mad cow disease

Lorca’s Week in Review (One sammich short of a picnic)

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This week was a complete and total clambake. I had a lot of fun with my kids, as evidenced by the YouTube video I posted of me tricking them into getting on a historic wooden roller coaster by telling them we were really in the line for the train ride. What? It was sort of a train. It had tracks and wheels.

We also went on this amazing four-story ropes course thing on the next mountain over from us and sadly, they wouldn’t let me take my camera. They said it was for my safety since I needed both hands to hold on to my rope, but I totally know it was because they were afraid of a lawsuit and just didn’t want me using my little camera as evidence.

I read a couple of books this week, and only one of them really sucked. The other one only mildly sucked, mostly because it was a book about ultra-religious strict Jews and it’s one of the Ten Commandments that you can’t not like a book about people who have suffered as much as the Jews. The book that really sucked was about rich people who vacation in their swanky summer homes on these quaint little islands off the coast of Maine and it’s practically preordained that you can hate those people because they very well may have had something to do with the plight of the Jews. They certainly don’t let Jews play golf at their country clubs in the crappy book, so I can say all kinds of ugly stuff about it.

On my autism blog, I explained why holidays like the Fourth of July really suck for autistic people. SUDDENLY it’s okay to set stuff on fire???

On these other blogs I read (mostly during time when I probably should be cooking a meal or swabbing Neosporin on someone), I found this great stuff:

Eating My Yard – about this total overachiever who actually cooks things

Toronto Pride – My friend with the panties on her website posted a whole bunch of pictures from the Toronto Pride parade. I could be wrong, but I THINK it either has to do with being proud of being gay or being proud of being from Toronto. The jury’s still out.

Dr. Jekyll and PMS – This writer tackles the ever unpopular male version of PMS. Or Mad Cow Disease. Whichever.

Tomorrow is a momentous day in our household: it’s the day we force our oldest child to join the cross country team. She’s already looking for a new home, preferably one with lots of fried foods and an aversion to any activity more strenuous than opening your own can of soda. Sadly, both of her parents are Ironman 70.3 finishers and one of us (yeah, it’s totally me) is a Boston Marathon qualifier. I’m kind of floored that she somehow thought she was NOT going to participate in school sports. Go figure.

Let That Be A Lesson To You

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I’ve had some dark days over the years, very real moments in my life when I’ve had to ask the universe, “WHY?” But I had a revelation today in which I had the great fortune to find something that not many people ever discover, especially at a relatively young age like I did. I have discovered my purpose in life.

I am here on Earth to serve as a warning to others. I am a proverbial head-on-a-London-bridge-pike. Listen to my tales of woe and learn from my misfortune.

When I was three, I ate some kind of weird insanity-pepper because my brothers told me it was a cherry popsicle. I think it actually scarred the inside of my mouth. I learned that my brothers are assholes and I’m not really all that smart. And that my parents are psychos who grow insanity peppers in their garden.

At eight years old, I learned never to listen to my dad because he gave me a plastic garbage sack and told me to amuse myself by picking up litter. I reached out and grabbed a dull metal cannister that happened to be an Army-issue smoke grenade and burned the snot out of my hand. Who the heck leaves those things lying around?

The summer before sixth grade my feet had a growth spurt while the rest of my body did not, and I seem to recall that just one foot grew a lot bigger at first and the other one had to catch up to it. Who knew that could happen? I spent pretty much the entire school year face down in various places and my mom had to send a note asking the office to call her if I fell down any more so she could have me evaluated for epilepsy.

Oddly enough, middle school wasn’t too bad but by high school I learned that giving your kids weird names like Lorca means all the teachers are going to call the child “Orca” on the first day of school because the idiot in the office left off the first letter of her name by mistake. Trust me on this, name your kid Sam. Boy or girl, doesn’t matter.

By high school graduation, I ate what was possibly Mad Cow Disease-ly tainted beef and therefore cannot give blood anymore because I was contaminated. Congratulations, I can no longer donate a vital organ, either, even after I’m dead.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was just my formative years. Random weird crap has been happening to me ever since then, crazy things that make people think, “Seriously? What exactly were you doing when a piece of the Space Shuttle landed on your head?” This stuff keeps happening to me because I am alive just to be a professional cautionary tale. My entire life is meant for others to sit back and watch what happens to me. It’s like being a whipping boy, only my suffering comes from being strip searched in three different airports for traveling to the Middle East without any luggage but coming home with luggage. It’s a long story.