Trouper

The producers of HamannEggs were concerned our plot was getting a little stale. The kids are getting older, there are less poop and pee stories to tell, and we aren’t planning on moving to Denver again. So they decided to pull a “Cousin Oliver” and add a few, fun character.

Namely, Trouper the dog!

Trouper the dog is a little white animal of indeterminate breed who comes to us by way of my brother Luke. Trouper is friendly, funny and only growls when you try to remove him from Luca’s bed.

He’s also a world class people food thief. He snatched a sandwich off Luca’s plate using a series of wires and lasers and a hang glider.

Luca declared Trouper to be officially “his” dog. This does not mean he feeds or cleans up after Trouper. Luca’s ownership duties include letting the dog on his bed and occasionally joining me for evening walks around the block.

Don’t get me wrong, my walks with Luca have been the highlight of my year. Even though Trouper weighs about 7 pounds, he still manages to drag Luca over every yard in the neighborhood. This is because Luca loves a good sight gag.

The real reason I love the walks is Luca forgets the rule about never telling your dad anything about your life and opens up about his fears, his desires and his deep feelings. Plus we get to look into our neighbor’s windows and see what shows they watch.

Now you may be asking yourself, “How is Grover the dog taking this?” Not well.

Grover does not like to compete for attention. Or food. And he’s taken to sulking like a 14 year old who had his Snapchat privileges taken away. I think. I’ve tried to get back into his good graces by giving him lots of treats and we give him 100% reign of our bed. But he mostly just sighs.

I’m hoping the warm weather will brighten his spirits since he can now lie around and sigh outside as well.

If all else fails we’ll write in a musical episode to boost ratings.

The Case For Guns

As you can guess, the whole gun video game thing simply didn’t go away once Diana banned them from our dank basement. Whenever the three males of the house were together, the topic eventually moved to how we could get more digital firearms into our lives.

We debated whether it was ok to simply sneak them without Diana knowing. But I said this wasn’t such a great idea because lying is almost as bad as shooting people. Kind of.

Luca eventually abandoned his blood lust and spent his screen time on his new baseball game or watching videos or other people playing non gun games. The Cubs season was also starting so that will occupy his mind until October.

But Elijah couldn’t let it go. His favorite game is technically a shooter, but it does dip a toe into the gray area. It’s a space/fantasy game that does involve futuristic guns, but it also has magic and swords and throwing stars and big hammers. It’s certainly violent, but doesn’t simulate what would happen if you used an AR-15 to its full potential.

Eli asked me for advice. How could he convince mom to let him play his beloved game? I told him when I was trying to convince someone to buy an idea, I put together a presentation. This intrigued the boy. What is a presentation?

I explained I put down arguments for why the people should do what I want. With one argument on each page, plus some visuals to keep things interesting. What I didn’t tell him is I usually ask one of the people who works for me to do it. And then they ask people who work for them to do it.

A week ago, Diana and I were enjoying some after dinner peace and quiet when we were summoned to the living room by Eli. He had his presentation locked and loaded. He was rehearsed and ready to do battle.

I have to admit, for a ten year old, it was a solid presentation. He had pretty compelling points, like “You can turn off the blood” and showed us the difference between the cartoony characters in his game versus a real soldier. He ended his presentation with a sad dog who said, “So mom, please let me play (game redacted) again please?”

It melted Diana’s Second Amendment hating heart and she relented. On the conditions that he turn off the blood and he never bought another gun game ever again.

We then his favorite game was still on the banned list. Because his presentation sucked.

ELEVEN

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Elijah turned eleven today. This kid is such an absolute joy. Smart, funny, sweet. With just the right touch of mischief.

In honor of his birthday, I present the other story of when I almost killed Eli in Mexico.

As you recall, we rented a little golf cart to tool around our little beachside town. I would find any excuse to get behind the wheel and dodge chickens and stray dogs and stoners.

After some mild threatening slash bribing, I got Eli to join me on a cash run. The great part about Sayulita is there is an ATM on every street. The bad news is 9.5 out of 10 of them are non working. And the working ATM tends to move from day to day.

Very quickly after descending from our little house, Eli and I were reminded how important Easter is to Mexico. Overnight, the town’s population had quadrupled. The streets were jammed with people celebrating Christianity with an ice cold Corona.

At one point, the streets were so jammed, that I pulled a grouchy dad move and whipped the cart into a side street and tried to manufacture a shortcut. Almost immediately, we got lost. A very unfriendly motorcycle cop told us to get off the street, as we happened to be going the wrong way down a one way street.

I u-turned and raced down another dirt road. We found a nice, well paved road so I jumped on. Not realizing it was a two lane highway. Oops. I put the pedal to the metal and got the cart up to its maximum speed (4MPH). Thankfully, God thought it was hilarious and decided not to kill us with a Petrol Tanker Truck.

Eli and I took the first dirt road we came across and tried to point our way back towards town. The little dirt road ceased being a road pretty quickly and turned into a driveway and then a backyard. The backyard of a couple dudes who could best be described as “Kidnapy.” The only thing keeping them from murdering us was the complete and shock of seeing two lily white gringos in a golf cart plow through their yard.

I swung the cart down another alley and somehow managed to get us back on the one way road where our adventure started.

We eventually made it back to the little road up to our house and were met face to face with a massive, traditional Easter parade, going the wrong way. We waited while a couple hundred worshipers in white robes strolled past.

When we got home, Diana suggested we all go for a ride into town.

Waves

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, gang. It’s been a little busier than usual here at the advertising quarry and I simply haven’t had a chance to write. But that doesn’t mean I’m lacking in material. I still have a few vacation stories to tell.

Like the time I almost killed Elijah in the sea.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I HATE wading into a cold sea. It feels like red hot needles dipped in Newman’s Own Salsa. Often, while playing with the boys, I would only be able to get knee deep before my body gave out, leaving me to simply wave to Eli and Luca as they played.

On one such beautiful Mexican day, the boys (bored with my lack of desire to get into the water) convinced Diana to take out her hearing aids and join them in the surf. I stood, shivering while the three of them shrieked with absolute glee. They frolicked, let themselves get pummeled by wave after wave and kept an eye out for a replacement dad.

Later in the day, after a long screen/nap session, we went back down to the beach. Out of spite and jealousy, I loudly proclaimed that I was going to join the boys in the real waves.

Little did we know, that the afternoon wave sesh (what the locals called it) was much rougher than earlier. Luca and Eli and I got absolutely destroyed by the waves, but in a fun PG-13 way. Eli loved it. Luca tired of it pretty fast and decided to go bury himself in sand.

Eli and I decided to be big boys and go farther out into the water to really experience the rough stuff. We wanted Rated R waves.

We waded out to Eli-chest level and almost immediately realized the error of our ways. Not only could I no longer hold onto him, I couldn’t maintain my own footing. Lost my balance and got knocked off my feet.

I surfaced to see Eli quickly getting pulled out to sea. I shouted, “Eli. Get over here!” Like he was simply being naughty and not kidnapped by Poseidon.

I leapt over to him and pulled him into my hip. He said, “I’m scared,” and I shouted, “Hold on to me!”

We safely made it to shore and hugged each other. I looked up and met eyes with two Lifeguards, who could not have greater expressions of boredom on their faces.