The little abstraction

Here's one for people who have had children. I'm not really certain what to do about the whole naming thing as S has apparently decided that we can't name the thing. Anyhow, as it turns out, for me, calling the child, the thing, or sprout, or whatever, doesn't really do it for me. In fact, it makes me feel disconnected from whatever is growing in her belly. Thus, I've taken to calling our baby girl "the little abstraction." Which, actually makes me feel a little bit closer to her. One could trace this all the way back to creation's beginning, when God didn't just make man, but actually named him Adam as well. And from that point Adam goes on to name all the animals. In the story Adam names all of them. He doesn't look at a koala bear and say, "Wait, Wait, Hold on. That thing is so damn cute, but I can't think of what to name it. Is it a...Ah, who am I kidding. Shuffle along fuzzy thing, I'll give you a name later." Actually this apocryphal story of the not naming of the koala is the reason that they are so vicious despite their cute exterior.

The one problem with my naming dilemma is that it actually adds fuel to the fire that I'm currently trying to put out. Ie, I keep telling S that it is just a name. Meanwhile, my behavior suggests that the inclusion of the word just is a rather egregious mistake. Apparently I think that a name is kind of a big deal, even it it's just "the little abstraction." I wish in the Bible it had a passage that said something like, "Wives, be kind to your husbands. Let them name the children because it will allow them to feel more involved in the pregnancy. You've already got "the little abstraction" growing inside of you. And listen, (still quoting straight from the apocryphal Bible here) I'm as big a fan of women's lib. as the next Paul. Bazing! But giving up the naming rights isn't such a bad thing, in less he names your child something like Dorcas, but then, that's not my fault is it. You should have married a smarter man." End quote here and perhaps the chapter.

Anyhow, the Bible does not include this lengthy quotation about how to properly name a child, though its got a lot of really nice stuff about how many shekels various things cost. Ergo; we'll just have to go about this whole naming thing in the modern way. Slyly suggesting names to one another until the other person breaks down and agrees to a name, then holding them to it despite the fact that they'll almost certainly want to renege within hours.

Because at some point in the next few months before "the little abstraction" arrives, I need to be in a bar and hear this song and remember that I used to be an eighth grader listening to Counting Crows and dreaming of the day that some yellow haired girl would love me.



Fiction
At two thirty in the morning the neighbor’s dog starts barking, and he carries on for hours, this dog, howling at the moonless sky. I think it’s a siren that set him off, though from here it just sounds like the cries of a child. And I walk down the brief hallway to the guest room and check to see if I am right. But there is no child screaming, just an old mattress covered over by a flowery bedspread that my mother gave me years ago. At three forty seven I contemplate lacing some sort of meat product with ammonia and tossing it over the fence. I imagine the dog sniffing the offering at first, measuring its worth before dipping his nose into the raw flesh. And at that point I lose track of the fantasy because it’s now 4:03 A.M. and I can’t think about anything but how tired I’ll be in the morning.

I call in sick to work. On the phone, I make my voice sound like I’ve been chewing gravel and some of it has gotten lodged in the back of my throat.

“You sound terrible,” my boss says.

“You should see the other guy,” I joke, but my boss just hangs up.

The dog has stopped barking or someone has put it down. I have the whole day ahead of me stretching out like some ancient valley in the eyes of an explorer. I watch dust motes settle on the television from the light in the window. I don’t know how Einstein invented things but perhaps it was on days like this. The carpet appears to be beige. The sink is best cleaned with Windex. I can’t remember the last time I had an original thought.

Hot air

Ah, it's so nice to finally have a chance to let in some cool air. It's been ninety thousand degrees in DC for what seems like eternity. Naturally it is now apparent that a certain neighbor's dog has taken up barking as an intense night sporting event. And, oh wait, was that a gunshot I heard? Oh well. At least we're getting some nice cool air. Note: It probably was not a gunshot but as a person who grew up in a small college town, any noise at night is obviously a gunshot.

Highlights on the way home from work:

As I pulled into the gas station, (BP mind you. I don't blame them for the spill, and I'm pretty excited that they gave it such an awesome name, Deep Horizon=bad ass). Though yes, I am sad for all of the devastation wreaked by the spill. Sorry, it's hard to focus over all the police sirens. Note: the station is within two blocks of us. Anyhow, as I began pumping my gas two loud voices started to call out from the distance.

Voice: Hey you. You.

Luckily it was far enough away for me to realize that it wasn't intended for me. And even if it was intended for me I probably shouldn't look up right away as it would make me seem arrogant. Not every random holler is intended for me.

Hey you. You.

I wonder who this jackass is that they're yelling at. He should really speak up.

Voice: Hey blue shirt. Blue shirt

Luckily I was wearing something that was more of a capris. Certainly they couldn't mean me. It would be a gross misunderstanding of my beautiful new shirt.

Voice: Guy pumping gas in the blue shirt.

I wonder who else is pumping gas in a blue shirt. Wait, am I wearing my blue shirt. No, this is at least cerulean. It's definitely not blue. I continue to pump gas while smiling lightly.

Voice: Blue shirt! Blue shirt!

Okay, I look up on the off chance that the voice has misidentified capris. Perhaps I can direct them to the color wheel. I try and see if they are up in the apartments above, but I don't see anyone. It must not be for me.

Voice: Blue shirt! Hey you. White boy.

And we have lift off. I do appear to be the only visible white boy on the block. And, I'm a little flattered because I've just been called a boy. I almost yell across the street, "I'm thirty, but thanks. I try my best to keep in shape." Instead, I look across the street and give a brief wave. Yes, that's me. I am white. Just pumping my gas. My half-assed wave seems to say.

Voice: Blue shirt!

Okay, now I actually smile, despite the color wheel mix up. I suppose that a person could actually call my shirt blue, and if I hadn't painted within the last six months I would only know of two blue colors, blue and navy blue, which I often mistake for black in dim light. The voices finally stop, and I get in the car and drive away. Except that I turn down a side street and there are the two women who have been yelling at me from across the street, one of them is pushing a stroller.

Voice: Hey!

This time, I know that I'm being talked to, so I wave out the window. Hello, I'm glad to have had this little chance encounter my wave seems to say.

Voice: Hey cutie!

When I get home I tell S that some people were yelling at me from across the street at the gas station. I say, post thirty, I'll just take it is a compliment.

Kind of a bad ass song.




The beginning to a DFW fragment that is also bad ass.

It is this boy who dons the bright-orange bandolier and shepherds the really small ones through the crosswalk outside school. This is after finishing the meals-on-wheels breakfast tour of the hospice downtown, whose administrator lunges to bolt her office door when she hears his cart’s wheels in the hall. He has paid out-of-pocket for the steel whistle and the white gloves held palm-out at cars while children who did not dress themselves cross behind him, some trying to run despite WALK DON’T RUN, the happyfaced sandwich board he also made himself. The autos whose drivers he knows he waves at and gives an extra-big smile and tosses some words of good cheer as the crosswalk clears and the cars peel out and move through, some joshing around a little by swerving to miss him only by inches as he laughs and dances aside and makes faces of pretended terror at the flank and rear bumper. The one time that station wagon didn’t miss him really was an accident and he sent the lady several notes to make absolutely sure she knew he understood that and asked a whole lot of people he hadn’t yet gotten the opportunity to make friends with to sign his cast and decorated the crutches very carefully with bits of colored ribbon and tinsel and adhesive sparkles and even before the six weeks the doctor sternly prescribed, he’d given them away to the children’s wing to brighten up some other less lucky and happy kid’s convalescence and by the end of the whole thing he’d been inspired to write a very long theme to enter into the annual Social Studies theme competition about how a positive attitude can make even an accidental injury into an occasion for new friends and bright new opportunities for reaching out to others and while the theme didn’t even get honorable mention he honestly didn’t care because he felt like writing the theme had been its own reward and he’d gotten a lot out of the whole nine-draft process and was honestly happy for the kids whose themes did win awards and told them he was 100-plus percent sure they deserved it and that if they wanted to preserve their prize themes and maybe even
make displayed items out of them for their parents, he’d be happy to type them up and laminate them and even fix any spelling errors he found if they’d like him to and at home his father puts his hand on Leonard’s shoulder and says he’s really proud that his son’s such a good sport and offers to take him to Dairy Queen as a kind of reward and Leonard tells his father he’s grateful and that the gesture means a lot to him but that in all honesty he’d like it even more if they took the money his father would have spent on the ice cream and instead donated it either to Easter Seals or, better yet, to UNICEF to go toward the needs of famine-ravaged Biafrican kids who he knew for a fact had probably never even heard of ice cream and says that he bets it’ll end up giving both of them a better feeling even then the DQ would and as the father slips the coins in the coin-slot at the special bright-orange UNICEF volunteer cardboard pumpkin bank, Leonard takes a moment to express concern about the father’s facial tick again and to gently rib him about his reluctance to go in and have the family’s MD look at it, noting again that according to the chart on the back of his bedroom door the father is four months overdue for his annual physical and that it’s almost eight months past the
date of his recommended tetanus and T.B. boosters.

Evening

"Human beings are narrative animals: every culture countenances itself as culture via a story, whether mythopoeic or politico-economic; every whole person understands his lifetime as an organized, recountable series of events and changes with at least a beginning and middle. We need narrative like we need space-time; it’s a built-in thing."

For the minimalists in the room: which of the following sentences is more pleasing: note the sentences describes his (the narrator's) state of mind when, prior to going on medication, he was on a bus during an accident where he witnessed the driver get seriously injured:

I felt unbelievably sorry for him and of course the Bad Thing very kindly filtered this sadness for me and made it a lot worse. It was weird and irrational but all of a sudden I felt really strongly as though the bus driver were really me. I really felt that way. So I felt just like he must have felt, and it was awful. I wasn’t just sorry for him, I was sorry as him, or something like that.

Or

I felt sorry for him. It was irrational, but I felt as though the driver were me. I wasn’t just sorry for him, I was sorry as him.

Cast your vote below.

Lady Bird Johnson tells one of the President’s aides in the great story “Lyndon”:

"[Lyndon’s] hatred of being alone is a consequence of what his memoir will call his great intellectual concept: the distance at which we see each other, arrange each other, love. That love, he will say, is a federal highway, lines putting communities, that move and exist at great distance, in touch. My husband has stated publicly that America, too, his own America, that he loves enough to conceal deaths for, is to be understood in terms of distance."

You say, how was your day? And I tell you a story.

At 6:30 P.M. I arrived home to find my wife sitting at the table on the computer. Let's trip plan, I said.

at 6:45 P.M. S went downstairs and shouted upstairs to me that she was in need of paper towels.

At 9:23 P.M. S asked me where the night had gone. The night had gone at least seven different directions and none of which we were eager to follow. Is the puddle in the basement from condensation from our uninsulated/too high humidity ducts? Or is it from a rainstorm and our, at the very least, partially clogged drain? I'm not sure all that I know, is that in another life I hope I come back as some kind of bird, so I can live on an island beyond a blue bay, between the edge of the sky and the edge of the sea.

Facts from a DFW fragment:

FACTS:
• Italian stigmatist Padre Pio carried bloodless wounds,
which penetrated the left hand and both feet medially
throughout his lifetime.

• The Umbrian St. Veronica Giuliani presented with
wounds in one hand as well as in her side, which wounds
were observed to open and close on command.

• The 18th century holy woman Giovanna Solimani permitted
pilgrims to insert special keys in her hand’s wounds
and to turn them, reportedly facilitating those clients’ own
recovery from rationalist despair.

• According to both St. Bonaventure and Thomas de Chilano,
St. Francis of Assisi’s manual stigmata included baculiform
masses of what presented as hardened black flesh
extrudant from both volar planes. If and when pressure
was applied to a palm’s so-called ‘nail,’ a hardened black
rod of flesh would immediately protrude from the back of
the hand just exactly as if a real so-called nail were passing
through the hand.

And yet, fact:
• Hands lack the anatomical mass required to support the
weight of an adult human. Both Roman legal texts and
modern examinations of 1st century skeletons confirm that
classical crucifixion required nails to be driven through the
subject’s wrists, not his hands, hence the ‘necessarily simultaneous
truth and falsity of the stigmata’ that existential
theologist E.M. Cioran explicates in his 1937 Lacrimi şi
Sfînţi, the same monograph in which he refers to the human
heart as ‘God’s open wound.’

I say or In General

I say: I'm a point A to point B person.

She says: I know. But I like to enjoy the journey.

She says: Look at Chaucer. All of the best stories happen on the road.

I say: I hate Chaucer and all those pilgrims nattering on.

She says: Nattering?

I say: It's a word I feel comfortable using.

She says: Should you?


In general, when someone asks me to help them solve a crossword puzzle clue I become fixated on the first word that comes to mind. The clue might be: willful and strong-headed, and the accompanying spaces will be five letters. Stubborn, my mind will think. And I'll say out loud, "Give me a second. I'm an English Major, I should know this one." Then I stand in silence, perhaps knitting my brows to simulate thinking while my mind repeats over and over, Stubborn, Stubborn, Stubborn. Until I throw up my hands and say, "I'm not good at this sort of thing."

In general, I prefer summer, and I don't mind a good sweat. When it comes down to it, most people don't, or we'd have died out long ago from an absence of children.

In general, I don't notice the sky. Although, when I do, I often remark on the quality of the light and am prone to saying that it is beautiful. I occasionally say lovely, and rarely, breathtaking. Today, mid-day, I looked up at the sky and noticed a small sheet of blue amidst grey clouds that were spitting rain. I wanted to remark to T that the quality of the light was lovely and that the clouds looked like the great masts of long white ships. Instead, I threw the ball in a field of grass like my ancestors before me. The sky will always be there.

In general, I've no earthly clue what any of the constellations are though I've often wished that it wasn't so. I say things like, "We should visit the planetarium in Montreal," as if I would understand anything. Years ago now I took a course where we learned about various constellations and went on a night hike in the small mountains of Santa Barbara to identify them. I don't remember any of the constellations or the professor's name. Only that he was German, and spoke with an accent, and that the pace he set that night left two students too winded to continue. Thus, I can't even identify the little dipper, but I remember that we called that mountain night hike, inappropriately, a "Nazi death hike." And I remember my classmates wheezing on the rocks at the bottom of the uphill grade.

I can't vouch for the rather strange video, but in honor of our visit to Canada it's time for Stars.

Gender Day

Unfortunately, it's not actually national gender day, which actually falls on June 32 each year. It's an obscure Holiday celebrated mainly in the southern regions of what used to be known as Uzbekistan, before Pangea broke off. Anyhow, a bit off topic, I suppose.

In the office we read dueling magazines. I read Vanity Fair.

S: Is that a magazine for women?

M: I think it's like Esquire for girls. Or TNY lite. Instead of an article about some ballet director it's on Tiger Woods' affairs.

S reads a magazine called Fit and Pregnant.

M: Why are all the women in the magazine wearing only underwear? Is it some sort of prerequisite of being pregnant that you are sans pants?

S: It's the summer issue. Those are bathing suits. And yeah, pants are pretty uncomfortable.

S reads facts about pregnancy to me. Apparently semen is not the labor inducing substance that it's often been credited to be.

S: It is good at softening the cervix. Do you know what the cervix is?

M: No. And I'd like to keep it that way.

I read an article about Tiger Woods with attached pictures of his mistresses.

M: You have to give him credit at least all of these women are hot. Can I get a high five on that?

S: (Stares ahead, secretly regretting bringing me to the appt/life).

M: No. All right.

We both secretly lament catching sight of our sonogram lady.

S: I was kind of hoping for a different one. (Pause) Stop glaring at her.

We sit in the small dark room while the lady takes pictures of our baby. And it gives me time to think about whether I really care about the gender of the child. Like sometimes when you say you don't care about something, but then when it arrives you discover that you really do. This happens primarily when choosing an option for dinner, when both parties say, "I don't really care. I could eat whatever." At that point one or the other suggests Chinese and the person, who has just said, literally seconds before that they don't care, comes out with, "That doesn't sound good," and makes another suggestion. To which the person who just idly suggested Chinese, now realizes either
a) Their life cannot continue without having Chinese food and this is a battle that must be fought, perhaps killed over.
b) That their sig. other is a passive aggressive liar who always wanted something but wasn't willing to just say it in the first place. In which case, over their dead body will they be going anywhere that the person suggests.

The typical outcome is usually a bowl of cereal and some toast as well as a near homicidal rage against anyone who says they don't care about something when they do.

Anyhow, the point is I wasn't really sure what I wanted, but I couldn't be sure that I wasn't wrong. Which, this not actually knowing oneself, makes being a human being simultaneously interesting and incredibly annoying. The sonogram lady started complaining about our sexless child's unwillingness to turn and face her. A fact for which I'm already secretly applauding the child. I consider it a wise move to keep my face turned from people who aren't my biggest fans either.

This time S asks all sorts of questions, which the sonogram lady answers as though she might actually like people/unborn children. I try my best not to let this sway my opinion of her, as I value, quite highly, holding strong and possibly misinformed opinions of folks. I feel like admitting that sonogram lady is an okay person precludes me from later saying that I'm a good judge of character and that it only takes me two minutes or so to know if a person is worth my energy.

Listen, as much as I was internally wondering about what the gender was going to be. I didn't really have any question. If science has taught us anything it's that men are responsible for the sex of the child, and therefore are the first ones to know what sex the child will be. I determined it. Side note: I love that the current ad on my facebook page is learning how to be a sonogram tech.

So, after a long wait in the small room the sonogram lady asked, "Do you want to find out what sex your child is?"

Then she messed about for a while probably to punish us for not having a child who would show its face. This lead to a brief period where S was again asked to shake her hips in a manner that I can only describe as degrading to pregnant women everywhere, who should be able to rest idly and be told by techs how beautiful their child is.

Tech: "It's a girl."

S: "Are you sure?"

Tech: "Yep. That's a girl."

So, I had two almost simultaneous reactions/feelings.

1) I am so incredibly joyful.
2) We have to have a boy next.

And I suppose I got my answer as to how I was feeling. I wanted twins. Kidding. Kidding.

S looked down at me, and I touched her toes, as our baby girl, the one I've been calling Mia for weeks already, because I knew, turned to face the sonogram tech.

Tech: Can you see the little eyes?

S: Yes.

M: She's not too pretty is she? (Luckily this was only mouthed at Steph. She couldn't understand me.).

Later
S: What did you say?
M: I'm just saying she's not a real looker and that I'm glad she's going to keep developing or there are going to be a lot of Saturday nights spent at home with mom and dad. It's fine. It's fine. We can play checkers. I don't even know how to play checkers? I know how to play chess. How can I have gotten through life without really playing checkers?

S: Are you stressing out a bit?

M: I just don't know what it's like to be a girl. I know up to about thirty what it means to be a boy. This will all be new for me. What am I going to do with a little girl?

S: You'll be fine.

Later:

S: I cried a little.

The room was small and dark, box-shaped like every doctor's office I've ever been in. When the tech told us we were having a girl I felt that incredibly sense of euphoria that comes only at the best of times in life. I held back my tears, and watched my little girl turn and face us, arms thrown up above her head, as if uniting in our celebration. Yes, you are little girl, and you are loved.

In General

It starts here. It's not a discreet bit of information or some sort of clever talk about impending fatherhood. It's about writing fiction, the above link, and I'm interested in doing that, and thinking about what it means to do that, and I kind of hope that you are too. Though it is our lot in life to constantly hope for the unseen, the unknown.

It's a fairly thought provoking article, though the death knell for literary fiction has been ringing for quite some time now, probably since the arrival of network television. Aka, a far more accessible loosely defined type of art that doesn't exclude a whole sub-class of the uninitiated. And, it takes a hell of a lot less work. In general, most human beings are lazy. Myself included. The arrival of the internet just pushes the art form from the margins to some side street where only a certain group of people still go to party. All that said, I'm not certain that I buy the premise that the form is culturally irrelevant now. I know a number of people who are profoundly affected by works of fiction, though certainly the ubiquity of the non-fiction form in magazines like Harper's, The New Yorker and The Atlantic signal a shift in forms. Which is where I'd say the form is headed, somewhere new. I don't know what fiction will look like, but I doubt it will be exactly what James Woods recommends. I think Zadie Smith makes a compelling case that the very style that Woods trumpets is necessarily on the decline. And change is good, change is necessary. Anyhow, this could seemingly go on ad infinitum. I guess I just haven't yet been convinced that fiction is necessarily mired in irrelevance. I don't read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to find out about the machinations of political intriguing s many of the above listed non-fiction pieces do. I don't even read them because they are from a foreign country that is currently all the rage. I read them to be reminded of what it means to be human.

To prove my point here is a piece of non-fiction that I wrote

THE PEOPLE I LEFT BEHIND

She has no legs. What am I supposed to say? I am struck by the gravity of having no legs, of it being a pain in the ass to roll over, to go pee, to do anything.

“Hi, I’m a chaplain, my name is Andrew. What’s yours?”

“Beth,” she responds.

I ask if she wants to talk.

“Oh sure, I’m in here because I got a bed sore,” she says.

I nod knowingly. I know nothing about bed sores.

“My girlfriend and I just broke up,” she says. “I’ve had a hard time getting around.”

Beth has no legs. Beth had a girlfriend. Beth shares with me that her companion now is a golden retriever. “What’s his name?” I ask.

“Shami,” she says.
“I’m leaving today; my mom is going to pick me up.”

“Well, that’s good,” I reply, edging towards the gleaming hallway floors.

“Bye,” she says, and waves, still sitting up on her left elbow, her hospital gown covered by fractals of light.

I did not know how long a hospital chaplain was supposed to stay in a patient’s room. It was hard to sense when a person was done unburdening themselves, to know
when I had listened enough—alcoholism, divorce, cancer, homelessness—and the anti-biotic was kicking in, coaxing the patients into that indifferent sleep of the drugged,something pre-mortem, beyond sleep, and it was time for me to let them rest, or go back to staring at the blank wall and contemplating their mortality, God’s handiwork. Some patients asked me to leave, and that always felt worse. I will never know which rooms I left too soon, what doors I should have stayed in. I will never know what burdens I helped them carry, what burdens I dropped. I will never know if I carried any of their burdens at all, mine were heavy enough.

I was twenty-one years old when I became a hospital chaplain, a junior at a fairly conservative Christian college, and still learning about the world. I remember Beth vividly because she was the first patient I visited alone. I remember the surge of excitement coupled with confusion as I exited the room, the reality of her living body in place of an abstraction: a woman that liked women. To Beth—shaved head, prosthetic legs—propped up on her elbows, waiting for her mother to come. Maybe she was waiting for something else, for the light to shift through the curtains, for its warmth to spread on the remains of her legs, waiting for her girlfriend to appear in the doorway, waiting like me, for some long silent voice to return.

In General

It starts here. It's not a discreet bit of information or some sort of clever talk about impending fatherhood. It's about writing fiction, the above link, and I'm interested in doing that, and thinking about what it means to do that, and I kind of hope that you are too. Though it is our lot in life to constantly hope for the unseen, the unknown.

It's a fairly thought provoking article, though the death knell for literary fiction has been ringing for quite some time now, probably since the arrival of network television. Aka, a far more accessible loosely defined type of art that doesn't exclude a whole sub-class of the uninitiated. And, it takes a hell of a lot less work. In general, most human beings are lazy. Myself included. The arrival of the internet just pushes the art form from the margins to some side street where only a certain group of people still go to party. All that said, I'm not certain that I buy the premise that the form is culturally irrelevant now. I know a number of people who are profoundly affected by works of fiction, though certainly the ubiquity of the non-fiction form in magazines like Harper's, The New Yorker and The Atlantic signal a shift in forms. Which is where I'd say the form is headed, somewhere new. I don't know what fiction will look like, but I doubt it will be exactly what James Woods recommends. I think Zadie Smith makes a compelling case that the very style that Woods trumpets is necessarily on the decline. And change is good, change is necessary. Anyhow, this could seemingly go on ad infinitum. I guess I just haven't yet been convinced that fiction is necessarily mired in irrelevance. I don't read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky to find out about the machinations of political intriguing s many of the above listed non-fiction pieces do. I don't even read them because they are from a foreign country that is currently all the rage. I read them to be reminded of what it means to be human.

To prove my point here is a piece of non-fiction that I wrote

THE PEOPLE I LEFT BEHIND

She has no legs. What am I supposed to say? I am struck by the gravity of having no legs, of it being a pain in the ass to roll over, to go pee, to do anything.

“Hi, I’m a chaplain, my name is Andrew. What’s yours?”

“Beth,” she responds.

I ask if she wants to talk.

“Oh sure, I’m in here because I got a bed sore,” she says.

I nod knowingly. I know nothing about bed sores.

“My girlfriend and I just broke up,” she says. “I’ve had a hard time getting around.”

Beth has no legs. Beth had a girlfriend. Beth shares with me that her companion now is a golden retriever. “What’s his name?” I ask.

“Shami,” she says.
“I’m leaving today; my mom is going to pick me up.”

“Well, that’s good,” I reply, edging towards the gleaming hallway floors.

“Bye,” she says, and waves, still sitting up on her left elbow, her hospital gown covered by fractals of light.

I did not know how long a hospital chaplain was supposed to stay in a patient’s room. It was hard to sense when a person was done unburdening themselves, to know
when I had listened enough—alcoholism, divorce, cancer, homelessness—and the anti-biotic was kicking in, coaxing the patients into that indifferent sleep of the drugged,something pre-mortem, beyond sleep, and it was time for me to let them rest, or go back to staring at the blank wall and contemplating their mortality, God’s handiwork. Some patients asked me to leave, and that always felt worse. I will never know which rooms I left too soon, what doors I should have stayed in. I will never know what burdens I helped them carry, what burdens I dropped. I will never know if I carried any of their burdens at all, mine were heavy enough.

I was twenty-one years old when I became a hospital chaplain, a junior at a fairly conservative Christian college, and still learning about the world. I remember Beth vividly because she was the first patient I visited alone. I remember the surge of excitement coupled with confusion as I exited the room, the reality of her living body in place of an abstraction: a woman that liked women. To Beth—shaved head, prosthetic legs—propped up on her elbows, waiting for her mother to come. Maybe she was waiting for something else, for the light to shift through the curtains, for its warmth to spread on the remains of her legs, waiting for her girlfriend to appear in the doorway, waiting like me, for some long silent voice to return.

Boy or Girl

Girl or Boy Predictor: An aside stemming from a discussion with a friend. A friend of mine is having similar trouble coming up with a proper name for his upcoming male offspring as we are having. We don't know the sex yet. That will come on Friday. Anyhow, we determined that the prevalence of the name Jr. for boys, where you just have the exact same name as the father has nothing to do with what is typically thought. It has nothing to do with land inheritance or expectations of taking over the business or nepotism. No, boys get named things like Andrew Jr. because it's damn near impossible to come up with a name for a boy. Thus, after beating your head against a wall for a few months you suddenly like the sound of your own name and hopefully, after all this time so does your wife. So you end up settling on Junior or JR or whatever. Why? Because boys, particularly white ones, can't have fun names. We've got like Doug, Brian, Greg, Andrew, John, Joe, Daniel, Matthew et al to choose from. We can't name the boy anything interesting or he'll spend the majority of his years in elementary school crying in a bathroom stall. Granted that will make great fodder for a future memoir, but I'm pretty certain S and I, particularly I, can screw up a child plenty without relying on the crutch of a weird name.

Anyhow, I can't wait any longer, so I've decided to take the test on childbirth.org to figure it out for myself.

Q: I am carrying the weight.

Out Front
Around the Hips and Bottom

A: In my uterus. Idiots.

Q: The hair on my legs is growing?

A: I am entirely hairless.

I am carrying the baby?

High

Low

A: That is a great post up offense for a college basketball team used most effectively by UCLA with Bill Walton, but I don't understand why they are asking me how I'm carrying it. It's not even out of the uterus guys. And if it was out, like a football. Like a little human football.

I sleep in bed with my pillow to the?

North

South

A: I sleep with five pillows, four of which are aimed in each of the cardinal directions. The other one is placed directly below the nape of my neck at an angle of forty five degrees facing Southeasst. What the hell kind of question is this?

My feet are?

Colder

The same

A: Right now, they're kind of hot, but I think that's just the weather.

I

Refuse to eat the heel of the bread.

Prefer the heel of the bread

A: I like it with cinnamon or Nutella. I don't give an s- which part as long as it's got good stuff on it.

The dad to be is?

Gaining weight along with me

is not gaining weight

A: I blame the weight gain on summer BBQ. And the baby. I blame everything on the baby.

My mother's hair color is

Gray

Not Gray

A: My mother's hair is whatever color she decides it is thank you very much.

During pregnancy my chest development has been

Real Good

Good.

A: Yup.

My age at the time of conception was:

A: Sixteen. Oh what a summer! Oh, you mean this one.

I am looking

Really good

Not so good

A: The answer according to every sitcom I've ever seen is the former.

Conception took place in the month of:

The backseat of a car. Is that a month?

My urine's color is:

Bright yellow.

Neon.

A: Platinum. We're bottling and selling the stuff.

I have been craving:

A: Love. I don't know what the other one's were.

The baby's heart rate is:

Really High

Pretty High

A: The former

My abdomen looks like

Basketball or Watermelon?

Answer: A squash thing. What's a squash thing look like? Also, stop looking at my stomach. My eyes are up here buddy.

If someone asks you to show them your hands you

Show them palms up or palms down.

A: Actually I take a movie script that I've written and then go urinate on it in a corner. Old Joke. Hi Marc Fellner.

How do you pick up a mug?

Who cares? Let's watch this video about boys and girls by Mike Rowe.




I'd give you the results but the internet crapped out on me before giving the result. I love me some Verizon. I wonder what the chances are that we get this fixed by next week. Pretty low probably.

Verizon Part 2

7:00 P.M. Andrew makes a call to Verizon.

Wait, wait, back up. That's not actually where the story starts. Sorry? You called on the 18th. Oh, you're right.

Something June 18th.

Andrew makes a phone call to Verizon.

Tech: I'm just going to run a diagnostic test.

M: Sounds good.

Tech: Everything is okay. I'm just going to need to get remote access to your computer for this next step to make sure you don't have any viruses.

M: Okay buddy. I've got nothing to hide. Note to users: Whenever you call Verizon make sure to use speaker phone, so you can do whatever the hell you want while they move you around to different useless parts of the phone tree. I think they must have a manual that they all have to read of how to enrage customers. I mean really, it's astounding. I think that the company is actually just a front for a large group psychological experiment that's testing the limits of America's rage. It's pretty much that show Punk'd on MTV, but instead of Austin Kucher popping out at the end, you just get disconnected after forty minutes of being shuttled between people's computers/phones that don't actually communicate with each other.

Tech: It looks all right. I'm just going to run a line test for the next 7 days to see if can find the problem.

M: This was relatively painless.

Three days pass. The Internet works for about thirty seconds then shuts off for ten minutes before working again in a thirty second burst.

M: We need someone to fix our Internet.

Tech: I can see you've had a lot of line problems.

M: (And I didn't even have to hold. These guys are turning over a new leaf. They are like one of those rich old men who have like five ex-wives from when they were younger and giant d-bags but have now mellowed out and that sixth wife is enjoying it/waiting for the day he kicks it and they collect.

Tech: Oh yes, sir. This is broken. LET ME OPEN UP A TICKET. THE TICKET IS OPEN, I just need to confirm with somebody in scheduling.

Time passes.

Tech: Okay sir, I can schedule you for an appointment tomorrow.

M: Have I died and gone to customer service heaven?

Tech: What?

M: Nothing. What are you wearing?

Tech: What?

M: Sorry, wrong number.

S informs me that she has a conference call and I hop right back on the phone tree one hour later.

I adroitly use a different menu option to reach the scheduling department. Fifteen minutes pass in which they play that Verizon count down music and then mention how I can turn off my modem to fix the problem. I read a story/consider the chances that voodoo is actually a functional way of harming people and begin to construct a Verizon struck from a piece of dental floss, a lined piece of paper, and an old Pottery Barn magazine.

After fifteen minutes I get through.

Schdul: Can I have that account number.

M: You mean the one I just used to access my account an hour ago? Sure.

Schdul: (A long pause) I read a story/reach over to grab a book and shatter a glass on the Pergo flooring. Normally I blame everything on the communists, but I'm chalking this one up to Verizon, and I expect them to take the amount out of my next bill. "I'm sorry ma'am (after telling him the account was in S's name he totally ignored the tenor of my voice and referred to me as Ma'am for the duration of the call, which greatly aided my patience let me tell you) I cannot access the account."

M: Awesome. Try again.

Tech: (After several more failed attempts he finally logs in). Do you have phone service with Verizon.

M: Listen man, I just need to reschedule an appointment that I made an hour ago. I just need to reschedule.

Tech: Can you confirm the type of modem you have Ma'am.

M: Are you f-ing with me?

Tech: I am sorry ma'am but you have an aesthetically unpleasing face. It lacks symmetry.

M: What?

Tech: Nothing. Ma'am, can you confirm your home number?

M: Okay.

Tech: (Long Pause) In which I imagine alternatively throttling the tech/everyone who works at the company in a very Christian way. "Sir, I cannot make an appointment for you because you DO NOT HAVE AN OPEN TICKET."

M: Uhm. That's not what the last guy said.

Tech: That guy? He was just shining you on. Actually: "Ma'am, I cannot make an appointment without an open ticket."

M: (At what point should I tell him I'm a dude/this is the greatest episode of Punk'd ever. No ticket open. This is even better than that episode of Girls Behaving Badly (reality show people) where the pretty women claim that they've dropped their ovaries and get men to search for them on the sidewalk).

Tech: I'm sorry Ma'am but you have no open ticket.

M: Can I just get a new appointment. I don't care about the ticket. Just make me a new appointment.

Tech: We cannot make an appointment without an open ticket.

M: So you're telling me I need to be transferred?

I listen to the Verizon guy click through the exact same menu that I had to and then I am put on hold. This hold last for fifteen minutes and is just long enough for S to accuse me of not doing dishes.

M: I'm on the phone.

S: You're reading a book.

M: It could ring at any moment.

S: It won't.

Finally the call rings through.

Tech: How can I help you?

M: I need to open a ticket.

Tech: What is your account number?

M: I will rip out your entrails and eat them in front of you? Do you understand me?

Tech: Can you repeat that number?

M: Okay.

Tech...Disconnected.

Time of Call 41:02.
Goal: To change an appointment from Tuesday to Wednesday.
Total Verizon people spoken to: 2.
Result of Goal: Utter and disastrous failure.

Join me and others like me in migrating from Verizon to RCN. They probably suck, but they can't suck that bad? Can they/I can't wait to see this episode of you just got Punk'd by someone at Verizon named Jay putting on a faux Indian accent. It's going to be great.

Update from 6/22
Verizon Tech from non-existent ticket calls about the appointment.

Tech: Actually, I notice this time slot is supposed to be from 6-7, but I actually get off work at 4. Can I reschedule?

M: You want to reschedule the appointment that I don't have because even if I did have the appointment you're changing it?

Tech: Yeah. How about Friday?

M: Yeah. Let's do Friday.

Fiction

Shana and I are in Italy: twenty-eight, unmarried, drinking and sad, still young enough to believe people should stay in love. We’re at a party in the San Vitale Quarter of Bologna with newly minted friends, the sort you make when you are traveling, saving money on food and spending it on alcohol. Our new friends are good looking blonds from some Nordic country we’d never visit. If we’ve learned anything in our eight years together, it’s that we both hate the cold.


I’m standing against a grey wall beneath a print of Reuben’s Samson and Delilah and watching the nylon covered legs of women pass through the artificial light of the patio. I am in a sea of unfamiliar faces, and everyone is speaking a language I don’t understand. It feels as though I have returned from space to find the whole world changed.

Babies R US

Thank goodness our GPS pronounces it as Babies R U.S. as in the United States. Because really I think the GPS is making an excellent point, the children really are our future. Either that, or we have the single most asininely programmed GPS in the history of the world, one that pronounces every St. not as street, but as saint, and every dr. not as drive but as doctor. I'm not sure who put that one together but generally when you come upon the abbreviation ST. in the driving world it's going to be street, saint isn't as popular as one would think.

So today I traveled into the land of Babies R US. Note: for the remainder of this blog post please pronounce at as United States to show your love for your country. The first thing we looked at were strollers. Guess what? Apparently you have to buy two different types of strollers, one for the early infant stage and then one for the jogging downtown looking like a young hip parent stage. This portion of the day was pretty much the highlight for me as I tooled around impressing everyone in sight with my behind the back stroller moves. I don't remember seeing other dads doing this, so I'm fairly certain that I'm going to be awesome. I wish I had a nickel for every time I was driving down the street and I thought to myself, I wish that dad would do something awesome with that stroller he's pushing. I guess I wouldn't have any nickels.

Special parenting tip 1: Apparently they put breaks on the strollers so they won't roll away. Unfortunately, I was so jazzed up about my moves in BRUS I forgot to put the brake on the stroller before putting it back up on display and it came crashing back to the floor. And yes, a woman, newly pregnant, did start laughing at me/us.

Lady: I guess as long as the baby isn't in there you're all right.

M: I was just testing the durability of the stroller. Side impact and stuff.

Lady: I guess it's fine. Just, once you have the child don't put it up on a shelving rack.

M: I'll probably try and avoid that.

After displaying my awesome skills with a stroller I assumed that S would want to retire to the car to make out with me for a while because I'm so cool. I think she must have missed one of the behind the back moves into a spin because she just kind of sighed a little and then took me to the next section with the buying gun in the ready position.

Next we took a brief detour into high chair land. Chairs that S had pronounced as uniformly ugly. I found at least five or six things that could have worked because of my incredible sense of style/nearly complete indifference to worrying about color schemes.

S: Do you like the brown and green one?

M: I didn't even notice it had colors. I'm a decision maker. All I notice is if it's moving on the open plain.

S: Oh.

M: I can tell you're impressed.

So, after finding several high chairs and vetoing the one she liked. The thing was made of wood, which bravo, but it had a small mat attached to the back that was already sliding off onto the floor even without an infant attached. This is a long ingrained belief of S's that everything wood is better than plastic. And for the most part I agree, but I'm not sure I agree for everything baby. That wooden pacifier just seems like it would give splinters.

About this time, maybe forty minutes in, I start to develop a low throbbing sensation in my left temple that I've come to identify as shopping. Thus, we quickly moved in to cribs and changing tables....I don't have the energy. Even writing about it is wearing me out.

Here is a short video that doesn't wear me out and that, well just watch it.

This moment is one of the funniest I've seen in American cinema in a long time. Everything is pitch perfect in this scene, the local hippie making up words, the angry old man interjecting with what we've all been thinking as the song reaches its crescendo. And the whole scenario is not gross out, or anything, it's harmless. Nothing is less funny than explaining why a joke is so funny. It's also a generational thing going on...I'll stop.

Fencing

The long awaited privacy fence is finally in the works. I had a wonderful hour and a half meeting with a representative from Potomac Fence company today discussing the relative merits of wood and vinyl, cedar and pressure treated, pickets, wyndgates and flat board fences. I never thought I would need to know so much about fencing, and now that I've crossed over to the other side I have to be honest, it's not that interesting. But if you have any questions about the performance of pressure treated wood as a post vs. the performance of cedar, or just how long a vinyl fence is supposed to last, feel free to ask. I'll anticipate at least fifty comments on this blog tomorrow from those highly concerned about fencing. This whole fence idea really got pushed to the forefront when we saw a picture of our backyard. When we've actually used our backyard we've felt that it was just fine, a nice little meeting spot, a table, some chairs, a grill. However, when you see it in a picture it becomes imminently clear that your neighbors have a visible rusty shed and that cutting the grass below eye level isn't that high of a priority. The only way our neighbor could rectify the situation at this point would be to start grazing horses in the backyard. Horses are pretty classy especially behind chain link fences, which really accentuate their flanks.

I'll probably just leave it at that though if you're interested in the pricing structure of a five foot versus a six foot fence, or the relative merits/cost of lattice work, I'm your man. Well, the real highlight of this whole interaction was getting a chance to just talk with the guy who was working out our estimate. At one point I mentioned that we were expecting our first child.

Guy: Oh. For real. Congratulations.

M: Thanks.

G: Oh man. You better get everything done while you can.

M: I've heard that.

G: Cuz once you have kids. Boy! You are not getting a thing done.

M: Yup.

G: I've got three and let me tell you, it ain't all about you anymore. You can forget expecting dinner to made when you get home. And your wife is suddenly going to forget that you do anything. My wife is British, you know, great lady, intelligent and all that. But man, she comes home now, and I can never do enough. She comes home and asks why I haven't cooked dinner. We both work full-time, and she might bathe the kids some day, and she'll ask me what I've done today, totally forgetting that I might have given them a bath two days ago. Just, man, whatever you do it isn't enough. I've got a set of twins, and it's pretty much, with three like being a single dad. There is never a moment when I don't have one kid or another occupying my attention. You might think you have time, but you never have time. Best thing that ever happened to me, but, (huge sigh). (Pause). I'm sorry. I didn't put a damper on that for you did I?

M: No. It sounds great.

It's not that I minded listening to my estimator's problems at home and in child rearing, I'm just pissed that I didn't get paid for it. The most awkward part was the five minutes he spent crying on my couch and later when he asked to rent the basement from me, but I was firm with him and asked him to leave despite his pleas. Anyhow, it was a great day for witnessing the future of our lives. After that, we went to a BBQ and watched harried parents pretend to pay attention to conversation while keeping two eyes on the kids in or around the pool, or walking towards the grill.

Person: "Nothing is easy anymore. No. That's not true. It's easy when they stay with the babysitter."

Then we talked with my sister.

J: "He's only feeding five times a day now."
M: "That's a lot isn't it."
J:"Oh no. When they are first born they eat about once every one and a half hours. You get to sleep in forty minute shifts."

Today was a pretty encouraging day. I can't wait to have kids. I wonder if parents knew what they were getting into if any of them would go ahead with it? You know, not in this retrospective position where they're all pleased and love their adult or toddling children because it seems like a hell of a lot work. Where is Gob when I need him? Oh well, here is a vaguely offensive Sesame Street video instead. Who is being mocked by Cookie Monster? The mentally deficient, foreigners? Now I realize that I never watched it because it was so offensive.

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The End of Men

Here is an interesting, if long, article on how women are taking over the world. The article is pretty long, so I won't expect anyone reading it to actually get through the whole thing, least of all the women. (See, if you read the article then you'll get that that's actually a joke as it goes to great lengths to point out the ways in which women are now more effective members of our knowledge economy than, get this, irrational men. My how the world has been turned on its head. Well, screw you Atlantic, I'm going to go invest my money in some commodities futures. What's that you say? This is how we got into this mess in the first place. Huh. Can I weld this problem back into good shape? No need for that. Huh. I guess I'll just be over here being marginalized. You'll all be sorry when the earth endures a new ice age and hunter gatherers are needed).

On Soccer

I've been watching soccer this
Soccer Officially Announces It Is Gay">. As it turns out I really enjoy soccer about once every four years, and I can get really excited about watching people expend a great deal of effort with no reward. I'd compare it to the early stages of a romantic comedy movie, when our lovable hero continually makes a fool of himself to try and win over the girl he loves only to discover in the end that she has dysentery. Sorry, I watch a lot of silent French film. Patently untrue. Or, it is like watching that guy in the bar who makes his way around to nearly every girl, sort of awkwardly standing over their shoulder, or worse, dancing up on them, only to end up completely alone. That's what watching soccer is like. For a while you feel pretty good, you have some laughs, cheer some, but in the end you find yourself thinking, "When the f are these guys going to score?"

My favorite part about watching soccer is hearing English announcers talk about the pitch. I think it's the mid-field. Who the hell knows? I just wish they'd call bad refs wankers. I'm sad that that isn't happening.

Other things I'm sad about:

The dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Hey guys that Rocky movie was good, but it wasn't that good.

My handwriting

When is it going to stop looking like an insane person who is also addicted to meth/when will everything just be electronic.

Duke and the Lakers

Two teams I couldn't like less won their respective championships. Why do you do this to me sports? And why do I always come back to you?

People speaking in thick Eastern European accents

I have a friend who does this very well. It's great fun. How come when we hang out we don't do this more. Related. Why don't we ever do large group male dances Fiddler on the Roof style? Why?

Freeways:

Can we all just agree that riding on a train is an imminently more pleasurable experience from an aesthetic point of view. Can we also agree that most people care one tiny iota about aesthetics. Lastly, can we all agree that iota is a strange word.

People who take themselves too seriously:

Relax people. You're just one in a few billion. And I don't mean that in a you're so special sort of way.

Winter:

When God was making up the seasons roughly five thousand years ago why do you think he came up with winter? Could this be pre-fail devil influence?

Colonialism:

Fighting wars throughout the whole world and extending your global domination used to be pretty hip and it generated all sorts of interesting literature up to and now including post-colonial literature. I think we can all agree that colonialism is a pretty great idea when carried out by megalomaniacs like King Leopold and a bunch of British guys, who are probably just going to try and get you to drink some tea and play cricket with them. Those days are gone now though. And nobody finds the American accent as charming. The linked article is excellent.

Patting yourself on the back:

Who does this? That's what other people are for.

House projects:

Hey, go ahead and get an education so that you can stimulate the economy by allowing someone else to do that job. Places like Home Depot are bastions that stand against the united front of the proletariat. We all got to get paid somehow.

The ocean:

Why does it need to be so big? We could use some of that space to build a freeway or throw away trash, or build really cheap tenements and rent them out on the cheap to people of ill repute. I'm just saying we have options.

Not going to bed:

Bad idea. Good night.

On Gambling

Listen, if pride myself on one thing that thing is customer service. Okay, actually I pride myself on gambling but that is a bit more suspect than customer service. As it turns out proclaiming yourself an excellent gambler doesn't elicit the sort of oooohs and ahhhs that you'd expect. I'd chalk it up to religious belief, but as we all know, the Bible is at least nominally in favor of gambling. Hi S. Oh, early martial arguments.

Proverbs 16:33 says, “The lot is cast in the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” So, look, everything is under God's divine providence, even the winner of the Kentucky Derby.

Remember when the apostles had to replace Judas in Acts? No. Well, they did. Side note: Not exactly big shoes to fill. "Okay, so we need you not to betray the Son of God. Anything above that and you're doing all right." Did the apostles send out a bunch of e-mails to their co-workers and write up a nice job description and form a search committee with representatives from every facet of society, then conduct a lengthy search and interview process? No, they picked out two quality candidates and did this:

26Then they cast lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles.

I think we can all agree that casting lots would save a lot of time and energy that is currently being wasted on search committees. And it would probably be more fun. And it that isn't enough for you, here is some more good Old Testament Justice:

Proverbs 13:11 says, “Dishonest money dwindles away, but he who gathers money little by little makes it grow.”

The takeaway: that's why I only gamble in small amounts. Not more than a buck a day. Hell, I gamble every time I get in the car that I'm not going to have an accident. I gamble when I wake up in the morning. I gamble when I bet a dollar on a World Cup game. It's all the same. I understand this to mean that gambling is okay as long as the increments are no larger than twenty dollars on a single bet. Note: If you're entirely against gambling, hi S, it's probably best to have stopped reading about two paragraphs ago. So, go ahead and expunge those.

And, in order to bring it back around I have good Old Hebrews to back me up: Hebrews 13:5 declares, “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."

Remember, I got an undergraduate degree in Literature.
Interview:

M: I just think that in the end, Anna was really weak, you know. I think she had other options. It really showed that her love for Vronsky was tantamount to the sort a kind of self-love that we're often all guilty of. However, Anna surrenders herself fully to it, and thus the train as well.

Interviewer: I'm not sure what that has to do with your ability to use manipulate Excel?

M: Everything dear sir. Everything.

Interviewer: I think we're done here.

M: Wait. I've got a theory about Jane Austen I've really been wanting to try out.

The job market, and thus money, did not flow towards me. However, I didn't take the lazy man's way out and get a job in something practical and high paying. Why? Because it's not good to make money. Am I right Hebrews? So I got an MFA in creative writing.

Boss: Listen. I need you to print me a report of all the consortium loan books that have been borrowed in the last year that have reached an overdue status of over six weeks.

M: I wrote a really neat poem on my desktop. I saved it right here.

Boss: Yeah, if you could just start on that report that would be great.

M: I'll read you a few lines if you'll stay.

Boss: I think I have a meeting (glances at non-existent watch).

Is gambling a vice? Only if you lose. Some might call that opinion a bit too teleological in its aim. Then again, they'd be using the word teleological, and we've no earthly clue what that means.

If gambling serves any real consequence it is a possible addictive behavior, and perhaps leading others astray. However, I'm not sure that I, as many other Christians have done, would differentiate it from any of the other golden calves we've erected. Remember, moderation in all things. Even moderation.

Uh, this short is a little overwrought but right on the money

In the morning I say to someone, "I am tired." I am forever telling people that I am tired. A person, unnamed here, due to spotty internet access, (and shouldn't any piece of information that I desire be at my fingertips when I damn well want it?)once said that we are only assured of death and taxes. Too true, my friend. However, we are also assured of sleep and of telling other people that we are tired. I'm not even sure that I know what it means to be truly tired or bone weary. Perhaps that's something I can report on with more authority after having a child. So, forgive me in advance for the many times that I'll say to you, "I'm tired."

Forgive me in advance for the times that I'll say to you, over the phone or at the water cooler, or standing in the cold, "Our lives are really different now." Because everyone already knows that, but I've run out of things to say. I've spent the afternoon cooing at something that has the IQ of a door mouse. As I stood on the corner waiting for the light to change a nanny walked by pushing some genderless (in appearance obviously) child next to me and stopped. The child had a large head and was gripping its toes in the way that babies do. And, as we stood there, waiting for the light to change the child sat up and started smiling. It was a beautiful thing, this smile. And I let my gaze travel to the same point that the child was gathering so much joy from. It was a chain link fence with a construction sign on it. One can draw one of two conclusions: the first is that children reawaken our sense of wonder in the world. They can glance at a chain link fence or a ceiling fan and find its beauty. One of the greatest things about children is that it allows us to relieve our own childhood minus all the angst but with all the nostalgia piled on high.

The alternative conclusion is that children just aren't that bright, and the fact that they find things like a chain link fence engrossing isn't exactly helping their collective case. Of course, this is relative to a full grown adult. Children are amazing little learners, it's quite a treat to watch them trying to figure out the world. And their ability to grasp language is enviable. And it is that very dynamic quality that makes them engrossing to their parents and, I'm just guessing here, slightly boring to others. It is a true case of not being able to see the beauty. Anyhow, I'm biased. I have a bit more of the discover new worlds sort of life goal rather than the discover more efficient ways to transmit e-mails or change a baby. They just don't carry the same cosmic weight in my mind. It's an obvious pretension. However, as I think I pointed out in an earlier post, self-knowledge is most often useless because just making ourselves aware, which I'd argue happens a million times over in our endlessly verbal culture, doesn't actually change our behaviors. I'm often aware that I'm behaving foolishly in life, yet I'm rarely swayed by that knowledge to curb my enthusiasm for stupidity.



Fiction (Touching)
The neighbor’s dog, a Maltese, is at the fence barking as if all hell has broken loose in the world. A squirrel has just run up a tree. “Shut the hell up Jeeves,” yells the neighbor, Mr. Richard. A crotchety, if that’s the sort of word we are okay using, man of about sixty five, who lived alone, smoked alone, and yelled at his dog alone. Kevin gets up from his rocking chair and approaches the fence where Jeeves is barking incessantly. He takes the back of his hand and swats him in the nose. “You dumb bastard,” he says, as Jeeves whimpers, and he walks back toward the house with his long tail tucked between his legs.

He had experimented for a while with ants that wandered through the cracks in the sidewalk. Naturally, he wondered what it would be like to feel pain. He had made friends in his first day at the new school by opening up a cut, with a ragged piece of plastic on his palm without displaying any consternation. This lack of pain, had made him God-like in elementary school, capable of taking all sorts of licks that slowed down his less evolved classmates.

If you asked him, and you probably would, or at least you’d want to, what was the best thing about not being able to feel and this is wholly dependent on catching him in the right mood, he’d tell you about that day that his little sister found a bird’s nest in the back yard. He didn’t really remember what type of bird they were, a jay, or some robin. It was something common. And she had seen the mother push one of the little chicks out onto the ground, and she’d picked him up, held him close. Put all of her hands onto him.

Decorating

Home decorating 101. It's time to decorate your babies room. Nothing says welcome to our family like a bunch of wall decals and maybe a picture of some friendly looking monkeys. I mean, when I was a baby I remember being extraordinarily excited to check out the new digs that I was in. It was amazing, here you go from being packed like a sardine into a uterus out into the big world. And, after the crying ceases, it's pretty great to see all of the trouble that your parents went to while you were in the womb. Though I distinctly remember thinking, I wouldn't have gone with that particular shade of green, perhaps misting fine rain would have been better. Except that I didn't have any of these thoughts because I was a baby. And babies can't see a damn thing.

Thus, inspired by the craze, I blame Martha Stewart, of decorating your baby's room as though they are a new tenant and you really want them to rent S stared showing me pictures of rooms on HGTV's web site. The rooms all have names like "Warm and Woodsy" or child inspired names like "Presley's Place" or "Roman's Empire." The sad part about looking at these rooms is that their often dotted with pottery barn furniture that we can't afford, and the occasional walk in closet, which is a must have for a newborn. Thus, I know that the only way that we can compete is to name our room something equivalently obnoxious. My first idea was to have a room with a crib, a changing table, and a dresser. I thought we could call it "Cold and Functional." For some reason S doesn't think that's the best name. Thus, we're stuck trying to come up with something cutesy.

What about Brayden's bear cave? No.

This picture sort of creeps me out for no good reason. Maybe because it's so old-timey. On the other hand it reminds me of when we were kids, and we'd want to cover our whole room in blankets to turn it into a cave. The whole project would take hours, or what seemed like hours, I don't know, time is different for kids, and we'd finally have it all set up and then some books would fall, or we'd realize that it was too hot, and everyone would end up leaving the room behind after half an hour or so, spending far less time enjoying the cave than we did in building it, and I'm certain that there was a lesson somewhere in building that giant cave of blankets, but I haven't discovered it yet. Perhaps that we should have thought ahead and brought AC?

Howard's hall of mirrors. Granted I don't think the name Howard has been used in a few decades but that's some pretty solid decorating you could do with that. Model the whole thing after Versailles.

Let's empty the bank account and make other couples jealous. Nothing says I love you to a child like giant hall of mirrors. Hopefully these mirrors will all be reflecting giant clowns or something else even scarier. I jest. Nothing is scarier than clowns.

I've run out of ideas because I can't quite find a viable name/theme mix. Although, I'm not trying particularly hard. Hmm.
David's Dump? Don't kids like dump trucks and stuff? Okay, clearly a bad idea, but I stumbled on this gem.


You supply the name, and I'll supply the carriage/child.

I guess when it comes down to it I just have a hard time parsing between the need to "nest," which is attributed to women and the obvious external influences of things like Martha and HGTV et al.Before I go any further let it be said that I am guilty of engaging in suspect behavior like avidly watching sports teams that would have been absolutely impossible to do really before the advent of television. Back in the day you checked your favorite team's outcome in the newspaper box score. So, I don't know if we're planning a wonderful room because we want our baby to be a part of our family or whether we're planning our baby's room to be perfect because you're supposed to plan a baby's room to be perfect. It's probably somewhere in between the two, and I'd even harbor a guess that it's leaning more towards the former than the latter.

I suppose it is one of those scenarios when it's probably best to just say uncle and get out of the pin as it's something I can't relate to that well. I want our child to have a wonderful life. For me that means buying a crib, a changing table, a dresser and a chair and putting them in the room. And, if they don't work in the particular configuration that we place them, then I'd probably just move them. Then again, the whole point is mostly moot because I am in no way shape or form a planner. My idea of planning is to wait until the last minute and then do things in a flurry of activity in which at least one critical item gets broken. My role is probably just to move things and to remind S (not that she needs it that much)that we won't need everything to make our baby loved. We probably just need to love it. And by that I mean, diapers, copious amounts of diapers.

Something that needs some work

At least I wasn’t born without a sense of humor, was the sort of thing that he’d say, when you got to be that age when you felt like you had to answer for something that you didn’t have a damn thing to do with. Technically he had tactile anesthesia. People were always asking him questions like, what he missed most about not being able to touch. And it was the sort of thing where you could tell that people wanted him to say something like a hug, or a good night kiss. And so he generally responded with something like, “I miss hugging my mother.”

It was the sort of response that turned folks misty eyed, and sometimes he got a little misty eyed as well. He pretty much always cried when other people did. It was a weakness. What he really missed though, he thought, as he rocked in that old white chair his daddy had picked up and hauled back from the dump, with the screws loose in the back, but still, a damn fine piece of furniture, was something he had never touched at all. He thought, or rather he guessed, that he’d like to touch a woman’s chest. It seemed a shame to him that he’d never really be able to.

Breast Pumps

S told me that I was supposed to blog about breast pumps. Unfortunately, as she possesses the necessary accouterments for the item I haven't done any research. And, while she was doing research I decided to take a nap. Sometimes when life gets you down and you have like six things to do, it feels great to take a nice nap and then wake up and wonder what you're doing with your life. Anyhow, I managed to take in about one picture before I dozed off. Breast pumps look like some sort of cone shaped thing that you might see adorning the decolletage of Lady Gaga in some crazy ass video. Apparently the highlight of these ads for breast pumps is that they show women going about all sorts of normal tasks while pumping. Breast pump, the ultimate tool for multi-tasking! Pump while you e-mail! Pump while you jog! Pump while you pump! (Incidentally doing a Google image search to try and rediscover the earlier Lady Gaga like photo doesn't net anything like the cone shaped thing you saw, but a really practical looking plastic bottle that is mostly reminiscent of a spray bottle. Also pictures of women nursing, which, I guess that's what I'm headed for, strange).


Really the contraption, not surprisingly is essentially reminiscent of something you'd expect to see on a dairy farm underneath a cow's udder. But now I know. And if I learned anything from watching G.I. Joe as a child it's that knowing is half the battle. The other half of the battle is fighting off the vague feeling that you should have been something else regardless of what you're doing. Trying to expunge that feeling through various mediums while working at a nine to five job that you find mostly rewarding, though occasionally, derivative and so on...

Now that I've begun blogging about breast pumps without having any actual information I've come to the conclusion that it was a bad idea.

S: If I had a blog I'd blog about breast pumps.

Well, this one's for you because I, willfully, still don't know anything. I do know that I occasionally enjoy writing fiction. Even if it doesn't always come to anything.

Meta-Fiction for funsies

Now, if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times, is not a great way to start a story. A great way to start a story would be to include something about a man without a face, or maybe he’s lost the sense of touch. He’d probably have some issues with his father. Most people have issues with their father, and it would give him something akin to depth. I think I’m going to go with the touch one because I once watched a movie starring Chevy Chase, an actor that nobody recognizes anymore, in which he did not have a face. I don’t really remember if it played any sort of essential role in the plot, and I have a vague memory of what looked like a giant sock over his entire face. Or not face.

Anyhow, this boy, let’s go ahead and call him Kevin. I’ve never been particularly fond of the name Kevin, and I figured that by naming him that, we could feel better about taking away his sense of touch. I mean, there he is, just being born into the world, and already he’s lost his sense of touch. Tragic that. Let’s put our heads together and see if we can come up with a scenario where Kevin’s disability puts him at some sort of disadvantage.

Kevin is sitting on the front porch of a house, it should probably be white. The grass is verdant and green, probably Bermuda by the looks of it. Kevin has got an amazing sense of sight and hearing and other stuff to compensate for his inability to sense that he is touching things. He’s got some scars on his hands and forearms from some mistakes he’s made with plates and green tea kettles and the like over the years, nothing major.

The grass is about ankle high and his mother, oh yeah he’s got a mother, has mentioned that if he don’t do nothing about it soon that she’s libel, her mispronunciation, to put down a canoe and start paddlin away. Kevin, like most of us, you and me included, isn’t really that fond of mowing the lush verdant lawn that is most likely Bermuda grass. He kind of thinks that it’s a crappy chore to have to do during the summer, and he occasionally harbors resentment at all that green lawn, and imagines setting fire to it, rest assured, he’s not really that sort of guy, he’s just got what I’ll call a rich imagination.

On the expectations of parents, defensiveness, and why the sonogram lady was probably a terrible person

S: Did you eat a peach today? We need to get rid of them.

M: No. Are you going to impeach me. (Sigh)

Later

M: I can't find a place to put the apple juice?

S: Why? Note: Earlier in the day she made fresh strawberry jam, canned and refrigerated it).

M: It looks like you just jammed things in here. (Sigh)

One of the biggest fears of any parent is that their particular child is going to be some kind of massive failure when it comes to life. Why? Because the child not only has to live up to but surpass all the unfulfilled dreams of their parents. At least the good parents. A lot people will tell you to let the kid be an individual and all that crap, but as we know, in general people are kind of insipid. Ergo; why not transfer all of your latent dreams and desires on that little ball of potential? I can't find any compelling reason not to.

That's probably why the second sonogram was a tough experience for us. The lady who was helping was turned out to be somebody who worked in the gulags in Stalinist Russia. Though she'd learned to mask her accent and appear to be like forty years younger. The problem was that at the second sonogram the Rusky needed the baby to flip into particular positions in order to verify that the tadpole had a heart and lungs or something. I don't know, I'm not a doctor, I just watch them on television. So handsome.

Anyhow, during the sonogram it takes a while for the image of the baby to appear. At first it just appears to be some sort of alien inhabiting a tiny part of space. Eventually it materializes, and you hear the heartbeat and you start to have feelings welling up within you that you usually only save for Michigan Football games and a really great episode of Friends. The latter is a lie. That show is/was vapid. Well, just after these feelings have begun to subside the babushka starts complaining about our child. Apparently our little squid decided that it would be a good time to practice his/her breaking skills and thus, he/she (let's just go with he for a while) was standing on his head and refusing to move.

Rather than being impressed by the amount of time that our child was performing a pretty solid headstand the middle aged harridan asked Stephanie to shake her hips in order to move the child. I don't know much about babies, but I thought that shaking them was pretty low on the things you're supposed to do list. I thought about making some sort of quip about British nannies but reconsidered because people who have been in Siberia don't really have senses of humor. Thus, she put S up to shaking her hips in a manner that I can only describe as troubling. Thank god our child refused to move, standing steadfastly on his head through this whole ordeal. That a way, kid, I valiantly thought in our little one's direction.

Eventually the nice sonogram lady left, throwing up her hands in disgust at our child's inability to properly align himself. And truthfully, I felt a little defensive. And I had the slightest glimmer of why parents would come into to talk to me when I worked with kids and claim that their child was a good boy and that they couldn't understand what the problem was? Well, the problem is, the kid is a pain in the ass. However, when it's your own unborn child working on a solid yoga pose you feel a bit defensive. You feel like saying, "Look lady, that kid is not disappointing, it is beautiful just the way it is." While at the same time you're a little disappointed that your sprout is a little slow on the uptake and that the shakes weren't induced in order to increase the difficulty level of the pose, but rather, that some sort of movement was required.

The now exasperated sonogram lady came back inside and our little blob of squid moved in the requisite positions. And we walked out into the light of the day and wondered if our child was always going to be so stupid....kidding. Can you believe that lady?

I was reminded this evening of this kick ass song by Semisonic called "Closing Time," except that it is the worst song in the world for people of a certain age because it was played at least twice an hour for a period of about three years during the years before iPods when all you had was the radio, and they just kept playing f-ing closing time. So, to those of you of a certain age, sit back and listen to this piece of shi- song for the one millionth time in your life.

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How to prepare for a child

A guy's guide to pregnancy.

Your wife is going to consistently ask you if you love and care about the baby that she is carrying around in your stomach.

Answer: This strategy is designed to trap you. A similar tactic is used by blowfish, bears, and mermaids in holding on to their mates. That said, it is best to tell your wife that you love the baby as much as she does, despite the lack of a protrusion coming from your non-existent uterus. Don't mention that it actually feels slightly different for you not having the child growing inside you, and that, right now, things seem kind of the same. This is a bad strategy. After leaning down and kissing her belly, you should start carrying a sack of flour around on your stomach affixed by duct tape to indicate your solidarity with the whole child rearing thing. And, if you're ever short on flour while making cookies you can just eat your baby.

It is also important that you display your love and affection by doing things like registering at Babies R' Us and requesting that everything in the house be baby-proofed. Use the term baby proofed as often as possible. Use it both as a joke and as something serious. This will show her that you're both ready to be a father but not too stressed out about the prospect and that you'll be the same handsome and fun-loving guy she married years ago. "We better buy those "thingies" you put over the wall sockets." Use the word "thingies" to describe outlet covers because it will make you sound concerned, but not so concerned that you're going around learning the names of new things. This will reassure her that you won't steal too much of her thunder. Then say something like, "We'd better baby proof the television." This joke, babies are too dumb to understand television, will set her at ease.

During the process of registering insist that everything be Euro Style. Don't confess to not having any idea what this means. Doggedly attack various strollers that don't seem to have Euro styling. Tell her that you'd always pictured yourself, since like the age of eight, imagined yourself pushing around a certain type of stroller. This will reassure her that you've always wanted to be a father, but that you're not so much of a sissy that you won't enforce your will on something like stroller buying if you so choose. This may arouse a passion so great in her that you might even kiss, though in all likeliehood you'll just be asked to pat her belly. Take what you can get you greedy bastard.

After she's finished registering for a bunch of stuff sit down on the couch and watch her scroll through every picture. Don't just say, "Oh, that looks good." That is the sort of laziness that she doesn't want to see. Pick out something specific, say, "That vegetable stuffed animal has extremely cute eyes. Look at those eyes, hon." This will let her know that you're not just bs-ing but that you're really and truly interested in this process of making a home for the baby.

When she says that you need to move everything from the future baby room into the other bedroom jump at the chance to help. Now is not the time to whine about your torn labrum or bum knees. It is time to lift heavy things and put them down in an uncareful manner in other rooms. It is important that you do this so she will see a display of raw masculinity coupled with the sort of carelessness that will assure her that your boy, if it's a boy, won't grow up to be a sissy. On second thought, if you're having a girl, set the heavy items down carefully to show that you're not some big stupid gorilla.

Further Advice Coming.
Fiction
The apartment is typically clean and well-lit, though the lights have been dimmed to enhance her concentration. The living room window is split in the middle by a thick metal girder, twelve inches in diameter, which bisects her view into two relatively large panoramas. She typically raises the blinds between the hours of 5:40 and 8:30 P.M. to watch people on the street below. The blinds are currently listing together with the slow rhythm of the fan. In one corner of the living room is a potted plant with three foot long yellowing palm fronds, fronds that in stretching towards the light from the window have begun to overreach themselves and are now hanging at forty five degree angles too weighty for the branches and are bowing heavily. Her bookcase is made of cheap plywood and is full of books, which are primarily about literature. She has several silver rimmed picture frames. One of them has a picture of a cat.

She can also fly, in the daydream, which makes the whole process even more complex because she could just float there regardless, adjusting the rope accordingly. People had done worse things for love.

In order to breathe correctly, her guru had told her, his mole moving up towards his nostril with each syllable, this conversation taking place at some mid-point of the erasure process, she was supposed to count from one to ten. This counting was supposed to help free her from the burden of thought. A single man is walking on the street below in what appeared to be a black or navy blue blazer. His shoulders are square, and his short haircut and ramrod posture are suggestive of a military background. He fumbles with his keys before getting into his car. Perhaps he is handsome. She can’t really tell.

She finds the process of holding her thoughts still to be like asking someone to hold a Rubik’s cube without even attempting the slightest correction in favor of symmetry. In the third grade, she had been unable to pass the entrance exam into the gifted and talented class because she had no facility with shapes and congruencies. She remembers the failure well, and complexly, because it was her first brush with what she would now call despair.

The sky is beige. Most of the heavy late afternoon light is being obscured by the entwined and full branches of deciduous trees.


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