WTF#2

Soooo, Shaymus and I have a daddy/son at the San Francisco Zoo last Friday. Now many of you that know me are thinking "oh shit, he is trying to return Shay." Well, to say the thought never crossed my mind would be a lie but, I love the little booger toooo much.....no matter how many times he tries to kill me. We had a really fun day that started when we arrived at the monkey exhibit. This group of primates had been vocalizing like the primates they are, loud and continuos while swinging from rope to rope to branch and so on. Quite an impressive display that kept my little "audience riveted." After about 15-20 minutes of watching this Shay decided it was time to move on to the next wild display. "So what do you want to see next" I ask..."graffs", he shouts. "Do you mean Giraffes" I ask, "NO, GRAFFS" he sternly replies. SO we head for the "graffs." If you have ever been to the Zoo you know you can walk on the pathways that circumvent all of the displays in an expeditious manner when you follow the map. The "Shay-Way" is more like firing a rubber bullet into a steel room.....you don't know where it's going, you really cannot follow it, and you just kind of wait for it to lose some velocity so you can catch it! Eventually we end up at the steam train. Now Shaymus loves trains to no end, so after 4 rides and 8 laps it was at best a "fit" and at worst a train induced audible test for an un-natural disaster alarm when I tried to get him off the train. We managed to end this quite quickly and move on to the bear exhibit. Of course on Friday we were not exposed to a knucklehead trying to enter the Grizzly bear exhibit. Nor was the entire familial unit exposed to any other knucklehead on Sunday when we made a family trip to the Zoo. It was on Saturday that some Idiot decides to climb over the fences and squat for lunch with "ursus arctos horribilis." Now before you start screaming at me about picking on the "allegedly mentally ill" hear me out. This guy had a warrant out for his arrest from Union City for threatening family members with a knife dating back to 2006, assault on a police officer charges and a few other raps. So where does society draw the line with violent, allegedly, "mentally ill" people. Marvin Patrick Sullivan has been claiming mental illness for over eleven years now. This "allegedly mentally ill" subject executed a Police Officer after being pulled over by San Bruno Police for an expired registration. As officer Seann Graham approached, Sullivan got out his car and began firing with an AK47. After calling for backup and dodging murderous gunfire, Milbrae Police Officer David Chetcuti answered the call of an officer in need of help and was gunned down by Sullivan. While lying mortally wounded on the Milbrae Avenue offramp from highway 101, Sullivan proceeded to execute Chetcuti where he lye. Now personally nobody on this planet can convince me Sullivan is mentally ill. The mentally ill truly do not have the capacity to understand that the person he just shot, that is lying on the ground dying really needs to have more bullets fired into their head. The truly mentally ill do not understand that they now need to leave the scene of the crime because they do not possess the capacity to understand they have just committed a crime. Yet we continue to live in a society where the "allegedly" mentally ill continue to mingle amongst us, committing heinous crimes. I have begun to believe that most people take it for granted that the actions of a sociopath will never affect them. So now we how two incidents at the Zoo in 2 years, first the Dilly-dipshit brothers get their friend killed, and claim that they did no wrong, now this idiot Kenneth Herron climbs in to have lunch with the grizzlies. Too bad they were not hungry. So when and where do you draw the line with societies idiots. Their crimes are of no cost to them. We as tax payers cover that for them free of charge. Even worse, since this alleged crime took place in San Fran-shit-sco there are a litany of organizations too "protect" all parties, including the improperly incarcerated grizzlies! If not for Berkeley being across the bay, San Fran-shit-sco would have my vote for capitol of the state of DumbAss!
If I have offended you in any way please understand that I am now mentally ill and not responsible for the rants and raves published here, seriously what sane person would could come up with this kind of rhetoric. SO kiss my ass, and lock your doors for the boogy-man is coming and nobody will stop him until he gets you!

Gas Attack

My arch nemesis has once again launched a full scale assault on all human senses. After nearly killing me in the music store he changed his tactics this morning. After eating his pancakes this morning he subdued my parental intuition by quietly playing with his set of Jenga blocks a Thomas the Tank Engine floor puzzle and 237 other lethal weapons. Mere mortals call these objects of parental destruction "toys" for some odd reason. In the hands of my son a Jenga block is like a wooden bullet. As innocuous as a floor puzzle may sound Shay turned that into a floor mounted, tailbone shattering tool of disaster by laying the puzzle over a film of olive oil he stole from the kitchen. After gliding nearly four feet across the living room floor I was no longer able to maintain my  balance and slammed butt first onto the hardwood floor. To add insult to injury he stood over me smiling and repeating "lubby-doo daddy, lubby-doo." This is when, thinking that he was really sorry for his action, he came in for the kill. With my head on the ground he tried to sit on it and unleashed a noxious, aft mounted, diaper encased 13 ton "poop-splosion." The Germans used nerve gas attacks during WWI and I can now fully sympathize with the poor British soldiers who encountered this wretched device of human torture. I do not know how long I was unconcious for, or how I managed to keep from tossing my cookies, but as I slowly regained consiousness, once again there he stood looking down at the pathetic heap of a gas-attacked father lying on the floor. As the fog cleared from my cerebral mass and the internal picture taking mechanism began to regain focusing capabilities I heard the faint speakings of the dictator that applied such evil to the parental unit.  "daddy, i got poopies"

I faintly recall thinking "No Schitt!?!?!?

Dog in mourning

It never occurred to me that a pet could grieve. Kai has been a really sad dog since Kona passed away. A normally vivacious and aggressively outgoing dog who would force you to pet her, she spent a lot of time, well moping around the garage. Eerily, she would lay on the spot where Kona had passed and would not get up from there and looked towards you as if saying "leave me alone please, my friend died here." Obviously we have been spending a lot more time with her and Melanie has been giving more treats. The dog loves apples and nibbles away like a human. If you hold the apple and rotate it as she eats, she will politley and with much mannerism eat an apple. Now this may not sound like much to many people but Kai was always the dog, whom when you gave her a treat, would come at you like a ravaged bear with her huge Rotweiller mouth open and then excitedly clamp down on the treat somewhere just short of your wrist. While you are trying to retrieve your hand from the depths of her gaping mandible she would begin to realize that maybe I shouldn't have done that then slowly releases your now slobber covered hand, add a few nicks and small punctures. So when Melanie told me this I was not entirely convinced about Kai's newfound table manners. Ironically, Melanie was feeding her an apple and had gotten to the core, then while turning to allow Kai to get one last nibble she caught Mel's finger and broke the skin. I have to admit it was really cute seeing this dog, who has since we got her when she was 4 weeks old, eat like it was her last or even her first meal in weeks, just plain gobbles without remorse. We have been saddened with the loss of Kona and now are healing with the help of our grieving dog who reminds us all we need to slow down and sniff a few butts for old times sake!  

Back pain and vulnerability

Being taken advantage of by a three year-old really sucks. I still think I can take him, don't get me wrong but the little turd acts like an assasin sometimes. Cold, but loving and warm, calculating but klutzy, sweet yet evil. I did a good job with my back this week. Constant pain, stabbing when I move in the wrong direction, unable to sit or bend over. I would like to say I did this lifting an engine off the ground to put it on an engine stand. Unfortunately I was leaning over the sink and doing dishes, with nothing in my hands but some water. Pathetic. Now back to my little parental terrorist. We are in a store yesterday renting a flute for my daughter and as I am filling out paperwork he is running rampant thru the store with Alyssa flying chase but a step or two behind. Kind of like an old Tom & Jerry cartoon where Jerry is tipping over everything and as Tom chases he is standing everything back up and just cannot quite catch Jerry. So I step away from the counter to get his attention and tell him quite sternly to "COME HERE" to which he replied "NO" then ran. SO I reach into my pocket to pull out my dart gun with the tranquilizer darts and much to my chagrin it is not there. "I will get you, you eveil little monster" I yell. Then came the ultimate insult "Catch me Fatso." I grabbed a guitar and started firing violin bows through the store like a mad Indian. I took off my shirt and dipped in a cleaning solution, wrapped it around an oversized Bass bow, lit it on fire and shot it at him as he wassticking out his tongue defiantly, ducked and ran. Needless to say the Woodwind section of the store was engulfed in flames. Customers were running out screaming about an father gone insane when I caught my next glimpse of the now hunted terrorist. I had grabbed a handful of drumsticks that I had sharpened points on with their electric pencil sharpener and started a rapid fire assault. My hand made arrows-of-mass-destruction were flying like bats leaving a cave at dusk when the casualties really started to mount. The first visions of carnage to come into view were a family of Ukelele's, mercilessly their lives were cut short...collateral damage in my quest to capture Americas.......well MY most wanted terrorist. Then came the first of what would be many wounds inflicted by the little twerp. A low sweeping blow to my shin with an Alto-Sax. I dropped to my knee and fired off three more drum sticks hitting an unsuspecting store clerk in the ass with one of them. I could her my prey laughing at me as he ran aisle filled with sheet music from 1980's romantic comedies. As the clerk lie in front of me screaming in pain I took my second injury, to left side of my ribcage. Feeling as if I had been hit by a rocket propelled grenade I looked to floor on my left side and there lie the remnants of a once beautiful Bassoon. It was personal now. I always liked the Bassoon. I crawled behind the counter and reached up to grab a handful of guitar strings when in rapid succession three Trumpets stitched the wall where my head had just been. Relying on years of watching MacGyver reruns I quickly started making snare traps out of the guitar strings when the explosions started, the little shit had cornered himself with a set bass drums and was beating them mercilessly. As i ventured out from behind the counter I made my way past a row of Fender Stratocasters when I caught a glimpse of him jumping off a stack of amplifiers with a Tuba and stiking me in the side of the head.....the last thing I remember was him standing over my nearly lifeless body and and saying..lubby-dooo daddy

then it all went black.

Sunsets from the deck.

I, or I should say "we" (Melanie, Alyssa and I) love the view from our deck. Especially the sunsets. We often look out the sliding glass door (the pics are from my deck) and see some beautiful sunsets. Throw in some cool cloud formations and you have really gorgeous pictures. Melanie
took this shot of  stand of trees down in the Santa Cruz mountains. It really makes you feel insignificant looking straight up a tree when you cannot see the top.

I have loved photography ever since I was in the 6th grade when a friend of mine got me into taking pictures. My first job as a weekend janitor allowed me the monetary means to purchase my first camera, a Canon AE1 Program. I took a lot of really good pictures with that camera and I still have it to this day, some 33 years later. I used to take my camera everywhere I went. My senior year of High School I was the School Photographer. Loved that job. Have been trying ever since to figure out how to get companies like Canon or Nikon send me their stuff to try and then.......well, keep.
Don't get me wrong I would love to pay for the cameras I want, it is just this the whole fixed income thing, it sucks! I routinely search websites looking at the latest cameras and associated gadgets and picture myself winning some worldwide photo award. I would have to sell the world on photos of my family which is why I probably won't be winning many awards or monetary prizes, or free cameras. But, there is always that one in a million shot that gets things started so I keep on shooting. My latest desire is Canon's new EOS7D. Next week it be something else, whoever comes out with the latest "super-whizbang-doublethrowdown-gizmachi
will catch my wanton desires. Over the last few years Melanie and I have taken to shooting pictures of the nature we see on the road. The solitary, somewhat dead looking pine tree was on the side of........a mountain 13,ooo feet up in Sierra Neva...okay, it was on the side of Highway 80 just outside of Truckee, California. But it was taken as we sat in traffic thru the window of the truck. I have taken to occasionally switching to black and white mode, thanks to Mary, and shot some timeless photos like the one of Alyssa fishing in Donner Lake. What made it eerie was

 there were forest fires burning up north about 250 miles away but the smoke was drifting south and east and filled the Tahoe basin every afternoon. The following day in Truckee it was snowing....ash. So Canon if you read this please send me a better camera, please.

Losing your Dog

Losing a long time pet really sucks. Melanie found our dog Kona dead in our garage just after midnight tonight. We knew it was coming, he had been really slowing down as of late. He had a slow, gradual aging over the last couple of years though. While his body did not move like it used to you could still see in his eyes that he still had the chase in him.
We are not sure how old was, since he was a rescue and they had little or no information on him. But he was a kind old dog that liked everybody. Scratch his ear and you had a friend for life. Climb through my window in the middle of the night and he would bark as he wagged his tail and rubbed against you. It is never easy to lose a pet, it is worse when you have a child whom has known him all of her life. Alyssa is devastated. My daughter loves Kona like no other. I believe that deep down they must be soul mates. She loves Kai, don't get me wrong, but Kona was special to her and always will be. Kai is a big lumbering klutz of a dog with kids and Alysaa seemed to get hurt around Kai.....but Kona was a genlte soul who never hurt her. When she was 2 1/2 years old I working in the garage and I heard her say "Kona, drink" not putting much thought to it until about the fourth time she said it and sounded pretty serious about him having a drink. So I stuck my head out the door to see what the problem was and there was Alyssa with Kona trying to push his head down to have a drink that he really did not want. Never got mad at her, he just politely resisted her offer. Shaymus even gravitated towards him more than Kai. I think kids are instinctivley good judges of character and know and understand unconditional love better than most adults. Kona, I am really gonna miss you. I still love telling the story about you in Yosemite, acting as if you had a bear in your sights and could not be consoled until I let you off the leash and you ran at a full gallop to the bank of the Merced River and jumped in to go for a swim, that's all. Just a dog in the water, going for a swim. We are all going to miss you buddy.

Speech development and singing in the tub

The last few months have been quite fun from the standpoint of speech development. Shay's vocabulary has been steadily growing as he becomes increasingly verbal. It was quite a relief to venture beyond the age appropriate "NO" response to everything. Even the proverbial "No" was typical of Shay as he would invariably tell you "I can't not want to" whenever he decided he disliked the current state of affairs. Last week my "daddy day care" speech therapy class' came into question when Melanie was putting him to bed and he began whispering "shit" and "damn" into mommies ear. I tried my best to deflect these accusations onto others but to no avail. While he has always loved being read to the last few weeks have been....well interesting to say the least. In the past he would grab a book and your finger then pull you to a clear spot on the floor to read the book he chose. Now he will grab as many books as possible, have you carry them, then grab another armful before heading off to his pre-determined reading spot. It is quite fun and has been a wonderful experience as both my kids have always loved being read to. Alyssa now devours books and is hard to stop for any reason. Quite often she will get into a book and forget to eat. Shay has even started to memorize more and more songs that sung to him. Last night after dinner he was in his carseat singing "twinkle, twinkle little star, I know where you are." When left to his own devices he sings quite often. Which is nice, since I believe that when he is singing he really cannot be plotting my demise!

 

What The Fuck!

When is our pacifistic society going to realize you cannot ever trust a sociopathic sexual sadist? When will all these assholes who "think" that a sociopath like Garrido can ever be cured of being a perverted child molestor and take responsibility for their "opinions?" When will the fucking parole board and judges have to pay for their derelict irresponsible decisions by allowing predators back into society where they prove over and over they will never change. When, as a society, do we hold the prison psychiatrists responsible for "deciding" that a sexual predator is "cured and no longer a threat to society?" Where do we start? The judge, the parole board, the prison psych., the defense attorney who claims his client did nothing wrong. If it is their daughter or son who gets kidnapped, raped and murdered do you think it may change their opinion. Maybe is these people were forced to read "The Mind Hunter" by John Douglas they would see things in a different light. I have forever seared in my mind the images of Mark Klaas' face after his daughter Polly had been found raped and murdered. I closed my eyes and tried to picture how I would react. When my daughter was in kindergarten I was talking with a friend of mine who had two older daughters about knowing where sexual predators were located and how close they were to our homes. To my astonishment she replied she did not have time to worry about things like that. To say it forever changed my opinion of her goes without saying. You can only imagine how I felt when I found  out the new renter next door had his face on the "Megan's Law" website. He was a real winner, molested a family member. Now here comes the part that should really yank your chain, the statute for which he was convicted covered children under 13 years of age....from newborn to 13 years old. What is even worse is that this piece of shit, as with many others are allowed to plea bargain for lesser sentences, usually from felony to misdemeanor. I don't fret about what the worlds sociopaths may inflict upon my family yet I am on constant alert to any threat. I once told a friend that "I don't worry about what someone may do to my family, but I worry about what I will do to the person that does bring harm to them." We need to wake up as a society and realize that somehow we need to start making certain people accountable when their decisions ultimately have profoundly negative impacts on the populace and forever destroy the dynamics of a family.

Busy, spirited, or just out to kill me

Since he was able to crawl Shaymus has been what everyone called "Busy." He was and is into everything. To say he is an independent little cuss goes without saying. He has a very deep concentration level when it he is on task, which is pretty much all the time. BUT, I swear this kid is out to kill me sometimes. Not maliciously, almost on an accidental level. I clean the living room floor twice a day of all his toys which mainly consist of  "Thomas The Tank Engine" trains, legos, hotwheels, books and later in the afternoon any and all clothes he "was" wearing that particular day. The attempted "parenticide" as I now call it comes when I need to navigate my way thru his play area. Just picture Joe Pesci in Home Alone. Getting your ass kicked by a 3 year-old is not something most people willingly admit to.  "no officer I have not been in neither a fist fiight or a plane crash.....if I told you what I have been thru you would not believe me." He is very cute and sweet, just ask Bern, she will tell you. I am in the unfortunate position of yelling "look, a UFO in the shape of "...........yet when peolple turn their heads the UFO has hit the "hyperspace" button and disappeared. An old friend of mine recently ended a letter with "I hear your son is just like you".......
That bastard wait till I see him again!