Cledus' Kick-Fightin' School

We tried to enroll Callia into the same secret ninja school Batman went thru, but it wasn’t until after we’d carried a weird flower up a snowy mountain that we discovered that the place had burnt down? Dejected, we looked into ninja schools closer to Nashville. There wasn’t a great selection to choose from. We visited Cledus’ Kick-Fightin’ School, but were unimpressed. For one thing, they had no affiliation with any higher organization.. but most frightening was they didn’t seem to have any rules other than, “don’t be a sissy!” We decided to keep looking.

Eventually we found Spirit Marital Arts in Hermitage. They’re good people and seem to have their stuff together. This weekend, they’re doing a board break-a-thon to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. It’s a good cause and the kids will have fun smashing stuff, so there really isn’t a downside to it.

If you want to donate a few dollars, it’s totally tax deductible.. here’s a way to do it via PayPal:

MY LITTLE GIRL BREAKS WOODEN BOARDS WITH HER HANDS!

UPDATE:

Thanks to everybody who has donated! Here’s what went down (kinda):

Here’s a thing we made during the snow a couple weeks ago starring Lacy, Guido, Ace, Laura, Callia and myself.. and introducing “Bertha The Snow Girl.”

Turkeys are cheap if you buy em the day after Thanksgiving. The bird is in the oven! The kegerator is full of Paulaner Hefe-Weizen!

AND after the meal, we’ll be gathering around the tv to watch the break dancing cinematic classics Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2. (I hate sports, so this is what we do instead of watching football or whatever it is people do.) We’re calling it “Thanksgiving 2: Electric Boogaloo.” I KNOW we did the exact same thing on February 25, 2009, but “Electric Boogaloo” is too fun to say and “Thanksgiving 3: Electric Boogaloo” sounds stupid. Technically, this could be “Thanksgiving 4: The Quest For Peace” – but I don’t want to over think this.

If you know where we live, you’re invited to stop in and eat and drink and whatnots. If you don’t know where we live, just put “chad riden’s address” into your GPS thing and you’ll find it.

Here’s the Facebook event page for Thanksgiving 2: Electric Boogaloo 2: Electric Boogaloo’er.. I’ve invited 200+ people over for dinner. I hope nobody lets me down. I know it’s late notice, but “planning” is for ass-hats. If you can’t make it for any reason, we’ll take that to mean you don’t love us.

The following is the front page story for The Daily Post-Athenian this weekend. This is just mind-blowing. FRONT PAGE NEWS IN ATHENS, TENNESSEE! Enjoy:

Friday, October 30, 2009
CLAXTON – You haven’t seen eerie or spooky until you’ve seen a 16-year-old jack-o’-lantern. Or, rather, the dried husk of a jack-o’-lantern with five faces carved in its surface.

Perry Riden said of the three “Riden Boys,” youngest son Eric was the pumpkin carver.

“Eric carved it when he was in eighth grade in 1993,” Riden said. “His Grandma Riden – whom they called Mammy – set it on cardboard over a floor register and dried it.”

Riden said her son got the idea to carve five faces in a large pumpkin from a character in “Transformers.” The design was patterned after the Quintessons, fictional aliens/space monsters that were both organic and robotic.

“If I understand it correctly, the Quintessons were creators of the Transformers in the 1980s cartoons,” Riden said. “This race of beings had squid-like arms and five faces on a robotic head.”

Riden has kept the dried pumpkin – complete with stem “cap” – for 16 years.

This is hilarious to me. Front page news! “Look! It’s an old pumpkin!”

The explanation of who the Quintessons are and what their role was in the original Transformers cartoons is all straight from me. I Twittered about being on the phone with my mom, explaining that to her. I spent 20 minutes giving her all of the glorious back-story details I have had crammed away in my brain since, what, 1985? That stuff is important! Everything else, forgotten. I took three Calculus classes in college. THREE! (Well, let’s be honest. I took the same Calculus class three times before I passed it. Still..) I remember NOTHING. I DO know the origin story of the Transformers inside and out. So suck on that, complete lack of marketable skills!

They referred to Grace Riden as “Mammy” – we started calling my dad’s parents “Mammy and Pappy” because they lived in Maryville, TN (read: “Muurrrrrrrrrviilllle” – not kidding, that’s how you say it) and those were the most country sounding names we could think up. They thought it was funny, too, and totally went along with it. I love how it makes us sound even more country bumpkin now. “Funky punkin’ bumpkin!”

Also, the ambiguous “Riden has kept the dried pumpkin.. for 16 years.” sounds like this is a wacky family keepsake my mom has held on to. She is a packrat, and it has to stop.. but I should clarify.. Eric Riden has kept the dried pumpkin for 16 years. Granted, it’s been sitting in his old bedroom back at the Riden Hascienda where he has not lived in the last 10 years.. but yeah it’s there. And it’s not the strangest thing there, by a long shot.. so send a photog and a reporter, news hounds, ’cause the story is much deeper than a dried gourd.

The paper, inexplicably, posted a 53-second video of the thing being rotated again and again.

Some people ask, “Hey Chad, what was high school like for you?” Imagine being in a town where the most exciting news for the weekend is a dried out pumpkin. This morning, there were a dozen elderly people sitting in a Hardees in Athens, TN drinking coffee and talking about the Quintessons.

Anytime you plan on staring at the sun for a while, it’s just smart to take a few precautions.

always wear protection

Callia and I made this recipe up from scratch last night. It sounds crazy, but they’re pretty tasty.

CALLIA’S COOKIES

1 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
2 1/4 cup flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 cup oatmeal
12 oz. chocolate chips
1 cup chopped peanuts
1/2 tsp. salt
1 banana
5-6 strawberries
1/2 peach

1. Cream butter, sugar, vanilla, chocolate chips
2. Add eggs, beat well.
3. Add flour, baking soda, salt, oatmeal. Mix.
4. Add mashed fruit. Mix.
5. Stir in nuts, additional chocolate chips optional
6. Plop on greased pan
7. Bake 10 min. @ 375.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

I guess it makes sense?

If one good luck charm doesn’t work out the way they planned, hopefully the other will save the day, right?

I don’t know where you buy one of these but I’ll bet somebody got rich selling them. I wonder what they credit more for their success? Luck? Jesus? The fusion of both made their dreams come true. May we all be so lucky / blessed.

My 3-year-old daughter has an arch-enemy on the playground: “The Girl In The Yellow Shirt.” Callia is always honest with me about whether or not she got into trouble or did anything bad at the daycare. She always tattles on herself and then apologizes to me and anybody else who was involved, without being prompted. The other day I went to pick her up and she had a report for me: she’d gotten into trouble.

It all comes down to what seems to me to be a personality conflict between Callia and someone she keeps referring to as “The Girl In The Yellow Shirt.” No name, no other details.. no notion of who this person is. She was wearing a yellow shirt and she was trouble. It took a while for me to get the whole story out of her.. but Callia and I talked about how we treat and deal with other people & that was that. Lessons learned and all is good.

Today, when I picked her up Callia declared that she’d gotten into trouble and was bad. One of the teachers came over and said that she was very impressed.. that a girl had hit Callia and she didn’t retaliate – she just told the girl “NO! Don’t hit me.” and walked away. Callia chimed in saying it was (who else?) “The Girl In The Yellow Shirt.” Uh-oh.. recurring problems with this chick.

I was curious, though.. so I had to ask, “was she wearing a yellow shirt again today?”

“Yes.”

“Two days in a row? Yellow shirt?”

“Yeah.”

“Really. That’s weird.”

“She’s mean.”

“I guess so..”

I’m not sure if this girl even exists.. and I’m not sure which scenario would be better: imaginary enemy or real enemy who already has picked out a trademark Super Villian outfit. Either way, I’ve got my eyes open and I’m lookin’ for yellow.

Callia’s third birthday has come and gone.. but Callia is still excited about it all. Today in the car, completely out of the nowhere, she says, “Daddy, I want a candle in my applesauce and people singing Happy Birthday.. .. ..and presents.”

Hey, who doesn’t want a candle in their applesauce?