Sunday, Calfgrit8 challenged me to a game of Pokemon. We played and Calfgrit4 watched. I won, as usual. This was the first Pokemon I’ve played with him in several weeks.

Then last night, Calfgrit4 challenged me to a game of Pokemon. Now, CG4 has only the barest understanding of the game — he doesn’t know any of the rules, he only knows how the game looks when played. But he was giving me the smack talk for 20 minutes before we actually played.

“You’re going down!” he told me.

“My deck is going to beat you up,” he threatened.

He’s learned this kind of talk from his big brother. I don’t know where CG8 got this smack-attitude from — probably some of his friends at school. (I don’t talk game trash to my boys, like that. Not yet, anyway. When they get 12 years old, yeah, maybe I’ll give them some smack.)

A few days ago, CG8 and CG4 were playing a ball game in the backyard. CG8 gave the old “You’re going down!” smack, giving CG4 a thumbs-down salute at the same time. CG4, not one to back down from anything, shouted back, “I’m going up!” and gave a thumbs-up salute.

My Dialga Pokemon deck has become the terror of the house. Dialga has sort of become my signature Pokemon, and they know that’s the only card in my collection that I won’t trade. My Dialga has become their white whale.

So last night while we were playing, Calfgrit8 had to take over for Calfgrit4 because little brother just didn’t know what to do. But CG4 hung close and cheered his big brother on and gave me the trash talk. He considered himself playing by proxy. I was winning 5 to 1 (6 points wins), but then CG8 managed to defeat my Dialga. They both cheered and high fived each other. “In your face,” one of them shouted at me.

I got a good laugh out of it all, but I reminded them about good sportsmanship. They tried to reign it in, but their triumph was just too much to contain. They actually danced around the kitchen table for a minute. They had finally managed to beat down my great hero, and they wanted a parade like VE day.

And to make it even more exciting, they poisoned and confused my Level X Dialga with some basic green Pokemon I had never seen them play with before — Koffeen or something like that. They found that beyond awesome, “We beat Dialga Level X with a little Koffeen! Ha ha!”

I turned around and won the game 6 to 2, but it didn’t matter. They had beat Dialga, and that meant Daddy was bested, regardless of the actual game score.

CG4 told me with righteous certainty, “Now you’ll have to trade your Dialga to me.”

I didn’t respond to the demand right then, but he’s going to be sorely disappointed when I tell him that beating my Dialga in one game does not entitle him to taking my favorite card as a trophy.

Bullgrit

Calfgrit4 got it by a basketball thrown 30 feet by a teenager. He laughed it off and went on playing.

The boys had a friend over for a couple hours this weekend. They ran and screamed through the house, but when I herded them out to the backyard, they sat around “bored.”

We’ve been contacting local moving companies to compare prices and quality for our pending move out of our current house.

Cowgrit has been working with a interior designer to pick out flooring, cabinets, paint, and such for our new house. There are three meetings in total to finalize all the decisions. This is far, far more complicated than either of us expected it to be.

The boys planned and set up a surprise birthday greeting and “party” for when I got home from work Friday evening. They hung up banners and streamers, and then they and Cowgrit hid behind furniture until I came in and looked around. “Surprise!” they all shouted and threw confetti up into the air. We had dinner and cake.

Holy crap! I’m forty-freakin’-two years old, now! How the hell did this happen?

My gamer group has started a new game campaign: Battletech, in the 3025-3050 era. We’re playing a medium mech lance of mercenaries. It’s a fun game, but good lord it’s taking forever to play out the battles.

I got to watch part of a Scrubs marathon this weekend. I saw three episodes back to back while Calfgrit4 napped Sunday afternoon, and I laughed my ass off. God, I love that show.

And some other stuff happened.

I decided that I really miss writing my blog. It’s often a lot of fun.

I found out that sometimes I really like not writing my blog. Skipping the stress of posting every day is a relief.

Bullgrit

I changed the first diaper on both our boys, when they were less than a day old. For Calfgrit8, I just happen to be the one holding him when nature called. So I laid him down and changed him. Cowgrit watched over the operation, as she had changed baby diapers before, but I performed the deed.

For Calfgrit4, when natured called for him the first time, I wasn’t holding him, but I accepted the duty. <insert pun here> By this time, I had a lot of experience, so I didn’t need supervision.

Since that very first diaper change, eight and a half years ago, I’ve taken care of one or both boys enough to be moderately offended by stereotypical comments about men not knowing how to take care of children. Not only have I taken care of my boys as part of a team with Cowgrit, after my work hours, on the weekends, and for the occasional some hours alone here and there, as I expect most modern dads do, but I regularly have the boys all to myself at least four times a month, from the time we wake up to the time I put them to bed.

Cowgrit works four days a month (usually every other weekend — she’s a nurse in the maternity ward at the local hospital). On her weekends to work, it’s just me and my boys all day. This has gone on for years.

I know how to cook for and feed the boys. I know how to do the laundry. I know (knew) how to change diapers. I can take the boys to the museum. I know how to pack for a weekend for the three of us in my hometown. I know how to handle pretty much everything that comes up in a regular day of being with kids.

So it annoys me when a woman who doesn’t know me suggests (or says right out) that I must not know how to properly cook for and feed my boys, clean up after playing all day, do laundry/dishes, etc. Surely I’m not the only man in the modern day who can take care of his children. Surely people don’t still think all dads are as shown in silly sitcoms on TV.

In this day and age, men have come to accept the fact that women can be competent in the work place, but for some reason, a lot of women can’t accept the idea that men can be competent in the home.

Now, just because I can be competent in the home — cooking and cleaning and such — doesn’t mean I like it. I like playing with my boys, but I endure cooking and cleaning because it has to be done. I don’t have to be good at the work, I just have to be competent. When I need to be. When Cowgrit ain’t there to grab the laundry just before I was about to.

Bullgrit

We have a wood playset in our backyard. Calfgrit8 saw a couple of “bees” under the upper level floor, so, being the superhero that dads are, I was sent out to confront the danger.

Now, I’ve been stung by bees and wasps a few times through my life, so I know how bad they hurt. I have a very healthy respect for the stinging insects. You might say I have a fear of them — they make me a bit jumpy.

So when I was looking around the playset, I was on a hair trigger. The boys hung around me, despite my asking them to stay back, and this caused me extra trouble. I didn’t want to be distracted by kids under my feet, and I didn’t want to knock down a child if I jumped back at seeing a bee six inches from my face.

Eventually, I got the boys to stay back far enough from me that I probably wouldn’t trample them when I ran screaming like a little girl. I didn’t see any bugs, but I did find a tiny paper wasp nest in one corner. It was so small it only had three holes in it. I easily scraped it away.

Then I found a round hole in one board of the playset. The hole was on the narrow side of the board, facing down. I examined the hole closely, terrified that a wasp would crawl out at any moment, land on my face, and sting me in the eye. I determined that this hole must be a wasp (whatever variety it is that makes holes in wood boards – there is one, I just don’t know its exact species) construction.

I pointed the hole out to the boys, and as I stood there wondering if spraying wasp killer up into the hole would do any good (and if it would render the playset off limits for the boys for the rest of the day), Calfgrit4 said, “How about if you stuck something in the hole so they can’t come out?”

That’s pretty smart for a 4 year old. And to show him how smart he is, I did that exact thing. I went in the house and got a small piece of paper.

Back outside, I rolled the paper into a semi-tight roll, and inserted it into the hole, as far as it would go. And as I pushed it in, I had visions of a wasp or twelve pushing it out and climbing out to attack me in mass.

We left the paper and the playset then, and played ball around the yard. A few minutes later, I checked on the paper. I could hear the wasps inside the board buzzing angrily from three feet away (although the recorder only picked it up from 12 inches):

For someone already very nervous about the whole thing, hearing those bugs growling like that, like they were totally pissed off and wanted nothing more than to sting to death the asshole who plugged them up, nearly make me tremble.

So I sent Calfgrit8 into the house to bring out the duct tape. He did so, and I taped over the hole, securing the paper inside. And that was it for the day.

I really hope those wasps can’t dig/cut their way out. My nervousness won’t subside until they stop buzzing. How long to wasps live without food? Please let them die soon.

Bullgrit