 

TJ

Alright.  I think I calmed down now after that last posting.  This one is light-hearted and melancholy at the same time (if that makes any sense.)

 My son turns 5 years old today.  That means it was 5 years and approximately 7 hours since I witness the miracle of my son coming into this world firsthand. 

My life has never been the same since.  I’ve watched as TCO (The Cute One – for the unititiated) has grown and evolved with his surroundings and with our guidence and antics. 

There are things that I know he got from Wynter and I and others that just seem to come automatically.  For example, the trademark grin and mischevious glint of the eyes I give…. or Wynter’s large vocabulary.

There are other things that just seem to come naturally.  TCO has a very large thing for Family.  Every one of his toys has a family.  There’s the Bear Family, the Puppy Family, the Monkey Family, the Gorrila Family (and he definitely knows the difference between a monkey and a gorilla), the Bionicle Family, the Motorcycle Family, the Leggo Airplane Family… etc. 

He also picks up rocks that he finds in parking lots and at pre-school that “looked sad and lonely” and brings them home and makes families for them (most of them are named “Rocky”… don’t ask me how you can tell them apart!)

He is also known to think of his sock puppet has his “little brother”, who he named Jack Peter.  It’s not bad enough that everyone else is asking when we’re going to have more kids any time soon… our own son chiming in to guilt us into it. 

This is one of the reason kids get pets.

The biggest thing that he has is Love.  He loves his Mom and Dad with everything that he has.   He will stop in the middle of whatever he’s doing, run up to Wynter and I and throw his arms around us… alot of times at both of us at the same time.  He loves Family Hugs and Snuggles.  He has all sorts of varieties of hugs and kisses that he can give.

And I’ll take those as long as he’s willing to give them out.

TJ