My Canadian Adventure

[a guest blog by Helga]

  Hi, it’s me again—Helga!  You might remember me from my previous blog.  Well, since then I’ve gotten twice as big and four times as smart.  And, like the Beach Boys, I get around.

  I went to Canada, and my parents, Pemulis and Joelle, went with me.  Canada!  OMG, the noise . . . and the people!  (That’s another allusion—if you know where to look.)  Get this: my dad has a dad!  And my mom has a dad!  Who knew?  One of them is never home and the other is always home.  I know what moms do (look after me), but what do dads do?  Beats me.

  I have a cousin Liesl, who can walk.  And I have a cousin Emily, who is even bigger than Liesl, and a boy cousin (Yecch!  Boys!) John, who is enormous.  In Canada, they grow them big.  In Germany, they just grow them fat, like Dieter in my swimming class.

  This is Dieter:

  From John and Emily I learned to talk.  Well, everyone thinks it’s shrieking, but really it’s talking.  I’m trying to teach my mom and dad to talk like I do, but it’s hard going.  They are so quiet you can scarcely hear them.  If you don’t exercise your lungs, they’ll disappear.  Use it or lose it, I say.

  Anyway, Canada . . . it’s like Germany, only full of my relatives.  Do you know how many relatives I have?  Scores.  Scads.  Multitudes.  One of them has 4 legs and lives with my mom’s mom.  He can’t pick me up, so I guess he’s kind of the idiot in my family.  Nice guy and all, but if you can’t pick me up and carry me, what use are you anyway?

  In Canada I met my Onkel Tom, and he liked me so much he followed me to Germany.  Onkel Tom owns a house and 2 cars!  What’s wrong with my dad that he owns almost no cool stuff?  Check out this comparison:

Onkel Tom                                   Dad

2 cars                                           0 cars

1 house                                        0 houses

5 guitars                                       1 guitar (he claims to have a 2nd)

962 Neil Young CDs                    0 Neil Young CDs

12,798 toys                                  6 toys (all mine)

1 outdoor pool                              0 outdoor stuff 

0 David Foster Wallace books     8 David Foster Wallace books

39,804 hairs                                 162 hairs

Leading in 7 categories:  Onkel Tom.  Leading in 1 lameass category:  Dad.  When I get older, I’m going to send my dad out to work at a bigger company than the internet startup that employs him now.  Obviously if we’re going to live in the style to which I hope to become accustomed, we’re going to need more euros.  My mom can hang with me, though.  I need an entourage.

  Auntie Jenn is really nice.  She carried me around for a whole day.  Of course, she can carry my cousins, who are gigantic, so it can’t be all that hard to carry me.  Someday I’ll be big too and when I am I’ll buy a house and a car and eleventy-six gazillion toys and have servants to pick up my toys.  Right now my mom and dad pick up my toys, but it’s not really a hard job when you have only 6.

  All this writing is tiring me out.  I feel as if I could sleep for 19 minutes.  And then eat.  And then sleep for 12 and a half minutes.  My life is just one crazy whirlwind of eating and sleeping and crawling after stuff I’m not supposed to have.  It’s not an easy job being the baby in the family, but someone’s gotta do it.