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.

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?

I’m not sure where exactly it came from.. it could have been Leonardo, the Terrible Monster (which is a funny book), or overhearing people say “murmer-murmer terrible twos..” but Callia now over-uses the phrase ‘this is terrible!’ It usually isn’t that bad.. but we were flipping thru channels today and landed on community access. “This is terrible!” she exclaimed. I laughed. “What is terrible?” “THIS!” (pointing to the tv.) “Yeah, you’re right.” (click).

Friday morning I was off work and stayed home with Callia and Laura. Laura had worked the over night shift Thursday night and was just getting ready to go to bed when Callia wanted to go upstairs and get some breakfast. I took her up there and fired up a pot of coffee and tried to figure out what to fix for her. She grabbed an apple out of the bowl on the table and started eating that. “Sweet!” I thought, “that solves that problem.”

Mr. Mom put some dishes away and was straightening up the kitchen / dining room. When the coffee was ready I fixed myself a cup and had the tv on. Laura came upstairs after a few minutes and asked Callia if she had eaten breakfast. Callia said, “No. I heard some talk about breakfast.. but I didn’t get any breakfast.”

Is there any doubt who she takes after? Callia is a three foot tall female version of me. I fear the future.

I should have typed this up two weeks ago.. then again, I should have renewed my driver’s license in April. It’s all about priorities, people. I’m trying to get mine in order.

Yesterday, I mentioned that Callia and I walk Guido every morning. A couple weeks ago, Callia was rushing to get her socks and shoes on in time to go race me to the park bench. Guido and I went on out to put some letters in the mailbox. Once Callia was ready, the door burst open and out she ran, yelling at us to wait for her. Behind her, she was dragging her little electronic puppy on a leash – one of those things with two buttons: bark and walk. It doesn’t walk very well and it sure doesn’t race at all. We walked up the street together, me holding Guido’s leash, Callia dragging her toy puppy behind her. She wasn’t holding the ‘walk’ button, but it didn’t matter cause he was on his side and spinning around.

It was really cute, and I wish I had a picture of us walking our dogs together.. but my camera’s broken and I think we’re years away from cyborg technology being affordable to the common man.. so that’s not an option yet.

Tonight, for her last milk before night time, I thought I’d tightened the lid on Callia’s cup enough, but when she drank it, it spilled a little. I apologized saying, “I didn’t screw it on good enough.” Callia exclaimed, “I’m screwed!” I thought that was over-reacting just a little.. but I can see it from her point of view, too.

Almost every morning, Callia and I walk Guido down the block to the park bench and back. Well, I walk. Guido lunges forward as if he’s on some weird game show on Japanese Nickelodian where his life depends upon peeing on as many objects as possible. Callia “races” us to the bench.. and she does run fast. Half the time, I’ve got Guido’s leash in one hand and my first coffee of the day in the other, so I kind of meander along, hoping not to trip and start my day off face down on the concrete and/or in dog poo.

This morning, Callia was talking about how pretty the leaves were and said, “the leaves keep falling out of the trees.” All-Knowing-Daddy offered his deep insight, “Maybe that’s why they call it Fall.” Callia looked concerned, and said, “we need to put the leaves back up in the trees!”

I’m such a goof for not writing more about the most wonderful little girl ever to smile at me. There is no excuse.. she does something every day that is worth documenting. She is a princess and a joy and my most favorite person in the world.

I’ve gotta go back and write about:
- walking the dog
- riding the bike
- coco & the fireplace
- stealing my coins
- not this dora/diego!
- i don’t have any choices / senses
- daddy, no talking
- sleep at night
- camping with the channel 8 people 9/23-4
- 9/17: music city queen riverboat
- 9/4-5: labor day @ Hascienda

Saturday afternoon I drove to Dickson to pick up Callia from her Aunt Jessie’s house & we stopped at TBG (the Truth, Beauty and Goodness Coffee House in Ashland City) on the way back. I got some sort of frosty coffee drink and Callia got a little chocolate syrup in her milk. We were hoping to do some kiddie karaoke, but the punk rock kids were doing sound checks for their face-ripping punk show that night. Callia liked the loud electric guitar.. which isn’t too surprising.. she loves Hendrix, Zeppelin and Funkadelic already, so I feel like I’ve done my job.

She wanted to play, but I had to explain that it was his guitar, and she’d have to wait till we got home so she could play her own. She’s got an acoustic Fender that one of my pals gave me a while back. She can’t hold it and play at the same time.. so she either lays it down and plays it like a steel guitar, or holds it up and leans it on her shoulder and plays it like a cello. She also has a harmonica and some other instruments. A couple weeks ago, she tried playing the harmonica and the guitar at the same time, but couldn’t coordinate it. Dylan himself would have proudly rambled something completely unintelligible.

She passed out when we got back into the car, so we went on home and I laid her in bed. Otherwise, I would have crashed the wedding reception at fellow comedian Leslie Nash’s house and let Callia jump on the trampoline with her daughter Emelia while Daddy scammed free BBQ.. but it wasn’t meant to be. Once she was in bed, I mowed the yard really quick and finished trimming just as it got too dark to see how poor of a job I had done.

Sunday, I took Callia horseback riding. She is obsessed with horses. We go to some stables to feed the horses there all the time, but she gets scared about touching them if they’re too aggressive. I did a Google search for “nashville horseback riding” and the first hit was Juro Stables in Mt. Juliet, which is just down Central Pike from the house.. 10 minutes away.

She was excited when we pulled into the ranch.. they’ve got a good 50+ horses there, plus peacocks (another favorite of hers) and guineas and chickens and puppies and stuff. When it was time to mount up, she freaked. I climbed up on our horse while holding her and she screamed the whole time, clinging onto my chest as if I was trying to give her away to gypsies (I get a bad rap for that. I’ve only sold her to gypsies three or four times.)

I pried her arms off of me, spun her around and sat her in the saddle in front of me. One of the trail guides led our horse around in a circle a few times and she finally calmed down and was grinning ear to ear. There were about eight people / horses in our group. By the time everybody else was mounted up, she was beaming with giddy goodness.

“We’re riding the horsey!” she’d squeal and giggle. I was a little scared about running, but when the horse trotted a bit, Callia looked like I’d just given her a popsicle and a pound of chocolate. She loved it.. so when we got the chance, we ran the horse again and again.
When we were on our way back to the barn, she said, “Daddy, I don’t want to go home! Can we do it again?” So, it looks like we’ll be back there soon.

She was too hyped up to take a nap in the afternoon, so we watched her favorite short film “The Robot vs. The Octopus Monster Saga” on the Beastie Boys dvd three or four times and then “The Incredibles.” She fell asleep on my chest halfway thru the movie.. and I’ve found that the key to being a well-rested parent is to sleep when the baby is sleeping, so I was out, too.

When we got up, we threw a pizza in the oven and watched the rest of the Incredibles. When it was over, we watched the Robot a few more times and then lit off some fireworks I bought cheap the day after the fourth (which would be July 5th, for those of you who are bad at math). With that, she was ready for bed.. so I read her a few books and snuggled her down.

I never would have thought the highlight of my weekend could ever be sitting on my back porch sharing a pizza with a two year old, but it’s pretty damn fun.