The Fish Pond: Don't Drink the Milk

Our first guest poster is Uncle Orca, or Uncle Dave, or our fearless babysitter, Agincourtdb. He is inadvertently responsible for all of this, since 17 years ago he introduced BigDaddyFish and me. You can read all about his life as a musician on David's Blog. He's a composer, trombone player in a ska band, a wicked singer, and a fair cartoonist as well. He loves our kids almost as much as we do, and is willing to work cheap, as long as he doesn't have any gigs.

Fishygirl has asked me to write a 'fill-in' blog for her while she's vacating with the family. That's vacating in the non-bowel sense. They've rented a beach house and are going to see how much sand they can carry away from the beach caked to their children.

I'm not sure what to write about, frankly. My own blog is fairly scattershot. Sometimes it's posts about gigs, links to my music, Youtube videos that I find entertaining (usually tech, science, and music.) I'm probably supposed to write about Fishygirl's kids.

Ok, here's something. I'm obsessed with preventing the drinking of bad milk. There always seem to be cups of milk laying around. Some are sippy cups. I fear them. If I open them and get even the faintest whiff of corruption, down the sink they go. The milk, not the cups. I think this annoys Fishygirl, but I stand by my room temperature milk policy. I took a big gulp of milk without smelling it once. It was immediately obvious that the milk was not the milk I had just poured straight out of the fridge but rather was the milk I had poured straight out of the fridge two days ago.

I would appreciate never having to feel that sick to my stomach again, if it's all the same to you. And I'll waste all the milk in the world to prevent that happening to the kids, especially Nemo, who has enough problems with 105 degree fevers.

What else? Okay, here's something: have you ever noticed that kids have selective and directional hearing? Especially while the TV is on. If Fishygirl's kids were gazelles it would pay to be a lion, because you could sneak up on them while wearing an entire brass band. Now there's a mental image. One of these days I'm going to film myself standing six feet away from Trout and document how many times I have to say her name in a normal voice before I get her attention. Of course, then, when I have her attention, what she sees is not Uncle Orca, her babysitter, but rather a set of monkey bars. I am something to be climbed, regardless of what I may be doing at the time.

Little Man and I bond over video games. I introduced him to Portal on my laptop. And also, Trackmania (a racing game on Steam.) Sometimes you look into his room and see, previsaged, the coming Lego apocalypse, and then you flee in terror.

Sunny is fickle. It's hit or miss whether she starts out liking me on a given day. I can usually break the ice by grabbing her and pretending to eat her up. She'll giggle and say, "Uncle Orca, I'm not a cookie!" If I kiss her on the cheek she wipes it off and says 'icky!'

What to say about Nemo. He's a treat. They were all snugglebugs at this age and Nemo is no exception. Of course, when the actual parents come home I suddenly become chopped liver, but that's to be expected.

Here's what I'm looking forward to: As the cool Uncle, so to speak. I'm looking forward to calls in the middle of the night from a teenage Trout when she's at a party and people are drinking and she needs to be picked up but doesn't want to be busted by mom and dad. I'm looking forward to being of no help at all when Little Man asks for advice about girls. I'm looking forward to seeing Sunny in the school musical, or on the softball field. I'm looking forward to watching Nemo learn to talk and have opinions and hobbies and turn his room into previsaged Lego apocalypses.

Oh, it'll happen. The Lego apocalypse is coming. It's juuuust a matter of time.

-AgincourtDB (Uncle Orca)