Kim and I had wanted to take the boys somewhere else pretty cool, much like we did last summer when we vacationed in Italy for a month, and that was an amazing vacation, but this year we were a little more strapped for cash than last year, and trans-Atlantic tickets don’t come cheap. Brainstorming ensued, and we eventually settled on Puerto Rico, and specifically the Puerto Rican islands of Vieques and Culebra. Puerto Rico has a very rich and in some cases, very sad, history, but Christopher Columbus “discovered” it in 1493 and its had its ups and downs ever since. The people are friendly and they use the dollar, which was also a plus.

Vieques and Culebra are both known for their beaches, and since Kim has been pining for a beach-centric vacation for years these places were perfect. Plus the kids could play in the sand and swim in the relatively shallow bays that made up many of the beaches of both islands.

After planning, the vacation broke down, time-wise, like this -

Week 1 – rent house in Vieques
Week 2 – condo on the main island of Puerto Rico, specifically the Loiza area
Week 3 – rent house in Culebra

Upon being told about this trip our parents, remembering how much fun they had with us on our first Italian trip, immediately volunteered to go with us, for the first week of our trip.

I’ll get into that more later on.

We got our airline tickets and started looking for lodging while we were going to stay there. Hotels were pretty much out of the question, mainly because of the price point, but renting a house/condominium was much more attractive, and there were many to choose from. We settled on a nice house that would be able to sleep everyone the first week, a condo our second week and then a house for the four of us our last week. There are a couple of options for travelling to Vieques and Culebra from the main island, but we settled on the cheapest mode of transport – the ferry. $2 per adult and $1 per child for a 1½ hour trip one way. How couldn’t that be great, right?

We got everything packed into 2 duffel bags. All four of us had 5 changes of clothes, except Peyton, who’s been having a lot of peeing accidents lately. Everything else (scuba gear, books, Legos, etc.) plus the clothing stuffed the bags full, but we were under the 50 lb. limit for each.

Flying out was a breeze. Arriving on Vieques was the hard part. More on that next time.

When Peyton and I go out for walks around the neighborhood (which has become more and more frequent since I’ve started working from home) he notices lots of things. He likes to talk to Twister, the horse that lives across the street, and he likes to yell, “RUN!” and then run, and he likes to play with leaves. His greatest obsession though started probably a year ago, while watching “Blues Clues“.

Peyton really grew to love the show. I like it too, as anyone who has read this blog before can attest to, and I’ve got my favorite characters on the show, but Peyton’s has become Mailbox, who shows up rarely more than once a show after Steve/Joe have sang their mail song and always delivers “a letter from our friends”. Mailbox wants to be a standup comedian someday but he’s rooted in place in the front yard, so it will probably be hard for him to travel.

But Peyton loves the guy (or girl, it’s hard to distinguish, since his voice has a strange timber to it) and always sings along to the mail-retrieving songs that Steve/Joe sings. And this love has translated into our everyday lives as well now. So while we’re out Peyton will now want to look inside of the mailbox when we leave on our walk and also on our return to the house. And he likes the vanity mailboxes, like the mailbox that looks like a dog at the end of the street or the stone one that has vines growing on it. But he loves all of them pretty equally.

So the next time if we show up at your house with Peyton and he has a pile of your mail in his hands, you’ll know why.

Man, I haven’t written on here in about a month I think. A lot has happened since I last wrote any posts. What has happened? I lost my job. Got let go.

And looking for work hasn’t been terrible. I’ve had quite a few nibbles on the resume, had an interview, working the emails and the phone. Something will happen soon, I can feel it. Then I won’t be Mr. Mom anymore.

But that’s not what this post is all about. It’s going to be a very big week around here. In no particular order -

1. Noah starts kindergarten. Monday August 25th, 2008. Today. Ms. Owen is his teacher. Is daddy nervous? Oh lord yes. He will be a Seahawk, as the picture to the right shows. That’s the school mascot.
2. Peyton starts mother’s day out. Is daddy nervous about this? Nah, not as much. It’s mother’s day out, not kindergarten. Minor league stuff.
3. I am finally starting the long march to the Master’s degree this week out at UTA. Colonial America to 1763 will be the first class. I couldn’t be more excited and nervous at the same time. It’s going to completely rock.

So that’s life right now. I miss writing here. Gotta finish up that Operation Downfall series. How will it end? Who knows.My bet? The Americans win. I’ve got a shiny penny riding on the outcome, believe me.

The other night I drove over to Central Market. I was ostensibly going there to get Kim some coffee [1. decaf Snickernut] but the real reason I was going was that I was out of beer. The last Späten Optimator was gone and I’d tried a single of Cooper’s Stout but the Traditional ‘Lost’ Beer [2. It's a tradition now. I just have a beer, in my Guinness pint mug, each week during 'Lost'. Just something I do.] had been missed last week because I drank the Cooper’s during ‘Battlestar Galactica’ so I needed a new six pack.

But what to get? So many to choose from. I wanted something different since I’d been drinking stouts for so long. Anchor Steam would have been fine but they were all sold out. Started looking around at all of them. Samuel Smith. Späten variations. Maybe a six pack of Cooper’s? The Rar Brewery from Fort Worth? They have about 300 beers so it’s hard to choose.

So I decided to wing it and try Coal Porter from the Atlantic Brewing Co. I wanted something different, a porter would do. When held up to the light I couldn’t seen through the bottle which is usually a good sign. Just not a fan of those Bud-esque light-as-water beers.

It sat in the fridge for a night and then I was going to have one last night during (don’t laugh) ‘Dancing With the Stars’ when my in-law’s showed up. My father-in-law hit the fridge [3. Something he does with frightening regularity] looking for something and out he brought a cold virgin Coal Porter. I hadn’t even had one yet and he was taking one.

I hadn’t offered one to him. The damn stuff cost $10 a six pack, so I was reluctant to part with one for just anybody, but he’s my father-in-law, so what are you going to do? Tell him he can’t have one? I lived with the guy for a year while my current house was being built, I’m too stingy to offer him one beer?

He opened it and drank and his eyes went wide. “Wow…that’s strong.” 3 more swallows and he was done. He set it down and walked to play with my kids.

A wasted beer. One freaking wasted beer.

I wasn’t going to drink after him, that’s just not what I do. I don’t take free samples from people handing out food unless I’m at Sam’s, so I wasn’t going to drink after him. We (the fam) just got over a virus, who the hell knows what he’s carrying in that mouth?

That bastard beer sat there on the kitchen counter until 10 pm that night. After Yamaguchi had won the competition I went and poured the remainder in the sink. Hershey-brown liquid headed for the drain, n’er to be seen again. With it I placed my other pint glass that had once held the second Coal Porter, now drained into me.

It was pretty good. A little thicker than the usual porter I like, but pretty good.

So yeah, I’m a beer snob. I don’t want people touching them without asking, capiche?

A couple of days ago I was getting up and Peyton, the baby of the family, was waking up too. Rather than put him in the bouncy seat, or let him play on the floor and bang a lot of toys on the tile, Kim suggested that I put him into the shower with me.We have a pretty big shower. It has 2 heads and is about 6 by 6 feet. Glass walls, very cool.

So I put him in there with me. I was tired, half asleep still and not firing on all cylinders. Peyton, naked, was on the shower floor. Usually in the morning one of the first things that Peyton does is poop. After that I change him and we both go on our merry ways, but like I said, I was tired, half asleep still and not firing on all cylinders.

So after rinsing the shampoo out of my hair I look down at him to make sure he’s fine and not splayed out on his back. And then I saw it – there was poop all over the shower floor. The hair stood up on the back of my neck and I probably lost all the color in my face as I went sheet white. There was crap all over him and he was just about to start playing with it.

I grabbed him and held him up to the water, a cascade of poop raining down onto me.

Couldn’t get worse, could it?

I washed him off and set him down and started to clean myself up. After having been both peed and pooped on I wasn’t too worried about me; skin is waterproof, and nothing was going to get into my bloodstream unless I wanted it to, but still, it’s poop. It’s what your body doesn’t need or want, that’s why you get rid of it.

I looked down again at him. He’d pooped again.

Now I had two watery piles of poop on the shower floor. We’d reached Defcon 1 in my opinion. I called for backup.

Kim came and helped me out. She’d been asleep. I hate waking her up, but I felt that this merited a little teamwork.

We got him cleaned up (no more pooping after that) and then I scrubbed myself down. Later Kim, the saint that she is, Cometed the shower floor. What kind of woman would love you enough to clean up crap? Like I say, she’s a keeper.