Please Enjoy Our Thanksgiving While You Wait for the New Year.

Victim of Hipster Culture, Pictures to Prove it

I got the iPhone and I got the Instagram thingie and now my family is so terribly hip!

I can’t help but get all Baudrillard when I’m making these “now” photos of my kids look as if they were taken out of the back of a Volkswagen Rabbit in 1971 with a camera from Woolworths.

What will the children think of this later? Will these photos be their Classic Rock? Will these photos be like when my parents’ generation made us sing songs from the 1950s in show choir and dress like in American Graffiti, even though it was the 1980s?

Are the children—and even my nonmarried domestic partner—cuter through historicalish filters that are meant to not BE authentic, as the hipsters so cherish, but LOOK authentic, as the hispters also so cherish? My mind is spinning! The children (and the partner) ARE cuter! Oh, god! I am a victim of hipster culture!

—Steph

A secret message in my shirt.

For all you Fambled readers: the secret to remaining calm amidst a Fambled storm. The ancient divorce texts say: “Yea, shall you read what the t-shirt sayeth, and yea shall know The Way to blessed fambly.”

Heeeeere’s WINTER!

Life is difficult enough as it is during Minnesota’s winters. Then try being Fambled. Have a partner who lives in a different city. Have four kids—some who are and some who are not related to each other by blood. Converge them at Grandma Donna’s house—which, by the way, is a small Linden Hills condo filled with breakable lamps.

Then dig out your car before the tow trucks come around, because it’s a Minneapolis Snow Emergency. And when I say “dig,” I mean DIG. DIIIIGGGGGG!

It’s all enough to make grownups stuff Kraft Macaroni & Cheese into their burgers. Why? Because it’s SOMETHING TO DO. And because it fills the existential hole in our bleak winter souls. And because we don’t want it to go to waste, do we? Have you looked outside? We could be here for days. The pioneers didn’t waste food, and THEY LIVED TO TELL ABOUT IT.

I’d say it doesn’t affect the kids, that their inability to focus on anything but the now makes them impervious to winter’s brutality, that their tiny kid-brains can’t deal with the space-time continuum and so they are unaware that it’s going to go on for three more months.

But there is evil glint behind the exuberance and you can really see it in the photos. Let’s just say that, in a stuck-in-a-ski-lodge-in-a-Stephen-King-novel kind of way, it scares me.

It would behoove all of us if you frequently called our cell phone numbers. Just for safety.

Don’t call the kids.

—Steph

We are back!

Maybe you’ve been wondering where Herbach and Steph and their whack-job fambly have been the past six months. Maybe you’ve been worried that it all fell apart between us and we’re no longer the loving fambly we purported to be. Maybe you’ve not thought once about us, and have been completely indifferent to our fate.

Screw you! We have been busy, yo!

Here’s a recap of the last six months:

1.) Powderkeg Live! was mentioned in MuFu New York Times!

2.) Geoff’s young adult novel Stupid Fast was bought by Sourcebooks! You can vote for the cover, too!

3.) Steph became managing editor of ATA World magazine!

4.) Geoff became full-time professor of Creative Writing at Mankato State University!

5.) Steph is teaching at St. Cloud State University again, and Geoff and Steph are teaching the same class at two different state universities—Creative Writing: Fiction.

6.) We’re living part-time in Mankato, part-time in Minneapolis. In Mankato we’ve met such wonderful people, including (but not limited to) the sparkling flower Diana Joseph, the warm, whip-smart couple-a-poets Candace Black and Rick Robbins (he’s the Good Thunder Reading Series guy), and the one-man-joy-band Brian Frink, whose house (which he shares with his wife, Wilbur) is the old Blue Earth County Poor Farm. He and his art students renovated it; Steph wrote about it for the Star Tribune. (With damn good photo gallery by Tom Wallace.)

7.) Grandma Donna moved from Madison, Wisconsin, to the Linden Hills neighborhood of Minneapolis! Right by the Lake Harriet Bandshell!

8.) Good God! That’s not even mentioning the children’s accomplishments! (Which include: coming in at budget during the Summer Academy Stick Bridge Engineering Contest, visiting Wizard World, and quarterbacking a football team, just to name a few!)

What did I forget, Geoffie? Oh, I know—the day I made this Taekwondo celery! (Tuesday.)

Ki-yap! Healthy Snack!

—Steph

Have you ever seen—

—two better looking non-married semi-domestic people who have two homes, four kids, five jobs, and one radio variety show between them?

If you have, send us a photo. And don’t send a photo of Sonny and Cher. They were married, and we’ve got more kids than they did.

—Steph

I am a pinball

Herbach Drives

Early morning.  Saturday.  Sunny day.  Great mood.  I drive four miles between north PoHo and Nokomis to pick up the kids. We need some soaps, detergents and foodstuffs back at the house, thus we drive to Target — another couple of miles.  Then we roll back home and there is lunch of sandwiches and carrots.  Then, two mile drive to Leo’s schoolmate, where he will “work” on a history project (turned into sledding), then four miles back to Nokomis to drop off Mira at play date, then home to get some work done… an hour and a half later, back across to Seward for Leo, who invites his friends to pizza, down to Nokomis for Mira then over to Uptown for pizza with Steph, Christian, and Charlie and Mira and Leo and Leo’s friends.  Eat like mad, inhale, lots of kids, video games, cheese thrown onto floor of restaurant.  Home for two hours for more video games.  Seward to drop boys.  Home for bed (we watched Juno before bed… it might have been too adult, but I was exhausted and it is very cute and the kids really love Kimya Dawson music, which is featured in the movie, so… I’m a good dad, right?).

Pizza Boys

Pizza Girl

Sunday was similar.  Drive, drive, drive, drive, back and forth, back and forth, boing, boing, boing, skating, Seward, home, gym, history project, home, Nokomis, home… all within a four mile radius, culminating in a four-stop mega-kid-pile drop-off across the entire four mile stretch of South Minneapolis (involving much high-decibel poo joke laughter — I laughed, too, as I enjoy sixth grade humor, although it does take a toll on my sense of self-respect) before taking my kids to their mom’s.

I put like 300 miles on my car while never exceeding 35 mph, while stopping frequently at stop signs, lights, houses, stores, gyms, skating rinks, while never getting outside a half-hour walk from my house.  Unbelievable!  I was in my car for approximately twelve hours.

A new era has dawned here at the PoHo Palace.  We’ve got tweens who like friends better than their dad!?  But dad still has to drive.  A lot.  Everywhere!  Perhaps Steph and I should invest in kid-sized Segways? (No, our poor childrens would be mugged immediately).

It’s good the kids have friends, I  suppose.

But, I feel like a pinball!

And what of our giant carbon footprint?

Hmm…

A mother’s apology to her family for her shameful behavior

Strep throat knocks out three of six

Over here at Fambled we’re in one of those periods where the cleave in the fambly is very well-defined, and actually advantageous. This time, it’s by ILLNESS.

Strep Throat (and its evil, face-melting sidekick Impetigo) has knocked out three of the six of us. Because the three down live in a condo across town from the other three, we’re easily quarantined.

Yay, fambly! We can be comfortably sick in our own homes!

Of course, two of the three in my condo right now also live with their dad part of the time, so they’ll undoubtedly spread the wrath over there. Same on Geoff’s end—two of the three in the Big Yellow House also live with their mom…

…Wow! I bet divorce is how The Plague spread throughout Europe!

While I consider medieval history while waiting for my own throat to puss out, the children play Rock-Em-Sock-Em Robots and watch Swiss Family Robinson. Yeah, we’re partying like it’s 1974. Yesterday they examined a giant icicle and built a snowman they named Charlie Jr. Jr. Jr. Jr. Jr. (It seems my kids have a problem coming up with names.) Tomorrow, we’ll probably fight terribly and retreat to our separate rooms to sulk.

Geoff and his kids—nowhere in sight. Thank goodness. We are sparing them from painful throats and zit-like face breakouts (no, dear nine-year-old, despite what your friend Zachary told you, you do not have acne).

But so sad. So sad! At Target today while waiting to fill our prescriptions, we picked up some cool heart-shaped muffin tins on clearance, and all we could think about was the fun cakes Geoff’s daughter would make in them.

All you Trads out there, when one of you goes down, your whole family goes down. Here at Fambled, we can preserve the strong while the weak do word finds.

Maybe we’re ahead, evolutionarily speaking?

—Steph

Impetigo. Also what Amy Winehouse had. If you want to be grossed out, google her and Impetigo.

The boys and their son, Charlie Jr. Jr. Jr. Jr. Jr. It was a great day to be diseased.

Best Fambled Rehearsal Aftermath

Generally we’re scratching each other’s eyes out after rehearsal.  But, Powderkeg Live! went well this evening.

And then, a little cold pack cheese food, port wine and horseradish flavor. Yeah, IN BED. (Go ahead and judge. We’re used to the judgment of others, and we have learned to ignore it.)

Oh my god! It gets better! BOB SAGET AMERICA’S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS RERUNS ON HALLMARK CHANNEL!