The freaks come out at night

STU WARNING: This entry, has little to do with Team Tinsley, and some might find it offensive. If you want a good Team Tinsley Team Tinsley story, go here. if not, well, read on...

You remember that song by Whodini, Freaks come out at night. I used to think they were singing the Flintstones come out at night. Then one day, someone said, Stu, you dumbass, the freaks come out at night. Oh, I said, I was never that well versed in the electric boogaloo.

However, I was and am still good a spotting a freak as easily as I could spot Fred Flintstone, and I spotted one rolling up to our Casa a few Saturday's in the rearview. I was across the street in my neighbors yard, giving him our house key. We were preparing to leave for a week, as we were having our hardwood floors redone. The freak I spotted, as I asked Eric to pick up our mail, and watch the casa, was the lady who worked for the floor company that was doing the job. She had come by last minute to finalize the price.

I knew this lady, let's call her Floory (you'll see why she needs an alias in a bit,) only from My Lovely Bride. She had done all the dealings with Floory on our floors, most recently the tile in our kitchen and den. I don't think my Bride had even met her face to face. So, watching her from across the street she didn't know who I was, yet, I knew who she was, and my freakar was going off, full tilt boogie. If that wasn't enough, Eric even asked, who is that, in a tone of voice that suggested he too, thought she looked a bit freakish. He didn't want to say to much though, as Floory could be a friend of the family. I doubt he thought she was family though, unless of course our family had a colorful history, with a strong emphasis on color. You see, Floory was an african american. For those that haven't seen our pics on the right side of this here BLOG, and even though we did send out a Happy Kwanza card last year, and fight the power every chance we get, Team Tinsley is white. Honky. Caucasian. Feel free to call it what you want in this PC world of ours. The point, I wasn't the only one picking up the freakar on Floory.

Fast forward, a few hours later, as I was preparing to move things out of our house (having your hardwood floors redone while you reside in the home is a tremendous beating,) I found a digital camera in MLB's closet. Strange. It wasn't our camera, and I had a pretty good idea that it wasn't one my wife had purchased on the down-low, so, playing an Okie version of Sherlock Holmes, sans the pipe, I deduced it must be Floory's. I walked into the Little Warrior's room where MLB was moving things out for the floor job and she confirmed, that Floory had in fact, had a camera with her. She promptly got on the horn and called Floory to let her know where she had left it. A few minutes later (Floory is worse than me, she never answers her phone, you have to leave a message and she then will call you back later) Floory told MLB to simply leave the camera on our bar/counter and that her crew would pick it up on Monday.

W.W.J.D.? Not sure, they didn't have digital cameras back in the day, but what I did, after a few beers, was to grab the camera off the bar and see what Floory had on her memory card. Boring stuff. She had about 10 successive pics of floors. Hardwood. Before, after, that sort of thing. At about the 11th picture, I got some cute kid pics. In front of a house, next to a truck. Then I'd get another pic of a floor. Kids. Floor. Co-worker (or so it appeared.) Floor. Kids. Floor. Kids. Kids. Kids. Floor. Kids. Floor. So on, etc. I was about to put the camera down, and head to the beer fridge (in our garage)and quit my invasion of Floory's privacy when I finally (about 20 pics in) hit the shit. In front of me, on the small preview screen was Floory, wearing some nighty type outfit. Very tasteful. No nudity. Posing seductively. I promptly forgot about the beer, and with anticipation scrolled to the next shot. Guess what. It was a floor. Hardwood. Before shot. I quickly scrolled to the next shot. Kids. Followed by Floor. Kids. Floor. Floor. Kids. Then, again, my efforts where rewarded with another seductive Floory pose, her on all fours on a bed, looking seductively over her left shoulder at the camera/photographer. Ruff. Next shot. Floor. Kids. Floor. Floor. Floory's in a new nighty, with her left breast hanging out of her bra, looking seductive again. I guess Floory fashions herself a Playmate? I guess I'll use that as my segue into describing more of Floory. Aside from her being a black woman, you don't know much about her appearance. Let's just say this, if Floory did fashion herself a Playmate and wanted the centerfold, Hugh would have to redesign Playboy to be the size of say, your city newsapaper. To the point. Floory wasn't fat, but she wasn't thin either. My Mom would say Big Boned. I'd say (MLB hates when I say this) she was thick.

Wonder what my Lovely Bride would say? Well about this time, my laughter at the pics he got her attention, and she quit packing up The Little Warriors room and came into the kitchen/den area to see what I was doing. As soon as she rounded the corner into the kitchen from the hall and saw the camera, she knew. Shaking her head, she asked, "what are you doing", to which I promptly held up the camera's small preview window and showed her Floory flat on her back effecting a Playboy-esque pose, Floory could have well been Medusa, as MLB was frozen, aghast by what she saw, but unable to turn away. I kept on scrolling offering up the strangest juxtaposition of images. Floor. Floor. Truck. Kids. Kids. Floor. Floory Playboy-esque pose. Floory Playboy-esque pose. Floory's friend (it appears, at least based on her photography, that Floory had a proclivity toward the type of women who worshiped Sappho of the Island of Lesbos, if you dig that mythology reference) in a Playboy-esque pose, Floor. Floor. Kids. Floor. Kids. Floory in a Hustler-esque pose. Floory in a Playboy-esque pose. Floors. Kids. Floory in a Swank-esque, I don't really want to see you do that with your underwear type pose. Followed by the exact same pose but with a different color of underwear - wadrobe change. Followed by what else, Floor. Floor. Kids. Floor. Kids. Floor. On and on and on.

After 150+ pics, I grew bored and decided to turn off the camera. MLB was still fretting over my invasion of Floory's privacy, but I wasn't really listening to her complaints. I was wondering if I had the ability to download Floory's pics. Her camera was a different brand than mine. I was also wondering how big her memory card was because she had a lot of pics on her camera.

As you can see, I didn't download the pics, otherwise you would see Floory on the right side of this page doing her let me make me underwear disappear trick. Alas, I was busy trying to vacate the house so they could start the floor job, so I forget the camera and the pics, drank more beer, and packed up all of our stuff in our POD thing, and then we headed to Houston Town. That's when the story got interesting, for me at least. MLB who was aghast at my invasion of Floory's privacy, promptly told the story to Jerr and Joyce (my parents.) Horrified when it was going down, Floory has now become one of Cart's favorite go to stories, the one she'll trot out at parties, or when a good friend asks about our floors. She's even prompted me to tell it at one point.

Me. Well, I really haven't told the story to anyone, except the time Carter asked me too, and well, now. It was fun at the time, but, funny shit happens to me a lot, so it's not necessarily top of my pops, like say this story.

For those that wonder if have any regrets? For invading poor Floory's digital camera, and privacy. Yes. I do. You see, upon our return from Houston Town, our house was much dirtier than we were told it would be from the job. They came up short on cleaning up as promised. This caused us a tremendous amout of extra work. The floors did look good. We were pleased with them. Well, not the entire Team. Ethan had a hard time with them actually. But, it was more, the change, and not letting go sort of hard time. He actually fell on floors when he saw them for the first time (we changed the color of the finish dramatically) crying, "I want my yellow floors!" The rest of the weekend, he'd say, "I want to go home," which in Ethanese meant, he wanted his old floors back. Regret. My regret is this. I should have downloaded the pics and emailed one to Floory as I commented on her lack of follow through on clean up while asking for a significant discount on the job.

Until I BLOG again...Floor. Kids. Floor. Floor. Kids. Floory on all fours on her bed. Kids. Floory doing the undies trick. MYFloor! Kids. etc. I hope!

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

A few weeks in the rearview, I, Stuart Tinsley, husband of Carter, father of Wyatt and Ethan, turned 38 years old. Say it with me. Holy shit. Down hill to 40, gaining speed. I write that for this. Mr. Coffee = Joe DiMaggio for me. I know, he was one of the best baseball players ever. He was married to Marilyn Monroe. Doesn't matter. That's not how I remember Joe. I remember him mainly for being a shill for Mr. Coffee in my formative years (read: 1970s.) That's always the first thing I think of when I hear his name, read about him, etc. His legacy (with me at least.) My second thought re: Joe is usually his reference in Mrs. Robinson, you know the song from the movie by Simon and Garfunkle. When I was young I thought it odd that Paul and Art would put a guy that hawked coffee pots in a song in which they wonder where he has gone when it was clear that he was on TV selling coffee pots. That's probably just me though. Huh? That's what you are probably asking yourself right about now, funk show brother. What does this entry have to do with my favorite Team of Tinsleys. Everything. Dig this.

Back in 1991 I was shacking with a young lady whom I had dated for some time. We had a big ugly break-up, and I moved out, pretty quickly. I took the two cats (both now deceased, one recently) as well as a few pieces of furniture, but that was pretty much it. I didn't have plates, or utensils, cups, or a coffee maker. Being relatively new to Dallas, and a tremendous dipshit, I loaded up in my GEO Storm and drove south on I-35 to Wal-Mart in, rim shot please, Waxahachie. Considering that at the time I resided in the Oak Lawn area of Dallas (slightly North of downtown Dallas) this was a tremendously silly thing to do. For those not familiar with the lay of the Messoplex, imagine my Pad in Oak Lawn to be, well, New York City. Waxahachie can be played by Syracuse, NY. Way upstate. Hundreds of miles away. I drove from NYC to Syracuse to buy a coffee pot when I could have taken a ferry a few miles across the river to Newark, NJ and bought one. I was (and am) a dipshit.

On this trip, my epic journey to stock up my new bachelor pad in Oak Lawn I purchased many things, one of which was a Mr. Coffee coffee maker. Fast forward to now, well, actually last week, and said coffee pot died. Now, regular readers of this here BLOG know that I have certain issues and won't be surprised to read that my old coffee pot is still sitting on our counter, right next to the shiny new replacement. I can't throw the damn thing away. Silly. Yes. Stupid. Certainly. In fact, just the other day, My Lovely Bride asked me, why haven't you thrown the coffee pot away (It should be noted that My Lovely Bride doesn't drink coffee, she claims it gives her the shits, which is probably more than you wanted to know, but my point, most coffee related happenings in our casa are done by me.) My answer. I don't really know. We've had trash pick up three times since it died. It is just an old, and gross, coffee pot, that I'm holding onto. I'm so bad, that I've even contemplated trying to fix it. You see, it still kind of works. It takes an hour to brew a pot of coffee, but it still brews. I thought maybe I could open it up and fix it and bring it to work? Then I remember, I'm inept, Mr. Fix-It I'm not. No Honey Do's, more Honey DON'T.

All of this was running through my head as I sat down to pay bills this past Saturday. Freshly brewed mug of coffee in front of me (from the new machine,) I had just seen the fallen coffee pot silently (and again, so dirty) sitting on the counter next to the new machine. Spacing out in front of the computer I was abruptly brought back to, what was then, NOW, by the entry of The Tinsley Boy(s) into our Dining/Living area. The Boy(s) will often follow me into this room when I pay bills, generally making it so I can't accomplish my task. Didn't matter this time though, as I was lost in thought, thinking about the timeline of my life with a Mr. Coffee coffee pot as my guide, with Once In A Lifetime serving as my soundtrack.

How did I get here? I hadn't really figured that out when E, Boy #1, The Elder Boy, erupted into a fierce howling cry. First thought was Wy, Boy #2, the Younger, our Little Warrior had some how hurt his big brother. I quickly did the Daddy deduction thing, and determined that Wy, across the room, and engaged in playing with a truck couldn't have hurt Ethan. Ethan was crying about something else? Thankfully, Boy #1 has a good command of the language for a 3 1/2 year old, which comes in handy at such times, so I simply asked him, what's wrong? Nothing. He was so upset that he couldn't talk. He was doing that crazy wailing sort of cry where you can't even catch your breath. As he continued, I started to get a bit upset myself, worrying that something big was up, that he had in fact hurt himself bad. Maybe something internally. Again, and a bit more urgently, I asked him what was wrong. Nothing. Huff huff, cry cry. So, I picked him up and placed him in my arms and on my lap. I was sitting on the chair that we use for our computer. It sits in front of our computer / home-office armoire. This seemed to make him cry harder which I found very curious? Did my moving him cause him pain? I was about to sound the alarm, and get My Lovely Bride involved (its indicative of how crazy the house is that she didn't immediately come running when the Boy erupted into his wailing, then again, I guess she figured I was in charge and on top of it - wrong) - she is good at this sort of thing, when he stroked the chair, and wailed louder.

That's when it hit me. That Daddy deduction thing working like some sort of doppler radar. I knew what was up...

You see, Dear Reader, what you don't know is this...until recently, like the day before, the chair we were sitting in was red. We went to Houston a few weeks back and my Mom gave us a khaki slip cover for the chair which My Lovely Bride had put upon it. Ethan hadn't noticed the change, and when he did, well he went into the crying thing. He was freaking out over a slip cover. Holding onto what was, tight. As I typed at the beginning, I'm 38, and although I've shed no tears over the Mr. Coffee, I still can't throw the damn thing away. Holy shit. The Boy is a chip off the old block, and, I'm sad to say, that ain't necessarily good in this instance.

Until I BLOG again...anyone want an old, dirty, sort of working Mr. Coffee coffee pot?

rivalidad del hermano

I'm an only child. I tell you that for this: most of the time I have no idea how to handle the Boy(s) sibling rivalry. It's voodoo. My go to move is generally to apply my own code to a situation. The problem with that approach though, I'm an adult. The Boy(s) are, well boys. Example. Wyatt is sitting in Ethan's room watching TV. Minding his own business. Ethan, in a bad mood for whatever reason, comes in and turns the TV off because he's annoyed that Wyatt is in his room, and well, he's in a bad mood and he wants to spread the joy. That's not cool. If someone did that to me, I'd tell them to F bomb off, or worse. But it ain't me, It happened to Wy, and he is in Ethan's room. So, what do I do? Be Wy's advocate. Let the natural pecking order happen? That's a rhetorical question. No need to email me. That's the kind of stuff that just baffles me. I actually cited Ethan in my example, truth be told, Wy is much more the instigator. Being smaller I guess, he likes to mess with E's mind. Example. Ethan is notoriously up tight about his stuff. Catalogs it. Has it in bags and boxes, all sorts of strange places. Sleeps with it. Curious. Very curious. Wy knowing this, will get close to an area of stuff and even touch it (not take it mind you, but touch it.) Ethan freaks out and then retaliates against Wy. Again, Wy started it? He knew his brother would freak. That's why he did it in the first place. What do you do?

These sort of situations are non-stop at our Casa. The end result is usually one of the Boy(s) ends up crying at which point me or my Lovely Bride get involved and have to deliver some sort of justice. It's tough, and as I said earlier, especially for me because of the only child thing.

All of that was typed to get to this...The other day, MLB is gone. Wyatt is watching The Incredibles in Ethan's room. Ethan leaves the front room, and me, to go to his room. Two minutes later, Wyatt erupts in a howling cry that sounds like he is genuinely hurt, vs. a fake cry, or mad cry. I jump from my throne of impotence, annoyed to be honest, to investigate, bum rushing into the room. Living up to the idiot that I am, I demand of Ethan, "What happened." Ethan stares at me with a mean smile, incriminating himself. Wy continues to howl. I fetch a plug and a blanket and pick him up for some comforting. Since he's still crying after the plug/blanket/pick-up he's been hurt hurt. Still I 'm not sure what happened. There are no marks? Again, I ask Ethan, "What happened to your brother." Again, Ethan gives me that smirky grin that leads me to believe he has done something to Wy. I decide to change my tack. "What did you do your Brother?" Nothing. Not counting to ten and getting mad myself, I again, demand, "What did you do to your Brother. You'd better tell me, NOW."

I'm an idiot. I mean, let's think about what I'm asking a 3 1/2 year old. Even if he did get the moral, right and wrong aspect of what I'm asking (all the instruction manuals say they don't get the moral, black and white thing at this age) is he actually going to step up and incriminate himself by telling me? Especially when I'm clearly pissed, holding his crying brother.

Still, he know he needs to give me something, so he looks at me, working up his I'm trying to get away with something let me work it cute smile, and said, "Dkadfad adfsalfsd iadfadf afdasfsdfd lafdafdadfa adfooadf." I type it like that because it was complete gibberish. Reminded me of some sort of Wy baby babble.

"What?!"

He then repeated himself, nearly exactly.

At this point, I'm more confused than mad. Wondering if he's really telling me something - that I'm not getting - and or if he is simply messing with me.

"What?"
"It's ok Dad." Placated by a 3 1/2 year old.
"What did you say Ethan. What happened to your brother?"
"Dkadfad adfsalfsd iadfadf afdasfsdfd lafdafdadfa adfooadf."
"What?!?! What are you saying?"

He then walked over to me, giving me that big fake I'm so cute you can't be mad at me smile, and gave me a big fake cute sweet leg hug (I'm standing holding his crying brother.) I wasn't buying it. I again, asked, sternly.

"What did you do to your brother Ethan. What are you saying?"

To which he replied (I shit you not.)
"It's spanish."

Until I BLOG again...Voy a azotar el behi del muchacho.