Pad Tired

One time I was in some place where they sell items.
Wherever.
Some trollop was there with her daughter, who was maybe five.
The kid was fucking around, being five, making noise, making demands.
The mother stooped low, and I overheard her hiss, "You're embarrassing me."
And I thought to myself, "No lady, you're actually embarrassing her."

What's more unbeatable than cancer?
The effort to beat cancer.
That's not supposed to be uplifting.

So roll out the carpet sample and bound up your feet, it's Turpin's birthday today.
She swallowed one of my gray hairs that fell off of my scalp once.
It was really gross.
Y'know, she used to have it going on, sure.
We all know that.
I mean, get her drunk on three coolers; sporting mens' glasses frames; setting up the tent by herself.
She was the full package.
But she's got these kids now.
She's also married to my best friend, but that's just a movie plot.
That ain't no thang.
But these kids, I'll tell ya.
They just, you can't get rid of them, can you?
A gaggle of children are sort of like an inapporpriate racial slur at a dinner party.
Once it's out on the table, there's no getting rid of it.
I love them.
The boys are always good for a laugh, and Rowan's old enough now that Peter can teach her to call me 'Uncle Fartface.'
It's perfect.
They all came on out to Pasadena ("Where?") for a visit, and that was good enough.
Sometimes the little ones get uppity, but you just have to give them one of those Heinz baby food things.
It's like a juice box, but it's a bag and it has peas in it.
All mashed up!
Water's great for kids. 
They're entertained by it, they can drink it (we were in a freshwater environment), and they can urinate right in there and no one needs to know about it.
We had a lovely day.
One of the little fellas wouldn't join us during snack time, but Andie managed to lure him up to us with cheezies.
They always want to eat. They're like the dog.

Yes, it was a helluva afternoon.
But then nightfall came.
Sorta.
It was gettin' on duckish.
That's dad's term for dusk.
Had to feed the babies. Had to feed everyone.
So, I was making pad thai in the kitchen because it's not just my sexual specialty.
The dish is perfectly suited for children. It can be family friendly if I'm not making it at the bordello.
It took me a while to prepare it, and the children seemed more fussy than usual.
By the time I had finished cooking, the children were all calamity.
They were just shrieking, oh how they were shrieking.
And I was thinking, "Let's jam some noodles and shrimp in these fuckers and smoke a joint."
This is the thought process of a bachelor. I'm unfit to babysit, everybody!
Nothin' doin'. They wouldn't eat anything.
They were screeching because they were hungry, reaching for food, but when I'd try to feed them...
Oh ho. What a loud, unsolvable pickle.
And I just remember thinking that I badly wanted to drown them.
To be fair, the pad thai was probably too spicy. 
Anyway, it got worse at bath time.
They couldn't have made more noise if you were skinning them.
Andie and I were outside of our home, and the catterwauls echoed in the evening sky, emitted from our bathroom.
It sounded like an asylum.
It makes no sense. When you have no children and you look at something like this, it makes no sense.
How does this become normal? How could you let this become your day?
Until you see pictures of them all camping.
Until you see them laugh and do all of the sweet bullshit that Anne Geddes loves to photograph.
Then it becomes a little clearer.
You see that they're all where they should be, and that feels right, so long as they're only visiting for a short time. 

Yes, the birthday girl has come a long way since our muted flirtations as twelve-year olds.
Sure, I have a thin mustache now and Sarah shaves her legs, but otherwise little has changed.

They call that a mom bathing suit.

I want to do a photoshoot with the boys in which we're all Greasers.
Sarah says I can give them cigarrettes, so long as I don't light them.
It's going to be great.