Vintonville

You know this September stretch we’re in– the one where the sun starts slacking on its hours, the foliage has a little slump in its posture and all of a sudden there’s freeze warnings (FREEZE warnings!). The one where it feels like a disgruntled, prune-crazed Old Man Fall is peering out of slat blinds and calling the cops on Summer for walking on his lawn? The one where–after the 17th call–Summer will be too exasperated to care any more and will let the old dirtbag have his way by moving out of the neighborhood? Yeah, it feels kinda like that. Like the shouting matches have resulted in spiteful, cantankerous legal action and that legal action is coming by way of Summer getting a size 9 pediatric right in her perky bum-parts.

Sigh. Old Man Fall is a jerk. But while he may be able to take my flip-flops and short-pants, he’ll have to pry them from my cold, resentful hands.

In the mean time, out of all our near-naked, sun-soaked and care-free two months of summer pics, here’s a “Look, Ma- no hands!” fave.

Me? Not a golfer.

Not that I haven’t tried. Not that I don’t enjoy strolling a sun-drenched fairway while taking in the ambiance of well-manicured grounds, fresh air and dudes of all ages howling new ways to conjugate the F-bomb. That’s all fantastic. It’s just that my learning curve is currently right about where most golfers were when they were, like, six. Oh sure, as a man of modern means I’m OK at chipping and putting– it’s just that when it comes to stuff like driving and knowing the difference between a 4 (iron…wedge?) and a 9 (iron?), I look like a confused, pigeon-toed hockey player with a cyclops complex… and that just won’t do.

In an effort to give Little Dude a leg up over his Papa– you know, so he’s a golfing pro right about the time racquetball makes its comeback as the status sport of choice– Lady Friend took him out for some early training, which started off well enough.

Smashing!

But then… yeah.

And then…um, yeah.

Next.

I have a very, very refined guilt complex. Those who know this use it against me all the time– and that’s cool, I would too. But this Tony Horton character and his P90X plan– it’s making mincemeat out of it.

See, the trick to losing weight isn’t necessarily exercise. Sure, working out helps make you look all bumpy, racks up bills for little boy sized t-shirts and seduces you into wanting to pull your pants dangerously low to show off your fun new Abercrombie V. But the real secret is eating “clean”. Stop pounding calorie-soaked fast food, stop swilling your weight in 82 oz. jugs of daily-caloric-busting soda and burn more calories than you take in. You can do all that without exercise. It’s like magic, really. But throw in some push-ups and cardio? Stuff starts getting miraculous.

And that’s where guilt comes off the bench and starts warming up. Thing is, after faithfully riding the nutritional bandwagon for 160+ days, the minute I ogle a cookie, entertain a slice of pizza or contemplate a trip to Cafe Rio/Bajio, guilt busts down the door to reckless abandon with arms flailing and I run into the other door marked “second-guessed paranoia” all curled up and whimpering.

Some people call that discipline. I call it sad time.

Thanks, Tony.

Babies are awesome, but they’re even more awesome when they start morphing from slate-faced cuddle-slugs to drooling, cooing mini-personalities. It’s here you get sweet, doe-eyed gazes of innocence and face-splitting, heart-thawing “I’m just happy to see you” smiles. The smiles that take a felt eraser to the 1 AM, 4 AM and 5 AM memory chalk marks of repeatedly losing sleep while trying to get them back to it.

Not that I’d know a whole lot about that. Keep up the good work, Lady Friend!

Yeah, babies are pretty awesome.

Last weekend, our fantastically generous neighbor made some cupcakes for Little Sis’ celebration and dropped them by before the wild rumpus got underway.

Cupcakes, you say. Ok, big deal.

No. NO. These weren’t run-of-the-mill cupcakes. As you can see, these tiny, pink jewels were home-baked tickets to a silky, confectionery and totally enticing dreamland– so enticing they had to be stashed away in our room and away from the little hands of would-be cupcake burglars and sneaky early-samplers.

When dessert time finally rolled around, Lady Friend was shocked–SHOCKED– to find that despite her back-room security, not one, not two, but three cupcakes had been victimized in a bold and daring daylight raid. Not only that, but as a final taunt the criminal also left their empty, crumb-caked wrappers on the serving tray.

Thanks to a frenetic party atmosphere, many innocent children narrowly escaped the wrath of Lady-Friend that day.

Next time, I’ll be sure to throw away the wrappers.

In my insensitive and uncouth opinion, I think every little boy should have a special place he can call his own. A place of refuge, solace and privacy. A place to gather his thoughts and admire the world around him when he just doesn’t feel like finding a bathroom. In my opinion, every little boy needs a Pee Rock, which is why Little Dude has one.

With cousins recently in town, we made some formal Pee Rock introductions.

They all got along swimmingly.

You know those moments–when you’ve been running through the similitude of day to day management–where  something makes you look up and re-realize what you’ve always known but become used to? The kind of something that compels a whisper of gobsmacked “Wow” ?

I just had one of them.