We got up late because we had some middle-of-the-night incident. I don't remember what it was. Heaven knows. Wild animals, monkeys, baseball players without heads. Heaven knows. Bad dreams. But we all got back to sleep.
Here is more or less what proceeded:
1. We did not color any flags today, because -- or perhaps despite -- of the fact that already more than 40 flags of the world adorn Joe's wall, which is certainly plenty of flags of the world, including Kiribati's, and many others. However, do not let this make you think it likely that we will color no flags tomorrow. More nations of the world are not yet commemorated on the wall in Joe's room. There is Work To Be Done.
2. Breakfast was what. I forget what breakfast was. It was, no, wait -- it was fresh strawberries, amen to that, and also Lucky Charms, and bacon. (Mmmm. Bacon.) Lucky Charms now has 15,765,409 marshmallow shapes. Joe is a fan of all of them. He feels each has its own flavor. I will tell you what flavor each has. Each has the flavor of SUGAR. Also a fine dusting of SUGAR.
3. We baked cookies. While Joe worked on a variety of costume items for a cousin who is so young that he will doubtless chew the costumes down to a manageable wood pulp like a hornet, I worked on cookies, off and on, and Joe joined me. He now insists on measuring. He has down many of the fractions in question when it comes to measurement.
4. While we were baking cookies, or, rather, before we baked cookies, I spilled about a quarter cup of butter on the bottom of the oven. Perhaps you do not know what a convenient thing this is to do. The smoke detector shrieked periodically for the rest of the day. I turned off the heat and set up the fan in the kitchen, which irritated the Asian lady beetles who sublet the apartment this time of the year. The ants were similarly discombobulated and could not find the cookie batter that Joe had splattered on the wall while he beat the batter.
5. After we started the cookies, which were chocolate with chocolate and three kinds of Nestle chips, which is nice because really YOU CANNOT HAVE ENOUGH KINDS OF CHIPS UNTIL YOU GET TO SALMON FLAVOR, WHICH IS WHEN YOU GO AHEAD AND BACK UP ONE, we also started bread. Joe said he needed to work on something. I am not sure what this was. It may have been the choreographic notation -- I kid you not -- that he is knocking together in his spare time to record his most abandoned dancing that he performs to instrumental music -- I no longer can allow him to listen to songs with lyrics, because he picks them up, such as "Love Shack," which he sung me tonight and I SWEAR TO EVERYTHING HOLY I HAVE NEVER PLAYED LOVE SHACK TO HIM -- or perhaps it was the part of the day when he was putting the finger puppets in my shoes. Anyway, we started bread.
6. Once the bread was started, Joe engaged with the dough. To see Joe engage with dough is to see Snakefinger take hold of a guitar. You saw Snakefinger -- I never saw Snakefinger do anything, unless you count stare out of an album cover, so I am extrapolating here -- take a guitar in his hand and then NOTHING HAPPENED LIKE WHEN PEOPLE ORDINARILY PICK UP A GUITAR. No, what happened was that he produced some SICK AND HELLISH VIBROMATIC GROOVE. Similarly, when Joe comes at dough, he does not make a doggie. He does not make a kitty. He does not make a little moon. HE DOES NOT EVEN HAVE THE DECENCY TO MAKE SPIDERMAN. I am standing at the sink while the dough cowers on its flexible cutting mat on the kitchen table, and Joe says, "Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad!" I say, "Yes, Joe," and he says, "Dad, I am going to make the best alien playground EVER." Know what? HE DID. At some point in the next 30 minutes, a small group of aliens -- I did not get their names -- went simultaneously down a dough slide and across a dough trampoline and then they went into the living room and a sabre-toothed cat got them, and I am here to tell you I saw what it looked like, and those aliens ARE NOT COMING BACK. Jeff Goldblum can so totally stand down and go back to the dinosaurs.
6. I think this was when Joe started working on the bizarre Post-It notes. I can't be sure. Suddenly, whenever I walked through the apartment, multi-tasking, like ya do, I started finding Messages From Hell in strange places. on my coat sleeve. "Beware, Dad!" Others were just graphical. In one case, a haunted house included a black cat and a ghost hanging off the side like a sanitation engineer. This was creepy. THIS WAS SICK. I congratulated Joe on his creativity and GAVE HIM SOME DOUGH TO PLAY WITH.
7. What happened to this dough? Everything. This dough was Jeff Bridges in that Coen brothers movie where things don't go well for him. At one point, Joe came to me and said, "Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad? Dad?" and I said, "Yes, Joe," and he said, "Dad, the dough went over the fence! Can I go get it?"
Sigh.
I was so glad I had given him some dough to play with. (This was roughly the same time when I found the dough I gave him yesterday between the New Yorker magazine and the Chef's catalog. Neither publication was willing to give up its connection to the dough.)
So we went next door. "Hi!" I said. "We had a ball of...we had a ball come over the fence. Can we come get it?" They said sure. And so Joe and I went and found the dough. It was under the sawhorse where my neighbor actually does WORK. This is why I pity/admire him. He DOES THINGS. You do not hear him out saying things like, "Did I tell you not to play with the dough outside?" You do not hear him saying, "Stop looking for ticks with the stick." You do not hear him saying, "No, you may not have a concrete collection."
This was all before the dough went on the roof and I had to get it down by standing on a chair and raking it with an extensible pole. I told Joe that is the LAST TIME I DO THAT. And I SO MEAN IT. My father NEVER GOT DOUGH OFF THE ROOF FOR ME.
8. Finally, thanks to some deity that even Wikipedia CANNOT FIND, the dough disappeared in the leaves. This caused Joe to decide to heap leaves outside the door of my apartment in ever-higher, Babel-level heaps, until I feared the house would not withstand it. He was filthy. His friend, whom we will call Accomplice, as her father does not know I keep a blog and might not like her name appearing, joined him. They heaped leaves with abandon. And then Joe said -- I heard this while I was making dinner, French toast, and who does not want French toast? Perhaps the French, I have not asked -- "Now we will jump in the pile."
Perhaps you know that there was a time when I was a Duke basketball fan. Despite the fact that I was 35 feet, roughly, from the leaf pile, I made it clear that, in fact, there would not be any jumping in the leaf pile. I made this clear as I levitated, and my feet moved like arrows loosed from Cupid's bow in April, like the Millenium Falcom pursued, like the Golden Apples of the Hesperides fired out the 15-inch cannon that still are carried aloft through the seven seas by the British Navy. I said, "No." I said, "No." I said, like that boy faced by the opportunity to participate in testing illegal substances in the ads when Nancy Reagan was in the White House, I said, "No."
And Joe said, "Why?"
I said, "You have built your leaf pile on concrete steps. You showed me the pattern that the steps made on your dough earlier today. No, no, no. No, you will not jump on the leaf pile on the concrete steps. No."
And Joe said, "Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad! Dad!"
And I said, "Yes, Joe."
And he said, "Dad, can't I please? I am just going to kind of" and then he showed me something that would make a crash-test dummy hurl "lean in like this."
AND I SAID, "No." When I said no, at that moment, not only did Joe and The Accomplice hear me, I was heard in far Avalon. I was heard in Atlantis, and sharks stopped their feasting to wonder what was so negatively evaluated. Even Michael Richards' career heard me, and you know how totally dead it is. I think they heard me in KIRIBATI.
9. After that, it's a blur. I gave Joe and his Accomplice French toast for dinner. I learned Joe does not like French toast. I am convinced now that the gene for French toast enjoyment must be prone to mutation, because the fact that he does not eat French toast verges on blasphemic. Did you, dear reader, not wait for French toast night? Did you not stand in the rain cheerfully on Thursday, knowing that Your Mother had failed to purchase sufficient foodstuffs for the week? Did you not think, when you saw the electric griddle -- OH BLESSED BE THE ELECTRIC GRIDDLE! -- did you not think, LET THE SYRUP BE WARMED, AND LET THE ANGELS REJOICE?
It was with fresh bread. The French toast was. Fresh bread, sliced with a bowsaw knife, and lovingly dipped in French toast stuff (batter? ambrosia? TOOTHSOMITUDE?) and slapped into BUTTER, PRAISE GOD, BUTTER MELTED AND BUBBLING IN THE PAN. There was VANILLA IN THE BATTER. And there was SUGAR GOOD GOD PLEASE OH SUGAR. And then I fried the bread slices, and I delivered them in sticks, and the Accomplice HAD THIRDS. And Joe said, "I just pretended to like it before? Just to be courteous?"
I went and checked his footprint on the birth certificate. MADNESS. Should he ever turn off Ren and Stimpy -- when he is 40, and old enough to watch it -- I will know he is not mine own.
10. They watched "Click Clack Moo."
Actual dialogue follows.
Accomplice: What are they typing on? That's not a computer.
Joe: It's called a typewriter.
Accomplice: What's that?
<Done.>