Froggy Went A-Courtin'

Froggy must have the hots for my wife - because she found him in the shower last night with her.

Lord knows how a frog got into my house, much less nestled up in the corner of our tiled shower.

According to this site - http://www.herpsofnc.org/herps_of_NC/anurans/Hyl_chr.html - I believe he was either a gray treefog or a green one. He definitley looked like a rock. And I had just found a treefog on sunday in - where else of all places - the treehouse.

And I was reminded of the turtle my neighbor JB found earlier in the summer.

"Greg," he said over the phone. "I found a turtle in the road and I don't know what to do with it."
"Let him go," I said.
"You've got to see him," he said.

Fucking thing was as big as a hubcap.

I shit you not.

It was either a yellowbelly slider or river cooter.

http://www.herpsofnc.org/herps_of_NC/turtles/trascr.html

Whatever it was, he was big and most likely older than all bloody get-out.

At first I figured we'd keep him as a pet and the boys could hand him down to their kids because surely this guy was going to outlive everyone. So I put him in the fenced part of my yard and went to bed. Next day I woke and a couldn't find him. How do you lose a turtle as a big as a hubcap I thought. The wife figured he'd crawled under the deck and was going to die a slow death, one that would bring lots and flies and other critters who like to feast on the dead.

Then I saw some brush move one day from the kitchen window. The fucker was huffing down the fence line obviously looking for a way to get out.

Then the wife calls and said that some girl she works with has pet turtles. "She let's them sleep in her bed," she said. My wife will believe anything. So this girl and her husband came over to rescue the turtle. I asked them basic questions I'd think turtle lovin' folk would know like how old do you think he is and what kind of turtle is it. Of course they know nothing. Real turtle lovers these people are. So smart guy husband picked up the beast and his lady sticks a blade of grass in front of his mouth. He does nothing. "Well, he's not a snapping turtle," she said. Fuckin' crikey mate! I could have told you that. And if it even crossed your mind he might be a snapper would you put your finger anywhere near his mouth?

I wonder if that turtle soup was good?

The List

Books I want to read.

Memoirs: from James Frey and Augustus Burroughs.

Bio: Nick Tosches penned tome on Dean Martin

Housebroken by David Eddie. The fucker who beat me to the stay-at-home-dad published punch

and I just picked up Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers...

Reading

I've taken - in my newfound free time - up reading again (yeah, mike i'll read that fucking screenplay soon).

I tackled The Comedy Writer by Peter Farrelly. One of the Farrelly brothers most noted for movies like Dumb And Dumber and Something About Mary. I had read the book years ago when it first came out. Friggin' hilarious. So I sent it to my brother Mike who is the funniest person I know and he's not even a comic. Anyway, I spotted it at the library book sale and figured it was time to revisit it. And I cracked up all over again.

I just finished Laura Lippman's Baltimore Blues. An awesome crime novel set in Baltimore. She's like a female verson of one of my favorite crime writers George Pelicanos, whose novels all take place in DC.

Back To School

It hasn't been easy for the boys. Neither has warmed up to the idea of school.

My 5 yr. old Spencer has broken down into tears just about every day that I've dropped him off at kindergarten.

I'm not quite sure what this is all about as he had been going to a playschool several days a week for almost three years. Best I can guess is that going from a hippie co-op w/ young girls as teachers to public school where Mrs. Doubtfire is his homeroom teacher has been the most traumatic.

Cole, whom I thought would be digging the interaction w/ other kids (he often seemed bored by me over the summer) has gone the route of his older brother and cries like he's in need of an exorcism every time I drop him off.

These are the joys of parenting my friends.

ReCap

The summer went something like this:

a. spencer learned to swim, and when i mean swim i mean cannon balls into the 4 ft. deep end w/o me or the lifeguard having to worry about him drowning.

b. he also learned to open his eyes under water

c. he also taught his younger brother cole how to do the heavy metal rock sign

d. my band - chest pains - played out severla times. live footage can be seen at: www.soundsreelgood.blogspot.com

e. i taught a class on how to make a zine at the Duke Young Writers' Camp (http://www.learnmore.duke.edu/youth/ywc/ywcofferings.htm). i had two classes. one comprised of six middle school girls and another comprised of 13 high schoolers (10 girls, 3 boys). i learned that technology has greatly altered the course of adolescence. i took the middle schoolers to a dance performance by the ADF (http://www.americandancefestival.org/) where one girl text messaged her friend during the entire 20 minute performance. in the high school class, i watched a young crush develop between two students - who shared iPod earpieces in class everyday. one day, while taking a field trip to 9th Street - the main drag of stores by Duke - i said to them as they walked earpiece-to-earpiece, "back in my day, when we liked someone we held hands." of course all i got was blank stares. fucking old man that i am.

f. i had a piece published at www.wordriot.org. ironically, after all these years of writing, it represents my first piece of fiction published. and it's a fucking doozey.