I’m not talking about the birds and the bees, I mean from where will you adopt your cat or dog? Odds are that your cat or dog will come from one of four sources, an animal shelter, animal control, rescue organization or breeder. Here is an overview of the pros and cons of each source.
Animal control
Animal Control is the entity that your tax dollars help support. They’ll usually be called by the county of residence animal control, XXX County Animal Control for example. If it’s really called XXX, then Vin Diesel has really gone down hill or maybe you need to speak with your local politicians about their side jobs. Continue reading Where do pets come from?
You never want to start a sentence out like that do you? To be technically correct, it was a video file on the camera and I didn’t show it to her because I thought she would find it disgusting. Continue reading My wife found a videotape that I was hiding
As previously mentioned in my ramblings, I’m a stay at home dad and care for Jake during the week. On the weekends Mom steps in so I can read comics, nap, climb trees and do other guy type activities.
One Saturday I passed Mom in the kitchen while Jake was rolling around on the floor.
“Do you get tired during the week?”, she asked.
“Yes, I’m exhausted during the week and it’s all because of this energy sponge, just sucking our lifeforce”, I said. I knew that she was joking because she was getting beat down by the 29 week old screamapillar that I see during the week. It’s ironic, that the reason for the daddy blog is often the reason that I can’t work or create things for the daddy blog.
However, my off comment about the lifeforce being sucked out of me triggered a memory about a movie that I used to love as a kid.
Mothers and wives sometimes don’t see the value in what guys or growing boys have. Sometimes it’s a collection, a piece of clothing or a thing that looks like an old rock. For me it started with a concert tee for Oingo Boingo, who I had seen in concert at an outdoor festival. That was early 80s new wave at its best, even today Boingo’s music sounds great thanks in part to Danny Elfman and their tight rhythm. Their frantic, multi layered music captured the sensibilities of a hyperactive teenage boy perfectly. Continue reading The 40 million year old paper weight-Sand dollars in the Sahara
Ladies, there is no easy way for us guys to answer the following questions.
“Is she more attractive than me?” It’s a loaded question and hopefully your fella knows to proceed carefully by answering, “Of course not honey. Oh and did you see that outfit? She’s gotta be over 30 and she’s wearing a news boy cap?”
“Honey, am I getting fat?” Tricky, tricky this question. Women can tell if the number on the scale is getting larger. They know the answer of the question when they ask it. “No sweetie, you look great to me, is everything OK?” This answer allows her to state whether her pants are feeling tight or if she just needs a hug from you. Sure, that answer is a punt of sorts, but it helps keep the peace.
Mommy Mojo officially lost all of her baby weight this week. She celebrated by wearing some pants that I hadn’t seen in over a year and doing her version of the happy dance around the house. I noticed that she was getting close, in addition to her frequent progress reports and in hindsight I should’ve said, “hey, you’re getting close to losing the baby weight I see’!
A statement of fact like that is laced with potentially dire outcomes, be careful here. We want to encourage her, but we also want to let them know that we love them regardless. For the record: we want to encourage them because, if they’re commenting on how much weight they’ve lost post pregnancy, then they want to lose the weight. Again, ladies, the encouragement isn’t from a male vanity point of view, its general encouragement, c’est sa. Sheshhh, even writing this I could feel the building wrath of moms giving me grief for encouraging them to lose weight.
That bag of sugar is equal to one soda a day for one month.
So Mommy Mojo finally lost the weight by doing normal exercise and not drinking her daily sodas. How much is one soda a day for a month? This photo is a nice representation of what exactly that sugar looks like in bulk after 30 days. A friend of mine, Jolene Park at Healthy Discoveries has that image on her flickr stream.
In frustrating news, for my wife, I’ve actually lost weight since Baby Mojo came into the picture. As a stay at home dad I pick up the car carrier, stroller and all of the other activities that necessitate keeping up the house and taking care of Mojo. The other night mentioned to the light of my life that I was going to go for a bike ride this week. She asked me if I’ve been losing weight and demanded that I go weigh myself.
She then uttered words that I could never say, “I liked how much you weighed when we got married, so if you exercise just be sure to eat more”, she said.
Star Wars AT-AT, made of bacon, hmmmm.
“Sure, I’ll have lots more bacon, red meat and beer”, I said.
“I don’t want you to clog your arteries, just gain a little weight”
Thanks sweetie, so I won’t be eating this delicious AT-AT….you can see loads more bacon and guy time wasters at http://www.tifr.us/
Waiting tables in college taught me one lesson that I’ll always remember; never leave the kitchen empty-handed.
You leave the kitchen take something – anything – because it’s needed out front by somebody.
Since being a stay at home dad I’ve had to practice that lesson countless times, but it’s helped me keep the Mojo castle slightly cleaner. I’m leaving a room – I grab a bottle, cup or toy and put it in its rightful place.
This is basic stuff, but it’s light years from where I came from. Even tough I learned the original lesson in college, I went through The Dark Years (where dirt and procrastination where my best friends. )
The Shower
Before Baby Mojo came into the picture Mommy Mojo and I were dating and she was over at the house. She had to wash her face, went to turn on the hot water and was aghast that there wasn’t any. “Your hot water isn’t working, how long has it been out?”, she asked. To hear her tell the story, she was under the impression that it was something that happened a day or two ago.
“Oh, it’s been out a couple of months”, I answered with all seriousness.
“A COUPLE MONTHS? How do you shower? Can’t you get a plumber in here to fix it?”
“Oh, it’s not broken, I’ve got the parts to fix it in the other room….”. In hindsight I realize how silly it was to not have hot water in the bathroom. It was the worst case of procrastination I’d ever accomplished, I was busted and without an excuse.
“How do you shower?”, she said, which was quite a reasonable question considering.
“Well, I shower very quickly.”
“Why? When there’s hot water readily available?
“It’s not the worst place I’ve ever showered”
The worst place I’d showered was this hostel in Beijing. It was in the middle of winter, there was no hot water and there were multiple holes in the wall where I could look out onto various, smog covered buildings . It was cold, had broken tiles on the floor, a flimsy curtain with rips and one of those prison mirrors that cast a reflection but wasn’t really a mirror.
So, whenever I’d shower at home, I’d think of that awful, cold shower that I had in Beijing for that couple of weeks and it wasn’t that bad. The house was under renovation and the cold showers were a small price to pay for not getting on my stomach to light the pilot when it would go out.
Mommy Mojo didn’t see the logic in my story either and suggested that I stop procrastinating and get that hot water flowing ASAP.
The Dirty Towel
A couple of weeks after the hot water in the bathroom was fixed Mommy Mojo was washing her face and asked me to hand her a towel.
“Eww, this towel smells”, she said.
“oh. I might have accidentally given you the towel that I cleaned up the cat pee with”, I sheepishly said. She screamed and promptly threw away all of my towels. It was then that she washed her face for a second time and took a shower with our newfound hot water, using her towel.
On the positive side, I no longer have to clean up cat urine and we have all new towels.
How people meet and fall in love can sometimes be an interesting, funny or embarrassing story.
Given that the name of the blog is Daddy Mojo, and not single guy on the corner mojo, you know that the story had a happy ending. However, I’ll share a quick story that, were we at a party together my Wife would be quick to tell you herself. This way I can get credit for telling the story while sanitizing it just a bit to save my dignity.
These pictures are what used to be my old house-after it was renovated. It really is an old house, built in 1908 and partially renovated by me, everything except the ceilings, subfloor and roof, you know, the expensive stuff.
Being a single guy I didn’t have too much in the way of creature comforts that would woo the women.
I did have:
A futon
A nice mountain bike
A lawn mower
Lots of power tools
A sofa and television
A couple plates, glasses and utensils
Two cats
One Dog
“Creature comforts” is an apt phrase. The animals were used to sleeping in the futon with me. I found it comforting when the cats would sleep on my feet, but they just seemed to wake her up. So the animals only lasted one night when girlfriend mojo entered the picture. The futon was placed on the floor, not on a bed frame; and you’ll note that a vacuum cleaner wasn’t included in my list of assets, so there was no shortage of pet fur anywhere in the house.
One spring day I cleaned the house by opening up all the doors and windows and plugging in the leaf blower. My neighbor said that he saw “plumes of fur” flying out of the house and wondered what was going on.
The sofa and television were in the living room. This was one of the few rooms that had an intact ceiling…
The rest of what I owned was in the living room, that’s the green room with the 10 foot section of plaster missing and a larger section of it dangling down. The living room was a certified disaster and I credit (now) Mommy Mojo for not running away forever.
The section of plaster that fell down happened one night with a thunderous boom. I was thankful that it didn’t fall down on an animal and promptly cleaned it up the next day.
So now the living room looks like a wasteland, heat or air goes immediately into the attic and there is always the threat of being knocked unconscious by a piece of plaster dangling from the ceiling.
The lawn mower was also kept in that room. To me it was no big deal, but Mommy Mojo apparently had a huge fear of spontaneous combustion. The short term solution was to move it to the laundry room, I suggested killing all the grass, but she didn’t like that idea too much either.
I’m guessing that the 18 pound boy in the other room means that she forgave me for the lawnmower in the dining room. One lesson that we’ll teach Baby Mojo is to be clean, girls don’t (normally) tolerate messy guys, at least not to the extent that I was. Daddy Mojo has cleaned up his act much more so than I was, the car is still a bit in progress, but the house is enough to be presentable.
We do still have the problem with pet fur, but now we have a vacuum cleaner, so we don’t need to bring the leave blower inside.
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