Meanwhile, on Christmas Island…

As much as I am loathe to write about personal stuff, I’m coming off a pretty good run of days here, and wanted to jot something down so next time everything is looking all ‘Pete and Jonathan; at the Grunion; on Wednesday afternoon!’, I’ll have something to look at and go, “Wait, that’s right, things haven’t always sucked; therefore they might once again cease to suck if I just hang in there...”

So this is a note to my future self: We had a pretty good week this week. You haven’t make a howling ass out of yourself in at least seven days. If there was a support group for people like you, you could get a chip today.

The Man Cub is once again waking up half-way through the night requiring succor, but it’s usually just when I’m getting ready to call it a night anyhow, and I’m really enjoying this stage of parenting. It won’t be long before he’s not gonna want to sit in his Daddy’s lap, sucking his thumb and watching cartoons and old Sherlock Holmes movies. Or be sung back to sleep in the middle of the night.

These are the glory days.

And the trade-off seems to be he’s sleeping till 6am finally (god bless you, DST!), so I think it’s safe to say establishing – at last – a dependable sleep routine has been key to my lack of dickishness in the last week. A well-rested Fang is a well-behaved Fang. Frankly, any rigorously enforced schedule makes him feel more comfortable, especially when he’s doing the rigorous enforcing. But I digress. Or he does. What person am I writing this thing in?

The dog is slowly becoming a crumbling ruin of his former self, and he costs about as much to maintain as most crumbling ruins – like 10-15% of the GNP. But the boy likes to throw things at him and bother him when he’s eating, and I’ve gotten used to force-feeding him his current ration of 87 pills a week, so we’re continuing to bite the financial bullet. As long as he photographs well, he’s got a place in my heart and our debt equation.

I don’t talk about The Missus’ business. She has her own blog for that; and if you know me, you know where to find her online. But if I haven’t been an asshole for a week, she’s the one I haven’t been an asshole to, and she probably had a lot to do with why not, so let me just say “thanks.” It’s tough fucking work being a total prick. Don’t let Bush making it look so easy fool you. It takes some doing. No wonder he’s in bed by 9 every night – he must be beat!

So as of today, I’m very happy to report that things are cool, even though – and I’m not ashamed to admit it – one of us remains in deep denial: