Stupid irritating Don Knotts
I’m pretty sure that by now, my Twitter followers (those who are still paying attention, anyway) think I’m a totally unoriginal idiot because like ten times now, my first tweet of the day has been something about how I’m up early, how I don’t like being up early, how the baby made me wake up too early, how I’m tired because I’m awake too early.
And maybe the first time I made it funny, the second time it was passable, and the third time it was like, “Okay, I get it, you’re tired, wow gee ha-ha-ha I can’t stop laughing seriously like I’m not at all patronizing you you unfunny asshead.”
That said, I’m really tired this morning. Perhaps I will tweet about it.
The problem is the baby, Sydney. She’s really fun and really cute, but she doesn’t understand that waking up at 5am is the kind of thing that psychopaths do because they imagine that Don Knotts has been sitting in a throne in the corner of their bedrooms all night long, throwing styrofoam packing peanuts at them every time they start to nod off. She doesn’t get that waking up that early is totally uncool and will not get her a date with high school quarterback Chip McSuperb. Cheerleaders don’t wake up at 5am. That’s more the kind of thing Flag Girls do.
(By the way, I don’t want my daughter to be a cheerleader because while I was seriously into several cheerleaders back in high school, some members of the squad got a reputation for being passed around more than Super Bowl guacamole. And I definitely don’t want her dating Chip McSuperb because everyone knows he’s essentially just tan forearms, a handsome face, and a penis, and that what you think are legs is essentially just a giant bifurcated penis that is capable of running a sub-5 second 40. But every girl who doesn’t become a goth or a lesbian secretly wants to be with Chip, riding on Chip’s motorcycle, clinging to his penis chest with her legs behind the twin stems of his bifurcated penis, so I’m just trying to work with my audience’s motivations even if they make me want to stick a fork into Chip’s beady penis eyes.)
(Oh, and also by the way, it was totally cool of you to assume in the above paragraph that the cheerleaders I said I was into and the skanky ones were in non-overlapping groups.)
When the baby wakes up, my wife Robin and I play a game called “I’m asleep and can’t hear that” until one of us can no longer stand it and gets up angrily, swearing at our sheets, or our robes, or the dogs. I seem to be losing this game, but because it takes Robin forever to fall back asleep after being woken up, what’s cool is that at least we both suffer.
So I get up and complain to nobody.
“What the HELL is her problem I can’t TAKE it anymore Jesus man I’m so tired I feel like I’m going to fall over onto my FACE DAMN why the hell can’t she just SLEEP like Austin he’s cool but DAMN I’m tired…”
And Robin rolls over and grunts because she’s really awesome at this game we play and therefore can’t hear me. And if she can, she’s embarrassed for me.
“CRAP I’m so tired damn baby what the HELL is she doing OW BASTARD” as I run into the doorframe because I’ve got this dry eye thing where my eyes stick to my eyelids and if I open them without lubing them first with eyedrops, I’ll scratch my corneas and it will hurt like hell for a half hour. So, I zombie-walk into the bathroom and navigate by feel, and sometimes I miss, and God help me if one of the dogs is sleeping on the floor between the bed and the bathroom.
And I get it together and walk into her room, and she’s all smiling and kicking around and all I can think about is that babies and puppies are cute as a survival mechanism. If you’re a parent, think about how cute your offspring were capable of being as babies. Cuteness somehow makes it acceptable that these vile things cause you to lose sleep, that they crap in their pants, that the advanced ones sometimes steal your car. Now imagine if babies kept all of these irritating attributes but looked like Carrot Top. The human race would be extinct.
Ironically, Syd is just waking up for the day now, at 7:45. This on the day I decide to rage about her sleep habits. But the thing is, she was screaming at 2am and 5:20am, and at some point, there was loud drumming from her room that turned out to be kicking rather than (unfortunately) a drum fill from any number of Zeppelin songs. You can sleep around those kinds of non-demanding interruptions, and you don’t have to get up, but it’s kind of like trying to sleep while Don Knotts sits in the corner of the room and throws styrofoam peanuts at you. Believe me, I know.
You know, I could totally go for a waffle today.
Comments
8 Comments on Stupid irritating Don Knotts
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carma on
Mon, 2nd Feb 2009 10:20 am
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Joely Black (@TheCharmQuark on Twitter) on
Mon, 2nd Feb 2009 10:21 am
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Shannon on
Mon, 2nd Feb 2009 1:50 pm
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Johnny Truant on
Mon, 2nd Feb 2009 1:52 pm
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AnnieH on
Mon, 2nd Feb 2009 3:03 pm
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Johnny Truant on
Mon, 2nd Feb 2009 3:19 pm
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Tracy on
Mon, 2nd Feb 2009 3:22 pm
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Delmont88 on
Mon, 2nd Feb 2009 6:30 pm
Yikes! That picture of carrot top is not the first thing I want to see this early in the morning. I am embarrassed to say that I had Carrot Top sign an authentic Carrot Top t-shirt for me when I went to one of his gigs 15 years ago and I am still hanging onto it. How lame is that???
I was going to say something witty and intelligent but unfortunately that picture has left me bereft of everything but the desire to run away quickly.
I used to sneak into my parents’ bed when I was a toddler. Imagine THAT crawling into bed with you.
It’s a negative attention-getter. The idea is to deeply annoy you in order to get you to keep coming back, as a sort of 21st century autoflagellation. It was either that photo or get Ann Coulter to say this entry was “so great that I’d club minorities for it.”
Quit your whining. Next thing I know you’ll be complaining cause the kids sleep literally ALL DAMN DAY. I promise. It’s a-coming. And, they bitch about being tired. This is all while you’re trying to work around their prone, lifeless bodies.
That’s going to be so awesome.
@AnnieH, I’ve got one of each (and then some of the assorted other stages in between). What I love is how my 13 year old will go on and on about how much it must suck to be me and have to wake up with a baby all the time. And I think “Oh great, he’s starting to get it, my work has paid off with this one” and then he’ll ask me if he can have the last Coke because he’s so tired because I let his brothers wake him up at 10.
I know he’s my kid and all but stabby-stabby.
Keep your chin up, Johnny…
Soon, in the near future, she will start talking back. You think an infant making baby noises is annoying? Just wait until you get greeted at her bedroom door with a roll of three-year-old eyes and a contemptuous look that sez “not YOU again! Where’s mom?”.
Girls really are parental baptism by fire. I have a theory about why men are gay. They grew up with little sisters, took one look, lived thru all the infant girl drama, and said “Thanks, but no thanks..”
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