How lucky was I this morning….and all before 9!  Wanna guess how the rest of my day went?

For a while, I thought I was a PC guy.

Post-college, my on-again-off-again advertising/graphic design relationship with the Mac did a triple reverse pike belly flop into the pool of quick and dirty corporate PC computing. Which was ok with me. I’d been dating PC for decades and had plenty of comfortable, “I can fix that” history with all its bugs, driver updates and plug and pray theatrics.

BUT, after decades of making out with the utilitarian PC brand and a few years of flirting with a Macbook Pro, our family recently invested in a “you gave my TV big time screen envy” iMac. I’m late to the party, but the streamlined, simplified elegance of this machine is like warm–but still at arms length– hug. The computer’s IN the monitor? No more towers? No more wires? No more jet turbine cooling fans? Customer support that practically wraps me in a scarf, skinny jeans, Converse, square glasses and stylized bedhead? Cutesy, pop bubblegum graphics to visually hold my hand with a wink and  a smile?

It’s double-fine.

And double the price. We had to rent the basement out to a wandering troupe of lost magazine salespeople for two weeks and three days, but what’s price when you’ve got a gleaming, glowing monitor the size of your youngest child perched on the desk in your office?

Nothing, that’s what.

Thank you for:

Always making me laugh

Loving this lady, even though

Keeping it real

Keeping it spicy

Being you!

I love you guys, more then you’ll ever know!

Happy Birthday!

And that’s why my brief run-in with Wonder Woman circa 1979 qualifies me to comment on the new “We need to resuscitate this character so we’re changing her look but we only plan on keeping this change for a few years at most” Wonder Woman costume switch just announced by DC comics.

Unfortunately, it was designed by the same dude (comic book artist Jim Lee) who redesigned The X-Men costumes in the 90’s. With Wonder Woman on the left and X-Men’s 90’s era Rogue on the right, one thing is clear: chicky, shoulder-padded leather jackets and gloves will never be restrained by petty things like “out of style” and “fashion boundaries”.

That said, if you’re thinking “geek”/”this post is lame”, well… I can’t argue with that.

This might be more urgent if I’d actually posted anything in the last few days, but hey, there you go.

That means I’m back in a cushy pair of Saucony’s and running a leisurely 10-minute mile at all hours of the day– but mostly at night because A) Cache Valley’s star-lit, cricket filled evenings can’t be beat and B) lower chance of running into/being seen by people I know. I’m not sure what happened between October 2009 and June 9, 2010, but the choice of filling my closet with Medium sized T-shirts and 30-waist pants now feels like a poor one, my home-run hitting, Kardashian rivaling butt’s got some seam-splitting back and the feeling of jiggle when I go down a flight of stairs is 236% overrated.

Being a “tall guy”, convention says all my vertical space helps in subtly stashing weight– that or people are lying when they say “You aren’t faaaaaat”. Still, I’m pretty sure it’s the latter, because the mirror tells me my hard-fought six-pack is gone, my arms look like unwrapped tubes of Pillsbury sugar cookie dough, and if I shaved my chest I could make some enticing cleavage.  That and the other night when I pushed my gut out and jiggled it for “I’m overweight I tell ya!!” effect, Little Dude disgustedly crinkled his nose and said, “Don’t do that, Papa. It looks like you ate 325 sheep and turned into a fat dude.”

Not to say I’m crying about it. Every year over the last four (d**n you, aging metabolism!) I come down from the off-season and have a pants-too-tight realization that motivates me into fighting shape just in time to shirtlessly enjoy the later half of summer… before I gorge myself into a 15-20 pound ice cream/pizza/burger/chocolate chip cookie “I’ll eat what I want because I deserve it” weight gain over winter.

Of course, I blame Tony Horton and his P90X. Once you realize the key to weight loss and sculpting a “Holy crap– that’s me!?” body, it’s easy to fall off the bandwagon because you know the formula– and know that it works. The real frustration is I’m rhetorically punching myself in the rhetorical privates for giving up all the dedicated sweat equity and egg-white eating from last year. After all, what’s the fun of setting goals if you can’t practice achieving them over and over?

Answer: No fun.Or I’ll just keep telling myself that.

In the mean time, I’m logging miles and flipping that Ragnar Relay guy breath mints.

As a kid, I knew birds had it easy– mostly because they never had to learn math. Apparently, Little Dude has the same idea. But with a twist.

“Papa, what if we lived in a dark, dark cave and we were lizards? Like, transformer robot lizards? That would be awesome! Cuz we could do anything we want, like climb walls and stuff like Spider-Man.”

Little Dude really likes the song “Genesis” by Justice. He’s not afraid to go amateur b-boy on it, either. The other day, as we came across the song while sampling the iTunes library, he jumped off my lap.

“Papa, watch me break it down.”

Arms flailing and legs kicking, Little Dude started going off with some some serious pop and lock.

“Whoah! You are breaking it down.”

Face scrunched in “I am awesome and deadly serious about this” mode: “Yes I AAAAM.”

Catching bugs is cool. Little Dude does it often. A few days ago, Little Dude caught an earwig/millipede looking thing that, once it was pinned between Little Dude’s fingers, started whacking its abdomen back and forth between them. Little Dude recounted the experience to Lady-Friend later, where we found out the bug was Herculean.

“That bug was smacking me so hard it felt like my wiener was gonna fall off.”

I’m not sure what eggplant is all about because eggplant is totally gross. But word is it’s healthy, so we eat it. And by we I mean Lady-Friend and me with my nose plugged. Little Sis and Little Dude are out. Still they get credit for trying. After sampling a bite, crying and spitting it out, Little Dude sat at the table and scowled.  After a few minutes, he calmed down but was uncharacteristically quiet as he ate the rest of his dinner.

“Hey- what are you thinking about?”

“Throwing egg plant in the garbage.”

Saturday mornings are usually pretty laid back: Kids wake up and Little Dude watches a half hour of cartoons while we make griddle cakes. As a note, we don’t really live on the prairie– “griddle cakes” just suddenly sounded cool and old-timey. So yeah– as we measured and mixed ingredients, Little Dude decided he wanted couch company and was going to make it happen with the power of adjective-laden persuasion.

“Who wants to sit on this blanket in comfort with me?”

For a few weeks, Little Dude been fighting a sinus infection. The other morning, when we asked if he was feeling any better, we got this:

“I’m still kind of sick. When I woke up, I had a beard of boogers.”

I’m beginning to see Little Dude views me as the “Party Parent”– IE the “fun” one. I know that’s cyclical and I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, but I’m pretty sure that’s just because I’m a 35-year-old with geek tendencies and the ability to buy his own toys… which on second thought, could be more “bad”.  Still, I know I’m not the only Dad whose son gets a gleam in their eye when Mama leaves and it’s “just the dudes”. Like the other day: As soon as Lady-Friend left and shut the door behind her, Little Dude immediately turned to me with a glint in his eye and a “Party-time!” look on his face.

“Papa, let’s put on some music and rock it up.”

Thing about being a little guy? No fashion anxiety. Sure, Mamas and Papas will try to police their kids away from a mismatched baller shorts/shark shirt/ball cap with Nerf glasses” fashion combo, but where’s the kids fun in that? Nowhere, that’s where. Which allows Little Dude to come up with awesome stuff like this:

“Papa, I wish I had a camo hat that said, “Army Guys Fighting” on the back and a camo helicopter on the front. And you had one with spaceships fighting aliens. That would be so AWESOME.”

A few weeks ago, Lady-Friend spent the evening photographing a wedding reception, which was kind of sad because she was gone, but kind of awesome because Little Dude and I could watch Star Wars The Clone Wars and eat ice cream in bed. That and we knew she’d bring us back a plate full of those delicious little finger cheesecake thingies.

Sure enough, Lady-Friend delivered, but Little Dude had already brushed his teeth and hopped in bed. Still, Lady-Friend calmed his anxiety and let him know they’d be waiting for him when he woke up. Spring-loaded, Little Dude popped up and grappled Lady-Friend with a hug, planting seven or eight sloppy smooches on Lady-Friends cheek.

Then, he looked at me.

“If you bring treats, you get THAT.”

“Wha? I gave u a huge slice of cake, rememeber?”

“Was that your treat for me?”

“Totally.”

Wham, grapple, hug! Smooch. Smooch.

Last week, the weather was gloomy, cousins were out of town and friends were all sick. Little Dude was having a lonely day which apparently left him a little desperate. As he and Lady-Friend went into the back yard for a breath of fresh air, Joshua ran to the “Pee Rock“, jumped on top and started yelling.

“HEY! HEY! If anybody’s out there, this is [Little Dude]! I wanna play! Come to my house!”

Little Dude is really getting into Old Testament Bible stories. There’s one I’d forgotten about but I remember thinking was awesome– one where a group of Baal worshiping priests were playing “My God can light fires better than your God” with Elijah. It all ends with Baal’s priests and pretty much everything getting torched by the God of Israel. See? Awesome. So yeah, that left an impression and Little Dude was intent to do the same– by praying to light a stone on fire on the stoop of our back door. I decided I should check in on the action.

“So what you got going there, Pal?”

“It’s a Stone! “

His eyes widened.

“A stone of GOD!”

Little Dude has wanted warm weather for months and has been asking to go to Hawaii forever. And by forever, I mean every day since December. Of course, I’m a big jerk and have been stone-walling because A) flying makes me nervous and B) Flying for five hours over a dark Pacific Ocean leaves me breathing into a paper bag 50% of the time. Luckily, the weather’s warmed up, but it’s not quite to “warm status” yet. Still, a very cool neighbor decided to fill their plastic kiddie pool with warm water run from the garage. As she filled it up and Little Dude and his pals jumped in– clothes and all– she overheard Little Dude’s grateful approval:

“Finally! I’ve been dreaming about this for so long!”

Sometimes, to kill time, I’ll You Tube innocuous clips from movies I’d never let him watch in full. On this particular day, it was Ang Lee’s The Hulk– the one with the giant poodle. As lame as that is, it does have Hulk beating up tanks and chucking them across the desert. Little Dude had never seen that before. There was only one awed and whispered response– one we’ve never heard him say before–:

“Hoooooooly craaaaaaaap.”

A few weeks ago, the family suffered through a series of colds and sinus infections. I’m not big on getting sick and loudly complained. Little Dude didn’t approve.

“Papa. Getting sick is part of life.”

I can’t remember what was on the plate, but dinner time was not going well. After finally getting Little Dude to sample a bite, his eyes softened with a smile. “Mmmm! Delicious!” Sadly, that was a lie as he refused to take a second bite.

“But you just said it was delicious!”

“Yeah, but I was saying it was disgusting in my MIND.”

She kinda dug it.