Eye Protection

Eye incident #1:  Curiosity gets the best of Jake and gets hit in the eye with a ceiling fan while investigating the view from the top bunk bed.

Eye incident #2:  Jake gets hit in the eye with a plastic baseball bat.

So this morning, Carol and I wake up to see Jake like this:

Maybe he's doing his best to prevent a third incident?  For those who think things come in three's, I should point out that the real incident #1 was putting his finger in the pencil sharpener. I think he's had his fill of incidents.  Here's to a safe Halloween.

World Record Curly Fry

There's good and bad in this picture:

Yeah, Jake's eye looks pitiful after accidentally getting hit in the eye with a baseball bat.  Good thing it was a plastic bat instead of something like adamantium.  So Carol and I had one of those long parenting evenings in the emergency room where you're quickly reminded that your other perceived emergencies like work stuff, the weekend plans and piles of laundry don't mean jack squat.  You just want your kid to be okay.  And he was.  Whew.  Side note:  Couldn't the hospital have given us the reams of paperwork to fill out while we were just sitting around the waiting room doing nothing?  Instead, they give us the paperwork at the end of the visit to ensure we get the special wonton extended ER experience.  Grrr.

So after our late night ER fun, we do what any good nutrition-conscious parents would do - hit the Arby's drive thru window.  And that's where Jake stumbles across this beauty of a curly fry.  That's gotta be a world record holder there.  I challenge you to show me a longer one.  And we even had six inches of this fried magic break off.  I know what you're thinking.  Chris photo-shopped that bad boy to impress friends.  Nope.  That's pure potato goodness you're eyeballing there my friends.  You can live a lifetime without experiencing a starch that amazing.  It was yin and yang in action.  A baseball bat to the orbital socket followed by the mother of all curly fries.  A good trade-off?  I think you know the answer to that one.

Goldilocks

After yet another silly incident in the Cruz household, I was reminded of Goldilocks from the famous fairy tale - you know, the little blonde that rudely trespassed at the Three Bears' property.  I always thought she got a free pass in that story.  There she was messing with other folks' furniture, eating their food and even sleeping in their beds.  The nerve of that little girl.  Maybe a better alternate ending for that story would be something like, "...and the Three Bears saw her sleeping in the bed.  They quickly dismembered her and gnawed on her bones for an afternoon snack.  The End."

So here's what happened the other day.  While typing away at the computer desk at home, I suddenly felt the earth shift underneath me.  I came crumbling down to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

"And Goldilocks broke Baby Bear's chair..."  

If a chair breaking down under the weight of your rump roast ain't a sign that you need to lose some weight, I don't know what is.  After hearing the crash and bang of me tumbling to the floor, Carol rushed into the room and immediately fell out laughing after seeing my pitiful self on the floor next to the chair I had just demolished with my immense girth.  I'm always happy to entertain my lovely wife but dang, did she have to laugh so hard?  I swear milk would've flown out her nose if she was drinking some.

So this was the first sign that I might want to leave my work desk and get on the treadmill once in a while.  The second sign was getting ready for the Navy Ball.  While putting on those high waisted pants for the dinner mess dress uniform, I was reminded of how stuffed sausage is made.

I know.  I know.  I'm in a lot better shape than most people and I shouldn't complain.  Gotta keep yourself motivated somehow though.  Ridicule is as good as any.

BTW, did you notice the white paw on the right side of the picture?  More on that guy later.

Packing at Pei Wei

If you say you don't like the lettuce wraps at P.F. Chang's, than you're a dang liar.  That's some good chinese food there, and this is coming from a guy that's eaten food in China.  So in China, do you think they just call it "food?"  Never mind.

Anyway, we were stoked to find out that there's a Pei Wei restaurant near the house.  Pei Wei is the faster and more casual version of P.F. Chang's.  Same menu and everything.  Just cheaper prices and no long waits.  I highly recommend it.  Love the mongolian beef.

Just don't go packing at Pei Wei.  Check out their sign.  Once again I'm reminded that, "you in the south now boy."

Kraft Not-So-Easy Mac

I was reminded the other day that I'm an idiot.  Allow me to explain.

Carol is really good about packing lunches for me and the boys.  The teachers and lunch ladies at school have even commented on the beautiful and healthy lunches that Carol packs for CJ and Jake.  Well, we had a late one at the emergency room the other night.  Baseball bat to the eye for Jake.  I'll get to that story later.  Everything is fine now.  Anyway, to lighten the load on Carol, I told her not to worry about packing me a lunch the next day so she could sleep in.  I would just take one of those microwaveable Kraft Easy Mac macaroni and cheese things.  How hard could it be to prep one of those?

So lunchtime rolls around at work.  I read the directions on the package.  I pour in the proper amount of water and nuke it for the prescribed 3.5 minutes.  Well, I get distracted with the never-ending slew of emails and realize that I've still got the Easy Mac in the microwave just sitting there all by its lonesome.  I figure it's cold by now so I nuke it for another minute or so.  Then I add the cheese powder just like the directions say and mix it up as best as I could.  Here's the end result:

I botched it up bad!  I inadvertently microwaved all of the water out of the thing so the cheese powder didn't have anything to mix with except for gooey clumps of over-nuked macaroni.  The picture doesn't do the ineptitude of my "cooking" any justice.  A baboon couldn't have messed this thing up any worse.  One bite would have zero cheese while the very next bite would be a cheese overload.  Yeah, I still ate it.  It was a pride thing.

The only redeeming thing I can take from this latest bout of stupidity is that at least the fire alarm didn't go off and the fire trucks didn't come to our building like they did two days later after someone burned up some popcorn pretty bad at work.  Hah!  I'm not the worst.

There is one other redeeming thing from this whole episode.  I giggled my head off.  After a very stressful time with Jake and the emergency room, it was good to be able to laugh at something - even if it was myself.

Good thing I married an awesome cook.