soundtrack

Posted on by February 27, 2014

tankOK…this is going to be my first really interactive blog.

I’ve had media that I’ve inserted and sent out…but I never tried to “direct” before. I never told anyone what to do or got even a little bit bossy.

I need to be bossy this time.

If I’m going to be able to channel the feelings this song gave me….and pass them along to the reader…I am going to need to orchestrate the scene a little.

Imagine this: I’ve finished casing my mail and I’m ready for the day of delivering the mail. I pull the mail down out of the case (carefully keeping it in delivery order), setting it in my big plastic trays as I go, then I put the trays in my wheeled canvas cart, and load my scanner and the smaller plastic tray that I deliver out of onto the top of the organized pile of mail I’ve just made.

I put all my marked packages into the bin…the smaller ones in one of the deep plastic tubs…write my departing time in the log book…then go outside to load my old Toyota truck (with the camper shell) that I’m using to deliver the mail.

(This scene takes place before I buy the Mail Jeep later in the year.)

After everything is loaded into the truck, I manipulate myself into the passenger seat and stretch my leg over to the accelerator and brake pedals, reaching across with my left hand to steer with.

And then the real work of the day begins.

I put this mixed CD in the CD player…and hit play.

The first song begins, and for a short period of time, I’m transported.

(Now here comes the part where I do the directing. When I deliver the mail, I’m all alone. I’m by myself…so if I want to crank it up and really feel all the power that a 20 watt car stereo can provide, I’m going to do it. When I’m by myself, I do what I want. The reason I’m saying that is that, for maximum “relatable” effect, you need to turn up your sound before you hit play. You need to crank this to understand what I felt when I started out with another load o’ letters to deliver.)

So….CRANK THESE JAMS NOW!!!!

The music begins to play…as loudly as I can play it…and my day begins.

My ROCKING DAY begins!!!!

I pull slowly out of the parking lot in my small Japanese truck, using my turn signal and looking both ways before I pull out into the road like I always do…but in my head, I’m not driving a little truck….I’m driving a very courteous TANK…a very mighty tank. I’m a Viking Warrior driving a mighty, but courteous, TANK!

All because I put this song at the beginning of the latest mix of songs I burned onto a CD.

Of course, I may have, in my musical wisdom, put something like Starland Vocal Band on the CD as the second song just to pull me back down into my hard reality.

I don’t remember.

I don’t think that I could sustain a high like the high that “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” gave me that particular morning.

You can’t go through your whole life thinking that you’re a bada** every single moment.

But what a fun thing to be able to program that mighty feeling of powerful public service for even a short moment.

Music is so great. I’m glad we have it around.

It makes my day.

 

the very most maudlin song ever written

Posted on by February 26, 2014

Good grief…I ate this stuff up when I was a younger, more sensitive boy.

I couldn’t get enough of this kind of stuff.

And they played it on the radio.

I think I might have liked “Seasons in the Sun”, too.

There must have been something inside me that wanted to lap these kind of songs up.

This song was released in 1975 and was written for a friend of the songwriter who had muscular dystrophy and was losing his sight.

I just read that on the Wiki article that I found on John Dawson Read.

Muscular dystrophy?

Now I feel like a jerk for almost making fun of how incredibly maudlin this song is.

The songwriter released two albums and then disappeared from the music scene for 30 years.

There’s something to be said for earnestness.

When I was younger, the song made a big impression.

I shouldn’t make fun of it now.

 

skating rink songs

Posted on by February 25, 2014

dixie rink

I was almost 13 when we moved from New Jersey to Georgia.

One of the things that we’d do occasionally after the move was go to this old roller skating rink that I think was called the “Dixie”.

It seemed like a lot of things were called “the Dixie”.

In the South…in 1973…it was not uncommon to see places with a reference to “Dixie”.

This old rink (roller skating is “rink”, right…that’s not just ice skating?) had a wooden floor and cinder block walls around the outer edges of the skating area.

It might have had a mirror ball, but I don’t really remember that part.

You could still smoke inside public buildings, and I think it was where I saw kids a little older than me smoking for the first time.

All these details are kind of irrelevant…it’s not the real point of this.

The real point is the music.

Blaring, blasting, bad sound system crackling….music.

It was cool. It was the epitome of what I imagined the rebel life to be…loud music, dim lights, kids smoking around the outer part of the rink.

There was something dangerous feeling about that seedy little rink.

That was the first place I heard this song…

So from now until the end of time, that’s going to be a skating rink song.

There were dudes with their own skates who could do tricks…skating around with a pre-disco set of moves that were pretty impressive to a young kid.

Here’s another song that I remember from the rink…

Check it out…that’s Sheila E. playing the drums behind Edgar Winter.

There weren’t a whole lot of places that were cooler and more dangerous feeling that “the parents” let a bunch of us neighborhood kids go to.

There’s a lot more songs that I remember from the rink…maybe some Bachman Turner Overdrive, maybe “the Night Chicago Died”, who was that? Bo Donaldson? Nah….Paper Lace….maybe some Motown at the Dixie?

Maybe.

Grand Funk! I know there was some rocking Grand Funk in there blowing a 12-year-old mind.

Skating isn’t a passion of mine…not roller skating, at least.

If I could “ice dance”…now that would be a passion of mine. Just the costumes would be enough to be passionate about.

Roller skating was an interest…it was never a passion.

But this music! This music was perfect for the skating rink.

If I hear “Little Willy” now…I can see those worn wooden boards and hear the sound of a bunch of young feet with clay wheeled skates going around and around…growing up and going nowhere.

Round and round at the Dixie Rink.

“Try telling everybody but…oh no…Little Willy, Willy won’t…go home.”

in the bin

Posted on by February 24, 2014

mp_questlove8_largepicture by Pari Dukovic from Wired magazine 2/17/14

Still—like Fishbone said in a song I just heard on a streaming radio station—problems arise. Sometimes it’s a little too easy to get to a song: think, type, retrieve. What about calling up your friend, making him drive you to the record store, waiting patiently behind the guy who won’t move away from the “B” bin, and then flipping through to see what Beach Boys records (or Beastie Boys or Brothers Johnson or Buckingham Nicks) are left? All of that’s gone now. And, counterintuitively, because it’s gone, it’s harder and harder to truly fall in love with a song or album. What was your cost of entry? How hard did you have to work? Which leaves the ultimate question: How do you build a relationship with music? How do you find your way to those songs that draw you in and—like Eddie Floyd and Mavis Staples said in a song I heard just yesterday on a randomly shuffled playlist—never never let you go?

“What was your cost of entry?” That’s a quote from a quote of an article in the latest issue of Wired magazine by Quest Love of the band the Roots.

How hard on the head of the nail can you hit something?

That’s the thing that I’ve been feeling right along…that somehow everything becomes kind of disposable when it’s so easy to get ahold of.

With the click of a mouse, I can find pretty much any song that I ever want to hear.

I can see pretty much any movie that I want to see.

With the click of a mouse, I can do that.

That’s kind of cool…no, that’s very cool.

I like having access. It’s so much cheaper than driving to every pawn shop that sold used records and looking obsessively through the bins. It’s so much faster.

But I’m alone in my search. I don’t see people I know or rub shoulders with anyone. It’s just me and my headphones and my computer…getting on Grooveshark or Google to look up some band that I was curious about.

It’s too easy.

There was a store in Marietta called Woolco that was kind of a competitor to Kmart. I guess that it was a “super” Woolworths. That was before I knew what Walmart was.

Anyway, they had bins of albums that they’d discount heavily.

I bought a lot of “classic rock” when it was still just music that was outdated. Five year old music isn’t even classic rock yet…it’s just old music from the 60’s and very early 70’s that no one was buying anymore…so it was cheap at Woolco.

I’ve never felt the thrill clicking a mouse that I felt pulling a new/old album out of its cardboard sleeve and putting it on the turntable for the first time.

Never.

Never, never, never.

This article…and the whole article can be found here…is a short one. It’s really an essay, I guess.

Quest Love says it best when, at the end of the essay, he says…

 “We did it one way in the past; now we have to figure out how to do it in the present, which, in so many ways, is the future. I try to navigate the waters by remembering where I’m going. When it comes to players, to programs, to services, think of them as ships bringing you to the music you need, have always needed, will continue to need. They’re not the voyage. They’re the vessel. Learn how to steer in the prevailing winds and soon you’ll be sailing.”

We have a lot of new options in how we get our music. It’s easier to share music than it’s ever been. There are a lot of good things that the new streaming services offer.

Man, it sure was fun looking through all the records at Woolco, though.

This was a great essay….and a really good issue of Wired with a lot of good tips on “modern” ways of finding new music. Check it out.

Taebo

Posted on by February 23, 2014

tae-bo-ultimate-300“WAIT!!! WAIT!!!! I THINK THERE’S ONE I NEEEEEEEEEED!!!”

We were at the flea market, and the young boy making the request for his mother to just slow down a little, take it easy, while he looked through all the display cases of video games for something…anything…that he might be able to GET…wasn’t one of mine.

That was refreshing.

It wasn’t one of my sons asking for a little time while he looked at the video games or tried to find the perfect robot.

His mother was on the phone…and she put the conversation on pause long enough to yell back at him, “TAEBO!! TAEBO!! COME ON!!!! WE’VE GOT TO GO!!”

The kid’s name was “Taebo”.

That was worth the trip to hear that.

“Taebo”.

Maaaaaannnnnnnnnnnn…that’s kind of weird.

Funny.

Of course, we named our little girl “Sparrow”….and from what I’ve seen, that’s kind of unusual. I don’t know too many people named Sparrow.

But “Taebo” is kind of unusual, too. Very memorable….but unusual.

It opens up a whole world of possibilities to realize that you really can name a child just about anything.

“Ronco”.

“Whirlpool”

“Vegomatic”

“Thighmaster”

You could name a child anything you want.

That’s a lot of power in a parents hands and mouth and brain.

Being able to do it doesn’t make it right. It’s not right to saddle a child with an unusual or strange name.

That’s just not right.

Now if it was a business, we’d do our market research and pick a name accordingly.

We’d be careful if the money was on the line and we were trying to be smart about it.

But when they come to you at the hospital and start filling out all the paperwork, it can be kind of overwhelming.

You might blurt out just about anything when the pressure’s on.

When the pressure’s on, and they ask, “Who is this baby going to be? What did you name this new bundle of joy?” well….

You might yell out, “Whirlpool!!” and then reconsider and shout out something a little more traditional, like..”No! Change that! Whirlpool’s crazy!!! TAEBO!!! TAEBO!!!  I PICK TAEBO!!! Do that one!!! TAEBO!!!”

But nobody ever says, “Tell them what they’ve won, Johnny!!” after you pick a name for the new baby.

It’s not a contest, after all.

The flea market is a crazy place.

It’s probably a better cross-section of all the different kinds of people in a community than you’d get a chance to see anywhere else.

The flea market is full of life.

(And I suspect that it’s probably the place to get some really authentic Mexican food if you’re feeling adventurous.  I don’t need to get a map pointed “south” to be in a place where I can experience another culture.)

And the flea market is probably the one place in the world where I might have a chance of hearing a mother yell back to her little boy to just “hurry up!! We’ve got to go!!! Now!!! We’ve got to go now….”

“TAEBO!!! TAEBO!!! WE’VE GOT TO GO!!!”

 

rehoming

Posted on by February 22, 2014

twowolvesfighting6a00c22528bc95f219

People getting rid of dogs are like people getting rid of cars.

You don’t get rid of something unless there’s some kind of issue.

A person can talk up the thing they’re trying to eject from their lives like it was the greatest thing to ever hit the planet, though. They can describe it in glowing terms.

They can entice.

In the case of a car, the description can include words as hopeful as “for parts…or fix up and drive” or “needs TLC”.

Who wouldn’t jump at a description like that? It’s a challenge of some sort.

“Hate to sell, but…” is another one. That ship will never sail again. You wouldn’t even have a chance of buying the beloved whatever if you didn’t catch these fools in a moment of weakness.

You better jump on it while that miracle window is open.

Now, dogs are even more interesting.

You really have to read between the lines with an ad trying to “rehome” a dog.

It may be a pretty blatant red flag…like “doesn’t like children” or “must not be around cats” or “outside dog only….bites”.

Those are things that I watch for…but I don’t have to ponder very hard.

I don’t want a dog that bites.

All dogs bite.

I want a dog.

I just don’t want a dog who bites very often.

It’s the more subtle clues that make me wonder exactly what is going on with the dog and this family that needs to get rid of it.

It’s the clues like “energetic” or “needs fenced yard” or even, and I haven’t seen this one yet but I suspect I will, “eats too much”.

There’s a lot of mixed breed puppies who need to be rehomed, too.

That’s kind of a “crap shoot”.

(Is that how you spell “crap shoot”? It sounds kind of bad….)

The people with these puppies make it sound like they did some paternity testing or something..”mother is a purebred Great Pyrenees…father is a roamer, but is a prizewinning Georgianna Mastiff…or something cool sounding like that…we think.”

I never imagined that it could be narrowed down like that. Except for the “roamer” part. That’s probably pretty accurate.

So…the reason I’m pondering all this is that some folks on my route have two dogs that they may be looking for new homes for.

I know these two dogs. I’ve fed them pounds of dog bones over the years. They’re great dogs. Smart dogs. Good around kids.

One’s a white shepherd and the other is a big chocolate lab.

These are great dogs. I know them. I’ve talked to them a bunch over the years. They’re good buddies.

And I know what the problems with them are.

They are curious and they like to explore the world around them.

That’s a bonus in a person, I would think. It’s a good thing to be curious about your world.

I do think that we’d be arrested eventually if we wound up in someone else’s yard or the homeowners woke up to find us in their kitchens….just because we were curious roamers.

We would be sent to the slammer in a heartbeat.

There has to be a limit on how we express our curiosity.

Dogs get in trouble for checking things out, too.

And there’s the “rub”…could I corral these two dogs without totally breaking their spirits? Would it be like taking on a “too far gone” car project because I was sure that I was more competent than the person who was broken by the derelict dream and who just gave up instead of continuing to try?

Am I the man for the job?

Would it be a situation where I could say, “Yeah…those dogs used to get in so much trouble for roaming around…but they have so much fun at my house that they stick close to home now.”

I don’t really know.

Those two dogs are pretty great, though.

she’s got everything she needs….she’s an artist, she don’t look back

Posted on by February 21, 2014

small-easel-with-a-blank-canvas-1385377654QWM

“She Belongs to Me” Bob Dylan

I look back.

I look back fondly at songs that talk about not looking back.

What’s up with that?

There was a time when I thought that I wanted to be an artist.

Maybe you never really completely stop being something? Maybe what I thought I wanted to do is still inside me somewhere…I don’t really know.

Being a mailman brings home a lot more consistent paycheck than being a full-time artist.

But being an “artist” sounds so much cooler than being a mailman, somehow.

“What do you do?” is a silly question in some ways.  It’s an easy question…the person asking it doesn’t have to have any real insight or sensitivity…doesn’t have to even really care about the answer.

Maybe it just shifts the attention away from what the “asker” does…a preemptive strike before the question can be asked of them?

“What do you do?”

“Well…I’m an artist.”

“No…that’s not what I meant. What I meant was …what do you do? What do you do for a living? How do you make your money?”

The money part legitimizes it somehow.

“I’m an artist.”

That would be simple and direct…satisfying…to be able to say that and just stop describing.

Better…but less realistic…than, “I’m an artist…but I spend most of my time waiting tables.”

Or driving the mail around.

It is cooooool to have a profession that pays the bills. That’s unexpected and appreciated.

Paying the bills is a grown-up thing to do.

Paying the bills…..

I look back.

I’m thinking about hands stained with graphite, looking at an easel filled with the frantic beginnings of what I hope might be something good, trying to figure out where to go with this new piece of “artwork”, trying to work out the problems.

I’m thinking about how satisfying it is to commit something to canvas or paper and not have any idea where I might be going with it.

I’m thinking about my place in the air…standing on the ground.

I’m thinking about how it felt to be surrounded with other people doing the same thing…trying to figure things out.

College is good in a lot of ways.

College can also be bad, I suppose.

If it’s the end of an education…if you get out and decide that you’re done with all that “learnin’ “…well, that would be pretty sad.

If anything convinces you that you’re “done”…I guess that would be a bad thing.

“She never stumbles…she’s got no place to fall.”

Maybe if you never really stand up, your chances of falling disappear?

“Just keep your head down…we’re going to make it through this…”

I wouldn’t trade a willy-nilly creative life for the “security” my family now knows.

“Security” can be kind of willy-nilly, too…but it sure is a lot less stressful than worrying about “the bills” all the time.

I don’t want to jump at something that sounds “cool” when people depend on my consistency.

But gypsy nomad, artist/musician, child of the universe…school bus living, desert sunrise viewing, campfire omelet making, live-r and lover…roamer and shaker, bread baker, “hello” maker, tax evader…no, not that one…small tax payer…smiler….sounds awfully good to me.

It’s pretty subversive to figure out how to be a free spirit on a tight schedule….bottled up but uncontained.

I’m a “secret soarer”….another leaf on the wind.

I’m an artist.

tabula rasa

Posted on by February 20, 2014

tabula_rasa

I am a completely blank slate this morning.

That’s never happened to me before.

Usually, if I drink some coffee after a moment of panic about what I was going to write about, an idea comes trickling in and I’ll fill up the morning with ramblings about the new snow or the Jeep breaking down, or something about family life, or beginning running, or growing older day by day, or trying to figure out how to stay younger day by day, or a trip I took…or want to take, or some remembrance of a loved one gone, or children’s toys or bad experiences at a fast food restaurant, or homesteading, or just about anything that brushes up against me while I wander through this world…still breathing.

But this morning, I’m a blank slate.

The only thing I can think of to write about is not knowing what to write about.

What a cop-out.

The trouble with arriving at that conclusion is that I know that there’s always something to write about.

If I’m breathing, there’s something to write about. Life goes on whether I’m paying close attention or not.

The “car” is always in gear…going forward even when I don’t press on the accelerator…going forward even when I do press on the brake.

Life progresses at its own pace.

Of course there’s always something to write about.

I know that.

There is always life swirling around me when I’m awake enough to pay attention.

And I flatter myself thinking that it’s a “tabula rasa” situation.

My head is full of too much extraneous information to even approach a blank slate option.

My slate is full…it’s just full of goofy stuff that crowds out the useful stuff.

So “beginner mind” is something that eludes me.

So….what to write about?

I’ve had my coffee, the house is still quiet….what to write about?

How about….dogs?

We need a dog.

That’s like needing a new car…or needing another pair of shoes…or a new watch because I’m tired of the old beat up watch I wear and look at everyday.

We don’t need a dog.

I want a dog, though.

Wants and needs? Maybe that’s something to write about? The difference between the two?

Maybe I could figure out something about that situation that I could write about?

Maybe I could write about how inspirational it is to see a video on YouTube of a young family travelling through Central America in a VW bus?

Maybe I could write about how depressing it is to see a young family travelling through Central America in a VW bus…when I can’t figure out how to make it back up to “somewhere interesting” with my own family.

Nah…that’s too pathetic…too whiny.

Maybe I could just run my fingernails across what I imagine to be the “tabula rasa” until someone begs me to stop making that horrible screeching sound?

“Blank slate” is a pipe dream.

The breeze blows across my cheek on a warmer Winter day, and my head is full of the promise to come.

There is always something to write about.

I just need to calm down a little and recognize that fact.

the most popular bobsledder

Posted on by February 19, 2014

lolo_620

 

There’s a link to an article on the Fox Sports website that calls into question the selection process for the Olympic bobsledding team.

And, yes…I couldn’t think of what to write about this morning.

The athlete that they were quoting said that he questioned the selection process…”said the teams for Sochi were chosen based largely on an athlete’s popularity”.

How many household names do I know who ride a bobsled?

Not many.

I don’t know any of these guys. Bobsledding is not an obsession of mine. I don’t follow the sport.

Now, Lolo rides a bobsled…and apparently that’s not very popular.

She must be popular somewhere for people to single her out as an example of the unfairness of the selection process.

She is supposed to be pretty fast. She can quickly push a sled as well as anyone.

People know who she is.

Why shouldn’t she push a sled with the other folks?

From what I’ve noticed, though, there really isn’t a lot in this life that is consistently fair.

There is always going to be some kind of situation or measure that doesn’t really add up.

And how about the wind tunnel that the speed skater’s suits included this year?

That slowed them down enough that they couldn’t medal.

I’m checking all my clothing for hidden stumbling blocks as soon as I can.

I’d hate to be held back because my clothing was a drag.

But back to this Lolo thing.

It would be kind of a drag, of a different sort, to work hard for a long time at being an Olympian riding a big, fast sled…and then have someone crash the party who just started riding a big, fast sled.

Nobody likes a dilettante.

Lolo is a dilettante.

But she has a great and unusual name…and that carries more weight than you’d imagine.

She could be a garbage collector or an ice cream truck driver and still attract attention with that name.

It’s a great name….very unusual.

You know…if they had a guy in a big Mickey Mouse suit riding in one of those sleds, I’d watch it.

I’d watch that….and you know they wouldn’t win. Ever.

Imagine the drag a set of big Mickey Mouse ears would create?

I wouldn’t care if they won or not. I’d watch it.

And I wouldn’t have to know the name of the guy (or girl…it could be a girl Mickey) in the suit. They could be an anonymous Mickey.

mickey bobsled

To me, that would be the most popular bobsledding team.

It’s funny when someone draws attention to how little attention they get by complaining about how someone even slightly less anonymous is drawing more attention than they are.

Man, that can make you feel like small potatoes if you don’t watch out.

It’s unfair to be skipped over if you’re qualified.

But other than the dilettante…who are these bobsledders, anyway?

I shouldn’t talk, though.  Did you see how that dude smashed the bathroom door?

They’re pretty big dudes.

I shouldn’t talk about them.

Emmet

Posted on by February 18, 2014

emmett

I was off work yesterday because it was President’s Day.

So, after I took Nate to preschool, I ran some errands.

When I picked him up, it was close to lunch time…so we went to McDonalds.

I’m not a fan of McDonald’s, but Nate likes the Happy Meals…so we went to McDonalds.

The kids ( the older kids…Sparrow stayed with us) went to see the Lego movie this weekend…and Nate had been to McDonalds the week before and had gotten the Happy Meal with the Lego Batman 3-D cup in it, so he was pretty jacked about getting another cool cup for the collection he’d just started.

” We have Wyldstyle and UniKitty.”

Nate wanted MetalBeard.

“I DON’T WANT WYLDSTYLE!!!! I DON’T WANT UNIKITTY!!!”

(Those two are “girl cups”.)

“Well….we need to go then. They don’t have MetalBeard. They’re out of that one.”

“I DON’T WANT TO GO!! I WANT METALBEARD!!”

Geeeershhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

So I did the only thing I could do. I went to another McDonalds.

“We have Unikitty and WyldStyle….let’s see….we have a Batman….and we have Emmett. We have a Batman….an Emmett…”

The guy behind the counter was looking through all the cups for us.

” How about MetalBeard?” Nate asked.

“They don’t have that one. The man said that they have Emmet. How about Emmet?”

“Who’s Emmet?”

“Emmet is the one with the hard hat” I told him.

So of course he needed to run over to the sign and look, with a bunch of people waiting behind us in the line.

After studying the picture for a while, he said, “YEAH!!! EMMET’S GOOD!!!”

Emmet was acceptable.

Whew.

So we got the Happy Meal and sat down and Nate started to eat.

( Interesting…to me at least…aside. Did you know that a Big Mac, that seems to have either gotten a lot smaller or my hands have gotten a lot bigger over the years, is three dollars and seventy nine cents now? Holy Smokes…what a ripoff.)

“Where’s my milk?” he asked….after we’d sat down and he’d started to eat.

“They forgot to give it to you. Stay right there…don’t move…I’ll be right back.”

“Do you have some milk? You didn’t put it in the Happy Meal.”

“White or Chocolate?”

“White” I answered, and when they gave it to me, I brought it back to Nate and all was right in the world….after I scraped the onions that weren’t supposed to be on his burger off, and after I’d frantically wiped enough of the mustard that wasn’t supposed to be on there off with my napkin that it was hard to see the yellow anymore. I should have just ordered another hamburger for him….but I wasn’t comfortable leaving him alone.

It takes Nate longer to eat his really little hamburger than it takes me to eat my really little BigMac, so I started to clean up before he was done.

I picked up all the trash on the table and left what he was still working at eating with him…and threw away what I could before we left.

He ate for a while…and then he said, “Where’s the lid for my milk?”

“I threw it away. Did you need it?! Why would you need it? Just drink your milk and we’ll go.”

“I NEEEEEEED MYYYY LIDDDD!!!! I NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED IT! GET IT!! GET IT!!!”

Total instantaneous freakout.

What the heck?

“Just drink your milk and we’ll go…you just have a little left…just drink that and we’ll go home and see Mommy.”

” I DON’T WANT MY MILK!! I DON’T WANT IT!!! I NEED MY LID!!! MY LID!!! I DON’T WANT MY MILK!!!”

I tried being reasonable. It wasn’t working.

So… I’m not going to dig in the trash for the stupid lid….that’s gross, and I’m not going to put a dirty lid on his milk…and when I haul him out of there, it’s escalated to the point where it’s getting pretty uncomfortable.

I just want to get out of that McDonalds that I didn’t want to go to in the first place.

I didn’t want to go to ONE McDonalds. I sure didn’t want to go to TWO McDonalds.

On our way out, Nate crying in my arms, me holding the Happy Meal box and the cup in the hand not holding onto a crying boy, on our way through the door of the Walmart McDonalds…. Nate says, “I NEED MY MILK!! I NEED IT.”

So we go back through the McDonalds…through the throngs of curious people who were probably wondering why a Daddy would let a 4-year-old “be the boss of him”…. and get the milk that I left on the table when we did my walk of shame…and he finishes it out by the Redbox kiosk….and then he throws the empty container away…without the lid.

Thank goodness that Emmet was acceptable or we might have really had some problems at the McDonalds.