Sharing a home with the two yard apes known as Poe and Poodle is usually a great deal of fun but does present occasional parenting challenges.  Like figuring out who gets to tell about their day first.  Or who gets to pick out the movie we're going to watch.  Or settling who gets the purple cup this time.  Fortunately, I've come up with a pretty good solution for all these things, and it doesn't involve caning them, locking them in a closet, or anything else that might attract negative attention from child protective services.

After the five gazillionth argument over the highly regarded purple cup, I had an epiphany.  I produced a quarter and instructed Poe to call heads or tails.  He won the toss, but that didn't settle the argument.  Instead, I had him choose odd or even.  With a puzzled look on his face, he chose even.  I consulted the calendar and told them "Today is an odd-numbered day, so Poodle gets the cup.  Tomorrow is an even numbered day, so Poe will get the cup."

Ever since, any time there is an argument over who gets to have, choose, go first, or whatever, they go to the calendar.  Odd days are hers, even days are his.  Argument settled, and it requires no parental interference at all - they can figure it out themselves.

Should we have a third child, we're screwed.

Today I was seen by Doctor Poodle.  Apparently, she's learned quite a bit in 4-K med school, because it was a very long, involved checkup, and I'm lucky to have survived it.  First she held the stethoscope to my chest and instructed me to cough.  Then she took my blood pressure, which turned out to be 830.  Based on that, I may need medication.

Next, she took some samples.  Some hair from my head and wrist, and something from my ear.  I'm not sure what.  Then, the syringe came out.  I asked what was in it.  "Needles."  I then asked if we were taking out or putting in.  I was informed that she'd be putting in blood.  It was inserted in my shoulder, chest, wrist, and both knees.

Now it was time to check my ears and eyes.  She peered through the otoscope and told me that my right ear contained princesses.  I have no idea how they got in there.  I asked what was in my left ear.  "Dora."  Examination of my right eye revealed nothing, but my left eye apparently contains a lot of blood.

Then, the scalpel came out and a large incision was made in my chest.  She confirmed that I was, in fact, receiving open heart surgery, which largely consisted of drilling holes in my breastplate.  She didn't feel it was necessary to suture me up afterwards.

Post surgery, I was instructed to lie down, and the syringe came out again.  This time, there was a lot of blood to be taken out of me.  I guess I had too much in my knees after all, not to mention that pesky left eye.  She managed to get it all out and then finished me off with a hair cut.

I sure hope my insurance covers all this.

Poe joined cub scouts a few months ago.  Scouting is a wonderful activity wherein young boys get together a couple times a month to make more noise than a 747 taking off during an atomic bomb test.  I tried it when I was kid, but figured out it wasn't really for me after about twelve minutes.  But Poe seems to be enjoying it, and my enthusiasm increased somewhat with my introduction to a long-standing Cub Scout tradition known as the Pinewood Derby.

A Pinewood Derby is where the den leader chops down a fifty-foot tall pine tree and makes his scouts carve a large hat out of it.  Okay, I'm kidding.  Actually, the cubbies are each given a kit consisting of a block of pine, four plastic wheels, and four nails.  Then, they must construct cars that they can race.  In reality, their dads (or stepdads) must attempt to find all the wheels and nails that the scouts have scattered about the globe within seconds of receiving their kits, then assemble the parts into something that will go really fast - if it's hurled off a cliff. All this is done as a father-son project which promotes togetherness - meaning the dad builds the car while the son watches Nickelodeon.

Okay, that's not entirely true.  In our case, Poe picked out the design he wanted, I did the rough cutting and shaping, and he did the sanding and painting.  He also assisted with the grueling task of picking out the coolest decals to put on it.  I was left with trying to get it to the target weight of five ounces and getting the wheels on straight enough that it wouldn't stop dead while rolling downhill.  Both tasks proved to be tougher than anticipated.  I managed to get 3 out of 4 wheels precisely where I wanted them, but the fourth stubbornly insisted on aligning itself practically perpendicular to the intended plane of travel.  I shoveled several pounds of graphite powder into the hub and hoped for the best.

The other challenge was hitting the target weight of five ounces.  This is critical, because your only source of power is gravity.  You need to turn the car's mass into kinetic energy.  In keeping with Newton's The Bigger They Are, The Harder They Fall rule of physics, you're relying on getting that weight moving down the slope of the track so it gets enough speed to outrun the other cars.  Of course, keeping that speed depends on how well you managed the other chore of putting the wheels on straight, so we were already behind the 8 ball.

But the big trouble in hitting that five ounces is...figuring out when you've hit five ounces.  Let's face it, your bathroom scale couldn't measure anything in less than one pound increments even before you tortured it for years with your cheeseburger-laden ass.  So what options are you left with?  You either buy a smaller, more precise scale specifically for the purpose of weighing an object that will be enjoyed for a total of 14 seconds, OR...you wing it.  I, of course, chose to wing it.  I used an old 24 inch level, several bottles of Schlitz, a carpenter's pencil, and 25 US quarters.

Cracking open the first bottle of Schlitz, I placed the level on the pencil, which acted as my fulcrum.  To calibrate it, I placed five quarters on once side of the level and five on the other side.   Why five quarters?  Because they weigh a total of one ounce.  By placing an "ounce" on either side, I could adjust the level on the fulcrum until it agreed that these five quarters weighed as much as those five quarters.  I then put all the quarters on one side and the car on the other side, alternately adding and removing quarters and ballast to each side until I was ready to crack open another Schlitz.

My wood chisels came out, and I removed wood from the car until I had enough space to add lead ballast.  Yes, that's just as strange as it sounds, but it was my goal to concentrate the weight near the back of the car, as I deemed that to be the best way to maximize the kinetic potential.  Also, it was a good way to kill a couple more bottles of Schlitz while making a mess on the kitchen table and feeling all manly and stuff.

I was able to determine later, by using an actual scale, that my quarter-pencil-Schlitz-level trick was actually pretty damn accurate.  Unfortunately, the aforementioned mis-aligned wheel hindered our efforts somewhat.  Come race day, Poe's spectacular racer finished just ahead of the middle of the pack - better than most, but certainly not good enough for a trophy.  He was openly grateful for all the work I'd put in, but still clearly dejected.  I felt as though I'd kinda let him down.

Days later, the actual results of the races were emailed out - 69 cars, 6 heats each - and I pored over the numbers.  During the course of this whole affair, I'd thought a lot of my father, who'd also had experience in the Pinewood arena - with decidedly better results.  His passing, though, meant I was on my own.  It's up to me now to continue where Dad left off, to atone for this year's loss, and to get those wheels straight.  And if several bottles of Schlitz must be sacrificed, then so be it.

I helped Poe with a reading assignment tonight.  He's in 2nd grade now, and his homework frequently includes an assignment called "Read a book for 20 minutes" which usually involves reading a book for 20 minutes.  Tonight, the book of choice was Dr. Seuss' Fox in Socks.  It's an endless series of tongue-twisters, but he got through it pretty well.  And it reminded me of an old favorite of mine...

Dr Seuss Explains Why Computers Sometimes Crash

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port
And the bus is interrupted at a very last resort
And the access of the memory makes your floppy disk abort
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash
And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash
And your data is corrupted cause the index doesn't hash
Then your situation's hopeless, and your system's gonna crash!

If the label on the cable on the table at your house
Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse
But your packets want to tunnel unto another protocol
That's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss
So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse
Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang
'Cuz sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy in the disk
And the macrocode instructions cause unnecessary risk
Then you'll have to flash the memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM.
Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your Mom!