Today is the greatest

Lia: No. I came in early. I had fun. I don't think work has to be this eight hour sink hole right in the middle of your day.

M: You're funny.

Things to remember before giving birth:

I need to talk about the merits of cross-ventilation. Every father in the history of the world has expounded upon the advantages of cross-ventilation to his little children. They come and gather round his feet and learn how opening one window on one side of the house, and another on the opposite side creates a wondrous breeze that they can all ride to Never never land. Though, at the rate they were going, with the AC bills and all, they'd probably just have to settle for that crappy beach two towns over. Twice recently I've walked around the house and opened it up to beauty of cross-ventilation and I've felt a little bit older and a little bit wiser each time.

S: Are you using salicilyic acid?

M: Yes.

S: Do you want our baby to have two heads?

M: (Pauses). I guess we'd probably be famous then.

It's also imperative that I start to bald slightly and begin wearing large glasses. Why? Because that's what real dads look like. Do you think somebody is going to let me coach the soccer team all clean-shaven wearing some hip shirt? No. They are going to let the guy with the mustache and glasses coach the team because he clearly knows his shi-. Everything I ever learned about sports was taught to me by men with mustaches.

The glasses are also an important part of the get up because they kind of scare kids. They say, "Look in my eyes kid. Oh wait, you can't because I'm wearing these large creepy glasses that are reflecting the sunlight right back at you. What happens when I take these off? That's right, I look like some sort of alien inhabiting the body of what used to be a dad. Do you want me to take these off or are you going to do a good job hitting the ball off the tee? Are you crying? Are those tears? I knew you'd take after your mother. You don't see me crying when I have to take out the trash. I just do it. Now go hit that damn ball into outer space. I know you can do it buddy. Though, to be honest, I'd settle for a dribbler down the first base line. I think you could beat it out. You run like a gazelle my boy, a short impaired gazelle. I kid. I kid. See how it has a double meaning...

I guess the other key component is to start slightly balding. Slightly balding suggests to children that you have lived some life that those full head of hair bastards haven't. Look at all the great thinkers in history, Socrates=bald Shakespeare=bald. Benjamin Franklin=bald Thomas Jefferson=probably bald under that giant wig Isaac Newton=I've no idea but for the sake of the argument let's go with bald. Jesus=Not given enough time on earth to start balding. Mikhail Gorbachev=bald. I could go on all night, but I think my point has been made. Bald=smart=respect.

Fiction

“That man has no rhyme or reason,” his mother had muttered on the day he received the gun some months ago. A wind was pushing in from the Northwest, whipping the window with streaks of rain that maneuvered in wavering lines along the glass like ants headed off to some strange war. She watched as the boy ran his hands over the grooves in the walnut where a sight could be affixed. The tea kettle was humming, but she sat in rapt silence, still watching. The boy knew next to nothing about guns. Not many people in his town carried them, but he knew that the gift had been special, a thing shared between men.

Today was a day when we were men who had not worked

Oh to write a line as wonderful as Denis Johnson did at the end of that wondrous short story! Oh well. I was not destined for such success. Instead, I was destined for a job sitting in front of a computer for a solid six or so hours a day. Normally this does not provide any major hurdles. It is what it is. However, this morning my computer was affected by some mad crazy identity erasing virus that appeared thusly:



Naturally my virus protector came up and said, "Hey. You there. I've quarantined this nasty virus and if you'll just restart your computer everything will go back to normal. Nothing to see here folks, just move along." And I, stupidly, took the virus protector at its word. And when I attempted to log back into my computer it acted like a girlfriend who has been in some fall and now has amnesia when you walk into the hotel room.
"Linda?" Hey, it's me Paul. Oh my gosh it's so good to see you!"

Her brow furrows. "I'm sorry, Paul..." she says in the sort of way that you know that she's got no earthly clue just who the hell Paul is, and now you're crying on the hospital floor and maybe someone starts playing some violins in the background. That's how my computer treated me. Like that poor SOB Paul.

The next step is to call someone from OIT. After they arrive be sure to play stupid and say something like, "I don't know it just quit working." Hide the fact that it said you had a virus in case you can get this whole thing fixed without ever telling anyone about the whole virus problem. This because everyone knows that their is no possible way to get a computer virus if you were doing only strict work all day.

Of course, after a little while it becomes clear to the OIT guy that you in fact have a computer virus. And you're standing in the room waiting for him to ask the question. Should you try to jump it?

a) Who doesn't enjoy a little bestiality at 10 A.M. Am I right OIT guy. Leviticus anyone?

B) I've got this great video I want to show you. You may want to turn away at the 1:02 mark.

C) Do you think I could have gotten this on that trip I took down to Mexico?

D) I think our new lending system gave me that virus.

E) I've never used this computer during work hours for anything except official business.

F) Isn't trojan horse a funny thing? Have you read Homer? I love his work? Do you like Chaucer OIT guy? I think he's silly.

G) Isn't the world a crazy place. It's amazing to think we can have our whole day come to a stand still because we clicked on a certain screen. What do you think the old timey equivalent was? Like when a horse brained you or something. Pause. What do you think of chain mail as fashion statement?

H) Isn't it strange that this computer picked up this virus at random. I actually think I noticed my co-worker's computer sneezing yesterday. Don't quote me on that.

I) Why do people make computer viruses OIT guy? Did you read that Atlantic article about Conficker? Me too. That shi- is crazy.

J) Do you think if the two of us were on a desert island that we'd kill each other or fall in love first? What? Oh. You find it easier to focus without the interruptions. Both I'd say.

K) If I had to do life over again...I wouldn't? Do you like jokes?

L) What do you think about the whole slave/master relationship we've got going with technology? Troublesome? Worrisome? Mildly interesting to talk about for six seconds.

I decide that the best course of action is to hover awkwardly until he asks. "Were you on any "different" web sites. What does he mean by different? Anyhow, I confess to him that I haven't been on any web sites that I haven't been on before. I'm very careful with my phrasing in case of a later jury trial. Which, my answer is true, but I also don't admit to checking anything except strictly work related things.

But now I'm standing there feeling like some sort of liar. I know I wasn't on any sketchy web sites but OIT guy probably doesn't believe me, and he has this computer virus deleting my profile and suggesting that I'm probably lying. This is an uncomfortable situation to be in. It's probably best lightened with a bit of vodka, but the American job has gotten way too boring for that.

a) Offer him a drink.

B) Make a joke about Dancing with the Stars.

C) Accuse him of downloading a virus onto my computer.

D) Mention that during work approved lunch breaks you occasionally check hotmail.

In this case B wins out, and it's also actually the correct answer as I bet on it every week. The down side of this whole scenario is that I couldn't get any work done, and I felt guilty for something I both had and had not done. I do not frequent sketchy sites but in an employer's eyes, perhaps anything that is not an Excel spreadsheet or a lending system is sketchy. It's tough to be guilty, but not as guilty as you look.

This blog didn't quite have the literary feel of the last one, so I'm going to go with something a little more upbeat.

Good?

Some nights you stand in the kitchen and play the music low while you wash dishes by the window. You know that you're supposed to use the small yellow sponge, sliced in half to avoid excessive mold, to wash the dishes. But instead you use your hands, small and calloused. You rub your palm over the dishes first, then begin using your fingernails to get at the smallest bits. You know that this isn't the way that you're supposed to wash dishes, but you do it anyway. Sometimes, it's just too much damn trouble getting things to come clean.

The rain has gone silent for a while, though the pansies have lifted up there gaze as in praise to the now absent god of rain. The birds are chirping outside the window in a manner that brings to mind Disney movies. The roses are beginning to droop, but the street is scrubbed clean by these spring storms. On the drive to Baltimore you have a discussion about the future, which is always tied to the past.

"I think you can be whatever you want to be," she says. "It's all a matter of encouragement and desire."

You wait a moment, keep right onto 95 before answering,

"I want to be Thor, the god of Thunder," you say. "I want to be able to pick and choose where lightning strikes."

She smiles and asks you to try again.

In the evening you stand in artificial light, the dishes clean and scattered across the counter in a manner you know she'd never allow. You think back to the warm water passing through your hands, like grace, onto a small glass bowl shaped like the world, with a blue top so much like the sky. You said to yourself, as your nails brought everything clean, that you were going to be a good father. Assuredly, this was going to be something that you were good at. You know that you've looked forward to it for so long. And you look back in your life, as a driver in some rear view mirror, catching sight of all the other promises you've broken to yourself and you wonder if this one will be broken too and how many times. Seventy times seven.

The dishes are done, and the voices of women talking about babies drift down the stairs where you are sitting in front of a bright screen in the dark. And you think that if you can just convince yourself this one time that being good is not a one time thing, that it is a thousand small moments stitched together, only a few of which will even last in either of your memories, that it will be okay. That you will be good.

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Twins?

Okay, let's just get the cat out of the bag. Incidentally, why did we have the cat in the bag? Were we planning on killing it or something? Cats tend to like boxes, but I'm not sure they are as fond of bags. Couldn't the cat just have clawed it's way out of the bag. Maybe we should give it some space when we let it out.

The point is that one of the hardest thing about having a pregnant wife is that you cannot engage in what the French call making love. Incidentally, do not do a search on the online slang dictionary for other terms to describe what we're going to call making love because it goes on for pages. And you suddenly start feeling really old and out of touch with the language, and simultaneously really happy to be old and out of touch with the language. Blaze? Really? That's a fire my friend.

Look, I know it's true what all the books say. That you're supposed to fawn on her, and remind her that she is still a wonderful and attractive woman in those stretchy pants, and that you've always wished, since you love her so much that there was bit more of her and that you consider it a real blessing. And also that you really like those big shirts she wears and her propensity for falling asleep at nine P.M. Don't get me wrong, all that stuff is true.

I think it's important to remember to use the word glowing in conjunction with their person about five times a day and to rub their belly and say how it reminds you of a bowling ball, and that you've always wanted to date a woman who was a good bowler.

But look, none of those reasons really matter. It's more of a scientific problem but really a problem of finances.

The reason we're abstaining is that neither one of want twins. I know that people always say that you learn to love them both and you make it work, but I just don't know if we have the floor space, and we don't have a bunk bed. So we're abstaining for now, because S doesn't really want twins either. It's science. Look it up. Just take a cold shower buddy, you've already got one on the way.

The Insider's guide to pregnancy

This post is going to be a little bit indelicate, so be sure to hide the women and children. Also, don't tell anyone where you've hidden them because that person could go and find them and you'd have ruined what really could have been a pretty good game of hide and go seek. Unless the women and children enjoy reading, then maybe it's best to keep an eye on them and maybe read them some choice passages that they might enjoy despite their age or gender.

Look, I had a recent incident in which a person stood in front of a large group of people and said something along the lines of, "Hide the women and children and also grandparents and other folks who are easily offended," and then proceeded to read something that was fairly offensive to me even though I am not a woman or a child or a grandparent. The passage was about a fairly graphic encounter of the sort that you'd really only want to read or hear if you were by yourself and even then you might start looking around your house and trying to scope out some good spots, like behind the bookshelf, or inside the old chest, to hide women and children in in case they were around while you were reading this passage. Then again, maybe you should just let them find their own hiding spots. At least the women, that is. Because in my experience, children are sometimes not as good at hiding themselves and should probably just hide with the women.

Question? Are you absolved of anything you read/say if you offer up that sort of caveat at the beginning? Or should you having to give that sort of caveat, hide the women and children, be a good indication that you probably shouldn't read/say what you thought you were going to. And that maybe it wasn't even worth it to make all those kids go looking for hiding places under folding chairs and making all the women, who are just hot and busy and tired and like worried about a grocery list and paying bills, find hiding places. Maybe you just shouldn't say it?

Question? Have you ever read Tristram Shandy? This is only slightly related to what this blog post is eventually going to be about, and it has very little to do with women and children. Mainly because women and children probably wouldn't enjoy a book like Tristram Shandy because it has so many digressions that they'd probably start wondering about places where they could hide themselves if someone was ever walking around and asking them to read Tristram Shandy.

Anyhow, the annoying part about Trirstram Shandy is that Laurence Sterne, who is neither a woman nor a child, and to my knowledge not an expert at hiding, never gets to the expressed point of the novel, which is really annoying, you just wish he'd get to this big moment that you've been promised. He just keeps going backwards, telling you story after story, digression after digression, kind of like a child sometimes does, where you just keep hoping that they'd get the point and stop meandering around wasting your time with this dumb story and that really it would probably just be better if they were hiding somewhere, perhaps with women, who probably could give them something to shut them up and stop that useless story.

Honestly, I was just giving you all that time in the previous paragraphs to hide your women and children. I was afraid that if I didn't write all these paragraphs that your women and children might not be in good spots, or they'd still be attempting to hide, which sometimes happens when kids play hide and go seek because they often cheat and turn around too early.

This brings to mind another thing: dids are always cheating at things. And sometimes you have to teach them a lesson by cheating yourself, and that is the lesson that cheating doesn't make you happier, but it does make you a winner. That's the sort of lesson that some people might say you might want to hide the women and children from, but I think that's just the sort of lesson that they need to learn.

I hope little Geoff found a good spot. He was sort of wedged between the book case and the wall, but he was only a foot or two away from me, and I could see him right away. And I said, "Hey buddy, can you find a better spot? Because I can see you from right here while I'm typing."

Patience is a virtue.

I'm not sure it's the same kind of virtue as say, hiding women and children from vikings, but it might be. Anyhow, the really exciting thing that....

Day

7:00 A.M. Wake up. The night prior I had complained vociferously about not being able to use the car to go to work on the grounds that I'd be exhausted. Granted S takes the metro every day and wakes up at 6:30, but she doesn't need her beauty sleep like I do. I go to hell in hand basket real quick. Actually I have to go in something much larger, it's really more like a large scale laundry basket and even then I'm a bit cramped on the journey.

I just think generally speaking that men are more selfish. It doesn't occur to me when I'm making myself a sandwich at 2 on a Saturday that S might be hungry as well. I mean, I know that I'm hungry how the hell should I know what's going on with her? Apparently you are supposed to ask though.

7:30 A.M. Proceed to doc's office. The trees and bushes are no longer in full bloom. They look like an emptying house when the main guests at the party have left town and everyone is a little too drunk. Sure they've got a few more blossoms to toss onto the street, but they've already had their best times.

After much debating it is decided that S will not wait for me to finish my appt. and that I will ride the metro one stop to Tenleytown, which I'm not sure who it is named after, nor does it in any way shape or form approach being a town. And I secretly wish that the name made more sense like the Presidio or Pacific Heights in San Francisco, instead of being Tenleytown, named after the proprietor of a tavern.

The building is a monolith, rising sleek and grey, vaguely reminding me of both NASA and every large office dwelling in every major downtown of the United States. The doors are twenty feet high and made of reinforced glass, which the sun doesn't really reflect off, so much as melt into. Though perhaps it's different at midday.

The elevators at the building are sleek and fast. They shoot from floor to floor in a manner that would make the Jetson's proud. When I board the elevator there are three of us. On the way up to the tenth floor, the man to my right begins knocking his fist against the side of the elevator tapping out a beat that he compliments with subtle noises that he both creates and bobs his head to. I have one of those moments when you are trying to decide if it is incredibly annoying that someone is tapping out a beat in a public location where we all just desire anonymity in some insanely strong way. Though, by the time we reach the tenth floor and are on the way to the thirteenth, he doesn't tap out a beat at all. And I find myself disappointed that he doesn't, and wishing, as I often do, that I was the sort of person who would start making a beat in the elevator because he didn't give a crap what others say or thought but just really enjoyed the sound.

"Have a good day sir," he says to me as I exit.

8:00 A.M. Stand in line at the doc's. Become uncomfortable standing next to another woman waiting for it to open and go hide myself around a corner and in order to help the disguise I stare for an inordinate amount of time at a fire extinguisher as though I've never seen one before. As if the fire extinguisher was a piece of the Dead Sea Scrolls, or I'm trying to learn to read English. The lady notices nothing. In the mean time another patient arrives and when the door opens he dutifully logs himself in as arriving second. And I can't, (though I secretly wish that I could) tell him that I was there first because I was standing around the corner by the elevators admiring the fine white lettering on the glass case around the fire extinguisher. I'm only mildly annoyed at him.

The nurses speak to one another with a little bit of slang, complaining about the ups and downs of being in what sound like needy families. Then, when they turn to talk with the patients, the grammar is clean and precise and the intense voice modulations are manicured down to a pretty fair monotone of whiteness that Dave Chapelle mocked so well.

The first two patients, including the guy who unwittingly cut, are in and out of the office in the amount of time that jiffy lube promises a crappy oil change. I exchange smiles with them as if we have somehow shared in something, this slight inconvenience to our morning.

When I am called back the nurse tells me to take a seat in room 1. I sit dutifully down in the patients chair, I've learned after twenty some odd years of appointments that it makes them uncomfortable when you sit in one of those more comfortable chairs that are reserved for parents of children. They like you to be sitting on the construction paper, uncomfortable, trying not to shift too much for fear that people in the hallway will hear you shifting about and know that you are there. It's entirely illogical re: the fear that someone will hear. If you actually fear that they won't know your physical body is present you've probably got some deeper issues.

The room smells exactly like every other sort of medical office, dental, optometrist et al, something that according to my father-in-law, a doctor, probably has something to do with the disinfectants that they use at night. And it's strange, but when I worked a few months in a hospital years ago, this smell was wholly absent, replaced by a slight stench that accompanied so many bodies in various states of decay that even that disinfectant couldn't cover.

For a while the nurses talk to one another, and then they come in to let me know that they're not sure if their office does the test or if it is the other office up the street. And I smile and nod, at the woman, who is friendly, with a large smile, and dreadlocks died blond, roots still dark. This, even though I know that S has confirmed the appointment the day before and that they do in fact give the test and that my time is just being wasted. I smile not out of any altruistic leanings or understanding that the world is a tough place to be for those in any kind of service industry but because I am often incredibly passive in social situations, deferring and smiling away in a manner that always suggests that I'm a pretty laid back guy and that I can understand that things aren't always as easy as they seem. A fact which leads some people who know me very well to be surprised at what a royal impatient dick I can, and usually am, if I know you well enough to be comfortable. That is not exactly a sparkling attribute.

The nurse and I exchange a couple more items in the next half hour. I give her the information as best as I can making sure to mention that I am getting the same test as my pregnant wife, so that she will work harder to make sure that this happens and perhaps imagine me and my pregnant wife cuddling with a baby. Without explanation the first nurse, no dyed blond hair arrives and takes my blood. I can't really understand her, so when she asks me to make a fist I just hold my arm out dumbly, and when she tells me to stop making a fist I initially just make the fist tighter until she says it again, more audibly, "stop making a fist."

And as I get ready to leave I say something like, "I'm sorry this was so hard to sort out," but she interrupts me after "I'm sorry this" to ask me some relatively innocuous, though business related question. A question that makes it clear to me that this is not the morning where I have managed to charm the nurses, but that I am just one more patient who needs to move along so that she can get to the next one.

The clouds are still low and grey, but the rain seems like a memory and the capacious distance between earth and sky is filled with a kind of viscous warmth that you know is just going to be hell by afternoon.

Pools?

Things that I swore I'd never do: Change a diaper. I just don't see the point. The good Lord gave my wife two hands, and I'm not the biggest fan of poop. Okay, I've long held, and probably already told the known world about it, this plan to buy one of those large kiddie pools

Obviously we'd shoot the dog first to clear some space for the infant. Anyhow, that sturdy blue pool is more than enough room for a child, who can't even walk yet, to roll around in and drool in and such. But, here's the key, when they poop, the kid doesn't wear diapers in this pool an added benefit of freedom for them, I just take a bucket, fill it with water and douse them. And there you have it. I don't ever have to change a diaper I have a happy and well adjusted child who knows way before other kids that kiddy pools are fun though a little bit strange. I don't really see the downside. And I've had this idea for years, maybe even before I was married. I'm probably going to sell the rites to this idea to QVC. It's a child toy and a baby changing table all wrapped up in one piece of cheap blue plastic!
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I love Odell.

Then again, I also said that I would never clean my bathroom and in the interest of not being divorced I decided to amend my ways. I've also at one time or another threatened to: drive the car off the road in an attempt to teach S a lesson. Not sure what the lesson would have been, perhaps, never drive the car off the road it's a dumb idea.
I also claimed during my teens that I'd eat fast food every night for dinner when I could finally afford to. This was long before Fast Food Nation and Food Inc. and all that junk. It was just the heady days of the early nineties when food was cheap and we didn't ask any questions. I kind of miss those days. I wish someone would release a documentary about how satisfied the cows are to be giving their lives in order to feed the world's dominant species and how it is a good and wholesome thing to make food available really cheaply because all sorts of people in the world are starving. And then they could show some people working in those giant sized warehouses cutting cows apart with chainsaws but really having a good time, talking about who was the best at carving things up and how well they were treated, and humanely. And that they were proud to be doing this thing, and that it was good, and made them feel good. Although, I guess the chances of that movie being made are pretty low because all the media are liberal pawns. NPR I'm looking at you.

But I guess life isn't really about following through on all the threats you make, even though they feel so good at the time. (Insert family guy video here) Peter: I'm going on a hunger strike until you give the workers those benefits! (A few seconds pass) Peter: Are you going to eat that stapler?

See, who the hell needs television when you can just write out all the funny-one liners without that annoying video.

"And I'm not saying that television is vulgar and dumb because the people who compose the Audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests."

Too true my man. Now lets all go out and smash some televisions and then read Victorian books by candle light. Who is with me?....

I guess I'll go clean the glass off the floor.
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