Cheeky's Hideaway

The Shit Heard Round the World

"You ever take a dump made you feel like you'd just slept for twelve hours?"
                                    --Ricky Roma, Glengarry Glen Ross

Can someone please explain to me why anyone, no matter what age, would hold in a crap if they had to go?

Not to be too graphic, but the last place you want to be is between me and the bathroom after a bowl of All-Bran and a pot of coffee.  The human body has an entrance and an exit, and it was built that way for a reason.

So it's inconceivable to me that our child refuses to poop.

I mean, come ON!  You're wearing a freakin' diaper! Do you know how many of us pine for the convenience of just relaxing the bowels in the middle of a meeting or during the third quarter of a football game?  You have the gift of total freedom, a gift that will only last a few more months!  Why squander those precious hours with your sphincter squeezed tighter than Heather Mills' fist on Paul McCartney's checkbook.

Imagine, if you will, what it would feel like to hold in four days' worth of food.  You'd feel as bloated as a Macy's parade balloon, and you could bounce a quarter off your belly.  Meanwhile your confused, half-digested food would be stumbling around in the dark, desperately looking for a way out.  Wouldn't the claustrophobia lead your food to take matters into it's own hands and take an alternate route out?

Cheeky cares not about these things.  The whimpering and whining is heartbreaking for the first 3 hours, but quickly becomes grating after the 78 consecutive hours that follow.  She'd walk around with her blanket shoved in her crotch, and we'd hold her and gently remind her that she's a veteran crapper who just needs to let her natural talents take over.  No luck. 

Imagine what your mood would be like if you were corked up for four days.  Now imagine if you had no sense of rationality, decorum, or accountability.  Now imagine you've inherited the emotional exuberance of your half-Italian father. 

Not good.

The human body, thank god, has the capacity to overcome our mental limitations.  After days of coaching and a doctor's visit Cheeky finally relented.  Unable to hold back the massive forces churning inside, her rectum let loose a blast so powerful it could be heard in four states.  After-shocks continued for the next several hours, as half of Cheeky's body mass was jettisoned, and after each her mood improved dramatically.  Our perky little daughter was back.

Dumbfounded and relieved, Oodgie and I prayed the crisis had passed, and prepared to return to our bucolic life of peeling stickers off appliances and watching Family Guy reruns.

Until a blanket gets shoved back into a crotch.

"My tushy hurts."

Oh shit.

S*b*rbia

There's been a lot of talk around Casa de Cheeky as to whether this particular casa has outlived it's Cheeky-ness. 

My deep personal loathing of suburban America has kept us comfortably nestled in our snug, $700/sq. ft. grassless abode, patiently reminding ourselves of how much our mortgage helps our taxes while wincing every time a delivery truck grazes our car.  We love the convenience of walking half a block to the over-priced grocery store that smells like Bruce Vilanch's large intestine if it had been left on the counter all night.  We're just down the street from a movie theater that, including babysitting, costs $40 per show, and we've got tons of cool restaurants and bars down the street that we vaguely remember the insides of.  It's almost ideal!

But there's a down side, too.  Our yard is a lovely shade of asphalt.  The space between rooms is about the same as the space between these two words.  And the cost of school virtually guarantees I won't have groceries--let alone essentials like an iPhone--until retirement.

Meanwhile, our friends beckon us with bony fingers from across the rivers, tempting us with tails of gingerbread houses on gum-drop lanes, with attached garages and affordable schooling where all children are handed gold bullion and Ivy League scholarships.  "Join us," they call, "all are welcome."  Their dulcet pleas echo in our ears, promising joyous backyard barbecues, with traces of desperate pleas for companionship in shared misery beneath the surface.

No harm in looking, right?

This weekend we trekked north for a brief taste of what could be should our weakening bonds to the city ever snap.  Armed with a fair value estimate of what we could afford and a short set of rules (no McMansions, no Penn Station) we ventured into the wilds of Westchester County to see if our hard-earned equity could be turned into something that didn't require an elevator ride and a stored-value card to do laundry.

In Des Moines, or Little Rock, or Missoula, the sale of our apartment could probably be leveraged into an 8 bedroom estate with a carriage house, marble fountains full of 1958 Glen Garioch, and a family of jugglers and flame-eaters who would perform nightly for our amusement.  We didn't think our dollar would stretch quite that far around the city, but a bathroom with two sinks and minimal exposed plumbing seemed reasonable.  Sure enough, the towns we visited (officially "villages," which makes me think they're populated by Smurfs) were all charming and beautiful, with affordable schools, beach-front access, and no neighbors casually dropping anvils on the floor above us during Cheeky's nap time.

Of course those weren't the houses in OUR price range. 

No, the houses in OUR price range "have potential."  They're the ones that HGTV looks at and says, "Well, we COULD fix it up some, but we might as well just bring in the bulldozers."  Don't get me wrong, I'm as big a fan of floor-to-ceiling wood-paneling in EVERY ROOM as the next guy, but there's something missing when the only cleanser you need is Pledge.

And then there are the "pass-through" streets these over-priced quaint homes were located on.  "Pass-through" is suburban code for "acceleration-only" allowing cars to shoot by like Hot Wheels coming off the loop-de-loop.  Backing out of the driveway would suicidal, and ever since I saw Pet Semetary I've assumed all such roads were automatically accompanied with nearby burial grounds for the internment and resurrection of evil dopplegangers of pets and loved ones.  No thanks...I'll pass on the high-speed Frogger and homicidal zombie cats, thanks.

We walked away disheartened, not because we didn't find anything we liked but because of how obviously poor and unworthy we are.  It's not like we told the broker we were interested only in castles with helipads; we legitimately thought we might find a yard and driveway without also finding appliances from the dawn of electricity.  Nothing makes you appreciate your unobstructed view of the apartment next door like the prospect of commuting an hour to get there. 

My next strategy: contact some brokers to see if they can locate a nice house somewhere in the early 1990s.

I Promise To Post A Real Update Soon, But First A Tribute to Geeks

I really do have some juicy updates for y'all, but I've been busy fetching low-carb ketchup for Oodgie while her surgically-repaired foot heals.  It's not easy being the only person in the house who is both mobile and focused enough to make it from one room to another without being distracted by the need for candy/cheerios/Max & Ruby/little blankie.

Here's a morsel to tide you over until I get something better up later this week.  It's a flowchart of how Dungeons & Dragons made modern life possible (R.I.P. Gary) and, having charted my own path on the chart over the weekend, I have to concede some technical accuracy to this, particularly since I'm effectively writing this in the basement,  by myself, in the dark.  Make sure you click on the image to see it full-sized (or just click here)

This Alone Makes Me Want to Buy Tide

I don't often watch commercials, let alone rave about them.  Up until a couple days ago, I could only remember laughing out loud twice at commercials:  for Terry Tate, Office Linebacker and for Sprite's "Sun Fizz" ad.  I swear to god, though, I nearly soiled myself at Tide's "talking stain" commercial.  Maybe it's because I have a history of spillage, but I crack up every time I see this.  So in lieu of actual creativity on my part, I'm posting it here for your enjoyment.

I wonder if I can get Proctor & Gamble to send me a check for this...