Hay Holiday Letter of Truth 2016

This is where you hear the truth and nothing but the truth about my messed up year and my embarrassing children, friends, and family. This year there are no ex-wife stories and keeping it fairly clean with only casual references to pegging, cockroaches, bed bugs, syphilis, farts, and fleas.

He Can Make It Anywhere

The year started out with my son Blade, the youngest and mouthiest, moving to New York City to go to school. He loved it at first, but then realized he liked working better than school. I guess that’s because it pays better. He’s now going to school part time and working full time as para-legal for a patent troll. He won’t admit his boss is the absolute lowest form of life on earth. Common criminals steal, but patent trolls do that AND set back progress for all humans. I am so proud of him. Maybe he can move into spamming and malicious software next? He shares an apartment in Manhattan close to Chris Christie’s George Washington Bridge. He pays the exact same rent for his tiny little bedroom as my middle daughter pays for her place in Montana. Damnit I can’t remember her name because of Forgotten Middle Child Syndrome. Of course “she” has a 3000 foot house in Hamilton, Montana with unbelievable character, who-knows-how-many bedrooms, a barn, a big circular driveway, two acre pasture, solar power, big wide front and rear porches and a knockout view of the mountains. And it’s even walkable to town. I visited Blade on his move to New York City and in the spirit of our new president-elect I also did a little grabbing below the belt, before grabbing was cool.

Pew In The Pew

Devon is my eldest. I easily remember her name, although I never call her that. Her boyfriend’s mother is Islamic. So when they visited her in California this year she went to mosque and wore a hijab. I once wore a turban in a Sikh temple and had some amazing food there. Sikhs are all about the food. In fact I may have hidden some food in that turban. After eating all that awesome grub you can fart in a Sikh temple and no one cares who dealt it. Not so in a mosque. You must be “clean” to pray. After you fart you must cleanse yourself. Not sure what the definition of cleansing is exactly, but knowing my flatulent daughter, she would be in a constant state of cleanse and would never be able to pray. Or pray they don’t detect you. And who enforces this anyway? What if it’s just an SBD? These are all questions to which I have no answers. Maybe a Muslim friend can help me here?  In any event, my atheist daughter obviously loves her boyfriend.

Dog Days

So middle daughter what’s-her-face trains dogs for a living. Actually they developed the protocol for training dogs to help manage wildlife (read bears) in urban areas, and now for National Parks to keep wildlife and people separated. I think she should be a professional photographer after sending this picture of her pit bull Lenny (Staffordshire something-or-other actually). Hey Blade, notice the beautiful mountain view and the solar panels. Just like The Bronx huh?

Fleagate

My dad is not even a bad amateur entomologist. What! Is your damn google broken? That is someone who studies insects. Now back to the story. Mom and dad had bad bites and rashes this summer and were convinced their house was infested with bed bugs. Because I am at least a poor amateur entomologist, and can spell it, I know that bed bugs have a natural predator, that being of course the lowly cockroach (bringing it right back to New York City and keeping it relevant for you Blade). Cockroaches naturally were my first treatment suggestion. That went over like a lead cloud. There is no “treatment” for bed bugs, except heating up the entire house to 130 degrees Fahrenheit and leaving it that way for half an hour. That kills them. The typical furnace isn’t going to do that, even aided by electric space heaters, so you must use portable propane heaters. Of course filling the house up with carbon monoxide and intense heat kills cockroaches, bedbugs, humans, and all other living creatures. Well, maybe not the cockroaches come to think of it. We made arrangements to move everything out of the closets, and got the heaters reserved at a rental shop. In thinking through the logistics it became clear that post-treatment it would require a person running into the danger zone to turn off heaters strategically placed throughout. I wasn’t going to do it and my first choice for this job, my sister, wasn’t anywhere to be found of course. In addition to the immediate danger of carbon monoxide and heat in a fully closed house there was the small issue of completely burning down the house. Dad has experience with this burning-down-the-house thing (see “Y2K Generator” HHLOT circa 1999). We decided that we should probably check to see if it was indeed bed bugs. It wasn’t. No evidence whatsoever. That being said, in addition to a poor amateur entomologist, I also am a poor amateur doctor, and went to WEB MD and compared their skin rashes to what was online. They looked exactly like Syphilis rashes. Burning down the house would be a helluva way to cover up getting an STI, and an interesting explanation to the insurance company. So instead they went to a real doctor who immediately proclaimed, ”these are flea rashes”. They have no pets. Our family friend Jami works in a vet’s office and visits every week. That would be the flea source.

Twisted Sister

My sister finalized her divorce recently and went to the judge to change her name. Problem is she changed her last name AND her middle name. She should have left all that alone and just changed her first name, which no one calls her anyway. Well, OK, just me, or sometimes people when they are mad at her, but that’s not the point. She changed her MIDDLE NAME! Who does that anyway? Her middle name at birth was in honor of my now 101 year old grandmother.  She changed it to the same name mom has as her middle name. WTF! I can get over all the rest of this, but here’s the real problem: Security questions on the Internet. Typical security questions on every website known to man are things that are permanent and not subject to the vagaries of memory like your middle child’s name. No, they want permanent easily memorable things, like high school attended, favorite pet’s name, your anniversary, etc. I have big problems with these security questions. My cat died, I never even started high school, and have been divorced twice. It’s an issue with security questions. So my go-to has always been “eldest sibling’s middle name” because I can’t kill it, forget it, divorce it, or lose it. So now like a boss, she changes it.  I’m simply doomed.

Beer Alarm Fire

No forceful evictions yet this year, but I did get a call from a tenant at 2:00 am who said the fire alarm was going off and beer was streaming down the stairs. I assumed the beer probably put the fire out and went back to sleep. I didn’t pay twenty thousand dollars for a new alarm system and fire doors to lose sleep. Of course the fire department called ten minutes later and told me someone got in a fight in the hallway and pulled the alarm, naturally waking everyone in the building and the entire neighborhood when the fire trucks came hammering in. Isn’t this what everyone does when you are drinking beer and happen to get in a fight in the hallway at 2:00 am---pull the fire alarm?

No Happy Ending

I’m sure you all have noticed junk texts are on the rise (growing career field for you Blade). But even better I got a really wrong number text not long ago. I thought it was my friend Rob messing with me under a new phone number, especially when I saw the 253 area code. So I started playing along. He started with this very romantic gesture:

“are you available for bbj and do you swallow”

Smelling blood in the water, and curious what bbj is, I replied

“Oh yeah I totally swallow”

He was definitely interested. Time to close the deal

“damn so what area an how much for a double pop”

Feeling like this wasn’t about a strong sugary drink, I responded thusly

“It’s free if I can peg you dry between pops”

Things just deteriorated from there because he had no idea what pegging is, his grammar was atrocious, and he was quite simply losing me. So I called Rob’s wife Cathy to laugh with her about what Rob was doing. She responded he was dead asleep on the couch and not texting anyone. She was cracking up and wanted to know what the phone number was. Naturally I gave it to her. So Cathy called and started messing with the guy, who of course denied it all. My paramour continued

“where’s your incall an what is peg you dry sexy”

“let me no ID like to hookup”

“Why don’t you google pegging then let me know.”

Our flirtation continued, cut for brevity, until the inevitable breakup:

“Dude, you have the wrong number. I’m just messing with you”.

“well just to let you know your # is on backpage as a fine ass black chic”

“I’m sorry I thought you were a buddy of mine messing with me.”

“I don’t have an ad. I’m a 52 year old white guy.”

“Do you have a link to the ad?”

“no its in backpage under escorts”

So this fine ass black chic(k) wishes you all a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kwanza, Ramadan, and even a Happy Chinese New Year, whenever that occurs!