Rule one of living in Houston. The cockroaches are bigger than sheep. They will take at least three shoe bangings before they die. I learn this when I come home Sunday night and find one chillin' in my bath-tub. Death to all cockroaches! I nail it with a flip flop and then hunt for more (cockroaches live in packs and always have a buddy - just like diving - that's a fact).
Rule two - everyone probably carries a gun - so be nice to them.
Rule three - July 4 fireworks are pretty cool. So cool that they make fireworks that explode in the shape of spaceships and flowers. For November 5th - all I ask for is access to the same munitions supply as the city of Houston. Wow - what a show that was.
And now I'm back. Jetlagged. But back. Then I am gone. I am offshore and gone. And then I am back. And now my head is a mess and there are jelly moulds with more intellect than me. Travel has taken it's toll.
But I am glad to be back at last. I wrestle the kids on the couch for 2 hours - which ends with the boys beating me with toy dinosaurs against my nuts and laughing in hysterics. I only restore a semblance of authority when I stick Driver 3 on the playstation and demonstrate how to drive a stolen car at high speeds around the streets of Miami for half an hour.
Fintan wants a go - so I warn him that driving cars is for grown ups - and being chased by the police is very naughty.
I turn the game off after he drives into a wall, reverse shunts a police car into a petrol station and blows it up and then works out how to get the man out the car and how to shoot telephone kiosks. From now on. Driving games are banned. We will stick to Wall-e.
Wow - there's a minefield of stuff out there (as opposed to a "mimefield" which is a section of booby trapped french mime artists buried in combat zones) that I now need to re-audit with my "dad head" on. I never even noticed all that bad stuff on Driver - previously that was all the good stuff - before I realised I needed a moral barometer for my kids.
I scrutinise "Dinosaur Kings" with religious zeal - is it ok for dinosaurs to kill each other?
My answer is clear today when Fintan makes a robot out of some lego at the dentist's and proceeds to kill all the imaginary lego dinosaurs - "cos the volcano killed them". I am strangely happy - Fintan - four year old Fintan has grasped the supervolcano concept and the comet death concept in an instant. And who said Walking with Dinosaurs was a load of crap?
Sarah and I stay up late and watch clips from Live Aid on BBC4. And it feels like a different life. Freddie Mercury in his prime - U2 - Bob Geldoff swearing at the tv. And it feels great to reminisce - great to be alive. But somehow - I wish I was doing something like that right now - why aren't Sarah, me and the kids at a gig right now? Sitting in a tee-pee nodding our heads to some trance-like beat? Ok - cos that's insane - but tv is great at making things look good. Specially from the comfort of the sofa!
I take the recycle bin outside, then the normal bin - I ponder what to do with the half drunk bottle of coke - is that a recyle or a normal bin? Can I be arsed to empty the bottle and then recycle. Is being that lazy a bad thing? I wonder if the glasses of wine we've sunk have made me over analyze the minutae of life. Hmmmmmm.
Tomorrow is a new day and I suspect I have a soft tyre...God - when will this tyre obsession end? I'll let you know how it goes.
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