Smurf Fishing

There's an old story in my family that usually gets a laugh. It's about a time when the five of us (my parents and my brother, sister, and me) went to a restaurant. On the way over my brother and I were talking about Smurfs. We each had sizeable collections of Smurf toys and we were bragging about the Smurfs we had and the Smurfs we were going to get. Each Smurf toy was different, often themed after some activity or profession. There was a doctor Smurf and a mailman Smurf. And one of the Smurf toys we had was a fishing smurf -- a little guy with a red plastic fishing pole.

When we got to the restaurant, I think it was after the meal was mostly over, my sister was drinking a Shirley Temple. That'll give you an idea of how old we were. And she took the cherry that came with it and stuck the stem in the little red bar straw that came with it, and she had a little red dangly thing on a red stick. And she started giggling.

When we managed to get an answer from her about what the heck she was laughing about, she waved her prop and said it was a "Smurf fishing."

Her laughter was contagious and soon my Mom was laughing. And my Dad started to get mad because they were pretty loud and they wouldn't, couldn't stop: that helpless laughter you can get for no reason at all.

But I didn't remember until this weekend, when I went up for Uncle Ernie's funeral, that the point of this story was that Joshua and I had been being obnoxious about Smurfs and Tara was making fun of us. I always thought the punch line was just how tickled Mom and Tara got over nothing at all. But it seems much funnier now that Mom reminded me about our Smurf mania...the idea that Tara was making fun of us is way more humourous.

It would all be easier if we got more sleep

I'm starting to think that parenting is mainly about trading sleep for babies in order to be testy enough to ensure that the kids grow up warped. I mean, I'm yelling at the kids about things that are nothing at all...because, for example, they are unable to get from the house to the car in less than about 12 years subjective time.

A good Thanksgiving

I don't know about you, but I had a good Thanksgiving. It was really nice to have several consecutive days with the family. We drove up to Dallas for the holiday, which was a slog: it took 6 hours just to get to my parent's house, a drive that normally takes about 3.25 hours. But it was fun because I so rarely get sustained conversations with Tanya these days...usually we're tag-teaming the kids or the housework or the baby.

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Funny, I've developed a habit of referring to the 'the kids' and 'the baby' as separate things...