My lack of swarth is apparent. Yet, more progress:
The battered trucker hat will be a nice touch, once the thing finally starts to bulk up. (As a reminder, support the DadCentric Movember Cause here. Don't let this be all for naught. Even though "this" is admittedly fairly sparse.)
All this talk of excess body hair makes me cringe, for it reminds me of my seething, terrified, fully rational hatred of primates in general and monkeys in particular.
Some people don't like spiders. Some have an aversion to rats. Many people don't like snakes. I hate monkeys. Hate and fear them. They are shifty hairy little bastards who'd just as soon bite off your scrotum as look at you, and even if they only looked at you they'd eventually throw their feces at you and jerk off and shriek and pick nits out of each other's fur and eat them and O fuck you monkeys fuck you straight to Hell.
And don't get me started on gibbons.
The problem with having The Monkey as mortal enemy and being a parent is that kids loooooove monkeys. When we took Lucas to the zoo, he and Beth insisted on seeing them. I gagged back a scream as the kid watched a particularly jocular orangutan stick his leathery red ass against the ape-cell glass. Lucas knew a little Baby Sign Language; he tapped his fingers together in delight and said "Mo' mo' monkey, daddy!" when the hideous creature shuffled off to do whatever orangutans do. (This one jumped on to a tire swing and began to hoot loudly, which I can only assume was a vital component of the ape community's plan to rise up and enslave their human masters.) I've tried to convince Lucas that monkeys are an abomination ("Dad, what's an abomination?") to no avail. They have him under their malignant simian spell.
I was giving Zoe a bath tonight; it was Shampoo Time, and of course the bottle of Suave Kiddie Shampoo has a picture of a grinning monkey on it. Bet you're thinking of eating your young, you prehensile-toed..."I don't wike monkeys."
"Excuse me?"
She wore a grim expression. "I don't wike monkeys, Daddy."
"You don't like monkeys."
"No. I wike horsies!"
Intriguing. "Do you like...cats?"
"I wike cats."
"Do you like doggies?"
"I WUV doggies!"
"And you like horsies."
"Uh huh. I don't wike bears. They scare me."
We did watch a lot of Colbert while she was in the womb. "You don't like bears. And you don't like monkeys."
"No. I don't. Wike. Monkeys."
"Excellent. We've much to discuss, you and I."
