The Body in My Backyard

When I came home from work yesterday, I had to bury a body in my backyard. Unfortunately, it was not the body of one of my enemies. No, it was my daughter’s fish, Kiki.

This was actually the second Kiki. We were able to find a good enough replacement for the first one before Baby E even noticed that something was seriously wrong. She noticed that Kiki suddenly looked a little smaller but my wife and I told her that Kiki had lost weight because she was sick. I don’t know if she bought that completely, but she went along with it.

This time, however, she saw Kiki 2.0 laying on its side, not moving, before we could try to hide it from her. I stuck the net in the tank and the fish moved away from it, but not much. Baby E was crying when I left for work. I tried to calm her down by telling her that Kiki was still moving, therefore was still alive. She knew, though. She knew Kiki wouldn’t last much longer.

Sure enough, Mrs. Revis texted me about halfway through my work day to tell me that Kiki was no longer with us and my daughter was inconsolable. I called and talked to her for a few minutes. It was heartbreaking.

“I miss Kiki!”

“I don’t want her to go!”

“We need to get another fish and name it Kiki too!”

It took a lot of work, but between us, Mrs. Revis and I calmed her down. Now the problem was what to do with Kiki. With the first Kiki, we flushed it down the toilet and Baby E was never the wiser. This time, she kind of flipped out when it was suggested. I said that maybe we should put Kiki in the river behind our house. She didn’t like that idea either. No, we had to bury Kiki in the backyard.

“That way Kiki will always be with us.”

So… that’s what I did.

She was more calm today. She was still sad about her fish dying, but she was able to talk about it without crying, which was good. I don’t know how much more of it I could take.

I can handle anything you throw at me, but not that. Watching my child weep uncontrollably is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. What made it worse is that there was nothing I could do or say that would make it ok that her pet had just died.

I don’t even want to think about what will happen the first time someone she knows passes away. If I couldn’t handle this, I sure as hell won’t be able to handle that.

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Is That A Word?

I was unaware that “dank” was a word. Then, as if by magic, it started appearing all over my Facebook page. Almost always, it was in those annoying ads that they put of there. Those ads are for those stupid click bait sites that have stories titled “The Dankest Marvel Memes” or “Top 20 Dankest Justice League Memes”.

Against my better judgment, I clicked on a couple of them to see if I could figure out the meaning of the word “dank”. So far, I’m not sure I have the definition figured out. I’m torn between it either meaning “not funny” or “extremely disappointing”.

Make Someone’s Day Interesting

This may surprise you, but I actually have a home phone. Yes, they still have those.

We first got it a while ago when my mom was babysitting Baby E. She was very forgetful about her cell phone and we wanted a way to be able to get in touch with her if she forgot it. Now that my mom is no longer babysitting, we thought about getting rid of it, but decided to keep it for two reasons. One, while not necessary, it will be helpful when my wife’s company starts letting her work from home. And, two, due to the bundle we got from our cable company, it’ll actually cost us more to have it turned off than to keep it.

Other than my wife and I, only 3 or 4 people have that number. All of them are related to us in some way. But, none of them ever call it. They always call our cell phones (when they actually take the time to call instead of text). So, our house phone only rings about once every other day or so.

“If nobody you know is calling it, then who is?” you ask.

The answer is simple: telemarketers.

Or, maybe they’re scammers. Hell, I don’t know. All I know is that they’re going to try to get money from me one way or another. And, I know that they’re irritating. Instead of getting mad and yelling at them, however, I thought I’d take a different approach and make the phone call memorable for them.

Last night, my phone rang and I answered it. A lot of these calls are recordings, so I didn’t say anything right away. That’s when the brief conversation happened.

Caller: Hello?

Me: Yeah, hi. I was hoping you could help me with my butt itch.

3 seconds of dead silence

Caller: Excuse me?

Me: Come on, you gotta do something. My butt itches really bad and I can’t get it to stop!

Caller: 3 seconds of muffled laughter

Me: HELP ME!!!!

CLICK…

I think next time I’m going to talk about having a burning sensation on my taint.

At Least One Thing

When it comes to parenting, everyone is different. What may be right for some will be wrong for others. Despite what haters on the internet say, there is no surefire method to raising your children. We each do the best we can and pray it’s good enough.

Or, at least, that’s what I do.

I don’t know if I’ll ever really know how good of a father I am. My beautiful princess will be turning 6 next month, so I still have a long way to go, too. I suppose I’ll leave it up to my wife and daughter to be the judges on that. There aren’t many people’s opinions that mean a whole lot to me, but those two are certainly the most important. No matter what, out of everything that’s happened since she’s been born, I know for a fact that I did at least one thing right.

Every time we drive past a water tower, Baby E will say, “Look, Daddy, a water tower! That’s where the Animaniacs live!”

That’s a win, my friends. That’s a win.

8 Years

As most of you may have noticed, I haven’t really been on here much lately. I’m not going to make any promises, but I will tell you that I’ll try to make more of an effort to post stuff on here. Only time will tell if I’m successful or not.

Speaking of time, though, I received a notification from WordPress last week that I just passed my 8 year anniversary with them. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been coming to this here blog for that long. A lot has changed in that time. I’ve changed jobs. My daughter was born. My wife and I bought our house. I’ve published two books, while working on several others.

It’s odd that 8 years seems to have gone by so fast, especially when every day at work feels like an eternity.

No matter how much of those 8 years that you’ve been here, I want to thank you for being a part of this place. You’ve made those years memorable. Thank you.

Pay Attention to Your Companions

The title of this post is good advice in general. Whether those companions be friends, family, or coworkers, it’s generally a good idea to pay attention to them. It’s an even better idea if the companion in question is a significant other. Then, not only is it a good idea, it’s a necessity.

I’m not referring to any of those people, though.

No, the companions I’m talking about are the characters that video games give you to help the main character complete their quest. Generally, these companions come in RPG style games, which are the ones I tend to gravitate towards. And, as anyone who has played these types of games before can tell you, those companions can be the difference between beating the game or giving up in frustration.

Recently, I found out that I did not pay nearly enough attention to my companions.

I’m playing through Dragon Age: Inquisition again. I’ve already beaten it, but I’m playing it on the Xbox One this time around instead of the 360. There is some DLC available for the One that I couldn’t get for the 360. So, at least there will be some new content for me during this playthrough.

I went to fight one of the game’s dragons. This is where I learned that I had spent too much time focused on the main character and not enough time on his companions.

About 15 seconds into the fight, every single one of my three companions was dead. Somehow, through luck (and using every potion in my inventory) I was able to defeat it by myself…. barely. Had it not been one of the weaker dragons in the game, I probably wouldn’t have been able to.

After the fight, I went to my inventory and looked at the weapons and armor they were equipped with. It wasn’t even close. The equipment for my main character was much, much better than theirs. It was as if I was wearing steel plate armor and they were wrapped in toilet paper.

Needless to say, I have made more of an effort to upgrade their gear. Since then, I have fought, and killed, a couple more dragons and my companions have fared a lot better.

Hopefully, you learn from my mistakes and pay attention to your companions. Otherwise, the next ass the dragon fries might be yours.

RTotD 050118

If the Green Lantern can make any object anywhere with his ring, couldn’t he place one of his constructs in someone’s throat, cutting off all of their air? Even if he got rid of it before his opponent died, it seems like that would be an effective way of taking the fight out of them.