God damnit we just had a pun fight like ten pages ago are you all dads or something
Hi or something, I'm not a dad because fuck ruining my life with kids anymore, I can't remember a time before I was capable enough that if you just sat an infant down next to me and left for the day when you came back it would be clean-ish, fed, and asleep, and I've got a decent grip on some memories that I know contextually had to be when I was just barely 4, and I turned 38 literally 10 days ago. The best part of kids is giving them back to their parents, goddammit, fuck all that "magical secret experience which you only know when you become a parent" shit. There are awesome moments like watching the gears clunk into place and start spinning when you help them discover how cool it is to figure stuff out about the big strange thing they find themselves embedded in which the big tall people call "the world" but then they dig a big stringy glob of snot out of their nose and wipe it on your pants exactly where you'll put your hand when you go to stand back up and discover their surprise gift of grossness and wonder if maybe the house couldn't use a few more five gallon buckets half full of water sitting around...
Kidding... mostly, probably, I mean, I compulsively can't let a kid be hurt, I remember cutting through the apartment complex pool in my jeans and tennis shoes and seeing a toddler tip backwards into the pool.
Next thing I know the parents are wondering why they just got blasted with water and who this strange wet dude putting their kid back on the side of the pool is because I didn't even get to think before I muay thai'D the shallow end from the far side of the pool to snatch the little dude out of the water because I've been responsible for watching kids too goddamn long.
Took a while to dry my wallet and shoes out, but naturally they went really quickly from "what the fuck why did you splash us" to "OH MY GOD DID HE JUST FALL IN WHAT THE HELL THANK YOU FUCKING AWESOME NINJA LIFEGUARD GUY" after they had a reasonable amount of time to process it.
So yeah, it's all good, but man, it is great not having any kids to deal with ever since the end of a period where the missus and I were helping the neighbor babysit/pick up/drop off his cool little dude of a son Elijah which we kinda got pressganged into doing a few years back from when he was like 4 and asking if she wanted to come over and chitchat (he bribed her with fresh fruit like the plum he was eating, said he had more, she told him "lemme see 'em" before accepting one and chitchatting with him) until he was like 10 I think.
Dude is like 17 now and he's been over 6 foot tall since he was 14, I'm 5'10" so it was a trip watching him just rocket skyward... the missus being 5'1" (and three quarters, she notes) was his height when we were dropping him off in like 2nd grade, so she's used to that sort of thing, and I'm glad she got to spend so much time getting to bond and enjoy him growing up while also getting to be very sick of the situation eating up so much of our time for years because she thought she was breaking bad news to me about not really wanting to have kids once we got free of the responsibility again... I was like, hah, I was worried YOU would want them, let's just have fun and collect animals and hobbies and shit!
Speaking of animals, we had a little cry earlier over Reggie, I realized last night that this was the last picture I had of the fat little sweetheart, and she said she keeps expecting him to barge in and let out his usual "HAAAAAIIIIIII YA'LL" mrowr he'd do when he wandered upstairs.
We invited Larry upstairs onto the bed/bandits blanket for the first time as a treat for the missus and himself, he's our big Border Collie/Pit Bull stray that used to be a little pile of legs and ears which followed her dad home when he was walking Bandit years ago like "hey uh... mind if I crash here with ya'll for like... ever?" and is a big derpy derp who was super excited to come upstairs and stink all over bandits blanket and check out the various toys and sights and smells up here before we had to let him head back downstairs to calm down.
While I was washing dog stank off my hands I noticed one of our little bathroom creepyfriends was holding an ant or a gnat so I grabbed a pic, looks like she turned towards the camera even.