Things

In the early days we used to sit down in the living room and watch you sleep. Though, to be perfectly honest, which I always am, when the circumstances warrant it, which is, I suppose, not exactly perfect honesty, you mostly cried. At this point in time it was not the sort of misting up that you associate with a particularly touching movie, or wonderful novel. No. It was more like squalling as though you had been pulled from a blissful place into entropic hell. As it turns out, my dear, you were probably not remiss in squalling.

But you see, in those first days, when your mother couldn't really get out of bed, and I was bent over you changing your diaper nearly in the act of praying, almost to you, as though you were a golden calf, hoping that you wouldn't scream. What I'm saying is, those days were hard. When you would close your eyes and scream at the world around you, at the profundity and absurdity of it, when you would flail with your arms and legs in a way that I was near certain would have taken you miles away had we just put you in water. So much quieter.

And darling, while we're here, me peering down at your balled up face turned scarlet in anger, we should probably talk about shi-. You see, in those first days you generally held on to your bowel movements, uncouth I know, until after I had removed your diaper. And then, generally at 4 A.M. or so, as your tiny dairy aire was lifted in the air to assure maximal cleaning, you would shi-, prodigiously, as though you sought to create a masterpiece of modern art on the walls of the nursery. This, you proclaimed, is the future of art. What I'm saying here now, my dear, is that I want to apologize for squelching your artistic creativity at such a tender age, for wiping off those marks that you thought were indelible from window and wall. But in truth, I don't miss those days. Art, my dear, has always been dying, or isn't it pretty to think so.

Baby

I skipped over a lot of blogging days because I had a baby. Okay, I didn't actually have a baby, but I'm not being held responsible for caring for the baby as though I had one. Though it seems grossly unfair apparently people now expect me to continue to care and love this little thing for eighteen years and perhaps even longer.

I'll eventually cover the first few days, which mainly involved rushing up and down stairs and making sure that s wasn't suffocating herself by smashing her nose against my chest too tightly. I want to cover that most sacred of baby stories, why the nanny in Britain shook the baby.

As it turns out, at least for me, this is apparently not true for S, a baby screaming at the top of its lungs for ten minutes or so is not the greatest thing in the world. However, when they start to take it up into the thirty minute range it's fairly easy to start harboring all sorts of rather unspeakable thoughts about one's child, like, I wonder if anyone would notice if I just dropped her back off at the hospital, or let's be honest, much worse.

The real question is what you do in those times of near homicidal rage at this supposedly sweet little child. I learned to cope by turning my music up to insane levels and breathing deeply three times, and then trying to achieve some sort of Buddhist like peace with my place in the world whilst my child screams at the top of her lungs for reasons beyond my understanding.

I believe that what I'm experiencing is just a microcosm, accelerated perhaps, of the general human experience. Such as, the seeming dichotomy of inflicting the most pain upon those we love, which would seem to imply that love is perhaps transient. Ie, if s were to come out of a crying fit and immediately smile at me, the reverse is far more likely, I would be experiencing, near simultaneously, one of the greatest highs (yes folks, she's smiling, and has been for more than a week, which I'm pretty sure is advanced for a kid her age. And even if it isn't I don't really care because it's just so damn cute) followed by one of the most annoying sounds in the world, lil s crying. It is seemingly incongruous that I could kind of desire tossing s out a window when she can just as easily make me talk in a baby voice and dote and beam with joy and do all those sorts of annoying parent things that I swore I wasn't going to do.

Perhaps this isn't indicative of the human condition, perhaps it's just parenting. And sometimes, you just sway to the music and wait for her to go to sleep, or to turn her blue eyes to you and open her toothless mouth in what is either the world's best smile or merely a cute smile interpreted as something far greater by a first time parent.

Driving Home

After we'd completed our interminable purgatory in the hospital, which included breast feeding classes, (males need not go, though I was there for the blow by blow while Sadie, unlike the well behaved child in the bassinet proceeded to cry until I rocked her to sleep)and nurses us showing how to finger feed our hungry little urchin.

Driving home we noticed that all the trees had lost there leaves. We were greeted by bare, skeletal things where only a scant few days earlier the park had been awash in gold. I discovered houses I had forgotten about, hidden as they were for eight months of the year behind a the veil of now lifted leaves. And as we drove home with our little grumbler sleeping peacefully in the back seat all the familiar streets looked changed because we were seeing them through new eyes. I suppose that is one of the good things about child birth for the adult, it marks the rebirth of that old familiar world yet again. What I mean to say is that everything felt different, and it was good.

Before we left the hospital we took pictures of little Sadie on her last day, trying to catch her between screaming fits. At home, we took pictures of her in the car seat before she started crying. It is strange how we obsessively create with cameras moments that occur so rarely. Most of the most beautiful things she does occur when the video camera is off but how to tell anyone that. To show them the moment when I turned her towards the mirror and our foreheads came together as we stuck out our tongues in unison, united in the smallest of ways. These things will never be recorded and like every memory they will disappear and be reborn as something different down the road.

The point that I'm trying to make is that everyone should get to drive a child home from the hospital. If only to remember that it is possible for the world to change in an instant.

Not about babies or Sadie

The truth of the matter is if I had to do it all over again, the whole mess of emotions and hours, and laughter, and conversation and silence, my god the silences, endless things. And beyond even that, the conversations, the banality of the everyday chit chat with folks that passes for existence, the truth of the matter is that I wouldn't do any of it all over again.

Why if I was the good Lord myself, I guess that I'd have taken one look at the universe and pronounced it good without changing a damn thing. I know. I know. It seems a strange complaint coming from someone on the other side of all the oblivions that we call night and day. I'd take a ship, if I could, like Noah, except instead of filling it with all of the animals, I'd fill it with nothing. I'd scrub the wood down to bare bones. I'd disinfect every last chance of it, to make certain that wherever I was going that I was doing it alone. I'd kill off as many germs in my mouth as I could. I'd take laxatives. Too far, you say. Not far enough, I'd answer. And I'd leave on a quiet morning, the sun putting ribbons of light through the clouds, and I'd head west, because explorers always head west. I wouldn't wave goodbye to anyone on shore for fear they'd hail me, ask me which way I thought the wind might blow or whether I might like some coffee, or maybe offer up a little tip on just how to tack properly. My god how I abhor the company of others!

I'd make way for an uninhabited island if the good Lord was good enough to provide one. I've never quarreled with plants or water, so I would not begrudge the presence of either on that faraway island. One suspects that I am only now enumerating something that the monks and poets have known for ages, that old love song we gathered up from our moderns: "Til human voices wake us and we drown." It is the same thing that drove Thoreau to Walden and likely the same thing that drove the good Lord to allow himself to be sent back to heaven. It is finished indeed.

I hear you now friend, whispering to me through all those thousands of miles of lines that connect us. I'll leave the term alone for the time being. You're reminding me of that night on the coast of Maine when we played cards and talked about all the places we'd like to go. I wish that I was there, I tell you, and you sound so confused. But certainly, dear friend, you were not there either. What is man but matter? And as Thales stated long ago, and I'm sure quite rightly you'd have to give him if you've stood yourself on a lonely cliff and stared out at the sea, all matter is composed of water. And so, dear friend, am I. How could I ever be anything at all?

Certainly the Lord did not kill everyone or else we'd have a race of inbreeds. Maybe they were just briefly swallowed up, the wicked not on the arc, those Egyptians crossing the Red Sea, before being washed clean and spat back out upon the shores of life. Certainly no conclusion is otherwise logical. How else to explain the fact that I nearly dissolved when we first touched. We are merely water, here one moment and gone the next. And I hear you reminding me that I said that no person could ever change. And listen closely, dear friend, for Paremenides was only partially mistaken, it is not the world that is unchanging, it is us, our souls and bodies. Do not the waves ceaselessly beat at the same shores like man upon his habits? Zeno reminds us both that all good philosophy is paradox.

But certainly this has all been said before. And all I really need is a quiet cabin in the woods in which to practice my own version of repentance, and two billion people to leave me alone.

The first few days

I can think of nothing so pleasant as the first few days/hours in a hospital right after a child is born via C-section. Oh wait, I can think of a thousand things.

Walks along old country roads
Amateur bee keeping
Counting fireflies in the backyard
Digging through trash cans for tea pots
Riding a giant sea horse
And so on...

Here's the strange thing about having a baby, they just give them to you. You get your very own baby whether you've read 9,000 books or not. They just leave the little thing in your hospital room (if you want, but you sort of feel guilty if you don't want to)in what they call a bassinet but what is actually a large plastic container.


As you can see that's definitely just a large plastic container that the hospital staff picked up at a local garage sale on the cheap. It's not exactly the perfect home you'd planned for your baby with matching curtains and Amy Coe bed sheets. No, it's a plastic box that daycares use to store old dirty toys/your newborn baby.

I digress. The main point is that you've got this little bundle of joy sleeping/crying/pooping bits of meconium that are less like your garden variety excrement and more like Elmer's glue. Such that, when you're the only person in the room who can stand up, it becomes your duty to change the baby's diaper despite your status as tyro, and all the while you're trying to remove this dark Elmer's glue from her rear end, holding her legs up, she's screaming at you at the top of her little lungs in a way that can only be interpreted roughly as, "What the hell are you doing? And, if you're going to do it, hurry up already?" (This may all have to do with the author's own insecurity about doing things that involve fine motor skills or that are just new and uncomfortable. He's willing to admit that there may be a whole class of parents out there who loved every moment of wiping up excrement while their baby cooed at them).

Rough sketch of a day at the hospital. We spent four days there.

10 P.M. Commence feeding the baby.
11 P.M. Have a "discussion" (may involve tears) about whether the baby is getting enough food/if the feeding and stuff is going right.
11:30 P.M. Change the baby's diaper. (see above)
11:45 Feed the baby again.
12:34 A.M. Finally soothe the baby enough to close your eyes.
12:45-1:30 A.M. Listen to odd grunts that may or may not be your child ceasing to breathe. Stand over the baby and watch their tiny chest move up and down, feel an overwhelming sense of love and touch her cheek.
1:30-2 A.M. Feed the baby and change diaper. Briefly squeal as s begins pooping out so much meconium that you're almost certain some of is fake.
2:30 A.M Finally settle down to sleep.
2:40 A.M. A nurse comes in to check S's blood.
3 A.M. Sleep.
3:30 A.M. The nurses change shifts and a new one comes in to check S's stats/ruin your life. Smile at her.
4-4:30-Feign sleeping while listening to your daughter make strange noises that might be just regular breathing for an infant.
4:30 Feed the baby. Discuss things like her sucking reflex and whether her hair will stay strawberry blond.
5-6 A.M. Soothe the wife and soothe the baby. Remember to smile at your wife but not the baby who misinterprets your smile as a grimace and thus begins crying. Teach your daughter to imitate you by sticking out her tongue. There she is in her little plastic box playing with her dad. She will be a good girl; you can already tell.
7 A.M. A nurse arrives to check on S's pills. They are good at swaddling the baby. You do not know how to swaddle her. This is your time to feel inadequate. You are good at holding the baby close and humming music to her. The room is a sauna. You've been told that babies get cold rather easily.

At some point during the afternoon or early evening you stand at the window with s in your arms swaying to the music playing on the Ipod. In the distance, telephone wires, brick houses, a steady stream of cars pulsing down Nebraska and leaving the city, a parking lot full of parked cars spitting exhaust, the sky, a pale blue, and a few clouds, like slivers of old bones strewn across a sea floor, and in your arms, a little blue eyed girl drifting off to sleep, and all these small pieces of your reality still too far away for her to perceive, too far away for her to even dream.

Some thoughts on nicknames

It is well known amongst those with children and even those folks who have spent time with them, children, that it is important to give a small child, particularly girls, a nickname.

From Wikipedia:

A nickname (also spelled "nick name") is a descriptive name given in place of or in addition to the official name of a person, place or thing. It can also be the familiar or truncated form of the proper name,[1] which may sometimes be used simply for convenience (e.g. "Bobby", "Bob", "Rob", or "Bert" for the name Robert). The term hypocoristic is used to refer to a nickname of affection between those in love or with a close emotional bond, compared with a term of endearment. The term diminutive name refers to nicknames that convey smallness, hence something regarded with affection or familiarity (e.g., referring to children,) or contempt.[2] The distinction between the two is often blurred. It is a way to tell someone they are special and that you love them. It is a form of endearment and amusement. As a concept, it is distinct from both pseudonym and stage name, and also from a title (for example, City of Fountains), although there may be overlap in these concepts.
A nickname is sometimes considered desirable, symbolising a form of acceptance, but can often be a form of ridicule.

As such, the new addition to our family is in great need of an appellation that will redefine her existence within our structure. We've been in the process of trying out nicknames since the day she was born. I'm now eager to solicit some help in deciding on the proper name for little Sadie.

Monkey-Sadie derived this nickname by curling her prehensile toes up and clinging to one of the parentals chest in a decidedly primatey kind of way, curling her back and tucking her head down just underneath your chin.

Pro: The derivation story is nice.
Cons: Young ladies aren't particularly fond of being compared to apes.

Monkey Chicken-This name arose from S's freewheeling commitment to not actually making sense when applying a nickname. S doesn't feel constrained by things like applying a nickname to a particular action, rather, it's justifiable to just string together a second animal name after the first.

Pro: Uh.
Con: Everything else.

Little baby poops a lot-This name, earned by almost every child in human history, applies most specifically to s's habit of waiting to do her most outrageous pooping sans diaper.

Pro: It's true.
Con: It's not that creative, and it has the word poop in it, which is offensive.

Little Baby Cries a lot-See above, but go ahead and switch out poops for cries.

Grumbles: s, probably like most babies, I don't spend a lot of time with babies, has a tendency to start grumbling when she is about to wake up or fill her diaper with shi-. These little grumbles are a first warning sign to her parents that they should prepare for fussiness.

Pro: I kind of like grumbles.
Con: I think I might sometimes call her Grumble cakes after a Homestar Runner skit.

Sadie Cakes-This nickname came out of nowhere. Sort of. Her middle name is Kay, and so it seemed kind of natural to come up with something else that was appropriately cute to describe her. Sadie Cakes seemed to fit.

Pro: Lots of family type folk like it.
Con: Sometimes I like to agitate a little.

That's why I'm going to use this blogging space to give Sadie her publicly sanctioned nickname. The sort of nickname that I expect everyone to use if they aren't comfortable with calling her Sadie. If they feel that pull that we all do when we see something small to come up with a different name for it.

Marquis de Sadie-It's just a great nickname. It's strength lies simultaneously in its historical significance, minor obscurity and incongruity. If you want to learn more about the original Marquis de Sade see the Wikipedia entry on the link. The gist of the link is that he was the sort of guy that French prostitutes thought was a little gross. If that doesn't speak highly of a man's character than I don't know what does. Thus, S and I can exchange witticisms about how s is terrorizing us with her screaming like a French Prostitute.
Note: S doesn't have as rich of a sense of humor as I do, so she has yet to engage in any sort of banter that would be deemed inappropriate, funny, or just mildly interesting.

However, I just wanted to get that out there before we started introducing her around to folks. Either Sadie, or the Marquis de Sadie. Thank you.

The Beginning

I'd like to begin now as I've traveled across the River Styxx and into the abyss of child rearing where I can now dispense advice to other expectant parents such as

1) Don't lavish too much love on the first one, or you'll have nothing left for the second.

2) Kids are like goats; you can love them too much. (Insert a heavy dose of laughter on this one).

S: Sometimes I think she wakes herself up when she pees on herself.

You see. The above quote pretty much represents the epitome of my conversations over the last three weeks and S just dropped that gem right in the middle of blogging. I mean, my life is just full of literary gold.

Anyhow, I don't want to spend all of my teaching gems in a single blog. I'm planning on writing a parenting book, and I want to save some of them up for that. Lord knows S would probably buy it, and s wouldn't benefit from that at all.

First, let's talk about labor and delivery. The movies all lie. I didn't drive fast when the doctor told us to get to the hospital; I went and got a sandwich. Why? Because labor is a marathon not a sprint. And yes, the doctor said that, not me, but I'm taking credit for it anyway. The point is, we had the picturesque Hollywood sort of rush to the hospital, splitting a subway sub in the basement of a parking structure. It was crazy.

When we arrived in labor and delivery they put us up in a fancy room with cable television, a nice leather couch, and a private bathroom the size of s's nursery. Let me tell you a secret about labor; the first part isn't that bad. During those early contractions I watched Michigan get absolutely destroyed by Wisconsin while holding on to S's hand and helping her breathe. And, as I'm sitting there pondering the effectiveness of a 3-3-5 against a power running attack, it occurred to me that Hollywood movies lie. S wasn't going nuts and saying, "You did this to me." She was breathing nicely on an exercise ball with the game on. And, honestly, I was pretty excited at how easy things were.

As it turns out Hollywood isn't lying, and the latter stages of labor see your wife's face take on the sort of contortions you've only seen on the faces of horse right before they're to be put down. However, I'm going to choose to forget that part and break down just why a 3-3-5 isn't a sound defense against a two tight end set.

Advice to all expectant fathers

1) Bring extra snacks to the hospital room. Why? Because your wife/girlfriend is going to say things like, "Don't leave, I'm in labor. I need you." The sorts of things that are going to leave you feeling a bit hungry after ten hours or so.

2) It's okay to watch sports during labor. Why? Because labor is kind of boring for the person not in labor. As it turns out, watching someone else breathe heavily for four hours isn't all that compelling. Note: The latter stages of labor it's probably best to just be supportive and stuff. However, labor lasts a long time. If sports don't suit your fancy bring a book or cocaine or whatever.

3) Some of the nurses will act as though you don't know what you're doing. The best way to dissuade this admittedly obnoxious behavior is to ask questions of them, so that they understand you're not some country bumpkin; you're an educated man who wants to help his wife get through labor. If you want to take it to the next level it's best if you then offer to place the epidural and make a mildly unfunny joke about having stayed at a Holiday Inn.

4) Be supportive.

5-10) See 4.

When the Michigan game came to a pathetic close I leaned over to S and said, in all seriousness, "I wish Michigan's defense was as tough as my wife. If they were, we probably could have at least held them under 35." Watching your wife go through the first part of natural labor is a kick ass experience, and it will give you an entirely new appreciation for how tough she is. I recommend it to everyone. I think I would have been asking for drugs at about the ten minute rather than ten hour mark.

Later, we had a baby. She had a squishy little face, and when we heard her first of many wailing cries to come S started crying, and I held back my tears since I figured it would be best if someone in the family held it together in front of all the medical personnel. And in that moment, what I felt, and what I imagine others feel as well, is such an incredibly strong emotion of the kind that you thought you had left behind with childhood or at the very least, young love, a feeling so incredibly intense it nearly bowls you over.

And I've always had this intense fear of holding small babies when they've been offered to me by trusting mothers. But I can tell you that as the nurse crossed the room and held little s out, bundled in a cocoon of blankets, I felt like it was the most natural thing in the world to hold that little girl and to stare into those deep blue eyes.

Key Match ups in the birth of our baby.

Apparently fifty percent of children are born when the moon is full. It's a statistic that scientists don't like to tell you because it proves that astrology was right all along or something like that. Anyhow, scientifically speaking, it is the moon's gravitational pull on the earth, as seen with the tides, that actually pulls the baby out of the uterus and into the world. Ergo; with Sunday being a full moon and our induction scheduled for 7:30 P.M., it's a race between man and nature. Moon and baby-inducing drugs. The moon is getting three points from the odds makers right now because man already walked all over its face a few decades ago. However, it would be a mistake to underestimate the moon, which has been screwing around with the oceans for a pretty long time, and despite its rather blank exterior, the moon has long been holding in animosity that it can't wait to unleash in this match up.

Key match up: Wife's uterus vs. the gravitational pull of the moon.

The moon has literally eons of experience in tugging babies out of women and turning regular folks into werewolves on this day. The moon has seen everything that a human being can throw at it.

However, the baby in my wife's uterus has put up an unprecedented defense, giving no sign of wanting to leave despite being overdue by nearly a week. We're expecting to see a camp stove and some baked beans in the next sonogram.

Advantage: Moon by a smidgen.

Key match up: Wife's anxiety over induction vs. the power of science

Science has a fairly short history of inducing women to give birth to babies. In fact, throughout most of human history women just had babies when they were good and ready. However, science has recently developed a way to make women give birth, and they are pretty excited about getting a chance to try it out. Science has given S a full ten days after her due date to take care of things before they have to step in and fix it.

Wife's anxiety over induction will probably be overcome, but the chances that she gives up the ghost entirely are pretty low. We expect a hard fought game between medical staff and wife as she pushes them to give her a low dosage of pitocin to try and keep the birth natural.


Advantage: The power of the Copernican world view and such.


Key match up: Natural birth vs. epidural etc.

If the wife doesn't have the baby by Sunday, at the moon's behest, the chances of her holding out against the intense blitz the hospital staff is going to come at her with is pretty low. They'll hit you from all angles, running a nine person multiple front against the weakened team of pregnant wife and mildly confused husband. This strategy is going to make it hard to hold out against key players like epidural, who, like the sirens in the Odyssey, lure you in to feeling good and then eat you alive, or at the very least prevent you from being able to move around.

If the wife wants to have a natural birth it is important that she focuses on spicy foods like she never has before. We're going to need to see an eggs smothered in tabasco breakfast followed by a bull of curried pumpkin soup for lunch and even the real salsa from Guapo's for dinner. This, combined with a bumpy car ride, followed by a long walk on the tow path are going to put her in prime position, with the help of the moon, and the conjugal visit trailer, to give a natural birth and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Advantage: Tabasco.

Key Match Up: Husband's ability to remain conscious and fight with the medical staff over natural birthing measures vs. the overwhelming desire to feint at blood and cower in the face of clear authority.

While the husband has absolutely no fear that he can stay upright through the whole pregnancy, it has been recommended that he be stationed up around the head so as to keep his eyes unsullied. The husband has been known, when cornered and or tired, to lash out violently and have very strong opinions about how things should be done.

Though the husband claims that he'll be fine years of wussing out over a variety of blood and guts shows on television leave the outcome in doubt. Also, his fear of bossy nurses and figures of authority, tracing back to an almost pathologically shy childhood and still a surprisingly sensitive adult for someone who jokes around so much, make the chance that he screws up his role as natural birth facilitator pretty likely.

Advantage: Toss up. The bossy wife may pull through and help on this one.

Prediction based on flimsy evidence:

The baby will be born on Sunday morning at 11 A.M. If we're lucky, she'll look like the cute kid at the top of this blog.


Tomorrow we'll take a look at other key match ups like:

Baby vs. breast the case of latching.

Whether the husband is able to sleep at home after the baby is born vs. no way in hell will the wife allow this

Will reading nineteen books about pregnancy make the wife prepared vs. reading one book half-assedly make the husband more prepared

The days keep going by

I'd like to think I'm a mess that you'd wear with pride.



S: Are you going to cry when the baby is born?

M: I don't see why not.

It's weird to sort of floating through life waiting for the next big thing to happen. I go to work; I process loans; I mail out books; but I'm not really all there. I keep waiting for the my cell phone to ring mid-afternoon and to briskly walk into the changing day streaked with blue. I'm waiting for the arrival of a new person to take up residence in the back of my mind.

Let's first lay blame at the feet of one lady from D.C. River Keepers who keeps calling me in the middle of the day to set up an appointment. Look, if it's between the hours of 8:30 and 5:30 P.M. don't call me unless it's an emergency or if you're having my baby. It's a pretty strict rule, I know, but I probably should have laid it down to Michele from River Keepers, so she wouldn't keep asking me if I'd like a rain garden appointment at 7 A.M. when I was thinking that I'd be rushing off to the hospital instead.

Honestly, I just really can't wait to be on the other side of this, so I can dispense my old school wisdom to the uninitiated. Gems like:

Get your sleep now.

They don't come with a manual.

Don't tell your wife she's looking bigger, tell her she's looking prettier.

Two words: Counter pressure.

Babies don't require much, just all of your attention.

Do you know how to change a diaper? Well, don't worry, you'll learn.

Most babies are made of an aluminium steel alloy and can be traded on the black market for some pretty amazing things.

If you have twins you're legally obligated to give on to the state as part of the most recent bail out package enacted by our socialist Congress.

Bring food to the hospital; both of you shouldn't have to suffer.

Babies, like cats, sometimes just need to be left alone to figure things out.

Singing to your wife's stomach can increase the babies IQ by at least 100 points as long as you do as you give them a strict diet of Elton John.



You know, the sort of stuff people don't always give you right off. I'll probably be putting the whole thing in book form, and I'll call it something like: Chicken Soup for little souls or something clever like that. I'll probably win an award, which will make my stubborn unborn daughter proud at some point later in her life, probably between the ages of six and nine. And when she does finally arrive into the world, blue and mushy, I'll send a tweet out there, don't worry.

Uh...Minus Four Days and counting

Probably the greatest thing about being a few days overdue to have this baby (minus how awesome this must be for Steph to get to hog the baby for another few days) is having people actually disappointed to see you.

P: Oh. Why are you still here?

M: Actually my wife had the baby, and your'e not going to believe this, the thing is crying all the time. It's like, what about my needs tiny little human being? What about my needs? Do you think I like changing diapers all day? I've got big things to do. Big things. And do you know what that new little human being said to me?

P: It's probably best you came in to work today.

Anyhow, there is nothing quite like the feeling of being unwanted to start off a work day in the right manner. The only better way to start a work day is to not start the damn thing at all because they call it work for a reason.

An aside that has very little to do with babies and much to do with me having bad knees that I hope are doing okay when our little bundle of mushy facedness arrives.

At the doctor's office for the second time in the past three months for a messed up knee.

D: Your ligaments are in good shape.

M: That's good.

D: And I don't think we need to do an MRI because last time it didn't turn out to be anything.

M: Okay, that's fine, but what the heck is going on with my knees? Why am I feeling something kind of pull and then having it be sore for two weeks.

D: You're getting old and you're still playing sports.

M: Oh. Is there anything you can give me for that?

I can only assume that when he said getting old he actually meant, "You are looking virulent and strong. You could probably father an entire Abrahamic Covenants worth of children. I admire your vigor and fine looking knees."

In other news, we still don't have a child. I'm now actively expecting S to never actually have this child. I don't sit at work wondering if she'll go into labor. I sit at work wondering when four thirty will roll around, so I can get the heck out of dodge. If this baby drags things on until Monday we'll be forced to miss Thanksgiving as well, and I'll already have something on my "List of ways in which you made our lives harder." It's a list that is a must have for any good parent. S is currently reading a book about attachment parenting, so I'm trying to counterbalance it by reading a book about detachment parenting.

Ex:

B: Crying.

S: That baby is crying?

M: What does it mean to cry really? How am I to bridge this nearly interminable gap between two distant souls and understand that I use a term like souls rat-

S: Change that baby!!!!

I'm pretty excited to learn more from this book!!

Tonight I read a book to the obstinant little girl trying to coax her out int the world to hear more of its ilk. S claims that she's gong to end up illiterate because I have a tendency to just ignore the words and make up the plot as I go along. I think it's going to wind up with her being extremely creative, and we all know how useful that skill has turned out to be for me.

S: Can I get you to help me hang this mirror?

M: Do you want the poem to be in free verse or iambic pentameter.

S: Just hand me screw.

M: That's what-

S: Grow up.


Other things:

M: You know, after seven years I think I've finally figured out both of our love languages. My love language is being left alone, and your love language is bossing me around.

One day

Only a little part of me is going to miss those days, and I'm sure that on some rainy afternoons I'll stare out the window and recall them fondly. "But these three cubic feet of blood and bone and meat are all I love and know."



Let's communicate right now through the vehicle of music.



But wait, none of these songs are about babies? Are you merely mourning the loss of some idyllic youth that you never had? That's an unfair question. A better answer would be that I'm moody and sometimes that mood is sad. Sad, of course, like most words, doesn't exactly communicate what I'm feeling. And I wish that you could sit here next to me and we could slide through the thin skins we've stretched over so much bone. And I look forward to holding a little girl who demands nothing from me, except all my attention, who won't wander away at the wrong moment, but will just be rocked slowly in my arms while the music plays soft and low and the moment becomes something more than ephemeral.




Okay, enough time has passed. It's time for the show to get on the road. Is that the saying? I'm not sure. I think I'll probably know when I'm finally a dad. We're roughly two hours away from it finally being okay to have this baby. Note: a number of folks have been treating me as though the due date is the actual date our baby will be born, and while we'd like that to be the case only five percent of women, according to S, who has read like thirty books about pregnancy, actually give birth on their due date. Ie: We could be talking about zeros tomorrow night people.

I'm through being excited. I'm just tired of S hogging the baby all to herself for the past nine months. Unquestionably, it is time to share!

Day 3/2

I had no earthly clue that this song played in Ice Age, a movie I originally detested but later grew to love as I got old. Incidentally this reminds me of the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," which I thought was amazing when I saw it in the greatest movie theater in the history of movie theaters with laughing and clapping. As it turns out, without the greatest movie theater ever it's kind of a trite little piece of crap movie. I guess what I'm saying is that under the right circumstances I can see why people riot, all it takes is the right sort of crowd and I'd be tossing a trash can through windows and looting stores. Parenting 101.



I'm not sure I've been keeping an accurate tab on how many days it is until S has the little one, mainly because I've never really known the due date. Anyhow, it's sort of a semantics of counting type thing, so I'm going to go with three/two days counting popularized in the ancient culture of the Inca in what is now Peru. The Incas...I can't wait to come out with that comprehensive made up history I've been working on for the last five minutes, New York times best seller list here I...sigh.

In the evening we sit in the bathroom in the dark. The light from the hallway makes a geometric shape of light on the floor. And while you lie in the water, half-submerged, I spin a lighter between my fingers and speculate about the color of her eyes. It's decided, after a time, that I'd prefer them to be blue. "Certainly," you say, "though if we have enough we're bound to have one with your brown eyes." I tell you that I expect her to be bald and you smile.

Time passes, the water cools, and you listen to me talk to you about the pain in my knee. It is discovered during our brief my brief psychoanalytic session that I am sad, not because of the pain in my knee, but because I wanted everything to be perfect for her arrival. "I don't want to be gimping around the hospital room," I say. You remind me that nothing in the world will ever be perfect. "Nonsense," I say, "what about this right here. The dying wick of the candle, the water hung round you like silk, and the two of us talking about the way we'd like things to be. Doesn't this remind me of when we were young and first falling in love, how we'd pretend that things were going to be different for us." I didn't say any of that of course, but I could tell that you understood from the way you kept so still in that universe of sound.

Post Number 365!!!! Four Days

We're almost there Ingrid.



Filling a mug that gets way too hot and always burns your hand way too full of apple cider.

M: I know this is a bad idea. (Closes the microwave door)
S: You do realize we’re going to have a child any day now?
M: Give me some credit. I know this isn’t going to turn out well.
S: I’m not sure that I should give you credit for that.
(Minutes later)
M: Crap, I spilled it all over the stove. I kind of saw that one coming.
S: You’re going to make a good day, but you’re still going to be yourself aren’t you.
M: Probably.

For the more visually inclined a conversation about electrocution and toasters:




And, as we bear down on the due date. Listen, I'm taking these doctors at their word. I assume that they didn't just create this due date out of thin air. If my child is not born on the due date I am going to be pissed. I think that's reasonable. I mean, are you telling me we can walk on the moon, maybe?, but we can't predict what day a child is going to born? That's why I'm calling an astrologist to help us predict a more accurate day. I think modern medical science really got off track when it went away from palm reading.

Tonight, in honor of our soon to be baby, we watched a movie called babies, that was about babies. As it turns out children do just fun eating rocks. The prospect of raising the lil gal on a strict diet of dirt and rocks has me recalculating that whole, you'll spend a million dollars raising a child from age 5-9 or whatever the heck it is now. Guess what, crazy statistic, we're feeding this child rocks. I don't know how much of a savings it will be since I'm not sure how much rocks cost to buy in bulk.

Honestly, the main thing you learn from watching this movie is that kids need constant stimulation and baby yoga and lots of intricate toys to turn out well-adjusted and happy. Minus all of these amenities children are pretty much miserable and asking if they can get a Nintendo, and your'e thinking, really? I had an NES when I was like seven and look at me now? Okay, it's cute, I said it. Enough already.

M: Is there anything we can do that doesn't involve you talking about how much your belly itches and then asking me to look at your feet?

S: Is that not fun for you?

M: The luster is starting to wear off.

So yeah, one day closer to welcoming this little girl into the welcoming arms of the world. Well, the world.

Five days...

Let's get Ryan Adams and Adam Duritz together and see what chicanery comes about.


This morning, as I was lying in bed, barely swimming up from beneath the tendrils of sleep, I began to consider a child. I didn't do it in an abstract way, moving through what a weekend might look like. I thought about having a child as a physical entity in my arms, a screaming little entity who is almost entirely dependent on S and I for everything. I did what I imagine most sane people have already done months before, I panicked. I started counting the ways in which I would probably end up failing this little baby: diapers, swaddling, general knowledge of what a cry means.

I'm kind of torn between the part of myself that says, "Hey idiot, people have been doing this for thousands of years. You're not exactly reinventing the wheel." And the other part of me that says, "Panic!!!" Or "Sure, but none of those people was me. If I'd been around for a few thousand years I probably wouldn't be so panicked."

Here's what I know about babies.

1) They scream during diaper changes right off the bat. This will be extremely hard for me because I'll want her to be perfect for those judgmental nurses. Also, I'll want her to change her own diaper and stop being such a leech on mom and dad.

2) Babies like to be swaddled. I don't know how to swaddle. At what point in my life did I think I'd be having an internal discourse about my ability to swaddle? Answer: never.

3) I'm probably going to have issues around meconium.

Some other things I'm hoping for:

1) That the baby pops out and says immediately, "I hope you've gotten caught up on your sleep just because I'd like to hear it from someone a bit cuter for once.

2) That the next person who has anything to say about parenthood that isn't positive, to me or S falls off a steep cliff...into a bevy of soft mattresses. I just want a little scare.

3) That our baby, upon arrival in the nursery compliments the fine craftsmanship that went into putting together a room full of paisley. Also, I hope at some point she can explain to me where paisley came from.

4) That sharks do not ever take over the world. I don't like sharks and neither should you.

5) That when the baby is crying in the middle of the night I remember that everything in life passes quickly, and that there will be a day when I miss waking up to that little girl and can't believe how old she's gotten.

Six days....

For those who enjoy lists about books that were good:

Against my better judgment I'm considering making it a goal to work my way through the combined list by the end of 2010, so I'll be ready for the next ten years. Chances this will actually happen are verging somewhere just above zero. And, one more essay by someone who didn't exactly love the wildly inappropriate review B.R. Myers gave to Freedom in the Atlantic.


Dance music that doesn't suck.



According to my mother I've been excited about being a parent since I was three years old. She claims, claims, that I used a truck to drive my older sister's dolls around the house occasionally crashing them into the walls, which clearly shows a boyish lust for mayhem. However, according to my mother, I was merely giving all of the dolls a ride in my truck, and it was probably, my insertion, an early onset of me being a little remiss in attending to the details, and perhaps, as well, an early sign that I was unable to calculate angles and turns as they related to the corners of walls. Like most things in life, I've no earthly clue if this is true.

I seem to remember, lord only knows how many years ago, making some sort of claim that I wanted to be a young father. And though I'd like to credit that moment when I was still a pre-teen or young teenager, and I hope we're not interpreting it the wrong way, I merely meant I would be excited to have kids one day not impregnate someone at fifteen, as proof that I've always wanted this to happen, I also remember saying hundreds of times to Steph that I didn't want children, that I thought I'd always be too selfish. It's really a matter of deciding which of those memories to indulge and impose as true.

After college I spent three years doing child care work for kids aged 3-10. In many ways, I loved it. Working with children allowed me to indulge my own inner child, and now I was big enough to win at any game that I wanted, minus connect four against a five year old recently immigrated child from China named George who is probably going to end up as a world champion, and the ability to make a connection with kids. You see, the great things about kids is that they'll say things like, "You're my best friend," hell, they'll tug on your arm and insist that you come play with them. When was the last time you had someone literally begging for your company? In fact, in a lot of ways I remember those long sunny afternoons in Santa Barbara, CA quite fondly. And if I allow myself to step through the thin veil of memory and into the scene, I watch myself tossing a basketball back and forth with a little blond haired girl who is telling me what it feels like to be left alone. I remember wishing that I could one day have a daughter like her.

Or, I could remember that miserable year spent in Ann Arbor, Michigan, caring for rabid snot nosed kids while listening to inestimably annoying thick Michigan accents. I can remember sleeping in my car during my lunch break, shivering with a full coat on, dreading a return to ABC's and bowls of crackers and cheese. And again, you see, you can stand at the crossroads of two memories and decide, which of the two paths that diverge you will take, realizing that you have taken them both.

Years from now I'm fairly certain that I'll be looking back, God willing, at the life of a child nearly grown up, and I'll long for the days when I was not yet packing for college or buying cars. I'll long for the days before I'd even changed a diaper, when I was still waiting in the dark for everything to change all at once.

Eight Days

When your wife is going to have a baby in eight days people tend to ask you crazy shi- like, "Are you nervous?" To which I respond, without fail, "what the hell do I have to be nervous about? Have you seen a video of labor, that shi- is intense. I don't think I'm nervous at all, but if I was..." at this point my interlocutor generally turns away in what can be called mild disgust or disdain. Sometimes I have to ask them to clarify which of the two they are trying to display.

Anyhow, just to head off any further questions, I am way too uninformed to be nervous about this thing. The closest I've come to taking care of an infant is playing dolls with a few little girls back in the day when I used to teach pre-school. I'm pretty sure the dolls are just like quieter and creepier versions of babies. I've not changed a diaper in my life. I have stood by at least a handful of times while others did it and secretly critiqued them for not doing it correctly. By correctly I mean, extraordinarily quickly. As far as I'm concerned you're just trying to get in and get out without getting peed on. I pretty much use that as a motto for most things in my life.

When you're eight days from having a kid it's almost like being months from having a kid. I mean, you've gradually been accumulating things for the past few months, but, in general, until you have the kid the whole ordeal is a supposition, a philosophical consideration. However, a baby crying at 2 A.M. or pooping twelve times a day isn't as much a philosophical consideration so much as a concrete fact. However, until that concrete fact is a living and breathing ball of baby it's hard to imagine what it will be like when things are different. I realize that most human beings in history have on one or the other side of this equation, but it doesn't make it any more explicable to me. I've never had to give a baby a bath in the kitchen sink. Apparently this will become old hat.

I guess if a person caught me in the right mood I might admit to being a little bit nervous. I mean, babies are small and fragile things that shouldn't be dropped, but are really easy to carry as footballs. This seems like a danger. In general though, I am feeling as stated above, too ignorant about this whole process to be particularly nervous. Occasionally I get nervous about the myriad of decisions that are required in order to be a functioning adult, and I vaguely recall the awful intensity of being in my early teens, but these sorts of things are very far away for our little girl. I suppose in the upcoming weeks the best thing that we'll be able to offer her is just love and care, and we won't even worry what her political views are or whether she'll be the valedictorian in her class.

Although, in truth, the two are related, I'm guessing. When you lavish that much love and attention on something the expectations, not in a bad parent way, are probably lifted pretty damn high, in the same way that you wouldn't want someone to criticize anything that you've worked very hard to create. And let's not even touch the implications of the whole "create" thing, as nature vs. nurture always turns out to be nature w/ nurture.

I'm holding off on being nervous and excited because I think I'll have enough of that in my future. For the time being I'm going with that great old poet Thomas Gray ignorance is bliss.


Thomas Gray


To each his sufferings: all are men,
Condemned alike to groan;
The tender for another's pain,
The unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.

Nine Days

We're nine days away from lift off here in Washington, D.C. Unless the doctors are wrong, in which case, we may not even be having a little girl, I mean, it could be a triceratops or something. Think how popular that would make us? We'd probably be on the front of Time or Star magazine and maybe even have our own reality tv show about the rigors of raising a dinosaur in the modern world. And really, I think I'd only need about a season and a half to get my memoir published.

Our little one appears to be a highly advanced creature. Thus far, we feel like she's leaning towards soccer because she loves to kick S in the right side around where her ribs used to be. These solid kicks are probably way stronger than you're going to see from your average child. She's in like the top ten percentile for baby kicking ability, I'd guess, which is pretty much the same thing as the scientific method. Though, she's not really moving around a lot, so we're thinking that she'll probably just play goalie. This will lead to all of us eating some delicious orange slices at half time of her games, I'll be the coach, except maybe we'll get a boy to play on the team and copy the plot of the movie Ladybugs, which I haven't seen, which will turn out to be a "delicious" way to spend our time. I put it in quotes because I enjoy orange slices.

We're also pretty excited that she has her head so far down. This shows the sort of obedience that you want in any child, and provides further fodder for my whole, I want a girl child first because they're easier conjecture. Clearly, most children are still busy flipping around and stuff, but we've got a little ball of energy ready to shoot out into the world after nineteen hours of labor or something. Is labor hard? Don't ask me, I'll be talking with a prison guard in the waiting room. Mad Men anyone?

I've also begun to speak to S's belly during the evening in halting Spanish, so that she'll arrive in the world fully bilingual, capable of saying things like, Hello, and how's it going? but in Spanish. We're also hopeful that this speedy brain development will lead her to be on the cover of Star. When you get right down to it, the best reason to have a baby is to try and get briefly famous, so you can publish a memoir. Thomas Jefferson said that, and probably then a bunch of other neat stuff that should help his corpse get elected to the house.

I've also noticed that the little bundle of what the heck are we going to do with this tiny human being who cries and poops a lot, as we've lovingly taken to calling her, enjoys it when I raise my voice. This shows a good and willingness to listen to my commanding voice, which bodes well for the future when I'm giving her orders like, "You'll leave this house in that outfit when hell freezes over!" And then we'll probably sit down and have a nice talk about what a Christian actually considers hell, like whether we're meaning Dante's Inferno leveled hell or absence from God, or ice or whatever because that's the sort of thing seventeen year old girls like to do on a Friday night, I hope.

Birth dates

It's probably time to discuss possible due dates. Thanks to the moderns of medical science people can now schedule a C section to give their newborn child the perfect due date. However, due to pressure, probably from ridiculous liberals and no good dirty hippies, women now feel that they should have their baby "naturally." Thus, we're left trying to guess at the perfect due date rather than accepting that we live in the greatest country that's existed since whatever Rome was devolved, likely due to an inability to tax their large populous effectively, tax cut people beware, the people from Gaul are likely to rise up if we don't keep this big ship called the federal government running. I demand chariot races, and charts!

October 31:
Score 5

Why? You get to tell your child that everyone dresses up for their birthday every year and that they are incredibly special.

Negative: Our child will eventually become old enough to know that it's not actually an advantage to have a birthday shared with every other little Joe and Kathy on the street.

Additional negative: 21st birthday. Halloween + drinking age=possible disaster even with the best of parents.

Additional Negative: She'll be unlikely to have everyone over for a sleep over on her birthday because everyone will just want to go home and eat a sack full of candy or razor blades or whatever moms warn their kids against in apples these days.

Additional Positive: Perhaps saving a bit of money on her birthday will allow mommy and daddy to save some cash and go on an adult vacation to Europe or South America or something.

November 2

Score: 9

Why? Because this would allow mother and daughter to share the same birthday.

Positive: This would finally put an end to those complaints from S (well at least one of them) about how not enough was being done on her birthday, and she damn well doesn't understand why men think birthdays aren't such a big deal when they are. And what did you plan? Nothing? Really?

Positive: I only have to remember one birthday for my two girls. This will allow me to save at least one additional part of my brain to remember some obscure sports fact like that Anthony Thompson won the Doak Walker award while playing running back at the University of Indiana.

Possible negative: Two girls complaining at double the volume about the inadequacy of the plans for their birthday, which they can't really be held responsible for, it being their birthday and all.

November 12

Score 8

Why? Because it's the due date

Positive: It's a Friday. This will allow me to maximize the sick days that I can take from my job.

Additional positive: An on time arrival bodes well for my future as it's already a pain in the as- to get S out of the door on time. Perhaps I'll have a little timely helper!

Positive: I don't give a damn what anyone says, that's the day I picked in the family pool. Do we win a live turkey to cook at Thanksgiving or what? I'm unclear on the rules.

Negative: In order for her to be a famous artist she should do something outside the norm, being born when you are expected does not help her in this regard.

November 19

Score: 4

Why? Because S can't put her socks on anymore.

Positive/Negative: She'll finally be in the world but probably have a really weird shaped head from being overly large upon exit.

Negative: I don't know if I can take one more week of S pulling up her shirt and telling me to look at how big her belly is. Yes, I know, I've seen it ever day for the last nine months thank you very much.

Negative: This sort of late behavior is uncharacteristic of a Bertaina and does not bode well for future trips anywhere.

Positive: She won't be a small baby by that point. I'm afraid of little babies. Please be at least seven pounds.

Streets....

Today, my netflix account started recommending movies that were Critically acclaimed, suspenseful and cerebral. If they'd just add a fourth category to the recommendation I'd feel comfortable about what I was watching.

Ie: Gritty, gutty, critics watched this movie, brief nudity.

Ie: Documentary, typical thing you dirty left wingers like, probably will reinforce views you already have, kind of a good movie to make out to.

Ie: Slasher, suspenseful, people will do inexplicable things that will likely get them murdered, why do people like movies like this anyway?

Ie: Family, This movie has a dog in it, at some point the dog is going to die and probably some people will learn about mortality and you might cry, stop crying!

Ie: Silent, boring, when was sound invented?, based on a critically acclaimed novel by Willa Cather

Ie: Heart-wrenching, based on a fairly pedestrian effort from Nicholas Sparks, some old people are going to remember loving someone when they were much younger, also it will rain.

Ie: Action, probably some explosions, also a good movie to make out to, barring that, watch it with some of your friends and make fun of it.

Ie: Retread of a movie that only gets worse each time we try and retell the story, I mean, why can't the Matrix have only been one movie?, women in tight clothes but fairly caricature like roles, probably a good movie to turn off halfway through and go take a look at the stars.

Ie: Cartoon movie, We're probably going to face some adversity that will be overcome after learning a little bit about the individual but also ourselves writ large, this movie got like 87 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, just like every other cartoon movie excluding those one's that obviously royally suck like Alvin and the Chimpunks 2, which was live action anyway when you really get down to it, inspiring.


I love greatest hits episodes of old blogs on xtranormal

Yup

The truth of the matter is that none of us were happy that summer. For a while, Jackie insisted that she was, but we later came to understand that she was defining happiness in entirely the wrong way, if it is fair to say so. Besides which, she was sleeping with an older man who wore expensive watches. She had nothing in common with any of us anymore.

Okay, it's probably not fair of me to say that all of were not happy that summer. James was working as a trainer in an old boxing gym, teaching kids off the street how to land a proper jab. We all knew for a fact that James didn't know shi- about boxing, but these kids didn't know any better, and who were we to blame him for being caught up with the idea of a better version of himself as projected by these kids. Something about this relationship between perception and reality seemed vitally important. None of us knew enough about boxing to be able to tell by the end of the summer that James hadn't become a really good trainer. Though, to be honest, we watched one of his little charges get his ass handed to him, losing by TKO in the second round after taking a series of left hooks to the head that left him floored until the eight count and on his feet but not on this planet by the time the ref called the fight. Afterwards, we took the kid, who turned out to be a little shi-, and we almost felt sort of bad that James had put so much stock in these kids opinions, out for ice cream and he tried to touch Jackie's breasts.

The real point is that we were all unhappy for causes unknown. Sydney had gotten into a motorcycle accident in the spring, and, as a result, she'd ended up with her jaw wired shut for the better part of three months. And you wouldn't believe the sort of things we'd all say to her knowing that she couldn't answer back, just turn beat red and stamp off way down along the beach where a bunch of druggies hung out beneath the bridge. And she'd pout down there for hours, to no avail, trying to get good and high off second hand smoke before she came back to glare at us all.

We were, most of us, in the early part of our twenties working at dead end jobs in retail stores and public libraries stocking books, waiting for the summer to be over, so we could forget that we were supposed to be making something of ourselves. Those days that last forever gave us all too much time to think about the positions we were in, and the failures we were fast becoming. Laura would usually bring cigarettes and those of us who smoked would cup our hands in the wind against the wind and toss the butts into the ocean and not one of us even dared to try our hand at a metaphor.

Derek would usually bring just enough beers to leave us all disappointed that there weren't more, and we'd occasionally make a camp fire and try and keep the smoke out of our eyes while we bitched about the people we wanted to love us the most. When we grew bored and our eyes were all stinging from all that damn smoke from the wet logs we'd put together we'd talk about whoever hadn't come that night, speculate about the sorts of things that could keep them from our nightly funereal engagement. And that's what it was, I now see, way before the thing with Jimmy, which, I suppose, was perhaps preordained after all those ashes had burned away, and we were left with the bare light of the moon on our ageless faces.

Date Day 2010/Fantasy Football

I would like to thank the good people at Target for providing a never ending fount of capitalist blessings to my family. It's really quite a treasure trove of a place. I mean, walking around Target with your head on a swivel, dodging moms pushing a cart with a baby strapped in while trying to manage a three year old who is pulling items off the display rack, is a real thrill for me. I find nothing more thrilling about my American citizenship than being able to walk into a bastion of free market competition like Target, so that I can purchase a whole bunch of stuff that I kind of want but probably don't need.

I don't know how many people have been in a Target and Babies R Us on the same day regularly of late. However, I'd like to note that the children in Babies R US seem almost infinitely more well-adjusted and cute. Is this a socioeconomic thing going on or just dumb luck? I'm not really privy to differences in the two stores pricing structures. Perhaps it's the sheer volume of crap available in Target that gets the kids overexcited, diagnosed with ADD and put on heavy doses of ritalin. I'm not really sure. However, if you're a parent, I recommend taking the kids to Babies R Us and then letting them sit in the car with the window rolled down to a proper level while you peruse the amazing dollar deals at the front of Target.

S and I embarked on our last big date day before the arrival of our little bundle of joy. Firstly, we woke up late. S took a shower while I lay in bed waiting for the room to warm up in a cocoon of blankets that I've taken to bringing to bed after she commandeered virtually everything else on the bed including like six pillows in an attempt to maintain some modicum of comfort in these latter stages of pregnancy. As it turns out, our room didn't warm up.

Thus, we headed downstairs together to make breakfast! For those of you who haven't made breakfast in a while, it is not easy. Thus, we decided that for date day we'd rather just have some cereal. Edit: I wound up eating some bacon in the microwave. Date day was off to a rousing start. It was at this point, in what was truly going to be an epic date day that S decided that we'd be attending church. To be honest, nothing says date day like some qt down at the old DC CRC. I think that's a gang name or something.

Anyhow, we continued date day by going to church and singing some hymns and praying some prayers and stuff. Then we went out into the vestibule or whatever, or causeway? or whatever, and had some nice snacks made by someone else. Nothing says date day like eating food prepared by someone else. Eating a couple of crackers and a piece of celery on a thimble sized paper plate made date day go from amazing to whatever is better than amazing.

We then went back into church and sat through an hour and a half congregational meeting where a number of people were highly displeased. This displeased us because it was our date day and here we were sitting amongst a big group of angry people. Even though the energy in the room was a bit exciting in a visceral way, I felt that taking to the streets and firing a trash can through someone's window would probably dampen date day for S.

We went home to try and reinvigorate date day. Unfortunately, in the midst of preparing to head off to Sugar Loaf mountain I realized that I had made a mistake in pulling Hines Ward out of my starting lineup for fantasy football. If you've never made a late switch to an underperforming player, (Chris Ivory) than you probably can't understand the kind of mental anguish that I was in, which is to say, a lot. After about the fifth time that I mentioned how good Hines was doing S asked me why I made the switch in the first place, which, as you can imagine, sent me into another wave of remorse over all the poor fantasy football decisions I'd made in the past. Making a mistake like this is akin to switching Baking Powder for Baking Soda in baking.

All of the remorse over my terrible decision made me want to take a nap. In the meantime, S was celebrating date day by writing thank you notes to people for our baby shower gifts. After a couple of hours of me randomly checking on seven games at a time to see whether Kenny Britt was still available S and I took date day to the next level. We went for a walk to take care of our friend's cat. Going for a walk with your pregnant wife is sort of the epitome of date day. It having been decided at this point that a romantic trip to Sugar Loaf was nothing when compared with a date day trip to buy diapers and a stainless steel trash can.

Anyhow, on the way over to the house, the sun was shining, and all was well in the world. Except that S was wearing those silly shoes that girls wear nowadays that aren't really shoes at all, but like little ballerina shoes that don't give the feet any support at all and that really look like they should be accompanied by a tutu. Not Desmond. I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your servers.

Date day really blasted off when I attempted to take a nap on our friend's couch while S tried to coax the kitty out of the bathroom where it was rubbing its head against the toilet, apparently deciding that cold porcelain was more appealing than either of us. On our way home we cut up Sheridan to eighth and admired a few single family homes, high quality gardening, and solid fences.

At home, I went down into the basement to spend more qt with Jay Cutler, (four interceptions? I mean, I could have started Ryan Fitzpatrick, how do you do this to me Jay?) and remorse. After a while S, who was probably engaged in some sort of productive activity this whole time like creating an excel spreadsheet of our future monthly expenses while baking vegan corn muffins from scratch, lured me back upstairs for a trip to Target.

Our trip to Target gave us some new insight into how great date day 2010 could really be as I argued with her about wanting to take a trip to Italy next summer. Apparently S thinks a savings account is for saving money while I thin it's just some disposable income for trips to Europe. As it turns out, these two separate views of finances don't exactly jive perfectly. I think we finally settled on traveling overland by wagon train to cut costs.

And, as we entered our second Target, the first Target didn't have the trash can we were looking for, and let me tell you, nothing gets me more excited than driving fifteen miles out into the burbs looking for a trash can, only to discover that we need to drive even further out to another Target for that stupid piece of metal that I could have had for thirteen more bucks at our local Ace. Our ratio of purchases to time spent was sitting at about 1 item purchased for every hour spent shopping, at which point in time we entered Marshalls.

As it turns out I love Marshalls because it has all sorts of cheap crap that I don't quite need, but on a good day, could probably talk myself into buying. Purchasing makes date day feel special, but we left without anything. Curiously unfulfilled. Finally, at our second Target we expressed ourselves a little bit economically.

M: This trash can is going to change our lives. I think this is finally the purchase that is going to make us happy.

S: Move it along.

In line, we briefly discussed our enjoyment of mint M & M's before taking date day to Babies R Us. At this point I blacked out, and date day really became a blur until I came home to find out that Anquan Boldin had had a really solid second half and that I might actually win despite my poor decision making involving the benching of Hines Ward. Suddenly, date day 2010 didn't seem like such a waste after all. S and I curled up and watched a little bit of Michael Moore's fair and balanced movie on Capitalism before I headed upstairs to spend some qt on the computer checking to see if Randy Moss was going to get me one more touchdown while S read a baby book until she fell asleep. Yes, date day 2010 had been a success! I'm up forty four points in fantasy!

A public service announcement

The internet is for ranting. This is for anyone who shops at the grocery store. People who walk are accepted from this public service announcement because they are good and environmentally sound folks who need to talk down to the rest of us. Now who wants to go drink some oil!! Sorry, I got a bit off track there.

Anyhow, I don't really give a damn if you have sixteen items in the 15 or fewer lane or if you forgot your canvas bags. I'm an easy going guy. The one thing you can't do, and I mean this people, I'm about to start doing some internet shouting, you cannot, I repeat cannot, take for-damn ever when pulling out of your spot in a big city. Why? Because you've got a line of about fifty cars behind you who are at the end of their work day as well, really the people in the cars more than the cars themselves, who are pretty damn eager to get the car parked and pick up some cheap soup so they can head home to watch banal television shows until they fall asleep and push the rewind button.

Ergo; I don't care if you can't find your lip gloss or coin purse or third child, when you approach your car with a handful of groceries it is your job to pull out of the spot in under thirty seconds. I don't know how many times I've watched somebody put their foot on the break and then sit there for another thirty seconds doing lord only knows what while I wait for them to actually back up and hold up a group of about seven cards behind me who are probably plotting how to kill me, in this case I do mean the cars rather than the people.

Things I don't care about.

1) If you are checking your cell phone. You have plenty of time to do this while you are handing the nice man your ticket, or driving slowly through the parking lot. Laws are made to be broken, check those voice mails on the road.

2) Texting. Texting is, other than on rare occasions, a debased way of communicating information with each other. STFT and get the heck out of my spot!!!!

3) You can't find your sunglasses. Like my old high school teacher Mr. Needles used to always say, "A lack of preparation on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." I don't remember anything else any of my teacher's have ever said. The point is, get yourself organized or learn how to drive with a bit of sun in your eyes you bastard!

4) Anything related to putting all of your wallet and crap in order. You can do all that crap on your time before you go inside your house to your loving family. Don't waste my precious time.

5) Anything else besides the few exceptions listed below.

Things that are okay

1) Strapping a baby into the car seat. This is acceptable for obvious reasons. I may even smile at you and nod knowingly about the rigors of putting kids in a car seat. Also, hurry it up, so I can get some bok choi.

2) Having an octogenarian as a passenger. Let's be honest, I'm not sure what this word means, but it can't be good. I don't expect people to help hustle people who can break a hip into the car for my convenience. Unless that person is in relatively good shape in which case I'll be fuming while someone in the store picks up the last on sale Odwalla.

3) You are a student driver and it is your first trip out in D.C. Although, you've got to learn somehow, so back the f- up and let's get this show on the road.

And look, I'm not saying that my time is more important than the person who is pulling out of the spot at a glacial pace. I just want an equal respect thing. When I'm at the grocery store you can bet your as- that when I get in my car I high tale it out of there. Why? Because I want to respect other people's time.

In conclusion, the whole purpose of this post is to accelerate the speed at which you exit your parking spot in the grocery store. Take a stop watch, time yourself, if you feel like you're going too slow, you probably are. Try tossing the groceries haphazardly in the back seat. Imagine that your husband or wife will still love you without lip gloss. Assume that the person behind you is actually on fire and the parking spot is the only nearby body of water.

Alternatives to the problem:

1) Walk. This is the way most of us should get shi- done if your country wasn't so stupid in terms of transit oriented development.

2) Public Transit. "Public Transit, it's not just for poor people anymore!" I pushed this slogan for a while but WAMATA turned me down, partially because the ending was, "Okay, it still kind of is."

3) Hover board-Somehow we'd invented these in the mid 80's, I think we've all, regrettably, seen Back to the Future 2, how is it that they haven't reached the market? I blame our liberal, read communist loving, president.

4) Take a queue from our eastern brothers and develop some patience and calm. Spend that time in your car calmly meditating on the beauty of that sliver of sky available to you beneath the parking garage's roof and wall. The main problem with this method is that getting angry and contemplating honking is way more fun.

5) Build shops that are underwater. These would completely preclude parking spaces, and, like Georgetown, we wouldn't allow any public transit to come to our watery kingdom/store because even mermaids don't like poor people.

6) Develop a sense of humor about nearly everything and apply it liberally.

This was a fun way to spend the evening. My favorite is the soccer players

Citizenship

I'm just going to include a little story recently published in the Atlantic by a reporter who traveled around for a bit in Afghanistan with some troops that I think should pretty much be required reading for any American over the age of 18. The story is basically a firsthand account of fighting in the war, and it's pretty much just an apolitical look at what it means to send people into war.

I think that one of the chief things we're asked to do in a democracy is think. And I think that it's impossible to think without having all of the information at hand. For instance, if you think you want a less intrusive government that lowers taxes even more, go ahead and advocate for it. However, don't do it by claiming our taxes are too high when they are at the lowest level that they've been since 1950. If you want to say that you don't like the stimulus bill, fine, I have my issues as well. But don't say that it didn't work because economists across the board pretty much agree that it helped prevent the recession from deepening by a significant amount. If you're like me, and you want to treat our country being at war as an abstract philosophical concept, read this article to get a little taste of what it means to send young men to war. If you want to oppose the Muslim cultural center near 9/11, by all means, oppose it, but don't oppose the mosque when it's actually a cultural center, and while you're at it, make sure to get rid of the peep show places and porn video stores around the 9/11 site as well; we don't allow that kind of crap in my version of America.

Here is an essay that pretends to be about lobsters but that is really about thinking and democracy, and in general, being a human being.


For a long time I've been writing you long letters and using words like diegetic, which mean things that I don't understand. I've said things like, I've always admired the peculiar shape your fingers take on the keyboard below the soft blue light of the computer or that I've missed the shadow that forms beneath your clavicle on the island of your skin. I asked you to sing me something where the point was the feeling, not the words; the truth is, I didn't want to understand any of them. I wanted to slip softly beneath the space that lies necessarily between two bodies. Just once, can you lie to me long enough to say that you understand? I promise, if you stay long enough, that I'll believe you.

South Lake and Facebook

Because sometimes things are pretty funny. The video below, though funny, does not represent the views or opinions of any writers, thinkers or editors of the blog.



I wrote and performed the listed song in around 1998 but as it turns out I'm not talented, so I sold the the rights to some English lady. When you get right down to it, the preceding sentence pretty much sums up my life.



You awake after five hours of inglorious sleep to the smell of bacon.
M: "It's like God put a little piece of heaven right inside a pig, and he's given us the ability to cut it right out and eat it."

S: Theology isn't always your strong suit.

Because you have brought flags and a strangely child-sized football, you spend the morning complaining about the fact that you won't be playing football that day. Sometime before noon, breaking a rule I might add, you start drinking rum. By two o'clock you've won several games of pool and downed a solid portion of the Captain's drink. Your friends are playing a game of Scrabble. Secretly you've always known them to be nerds. For a while you toss the football back and forth in the house over lamps and through rafters, in just the sort of way that gives every mom nightmares. In fact, that's one of the first memories you have of your spouse, her telling you and your friends to stop tossing the football in the quad. Clearly, she didn't know how accurate you were with a football. Eventually you convince a couple of your friends to go outside and toss around the football. On one of your first throws you want to prove that you've still got it so you zing a tight spiral twenty yards to your friend. It is at this point that you begin to suspect that you might have torn your right labrum as well. You gun a few more across the cement to prove your worth before retiring inside with an aching shoulder and elbow. Someone else is going to have to play football with your kids.

By two o'clock most everyone is playing poker, so you take a nap. It is a point of pride that with you that you don't play poker. You don't even know the rules. Playing poker is like learning about drill bits or how to cook a delicious Thanksgiving dinner, something you'd rather not know. You sleep for a couple of hours then call various people in your family and talk to them about work.

Outside, a few evergreens cast long shadows across the street. Without even walking outside you can tell that the air is crisp. If you had to live life over again, you're fairly certain that you'd sleep more. By four o'clock everyone is done playing poker and you have the run of the house to yourself. For a while, people climb on rafters like monkeys for no explicable reason. You start to climb up but then climb back down because you're going to be a father soon and safety is no accident.

In the early evening you drink some more rum and coke. By this time the booze has no palpable effect on your body, but it appears to be in the process of burning a whole in your esophagus. Some time passes in which really nothing much happens. Eventually everyone heads down to the casino and you watch a couple of your friends play craps and blackjack and secretly wish you had way more money, so you could partake as well. However, you're going to be a father soon and financial safety is no accident. It is at this point that you burp and discover that the hole burnt into your esophagus from the rum and coke has created something akin to the sulfur smell when Old Glory erupts. Your friend, who is well on his way to becoming a doctor, cowers away in fear.

At the blackjack table some people win money and some people lose money. We debate the merits of telling wives about substantial financial loss via text or phone. It is decided that the best method is just to exaggerate the cost of the lodging to make the gambling losses seem smaller. Really, it's why you've always liked being friends with smart people, great ideas like that. At the craps table a couple of your friends win money while occasionally heckling poor rollers. The whole process looks like a hell of a lot of fun if you're winning money.

At the end of the day, you don't have some scathing critique of the casino, you only slightly think something like "no wonder they hate freedom; it gives you slot machines." Later on someone receives a return text from a wife saying something along the lines of, "It doesn't matter how much you lose, I'll still love you." You're pretty certain that no such text would be headed your way if you had done more than pay the 4.50 withdrawal fee to take out forty bucks that you didn't gamble. Casinos are strange but so are human beings.