According to my WordPress dashboard, this is the 1,000th blog entry I’ve made. That’s either very impressive, or I’m a very sad little man. Either way, I guess that’s as good an excuse as any for rambling on at great lenght about a bunch of stuff that nobody else is interested in – I mean, that’s the very heart of blogging, isn’t it?
I was utterly stunned this morning – after an extremely fussy getting-dressed ritual that included Evan trying to bite me (and only getting a mouthful of my shirt) – to see Evan try to hit one of the ladies at the day care. I had a moment where I was about ready to yank his butt right back out of the place and take him home; they asked me to go ahead and leave him there, and they’d call me if it becomes a problem. I better not be getting that call. I guess I just wasn’t ready for my little boy to be exploring the power of tooth and claw quite so early, regardless of how normal and natural it is for him. He’s gotten a couple of spankings at home, and gets a short, sharp slap on the belly if he acts up while he’s getting dressed – just something to bring him up short when he’s trying not to let me put shorts on him. That’s the extent of his exposure to physical violence, if you even want to call it that. I fiercely limit his TV time (and when he does get TV time, I fiercely limit what he watches – there’s an approved list), so I don’t think that’s where he’s getting it. However normal it may be for him to go through this phase, it still just makes me wonder if I’ve done something wrong somewhere along the way, which in itself probably isn’t a new phenomenon in the world of parenting.
Last night I was talking on the phone to Rob O’Hara about gaming conventions, what’s right about them, what’s wrong about them, how we’re simultaneously exhausted from the last one and eager for the next one, etc.; I’m convinced that this conversation was less about video game conventions and more about keeping him awake on his long drive. If I didn’t manage to accomplish that, I bet Evan’s hooting and hollering right into the phone did! I’m working on distilling some of my own thoughts on video game shows past and present into a future blog post. For the eight people out there who are interested. (Hey, someone has to cater to that niche.)
Anyway, after the great “Evan: Warrior Baby” incident at day care this morning, I come home and discover that Oberon has invented a new Olympic sport: running backwards at top speed while vomiting, as if he’s trying to outrun his own barf. Rather than finding a puddle to clean up, now I’m trying to clean up rivers of cat barf. He’s recently been getting to go outside for an hour or two a day – he comes back to the house pretty quickly, stays away from the road and the driveway (which all of Crawford County seems to use as a turnaround when they get lost up here), and doesn’t wander far from the house. He’s sufficiently demonstrated that he’s not going to “lose the house” like he evidently did his last one (he’s lived here longer for one thing – he was virtually a big kitten when we took him in), but I may have to curtail his visits to the great outdoors if he can’t “hold his liquor” (well, okay, blades of fresh grass) any better than this.
Those crazy boffins at Film Score Monthly have released Jerry Goldsmith’s awesome complete score from Twilight Zone: The Movie on CD – as in “in its entirety, every note.” As soon as funds permit, I’ll be adding this to the Goldsmith Shelf and giving it a listen. (Yeah, he’s got a whole shelf in my CD shelf unit. Okay, okay, it’s more like one-and-a-third shelves.) I could go on about how replete with awesomeness this is, but it’s Jerry Goldsmith movie music from the man’s heyday – that should really say it all right there.
In other movie music news, want to hear some brief clips from Michael Giacchino’s score from the new Star Trek film? Which will also, in all likelihood, be replete with awesomeness? Click here. Even if you’re holding out on how good or bad the movie is, the music sounds like it may be one of the best things about it. This is shaping up to be a better “soundtrack year” than I had, in all honesty, budgeted for. If Silva Screen actually gets the long-promised CD of the scores from the two Peter Cushing Doctor Who movies out this year, I will be very happy indeed. Ah, who am I kidding, I get new McCreary and Giacchino this year, and some relatively-new-to-my-ears Goldsmith? I’m already very happy. Now I just need to knock over a liquor store, or sell a hell of a lot more DVDs.
On that note, and considering that Evan woke me up – complete with his foul mood – at six o’ clock this morning, I think I’m going to go lay back down on my brand new mattress and get some more shut-eye. My back and shoulders and neck aren’t killing me or even trying to critically maim me for the first time in quite a while, so I feel like enjoying that feeling just a little bit more.
It worked — I arrived tired, but awake.
You’ll be pleased to know that I restocked on waffles today. Now that you don’t need the kid to be a super-powered screaming machine in your ear, it’s safe to keep his kryptonite in stock once more.