Words of William - an occasional Q&A with my 6 year old

Q: What would you do if you were the President of the United States?
A: I would go to the White House, go swimming and then go bowling. I would invite you and Daddy into the Situation Room if 'something happened'.

Q: If you ruled the world, what would you do first?
A: Make Tin Tin come to life.

Q: What kind of pet would you like to have?
A buffalo and a pet Cobra.

Q: What do you want to be when you grow up?
A: A champion wrestler.

Q: What do you love to eat?
A: Rubbish.

Q: What is Vegemite? 
A: It's made of mashed up vegies by Australian shoppers.

Q: How do pictures get onto a TV screen?
A: A director puts them there.

Q: What do you think Heaven is like?
A: Gold floors, angels and lots of dead people.

Q: What do you think the tooth fairy does with all those teeth?
A: She takes them back to her house in the sky.

Q: Why did God send you to Mommy and Daddy?
A: Because Miss Jessica already had Emma.

Vegemite. Treasured by Aussies for eons. Despite what Americans think, this stuff is delicious and life would not be worth living without it. Spread it on toast, bread, on crackers with cheese, make a soup stock with it, eat it straight off a spoon. Does not resemble roofing tar at all. Is not made from 'mashed up vegies' as my son seems to believe. It is in fact, a yeast extract and one of the world's richest food sources of Vitamin B. The two Aussies in our house go through it like crazy. We start eating it as babies. We don't really go home to visit family. We go home to come back with a new haul, such as the one pictured above.  

Bruce on Jimmy Fallon last night

I just love his stupid face to the moon and back. That's Bruce's stupid face. Not Jimmy Fallon's.

Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen: Sexy And I Know It (3/2/12)

Retrospective: an occasional series

This is something I wrote a few years ago. It was for my original blog that never really got off the ground. I had good intentions. Whatever. I picked over some of the stuff and thought I'd recycle it here on Kingdom of Days when the moods strikes me. I like this one and it's nice to remember what was going on back then. 

This is from November 2008. 

Right now, I'm wondering where the heck Dorothy Gale is. And why she is taking her sweet time getting here. Yes, that Dorothy Gale. The one from Oz via Kansas. There is a 3 year old child here breaking his heart over the fact that this girl and her little dog too have not come over to play.

William is absolutely fixated on Dorothy. It started out being cute. He's been watching the Wizard of Oz for a while now and loves it. Which is great because it's my all time favorite movie. He has all the Madame Alexander characters they were giving away with Happy Meals a while back. Although we ordered most of them from Amazon. Since Happy Meals are the work of the devil. 

Recently he started asking for a Dorothy doll that 'takes her shoes and socks off'. No amount of explaining that these things are hard to come by (ie. impossible) would cut it. So we're looking for that non existent doll every place we go.

And then I think William had a dream that Dorothy came over to play. In his world, there is no difference between a dream and reality. He just woke up one day and told me Dorothy had been over. And he wanted to know when she would come again.

For three days now, every little thing is about Dorothy. What would Dorothy think of this? What would Dorothy say about that? Would Dorothy like to eat this? Could I share this with Dorothy? What does Dorothy say when she goes to the doctor? Is Dorothy ticklish? Can Dorothy come to Thanksgiving dinner with us? Does Dorothy like crystals? Will Dorothy be here to help us put up the Christmas tree?

So yeah, it's cute. Until it starts breaking your heart. Tonight, we were in a department store in the toy section. 'Maybe there'll be a Dorothy dolly here that takes off her shoes and socks?' he says, so hopeful.

Then William stops a woman and asks her if she's seen Dorothy. She looks at him blankly. 'Dorothy Gale', I fill in helpfully. 'Yeah, Dorothy Gale is her name!' William says. 'Have you seen her?'

'You mean Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz?' the woman asks.
'Yes! That's her!' William says. 'Have you seen her?'
The woman is kind and she plays along. 'No, I don't really think she's from around here but if I see her I will tell her you are looking for her.'

We go to California Tortilla for dinner and while I'm ordering William's burrito, he tells the clerk we need an extra burrito... for Dorothy. I shake my head at her. No extra burrito.

'But Dorothy is hungry! And she might be here soon!' All through our dinner, William asks when Dorothy is coming. 'If she comes, ' I say, 'I promise I will buy her a burrito.'

I swear my heart is about to break. I don't want to tell him she is not real. Much less go into that whole Judy Garland thing. He is three years old. He has such a wonderful, vivid imagination. I know kids have imaginary friends but this is somehow different. Normally, the kid with the friend can see the friend, and no one else can. In this version, the kid is waiting for the friend to show up and the friend is not only not coming, but the kid can't understand why.

So Dorothy Gale, if you're out there somewhere, it would be great if you could take a side trip off your little yellow brick road and stop by to play with my child.

Eventually, we did find a Dorothy that takes off her shoes and socks. Here she is pictured with a few of her friends and without her shoes and socks. Actually, don't know where the shoes and socks are.

Conversations about death; continued.

I wonder what goes on inside William's head sometimes. This morning he asked me 'Did you go to Big Man's funeral Mommy?'

It is so very sweet to me that if one day the entire E Street Band should turn up unannounced for tea and toast, my child would not bat an eyelid. At this point, Bruce and the band are just so much white noise in the background of his little life. Why on earth wouldn't I go to Big Man's funeral? (Larger than life sax player Clarence Clemons passed away suddenly last June after a stroke).

'No', I said. 'I did not go'.
'Does everyone have a funeral?' he asked.
'Most people have funerals, yes.'
'Well, you're coming to MY funeral aren't you?'

Me: I really, REALLY hope and pray that I never have to go to your funeral, my love.
William (indignant): WHAT? You won't come to MY funeral? WHY NOT? I swear, he was about to cry.

OK. So, life lesson #2344556. I try my best to explain. If things go according to plan, the parents will die before the children because they are older and have already lived their lives when God decides it's time. The children need their own time to grow old and live their lives before they die. That's the circle of life. If the child dies first, it usually means something super bad has happened.

William: So, you would cry if you had to go to my funeral?

Me: Child, you have no idea how much I would cry. In fact, I'm pretty sure I would need my own funeral my heart would be so broken.

William: Oh, so we'd be together anyway, right? You wouldn't be crying for long! And I bet we'd see Big Man up there in heaven too!

He moves happily onto the next thing that pops into his head but he has unwittingly tapped into my greatest fear. I don't know if other mothers are like me but from the moment I first held him in my arms I have (very) often been paralyzed by the thought that I might lose him. Dire Scenarios R Us. I am genius at this. The car that slams into us while we wait at a light. The truck on the highway that gets too close, clips our car at speed and sends us careening down an embankment to a fiery end. Except I survive. The fall off a bed that snaps a spine. The maniac who kidnaps him in Walmart*. The fatal disease that blindsides us. And so on in that jolly manner.

Before anyone feels the need to enlighten me, I am aware this is a completely useless skill set. And it's not like I set aside time each day to dwell on the many ways things could go belly up around here. These thoughts come unbidden and when I catch myself projecting doom I try hard to make myself stop.

I think it happens because I am acutely aware of my blessings. And I know that unspeakable crap happens to good people sometimes.

I know one other thing. I am thankful William has the framework of the concept of Heaven to work with at this tender age. Some people think this is perpetuating a fairytale but you know, to each his own. With no Heaven to contemplate, how do you help a child make sense of life and death when their inevitable questions come? How do you make sense of it for yourself for that matter? I am truly interested. What do people tell their children about suffering and death if they don't believe in a higher power or the hereafter? That shit just happens and then you're gone? I don't buy it.

*Why do I single out Walmart as a venue for child stealing? Oh, no particular reason.  I could just as easily have said Target. But. I. Didn't. 

Clarence and Bruce. Things will never be the same without you, Big Man. 

I don't know why, but this made me laugh :)

And the Comcast laughs just keep coming

Seriously, I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. We received a notice in the mail today from a collections company informing us we owe Comcast $740 for unreturned equipment. You know, the same equipment I've been trying to return to them for two weeks now. On the day we fired their sorry asses I was transferred to the 'pick up department' where I spent 52 minutes on hold with these fools. They never got back to me so the pickup was never organized.  There's a limit to how long someone should reasonably be expected to remain on hold and I reached it. I figured if they wanted their stuff back they would come looking for it in their own good time.

And so yeah, I gave the stinking DVR to my friend Jessica. Ironically, she is one of the three Comcast customers in the contiguous United States who has not had any drama with this company. It's especially ironic if you know her since she's a walking definition of a customer service department's worst nightmare. (Love you girl!)

So she calls her buddies at Comcast to explain how she got the DVR and to have it switched over to her account. What do you know, they have no record of the Schwinds, who live two miles from her, ever having had a Comcast account. Nope, don't know those freaky folks, so sure, go ahead and keep that DVR they tell her.

With steam coming out of my ears (remember I'm still dealing with our local phone company who keep charging us thousands of dollars for a service we don't have with them), I call Comcast customer service and proceed to lose the plot with them over the collections note.

'Oh I deeply apologise', says LaShawntell, (I'm not making that up), 'I can help you with this. I can get someone to come out and get that stuff for you, don't you worry'.

She puts me on hold (oh God, please not the Comcast 'on hold' treatment again). But she comes back after a blessedly short time and tells me 'we don't have no record of you having an account with us. You sure you have a Comcast account? What you say the last 4 digits of your social was again?'

Oh, my bad LaShawntell, sorry, yep, you're right, I was just joshin' with ya. Never mind! 

Dear Lord. She puts me on hold again and when she comes back she says 'Oh, I found y'all. Your service was disconnected so that's why you wasn't showing up. I see here you all have a technician scheduled to come to your house and do some work. I can get him to pick up the equipment when he comes to your appointment.'

Me: ???????? Um, why do we have a technician scheduled to come to our house?

LaShawntell: Says here they coming to do some outside work at your house.

Me: Outside work? Will they fix our fence? It's falling down. Because since we don't have a Comcast account, there's no work they could possibly be doing for us 'outside'. It would be great if they could fix our fence though.

LaShawntell: (crickets chirping).

Ultimately, it turned out she was unable to schedule someone to come pick up the equipment after all. She could put us on the schedule for a pick up but she couldn't guarantee when it might be. Not even a vague, ballpark idea of the day or week or month. I mentioned that I would not be sitting around waiting for a maybe pickup on some random maybe date but if she liked I could just bundle everything up and leave it on the porch.

Maybe it would still be there when they eventually came to collect it. Or maybe not. Hard to say really.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's adventures in Customer Service Hell when I try to physically return the equipment to an actual Comcast location myself. Hey, maybe I'll walk out with a cheque for $740.

We Take Care Of Our Own (With Lyrics) - Bruce Springsteen

Updates as they come to hand :) Now with accompanying video... Although, can it still be called a video if he is not technically moving in the video? Interesting.

And a question about the lyrics. 'There ain't no help, the 'Calvary' stayed home'. Followed by something about no one to hear the bugle blowing. I thought at first I was mishearing and that he was really saying 'cavalry', which seems to make more sense than Calvary. However, it's definitely 'Calvary', it's even capped in the lyrics on the video. This is an absolutely fascinating use of this word in this context. I'm going to go with that because I can't believe he would make such an error. Genius.

Thoughts anyone?

(And yes, ok, I am prepared to admit that I might be slightly biased but this song is Awesome.)