Job Prospects

In which your humble narrator, after a grueling semester of teaching slack-jawed, glassy eyed undergraduates, reevaluates his career prospects.

There's nothing like a lousy class to aggravate one's barely suppressed misanthropy. In my introductory Educational Psychology lecture section I tell hilarious stories, sprinkle popular cultural references and basically jump up and down in order to keep the ungrateful suburban spawn (who happen to be our nation's future educators... Hooray!) awake for a measly hour and fifteen minutes. This particular semester is seeing attendance rates at about 60% of enrollment, a lot of vacant looks and some truly depressing test scores. Adding to this festival of crap, one student, whom I'll call "Hippie Q. Flakington," actually asked my opinion of alien abduction in class.

At any rate, perhaps it's time to reassess my career options. Here are the current contenders:

• Official artificial spine implant technician for the Democratic National Committee. My job duties would involve inserting steel rods into the rear ends of the invertebrate members of the Democratic caucuses in both chambers of Congress and the White House. I will clearly need hazard pay for having to look at David Axelrod's butt.
• Lifestyle Suppression Artisan. My job duty will be to brutally suppress anyone who attempts to use mass media to disseminate their "lifestyle choices." The entire Huffington Post "Living"* section will be replaced with a single HTML page reading: Shut up.
• Language Cleaner. My job duty will be to outlaw stupid, corporate jingo and ridiculous sports metaphors that have entered common parlance. I plan to synergistically bring my A-game to this effort. Also there will possibly be a "webinar."

*Do not click this link. You will be transformed into a vegan, eco-conscious Tibetan doula that constanly emits personal finance expertise for transgendered albinos. 

Babies Watching Babies

In which your humble narrator watches a baby watching babies and loses any sense of perspective.

Child #2 is a far more social animal than Child #1. She smiles at strangers. She's learned all the names of the other little children in her two-day-per-week daycare room. She talks to cashiers. She's simply way, way more into people than Child #1 was as an 18-month-old.

Her most recent favorite pastime involves watching Babies (2010) the Thomas Balmès film about, well, babies. Wife-a-roo found the film on the online streaming section of Netflix and it's been a regular staple for about a week. Particularly in the evening after a hard day of annoying her brother, changing clothes twelve times and spreading filth as far as the eye can see, she toddles up, says "Watcha Baby!" and demands to be placed in lap in front of the computer. She'll usually watch intently for 10-20 minutes as the four babies from far-flung reaches of the globe go through their little baby lives. She's quite approving of the amount of dirt that the African and Mongolian babies get to experience on a regular basis. Another favorite scene is when the little Mongolian chap is taking a bath in a washtub and a friendly goat drops by to drink some of the bath water.

It's clearly animated viewing on Child #2's part. She imitates the babies facial expressions and even describes their emotional states, "Baby sad," or "Baby laugh." In short she's enthralled.

I'm less enamored. I've done a lot of baby-watching in the past three years and frankly I'd rather spend my screen time watching British people being devastatingly cruel to each other or possibly exploding.

Minivantastic

In which your humble narrator purchases a Mom-mobile.

Bit the bullet. Bought the minivan. I don't love it, but it's a hell of a lot easier to insert my squirming progeny into the sliding doors and high seats than in my beloved wagon of yore. No one explained the crippling back pain associated with child-rearing to me before I went and impregnated Wife-a-roo.

Word to the wise, if you're going to be the Mommy and stay home with your children, it behooves you to be a smallish woman (around 5'4" tall) with hips. If you're lanky and over six feet, the problem you run into is that small children are small (hence the name) and spend most of their time all the way down on the floor. If you're tall, the floor is very far away. Also the children are fickle and like to be picked up from the floor and then returned to the floor approximately 457 times per hour. This is a recipe for lambasted lumbar.

And I can't overstate the importance of hips. If you don't have them, there is no convenient place to place one child while simultaneously using your free hand to prevent the other child from eating dirt.

Monday Morning Hate

In which your humble narrator enumerates five invidious calumnies of modern life.

• The terrible combination of hail stones and 45 mile per hour winds. Sure, I'd love to get a new roof every 18 months.What could be more fun than having workmen scurrying over your house?
•  "Angry electorate" news stories. I get it, but until Grandma gets out of her chair, clicks off Fox News and actually starts lobbing Molotov cocktails, I'm not that impressed. Let's identify the issue correctly, it's the "whiny, uninformed, proudly ignorant, cry-baby electorate."
• Unending upper respiratory infections.
• The fact that Mazda's funky little minivan is just not big enough for someone who is 6'1". Hello Toyota Sienna, goodbye youth.
• This.

Help, help, I'm being oppressed!

In which your humble narrator cogitates on the cruel vicissitudes of life.

I had to help my Mom move at the beginning of the month. My back is ruined. Our house was pummeled by quarter-sized hail and 50 mile per hour winds necessitating a massive insurance claim. We're getting another new roof, new siding and a new garage roof, all before the snow flies (fingers crossed). Child #2 was exposed to Whooping Cough at daycare, probably from some little un-vaccinated kid with jack-ass, hippie parents.

Also this month, I expect to buy a minivan. Life as I have known in is over.

3 year old weird

In which your humble narrator relates a bizarre dialogue with Child #1.

Child #1: (after drinking) This orange juice makes my body smooth.

Me: What?

Child #1: This orange juice makes my body smooth.

 Me: Why?

Child #1: It just does, okay?

Tick, tick, tick...

In which your humble narrator perpends upon the coming autumn with fear and trembling.

Summer seems to abruptly deserted those of us nestled into the curves of the upper Mississippi. Unfortunately a richly deserved, bright and sunny autumn seems to be nowhere in sight. After the constant rains of the early season I feel more than a bit annoyed by the constant cloud cover of this September.

In remembrance of my ability to manufacture vitamin D only a few short weeks ago, here are some photos of my offspring from an early August outing.

Child #1 runs down a hill at Gold Medal Park in Minneapolis.

Note the clearly more predatory approach of Child #2. If she ever gets Zombified* we're in trouble.

Dissertations for Wife-a-roo and myself are both in progress. She's ahead of your humble narrator, but she started two years earlier and is only going to finish a couple of months before me. I intend to point this fact out to her on, pretty much, a daily basis for the rest of our lives.

In other news: Twitter is still stupid.

*This is apparently the correct spelling of the past tense of the verb "to Zombify." Don't doubt me. This is a quality blog; I looked it up.

The Air is Brisk and Here are some Things I Loathe

In which your humble narrator pontificates on incommodious impediments to a calm and happy life.

• Class shoppers, those detestable undergraduate adders* and droppers who prevent you from getting an accurate class list until the third week of the term.
• Terrible Twin Cities drivers that do not understand that on a multi-lane road being in the right lane is a necessary precondition for making a right turn. Turning right from the left lane? Generally inadvisable.
• The social acceptability of cheap perfume for adolescent boys and undergraduate males. If I can smell you coming from 15 yards away there's a problem. If you're sitting in the fourth row in my class and making my eyes water, there's a serious problem. 
• Shopping for new cell phones. 
• The never ending mosquito swarm. I'm ready for a quick freeze to destroy all the blood-sucking little bastards.

*Not the snake kind.

I'm trying to run a respectable patio here...

In which your humble narrator cleans up the garbage heap of vice, fornication and sin that sits outside his side door.

At 4:40 this morning I woke up to a persistent yowling. As I emerged from sleep I was fairly sure it was feline in nature and my thoughts turned immediately to our emergency back-up cat, Akbar. He only has two brain cells and if one of them goes on the fritz he frequently gets "stuck" in whatever activity he was pursuing when half his cognitive function blinkered out. I figured, eyes still heavy, that he was downstairs yowling at phantoms. But it kept up.

I rolled over to make Wife-a-roo go deal with her retarded cat (Akbar is why Wife-a-roo is no longer allowed to pick pets independently) when I noticed that Akbar was sitting by the bed, not making any noise at all. Our main cat, Harold was asleep at the foot of the bed as usual.

So I stumbled out of bed to investigate the yowling. It was loud. It was punctuated by wild shrieks. I went downstairs to the kitchen. The window was slightly open and the noise was louder. I opened the side door to see a guilty looking tom cat shuffle off into the front yard. An irritated pair of yellow eyes peered back from under the raspberry canes. A saucy looking little lady cat had apparently decided to turn our patio into an early morning niche d'amour. She had tags on but was clearly on the prowl for some lovin', making me wonder about whatever neighborhood yahoos hadn't spayed their little darling. She was also clearly peeved about my arrival on the scene.

It took much more effort to dislodge her from her little hissy-hussy den than I anticipated. Which is how I ended up in a bathrobe chasing a spitting mad, hot 'n' bothered lady cat out of my yard with a broom at 4:45 in the morning. As I trudged back into the house, Venus was particularly bright in a cloudless sky.

Heat Melts Brains

In which your humble narrator shares some weird.

Last Thursday I left my modest but well-appointed home at seven o'clock in the morning to make my way to the University to enlighten the minds our our nation's youth while simultaneously crushing their young spirits. I took the bus to the train and stood waiting at the station as the various over-perfumed junior account executives milled about fidgeting with their phones, when a large middle-aged woman wearing cargo pants walked onto the platform.

She proceeded to reach into the mid-thigh, velcro-secured cargo pocket and withdrew a piece of buttered toast. No wrapper, container nor napkin was evident. She took one bite, placed the toast back in the cargo pocket, chewed thoughtfully and stared out into space for about a minute until she repeated the procedure to procure another delicious morsel of toast.

Realpolitik

In which your humble narrator tries to tamp down the smoldering embers of sibling conflict which could flare into a full scale war of mutual destruction at any moment.

I should say as a caveat, both children are doing quite well. Each is charming, mostly well-behaved and pretty much delightful now that everyone has gotten over the long-lasting summer cold that's been going around.

Here are the little darlings on a recent outing to Gold Medal Park in downtown Minneapolis, conveniently located three blocks from Wife-a-roo's office. Child #1 is now using the toilet like a pro and Child #2 has found a new love of being upright and verbal.

Our recent conflict involves the unfortunate issue that Child #2 is interested only in whatever Child #1 is playing with at any given moment. Since Child #1 has a flair for melodrama, he provides massive reinforcement for Child #2's meddlesome nature by obligingly caterwauling whenever she interferes with his play things. Child #2, of course, finds his vocal histrionics absolutely enchanting and rarely misses an opportunity to irritate him. Child #1 no longer even waits for Child #2 to start messing up his train set. He simply begins fussing whenever she enters the room. Drawn to his siren-song of constant complaint, even if she wasn't in a mood to mess up his railroad, she usually cannot resist the invitation to battle over brio train tracks and Thomas the Tank Engine figures. 

Sadly, I have little interest or patience for this particular sibling ritual and usually just end up taking whatever toy has become the object of their concentrated desire away from both of them. This results in both of them howling at me instead of each other. I'm pretty sure there's a reason that I do this, but for the life of me I can't remember what it is.

It's August, When a Young Man's Thought Turns to Things He Hates

In which your humble narrator lists the vexations of high summer.

• The unmistakable odor of cheap cologne which wafts off of the business-type business people who ride the train downtown early in the morning.
• Being shiny all the time since it's so damn hot.
• The lack of four hour parking meters anywhere near the University now that the river road has been dug up for insufficiently explained reasons. "Utility work" indeed.
• The barely restrained glee of local newscasters when describing some fresh 'n' juicy, new double murder.
• Summer watchband stink.

Hooray for using the Potty

In which your humble narrator closes a door of complain and opens a window of kvetch.

Child #1 is reliably using the toilet. Hooray! No more poopy diapers of a 2.75 year-old thrashing around while screaming "No! Don't clean my testicles! I don't like testicle poo!"

Yeah, well Buddy, this hasn't exactly been a picnic for me either.

Now that he goes to the potty, he goes all the time. Today I think he went 38 times between 8:00 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. I've spent more time in my downstairs bathroom over the past three weeks than in the preceding six months. It's really not a big deal, unless the adult to child in home ratio reaches 1:2. In that case, making sure Child #1 gets to do his business without interference means perching on the end of the tub in an unnaturally twisted position to assist him while using my right foot to repel the marauding advances of Child #2 who wishes to be intimately involved in the experience, mostly by pinching the bare thighs of Child #1 whilst he attempts to urinate.

Public bathrooms are another boondoggle since they are both wonderfully exotic but full of dangerous menaces like loud flushing toilets and electric hand dryers.

We're packing the children and my Mom into the car on Friday to drive to Iowa for a friend's wedding. This will be the first "potty-trained" trip.

We who are about to get peed on salute you.

100th Post Spectacular

In which your humble narrator celebrates one hundred instances of bloggy goodness with a list of lessons learned.

Here is a list of lessons recently learned that don't promise much applicability in the future.

• Terry cloth seems to be an acceptable fabric for clothing worn (in public!) by women under the age of 22.
• Presbyterians all look the same.
• Summer gives me a headache.
• People fear couscous. 
• Babies love banjos.
• There's not a noticeable difference between reading the Pioneer Press and then recycling it, and just recycling it immediately.
• The French brew beer. (Sacre brew!)
• Ohio is like, the place to be this summer, at least judging by the airfares.
• Twitter is still stupid.

Best Veep Ever

In which your humble narrator jests about our beloved vice president.

Hey, it's so hot and windy today that I feel like I'm standing near Joe Biden's mouth!

Just kidding, Joe. You know I loves me some Biden. From that one time I met you on the Amtrak between Wilmington and D.C. to last week when you told some pissant in an ice cream store to maybe not be such a bilious tax-obsessed wingnut jerk. You are the best vice-president ever, and that includes such memorable heavy-weights as Garret Hobart and John Nance Garner.

Cold Comfort

In which your humble narrator is grateful for a little well-timed aridity, celebrates improbably weddings, the color orange and remembers his paternal grandmother who couldn't remember anything.

It finally stopped raining. June has been unpleasant. It's either been beastly hot or raining or both (mostly both). If I wanted to live in a climate unfit for human habitation I would have decamped for Dixie years ago, thank you very much. The garden was waterlogged and there were mushrooms all over the lawn. Child #1 who assiduously scrapes any single particles of green vegetable matter off of his carrots has shown a surprising interest in eating the damn yard mushrooms. "No, no we only eat grocery store mushrooms!" And it's not like he would eat grocery store mushrooms either, but for some reason, potentially poisonous things growing in the yard look tasty. My sister suggested that I use this to my advantage and sprinkle foods he refuses to eat in the grass to gin up some interest. "Look! The yard grew us some meatloaf! Isn't nature's bounty wonderful?"

Wife-a-roo and I went to a wedding on Saturday. A friend of mine from my days working in the used bookstore got hitched to a perfectly lovely woman much to the surprise of everyone who knows this guy. A former unwashed, anarchistic, dread-locked, hippie-jock hybrid, this guy managed to find a charming woman who actually seems to, you know, love him. The wedding, for me, was a delightful combination of heartfelt goodwill mixed with with a noticeable undercurrent of surrealism, a bride dressed in a bitchin' orange wedding dress and free dinner. Just my kind of shindig.

The wedding was a nice way to end up what had been a lousy week which kicked off on Monday with news from West Virginia that my grandmother had died. She had suffered from Alzheimers for a number of years. The last time I saw her at my grandfather's funeral almost two years ago, I had to introduce myself to her. She was a good woman. She took care of my sister and I often when we were kids. She taught us a number of useful skills and took crap from no one. Her personality was big. She loved cheap beer, her unloveable fat cat, making things and delivering well-deserved smacks to various smart-alecky members of her family. She was an excellent cook and made everyone feel welcome in her home. She fumed loudly about sexism. She registered as a Republican to please her parents and became a liberal because of the civil rights movement. She sewed, knitted and crocheted. My daughter is sleeping tonight wearing a pajama shirt that Grandma made for me thirty years ago.

Her memory, language and abilities were all degraded by her disease to a point that the woman that I knew has been gone for a long time. Unlike some Alzheimer's patients, she seemed to, at least intermittently, be aware of her diminishing faculties. I suppose an easy death should seem like a relief for a woman who had lost so much of herself. But it's cold comfort.

First day of the rest of the term

In which your humble narrator knows he should not be surprised and yet still...

Today is the first day of summer term. A whole semester's worth of educational psychological goodness crammed into five, fun-filled weeks. I (of course) received an email from a student who did not show up to the first day of class because she had the first day "written in her planner as Tuesday, June 15." I can only suspect that the wrong date was inadvertently written while she fiddled with her slide-rule and Trapper-Keeper.

Why must you turn my inbox into a house of lies?

Phoney Quality Time

In which your humble narrator reflects on the plugged-in parents at the playground.

The New York Times ran a story this week about parent using smart phones and ignoring their children. The descriptions of typical interactions largely mirrored the sort of thing I've observed on the playground. Harried parents bring their offspring to the park for some quality time, and spend the entire time on their phones. On a recent morning outing, we arrived at the park to find a mother and a little girl. The mother was on her phone when we arrived, and on her phone when we left 45 minutes later. The little girl was apparently only allowed to play within a 15 foot radius of the mother. One begins to wonder: what is the point? Surely she could ignore her child at home.

Regular readers might expect a full-throttle vitriolic screed at this point. But with an uncharacteristic spirit of charity I have to admit that I understand the impulse. I don't have a fancy phone, but I do stay home with the kids most days while simultaneously trying to "work." Sometimes all I want to do is to have the kids leave me alone for five minutes so I can keep my email inbox down to a manageable size. When classes are in session I make it a point to respond to student emails within 24 hours. This can obviously take up some time during regular childcare hours.

I think part of the issue is that, as parents, we're supposed to be in a state of filial bliss at all times. Certainly the child-centric culture of the past twenty years blares its expectations of personal fulfillment through "parenting."* If your precious little wunderkinds aren't making you happy, well then there must be something wrong with you.

Or not.

The Big Schlep

In which your humble narrator goes to the big city, eats pizza and bagels and discovers that there are a hell of a lot of playgrounds in Manhattan.

Apologies for the infrequency of postings of late. The end of the term and its accompanying flurry of work and a recent trip out east have left little time for writing lists of stuff that irritates me. 

Child #2 rides the subway

Child #1 looks out over New York Harbor

Wife-a-roo, and Children #1 and #2 and I flew to New York last Wednesday. Wife-a-roo had a job interview with some sexy research outfit doing even sexier research than she usually does. Since they paid for her flight and we had access to an empty apartment courtesy of one of her investment-banky cousins,* we decided to make a trip of it.

Both children were surprisingly good travelers. The flight out was completely without incident except for when Child #1 was informed that he would have to remove his shoes in the security line. This prompted an on-the-floor screaming (and sock-footed) fit much to the delight of our fellow travelers behind us waiting for their own chance to do the TSA tango. Calm was restored on the other side of security when Child #1 was re-shod as he choked back the tears of rage and humiliation of having to go sock footed in public for 1.5 minutes.

We stayed in Manhattan near Gramercy park for two days. Wife-a-roo had her interview which went well. We saw an old friend from college. We ordered freakin' awesome takeout.

On Friday, Wife-a-roo's father drove down from ye olde New Hampshire homestead to meet up with us. We had lunch at Veselka, a Ukrainian restaurant in the village. Then we piled into his ancient Volvo and went out the Mid-town tunnel to the Long Island Expressway to go stay for a couple of nights at the North Shore Home of Wife-a-roo's aunt.

A brief note on Wife-a-roo's family and their relationship to cars. They kill them. Dead. Grandpa's Volvo has 323,000 miles on it. The air-conditioning is kaput. It was 90 degrees and humid on the L.I.E. outbound on a Friday afternoon. Then the car overheated.

Quiet, you nattering nit-wits...

In which your humble narrator listens to some drivel on the radio and condemns self-help speak to the deepest pits of Hell.

On a recent edition of the Middle-aged Liberal Ladies' Lifestyle Hour on public radio, I was brutally assaulted by an obnoxious cliche that won't seem to die the death it so richly deserves. While I only listened to the show for about seven minutes (on Lexington Avenue, between I-94 and Trader Joe's) I managed to get a full-fledged fume on by the time I pulled in to buy groceries.

The guest prattled on about her near-divorce and kept returning to the "lessons" she learned about "living in the moment." I loathe the constant drumbeat of "living in the moment." Here are some moments I prefer not to live in:

• When the dentist is busy drilling bits of tooth out of my head
• Any moment in which Jay Leno is present (live or via video)
• Black Friday at Wal-Mart
• August in the northern hemisphere
• A 14 hour plane ride where I'm sitting between Susan Sarandon and Bill O'Reilly

The pathological need to believe that everything happens for a reason may be an effective short term strategy in the face of adversity, but it cannot long endure. One rarely hears lottery winners stressing the need to learn from their sudden windfalls. We don't have any problem living in the moment if it's fun. It's the random crap that happens in a normal life that we struggle with. Trying to wring meaning from every lousy thing that happens to you is an invitation to an existence of self-involved navel gazing. Life isn't a curriculum with a syllabus full of triumphs and tragedies all custom tailored teach us important life lessons. It just is. And that ought to be enough.

It's Saturday, so I hate stuff

In which your humble narrator tallies five vexations.

1. Turning the furnace back on in May when I didn't run it for all of April.
2. The fact that Child #2 predictably sleeps until 7:00 a.m. on weekdays, but just as predictably only sleeps until 6:00 a.m. on weekends. 
3. The term "game changer." Seriously, people. Enough with the sports metaphors. They're a cancer on public discourse.
4. The stock market. It is stupid. How can my broadly diversified (and tiny) IRA dip by $800 and then rebound by $550, in the same day, without a massive amount of stupidity being involved?
5. A-Rod.

Happy Birthday, Baby! And now for some violent purges...

In which your humble narrator celebrates his daughter's existence and spills his guts.

As of last Friday, Child #2 has made the complete circuit around the sun. Feeling ever pressured by society's expectations that we celebrate these sort of milestones by "doing" "something" (other than our regular routine of keeping the children alive and then collapsing into the forgiving, oaky arms of a mid-priced Kentucky Bourbon once they're finally in bed), we organized an extremely modest festival in honor of Child #2's first year.

We invited two sets of friends with children near the same ages as ours (our only local friends with similarly aged children), plus my mother and sister. The children (all falling between 1 and 4 years) played as a group, mostly independently. Food was eaten. Cake was mashed into faces. Fun was had by all until everyone had to go home to take a nap. Child #1, currently suffering from bad pollen allergies, was watery-eyed and full of snot at the end of the party. I trotted out to the local chain apothecary to purchase some antihistamines for his sad looking little self.

Walking back to the car, I thought to myself, "Hrmmm, I feel a little bit queasy. Must have been the cake" (not usually partaking in rich, butter-creamed sugar-bombs). And I went back home.

The next 6 hours are a bit foggy. I know that I completely purged my entire digestive track with a violence best described as "Stalinist." I remember sitting on the potty thinking, "I am going to have a terrible funeral. The Rabbi is going to have to tell everyone that I died from pooping out all of my internal organs. Everyone will be embarrassed."

Child #1 got it and puked all over my house... but I was sick so I didn't have to clean it up. He was so ill that rather than running around as a maniac as per usual, he actually spent most of Sunday in my bed watching Curious George cartoons, at least while we weren't sleeping or he wasn't leaning over to vomit on my pillow.

Needless to say, we survived. It was yet another vile virus brought home courtesy of Wife-a-roo who apparently works in an open sewer staffed by lepers militantly opposed to hand-washing. We're thinking about putting up a decontamination tent in the yard.

In better news, it's the last week of term. By this time next week, I should be free and unencumbered by undergraduate papers for at least 4 weeks. Now about writing that dissertation...

Wild Assertions Unsuported by Evidence

In which your humble narrator makes unsubstantiated claims.

Having always quietly envied the undeserved confidence of idiots, I have decided to forgo my usual personal standards of argument and make several wild claims. They are, in no particular order:

• Secretary of the treasury, Timothy Geithner is clearly an elfin prince, impersonating a human being in order to spread faerie mischief throughout the financial sector.

• Orange is the most dangerous color.
• "Molecules" are just a big joke perpetrated by scientists on an unsuspecting public.
• Saskatchewan has a purpose, and once we know what it is, there will be a new golden age of television.
• You know Rhode Island? Well the locals don't call it that. They refer to their state as "Uncle Phil."
• Animals whose plural names aren't different than the singular form (like "moose") are the accountants of the animal kingdom.
• "France" doesn't exist. It's a cleverly wrought fantasy country designed to collect the excess sneers of conservative politicians in the United States and United Kingdom. 

Children looking dignified

In which your humble narrator shows off his progeny.

Child #1contemplates something in his weird little brain.

Child #2 smears tasty Indian food all over her face, and yet manages to maintain a certain dignity during the experience. She looks like she's testifying before a congressional committee. "Senator, if you'll let me finish..."

Spring, when a young man's fancy turns to avoiding being hit by an Audi

In which your humble narrator marvels at the natives' Jekyll and Hyde behavior when it comes to anything with wheels. 

Minnesotans are not friendly. They are "nice." They will tell you this themselves. There's an entire cottage industry of "Minnesota Nice" merchandise and paraphernalia. There's a freakin' Wikipedia page for Minnesota Nice! But as best as I can tell, the niceness generally only means that they will grudgingly answer direct questions put to them and they generally refrain from spitting on strangers.

All bets are off when you put these people on wheels. Cars, bikes, roller blades, put a Twin Citizen on wheels... and well, you have a wheeled menace. Amazingly this extends even to shopping carts. Back in my old Rust-Belt, Ohio home, people sort of moved out of the way in the Kroger so you could pass by them. Not here. Here, people are so militantly resistant to admitting that other human beings exist in the universe (when wheels are involved) that they will park their carts in the middle of the damn aisle and pretend you don't exist while you glare at them. Then you finally clear your throat and say "Pardon me," and the nasty local glares at you, because you've interrupted her careful meditation on Frosted Spelt Germ Puffs.

Cyclists here constantly write letters to the editors of numerous local publications about bastard car drivers and how we all have to share the road. Of course I've seen one cyclist stop at a stop sign in the last 60 days. Three have failed to stop and turned left in front of my car while I was stopped at the stop sign.

And the drivers are terrible. After an awful winter, the warm weather has made people even more hell-bent on driving like maniacs now that there's no ice or snow to contend with. Drunk driving is tolerated to a degree that's both embarrassing and completely contradictory to our image as a northern socialist nanny-state. Ten people died this past weekend in traffic accidents. In a metro area of 3.5 million, that's high.

Last session, the legislature passed a ban on texting while driving. This was before Oprah's crusade too. But since we only have about 7 highway patrol officers nobody pays a damn bit of attention.

Wheels go on, brains go off.

Trans-species confusion

In which your humble narrator considers that he may have committed a strategic error.

I think I accidentally taught Child #1 to play fetch with Child #2. This wasn't really my intention. The three of us were horsing around upstairs in our gracious master bedroom with en-suite bathroom,* and throwing an itty-bitty soft-sided (vinyl maybe?) basket ball around the room. At some point the baby decided that she was going to use her mad crawling skills to chase the little ball when I threw it across the floor.

Child #1 recognized a nascent game immediately and began to throw the ball across the room with the express purpose of having her chase it down. All the while he shouted encouragement such as "Go, get it!" and "Good girl!"

Is she a baby or a puppy? She already drools a lot, eats anything off the floor and bites people when she's in a bad mood. I'm afraid this is just going to add to the confusion.

*It's the entire second story of the house! Which would be impressive if we didn't live in a teeny-tiny, post-war, ticky-tacky cape cod.

Sass Mouth

In which your humble narrator shares some choice utterances from that fount of sass, Child #1.

Upon being told that his baby-sitter was coming (and he loves her):

"She's not my friend any more."

Upon being encouraged to eat some pieces of apple:

"No. It's too dangerous."

Upon being encouraged to defecate in the potty rather than in his diaper:

"I will never poop in the potty. It's gross."

Upon being presented with a slice of homemade pizza made by his father:

"I don't like your pizza. I like the pizza the man brings to the door."

Reflections on an undocumented week

In which your humble narrator writes a list rather than composing a substantive essay about something of interest.

• Lists are easier to write than regular posts.
• This is the earliest spring I've ever seen in 12 years in Minnesota.
• Undergraduates have a hard time focusing when the temperature is above 60 degrees.
• A friend applying to the bar (you know, like, lawyering) asked me to write a a character reference for her application (being her friend with the best ratio of "length of time known" to "ability to write sentences"). I emailed the first line of my draft letter to her: 

"Dear State Board of Lawyerliness: J.R.T. is one of the finest, most ethical hoboes that it has ever been my privilege to drink with under a bridge. She only stole my bottle of gin once and that was my fault since I pushed her shopping cart into the river."

• Child #2 has taken to signaling that she has finished her meal by hurling the remainder of her food to the floor, or grasping it and rubbing it vigorously into her scalp.
• Potty training Child #1 is a total drag.
• Apparently, I like talking about the Large Hadron Collider way more than most people. Particle acceleration is cool and "Large Hadron Collider" is fun to say. 
• On a related note: I am made inordinately happy when man-made calamities do not end life as we know it. First they fired up the Large Hadron Collider and we didn't get blinkered out of existence in an "oopsie-doodle" accidental black hole. Second, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann appeared together on stage in Minneapolis and the resulting explosion of jingoistic malarkey proved to be entirely metaphorical, leaving my beloved adopted homeland relatively unscathed.
• Manchego is a tasty cheese.

Wife-a-roo's quotable quotes

In which your humble narrator relates an utterance from his spouse of nearly nine years.

Granted, it was relaying a pronouncement from Child #1, but still.

"Your son told me that I was round like a circle."

 "Wait. In reference to what?" I said. "He was feeling my head," she replied.

A day of solemn reflection

In which your humble narrator pledges undying devotion to a certain corporation.

Happy birthday, Gmail. You are five years old today.

Also, if this works for physical storage, I propose that Google provide cloud daycare. I'd just upload the children to a nice, progressive, cloud-based daycare center when I had to go to work, and then download them again at the end of the day.

If they come back with a few banner ads on their butts, well... I'm probably cool with that.

Spring Sprang Sprung

In which your humble narrator remarks on the seasonal madness of Minnesotans.

This is the first March in the Twin Cities in 675 years of record-keeping (since the reign of King Thorbjorn the Unresponsive) that there has been no snow. As I sit tapping out this this sentence at 8:52 a.m. it's already a balmy 54 degrees.

I am wearing a short-sleeved shirt.

To say that this has made the locals "happy" would be an overstatement. "Suspicious" is more like it. When the dumb college dudes started wearing those shiny shorts three weeks ago, (when it got into the 40s) the fleece-clad locals scoffed.

But today it's going to be 75. And the locals have all emerged from hibernation, blinking in the sun and looking vaguely sour, as if nice weather in March must surely be some sort of portent of doom.

The climate induced schizophrenia is especially noticeable on the playground where over-bundled children are tended by Mommies and Nannies in shorts. Children in parkas play with children in tee shirts. Child #1 still insists that we take his jacket with us whenever we leave the house, but he never wears it.

Oh, of course! They wore shirts! It all makes sense now.

In which your humble narrator prattles on concerning poop and cartoons.

It's Saturday morning and Wife-a-roo is minding the progeny. I informed her yesterday that every single poop that either one of the little darlings produces this weekend is her responsibility because both of them crapped so much while she was at work this week that in order to maintain the poopy-diaper ratio that keeps our marriage intact, she was going to have to be the main poop-changer for two days. So this is just like a vacation for me, except I'm still at home and have to clean and grade papers and work and stuff.

For some reason I woke up this morning with a strong "It's Saturday!" feeling which made me want to watch Saturday morning cartoons. But sadly the Saturday morning cartoons of 1984 aren't on anymore. Mostly it seems to just be more of the same insipid morning "news" shows that are on during the week only with third-string anchors instead of Meredith Vieira, George Stephanopolous or Harry Smith.

On the plus side, after some interwebular research I finally found the answer to a a question I've been asking for what seems like months. That question was (usually directed at Sister-of-Me) "What was that one weird cartoon about a bunch of animals living in a tree in a park, and maybe they fought crime or something? I feel like there was a girl Panda bear and maybe a bashful mole involved somehow."

The answer is "Shirt Tails."

I had completely forgotten that they wore shirts. Duh.

And last, does anyone remember another cartoon on at that time which had the hilarious title "Pole Position?" Fortunately I was only able handle one entendre at a time at the tender age of 5. It was a sort of British speed racer. I encourage you to go here to read the theme lyrics, because if you're immature like me, they'll make you giggle.

Those Sour Grapes Will Make a Lovely Whine

In which your humble narrator pummels the body politic with his mad metaphorical skills.

I don't usually get all blog-politicky but certain events have transpired which call for three minor points to be made.

1. The Health Care bill passed. This means that my uninsured, pre-existing conditioned Mom will be able to purchase insurance again. This means that the 8.7% of my brain that is in charge of worrying about Mom being hit by a truck full of organ thieves and having tens of thousands of dollars in unpayable medical bills can now be reassigned to worrying about zombies, tornadoes and Peter Fonda.
2. For my Republican friends (and you, Grandma): It's not actually a subversion of democracy when congressional majorities pass legislation which is then signed by a president who won a clear majority of votes. When your side wins you get to start wars and send free platinum toilets to bank executives and stuff. When we win we get to do stuff too. 
3. I look absolutely smashing in the official socialist paradise jumpsuit that the neighborhood commisar delivered to the house yesterday. Long live the Apparatus of State!

Do you remember that one kid in the neighborhood when you were growing up that nobody wanted to play with because he was constantly changing the rules? If you were playing basketball and you made a shot, it didn't count because that kid would immediately call a foul or invent a rule that said nothing that touched the rim counted for a point or maybe that you were actually playing lacrosse and by making the basket you just earned -43 points. But if that kid had the ball, you weren't allowed to defend the basket because he just remembered that playing defense contravenes the Basketball Convention of 1896. So you were supposed to just lie down on the ground and let that kid take as many shots as he wanted.

That kid is now a Republican member of Congress.

It's Friday so I Hate Stuff

In which your humble narrator accounts for five rebarbative aspects of life.

1. Sentiments expressed on bumper stickers that are entirely antithetical to the driving habits of the owner of the vehicle on which said sentiment is plastered. While in the car with my children yesterday afternoon, a man in a Buick who exhorted us to "Protect Life" simultaneously attempted to rob us of ours.
2. That weird mold that's been growing on the lawn underneath the snow.
3. Any mention of Tiger Woods, ever.
4. The insistence of newspapers to break their 500-word news articles across three pages to cram in more ads. I know y'all have to figure out a new revenue model. Annoying the crap out of me isn't it.
5. The realization that I am clearly old. Now that the haircuts of twelve-year-old boys regularly piss me off, there's really no point in trying to remain even vaguely cool.

Scrapbooking for Jesus with my seven children while losing weight by climbing rocks and making sweet love to my bicycle

In which your humble narrator surveys the interwebs and finds them wanting.

The fine folks at Google, in their zeal to index everything, changed the functionality of the "Next Blog" button featured on the navigation bar of most Blogger blogs. Rather than taking you to a completely random Blogger blog (possibly in another exciting language) it now takes you to a blog that Google thinks you will find interesting based on what you've written on your blog. What follows is an unscientific survey of the blogs available to me via the Next Blog button (all within 3 clicks).

• 15,000 "family" blogs focused on frequently photographed children named Camryn, Tamryn, Payton, Braden, Jayden, Caden, Aiden, Ain't Misbehavin', Desmond, Connor, Tanner, Planner, Delilah, Rylie, Kylie and Wingnut.
• 12,000 blogs with the word "ramblings" heavily featured in the title or description.
• 9,000 blogs where people talk about Jesus... a lot.
• 6,000 blogs about scrap-booking (many overlap with the above categories.)
• 4,000 blogs about losing weight.
• 2,000 blogs describing climbing up big rocks in exhaustive detail.
• 750 blogs about people and their unnatural relationships with their bicycles.
• 500 blogs with "embracing winter," somewhere in the first few posts, because really, seasons need hugs.
• 50 blogs about making life more simple by blogging about simplicity.
• 1 blog about an international organization of philatelists.*

I understand (even if I also reject) the preponderance of sallow-skinned, dead-eyed suburban family blogs showing up. I write about children. They write about children.  I, however, am at a loss regarding the climbing of big rocks, the techno-sexual bicycle relationships, simplicity, and philately blogs.


Actually the philatelist's blog was the only interesting one.

*I have spent at least an hour trying to imagine what their parties must be like. My only conclusion: off the hook.

Abrupt Reversal

In which your humble narrator discusses his progeny's prudishness and rapaciousness for candy.

For reasons known only to his own little weirdo brain, Child #1, a previously stalwart opponent of combined bathing with Child #2 has abruptly reversed himself and begun demanding that his sister be deposited into the tub at the same time that he goes through his evening ablutions.

This surprised all and sundry since upon previous entreaties to maximize the efficiency of tub-time, Child #1 looked positively scandalized and began the octave jumping litany which follows any suggestion to which he is not immediately inclined, "No, No, NO, NO, NO!"

Frankly, he is a bit of a prude. Someone gave us* a copy of that classic of the Western Canon, Once Upon a Potty, which we introduced to Child #1 several month ago. He was appalled. When his grandmother read it to him and his eyes got very big, and when the got to the page on which the little boy proudly produces poop, Child #1 covered his eyes and blushed.

Needless to say potty training is proceeding slowly. At least now it's proceeding. Once he figured out that going in the potty chair meant a high probability of candy upon completion he suddenly got a lot more willing. Every kid has his price.


*Or maybe Wife-a-roo bought it? Or maybe pixies left in under a cabbage leaf in the garden? I cannot keep track of the stream of child-related ephemera that sweeps into our house on a weekly basis.

They sailed away in a big cliché, to a land where a donkey goes...

In which your humble narrator declines to smell a donkey.

On today's public radio edition of the Liberal Mid-Morning Middle-Aged Ladies' Lifestyle Hour (LM-MM-ALLH) they're having yet another guest who has made the boldly innovative decision to abandon the fetid stench of the metropolis and move out to the Real America where things are all simpler, purer, more rural and everything is positively saturated with greater meaning. She lives on a farm and writes about it and stuff.

YAWN.

I've decided that I'm going to adopt the outlook that living in a 1948, post-war, ticky-tacky house on a nondescript boulevard in a relentlessly middle-class urban neighborhood confers upon me a penetrating insight into the human condition. As such, every single economic and lifestyle choice I make becomes a part of the narrative of my own personal specialness. Applications for "cult-like followers" will be accepted.

Also, this woman on the radio said she "loves to smell her donkey." 

That's messed up.

Double Indumbnity

In which your humble narrator reminds you that the children are our future and as such we are hopelessly screwed.

I spent a few minutes this morning trying to track down a quote I'm pretty sure I read in a Joe Queenan book. I can't remember if it was Mr. Queenan or if he was quoting someone else. Without further nattering it was something along these lines:

If children are so smart, why isn't one of them in charge of the Federal Reserve?

While a spectacularly bright boy over all, Child #1 does manage some truly epic failures of smartness in his brain thing. On Tuesday night, Child #1 was looking a little queasy at dinner and not eating much. His mother got him some frozen yogurt (bad idea) and he ate a little. After dinner he decided he was going to help give Child #2 a bath and ran from the kitchen into the bathroom. Upon entering the bathroom, he began to vomit (while running toward his mother), slipped on his own puke, slid across the floor on his ass, leaving a trail of pink yogurty barf. Much wailing and distress ensued.


The next day he got pink eye, which he's handled with all the stoicism you would expect from a two-year-old, by trying to gouge his eyes out, intermittently wailing, and smearing yellow-green eye pus over all my modestly appointed home.

The baby pooped through two sets of clothes yesterday, and her nose is still running, leaving her with a ring of gray (frequently linty) boogers around her nostrils.

I'm leaving the little darlings in the care of our baby sitter today while I go to teach some undergraduates about curriculum analysis. Undergrads may be nearly as gross as children, but at least none of them will touch me.

For this, I am truly grateful.

The Department of "With All due Respect"

In which your humble narrator decries weasel-speak.

Why is it socially acceptable to be insulting, insensitive or condescending if you preface your remarks by uttering "with all due respect?" I suggest we encourage our elected officials to avoid weaselly idioms.

After watching a few clips of last week's White House health summit I'm convinced we should replace "with all due respect" with, "bitches, please," 'cause you know that's what they're all thinking.*

Except for John Boehner who is thinking about cigarettes, and Joe Biden who is thinking about, oh I don't know... maybe waffles. And Amtrak.

Of Water Heaters and Swollen Gums

In which your humble narrator smacks his head literally and figuratively.

We got a larger than expected tax refund this year due to the birth of Child #2 and some withholding irregularities on the part of Wife-a-roo's employer. The general plan was 1/3 to savings, 1/3 to home improvement and 1/3 to debt reduction. The water heater was high on the list. In fact I was going to call our plumber on tomorrow to schedule a replacement. But that would have been too easy. The bottom fell out of the old water heater Friday morning, flooding the basement with hot water, a half of an hour after Wife-a-roo left for work. Sister-of-Me came over to watch the children while I mopped up and got ready for the plumber to come in the afternoon. (Mercifully they squeezed us in on the same day.)

I managed to crack my head pretty hard under the stairs while cleaning up the soaked boxes that I had foolishly left in the path of the river from water heater to the floor drain. We've now spent half of the tax refund on a new water heater, a new kitchen drain, and super clean sewer lines. Every time I go into the basement the furnace creaks and wheezes as if to say, "I'm the last mechanical system standing, buddy. I'm going to wait for the inevitable cold snap in March and then die! Haw-haw!"

Also the children have given me another cold. And I think Child #2 is teething (a process that she likes to ensure takes at least 2 weeks). And my permanent retainer on my lower teeth broke, and the orthodontist doesn't have any available appointments for a month.

On the plus side, it's getting brighter, the garage door lock is unfrozen and my children are beautiful, even if they do spend a lot of time trying to improvise new ways to make me pay for unknown sins in a previous life.*

Maybe I'll spend the rest of the day reading the book of Job and try to be grateful that I'm not covered in boils surrounded by my dead livestock.

*I don't really believe in reincarnation. If I did I would be forced to conclude that in order to merit the constant annoyances of my life that I was was some sort of nun-beating Jerry Lewis type person in my last incarnation.

Nickel and Dimed

In which your humble narrator spews invective in the direction of his telecommunications company.

I hate you, Qwest. I hate you so much. You are a very bad telecommunications company. Your left hand does not know what your right hand is doing. I have suffered your incompetence for years, but your avaricious "convenience" fee has gone too far.

I have paperless statements with Qwest for DSL and phone service. Once a month I log on, and pay my bill. Until this month. A new check box appeared at the bottom of the payment screen requiring me to authorize a $1.00 "convenience" fee to process my payment.

When companies start charging you for the privilege of paying for the services you purchase from them, I think we can agree that we're officially living in Bizarro World.

I, of course, wrote an angry letter. I always write letters. I wrote:

The "convenience" fee you've imposed on online payments is the last straw. I will not sign up for auto pay because then I won't be able to review my bill before paying. I sent a check for payment today. Please enjoy processing it manually.

I wish to un-enroll from online billing. We'll go back to expensive paper statements since you've decided to soak your customers for online transactions. I'm so sick of companies trying to nickel and dime me. I'll be looking seriously for a new telecom service in the next month.

I later received a form response from Qwest thanking me for contacting them and informing me that:

The fee is new and was a difficult decision for Qwest.

Oh, golly. Well I feel better knowing that you agonized over it. They continue:

Convenience fees are a common business practice that Qwest is adopting in order to operate more efficiently. Qwest approaches business from two directions: not only providing customers with world-class products and services, but also by operating in the most efficient possible way.

Allow me to translate. "Everyone else is doing it. Qwest approaches being a douche bag from two directions; not only providing outsourced, useless customer service and crappy products but also by nickel and diming your sorry butt for whatever we can get away with. Get bent, Qwest."

I wonder if Tamera McCurry of Qwest Customer Care had to go to school to learn how to do corporate double speak of if it's some sort of natural ability.

Insufficiently Absorbent

In which your humble narrator recounts some lunacy from his childhood.

So my parents, being good hippies harbored an illegal alien when I was a kid. Maria was a Salvadoran migrant worker. We lived in northern Indiana at the time and she had come up with a crew to pick produce. But she was pregnant and they wouldn't take her back to the winter camp in Florida. So Maria and her two-year-old son Jose moved in with us. Soon there after she had another little boy, Victor (pronounced Beek-tor).

One time we ran out of Pampers and she diapered the baby with a tortilla. True story.

It's Tuesday, so I hate stuff

In which your humble narrator lists five things that get his Capra aegagrus hircus.

1. The five ancient Buick drivers in front of me in line at the car wash WHO ALL HAVE CLEAN CARS.
2. Encountering unexpectedly damp objects. (Child #2, I am looking in your direction.)
3. Diaper rash.
4. Students that email you the night before an assignment is due and then expect you to answer their questions within an hour or so. Sorry, kids, I don't actually spend the 24 hours before your deadline hunched over the Gmail waiting to answer questions you could have asked last week.
5. NBC Winter Olympics Commentators. Let's put them all on a bobsled, set it on fire, and push it off a mountain.

Funny Kid

In which your humble narrator relates some of the nascent humor of Child #1.

I think my son told his first joke today. It wasn't a retold joke, either. It was original material. Maybe he has a pencil and paper in his crib and works on his act at night.

This evening he starts telling his mother, "It goes in a diaper! It goes in a diaper! to which Wife-a-roo, a born straight-man person asks, "What goes in a diaper?" At this point, Child #1 grins and says, "Ummm, maybe... a butt?" followed by uproarious giggling.

The joke was on top of another incident during an attempt to get him to be interested in the potty. I present to you a short play in one act:

Scene: The bathroom. Child #1 is preparing for his evening ablutions. He is sans pants. His mother, Wife-a-roo  is drawing his bath.

Wife-a-roo: Child #1, would you like to use the potty?
Child #1: I will use it.
Wife-a-roo: How about we take your diaper off and you sit on the potty?
Child #1: Yes. (Wife-a-roo removes diaper and Child #1 plants his butt on the little potty.
Wife-a-roo: Now you can pee in the potty. (Child #1 starts to get up) No wait, stay there for a minute... (Child #1 furrows his brow)... now think about peeing.
Child #1: (in what is best described as a sarcastic sing-song voice) Think about NOT peeing. (Child #1 leaps up and makes for the tub.)

Faith-based Refrigeration

In which a dark shade from your humble narrator's past emerges on Facebook and causes reflection.

When I was a callow and sallow youth I attended a preparatory high school in southwest Ohio run by the Jesuits. Like about a quarter of my fellow students, I was not a Catholic. There were a fair number of Protestants, and a goodly smattering of Jews, Buddhists and Hindus at this school. We still had to attend the long, lugubrious all-school Masses, but there wasn't any formal Inquisition-like establishment aimed at converting us. Did I mention that this was a boys' school yet? It was. I received a decent education and despite having no nostalgia for my alma mater whatsoever, I don't harbor any particular hard feelings... well, except for the broken nose thing, and the two concussions.

We only had one nun at this school. She was a native Kentuckian of thick, German stock, a member of an order I have never heard of aside from her membership, and a habitual teller of tall tales. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the current students of my high school have a Facebook page devoted to quotations from my former  history teacher, the most erratic, Germanic instructor I have ever had, bar-nun.* Let's call Her "Sister Helga." While I was in school we often referred to her as "Attila."

What was surprising to me was the consistency of her craziness, even after 14 years. One of the quotes was, "Indians have to pay $7 a gallon for gas, just because they're Indians." This teacher was way into the Indians. We spent the first quarter of junior year American History talking about the Indians, wherein we learned that the "Iroquois" were composed of five tribes, hence the name, since "quois" means "five" in French.** When we were in school she used the same line, but she's obviously been adjusting for inflationary injustice since it was only $3 per gallon back then.

Sister Helga told us she was 80 years old.*** She told us that she was one of fourteen children.**** She told us that she went to Pine Ridge in South Dakota every summer to visit her sister (also a nun) and minister to the Indians.*****

There was one particularly memorable story about a time when she was teaching Bible School to the little Indian children on the Pine Ridge reservation. According to Sister Helga, one day, while telling the children about Jesus, a Schwan's Freezer truck pulled up outside the church. The Schwan's man told her that his refrigerator unit had broken down and could the children please eat some ice cream before it melted? According to the story it was 130 degrees in the shade that day, and there was only one air conditioner in the entire state of South Dakota and that was at the Governor's mansion and they never let the Indians near it. So Sister Helga and the children gorged themselves on ice cream. One little girl asked Sister Helga to drive her home after Bible School so that she could take an ice cream bar to her aged grandmother. "But little Indian girl," said Sister Helga, "you live 2 hours away and it's 130 degrees and I don't have air conditioning in my pickup truck."

"Please, Sister Helga! I know it will be fine!" said the little girl, and Sister's heart melted and she and the little girl got in the truck and drove for two hours on a dirt road in the 130 degree heat with the ice cream bar sitting on the dashboard of the truck. When they reached Granny's house the little girl kissed Sister Helga on the cheek, grabbed the ice cream bar and ran into the house.

The next day, Sister Helga asked the little girl about her Grandmother and the (presumptively) melted ice cream. The little girl told Sister Helga that her Grandmother (who hadn't had any ice cream since 1931) loved it. "But wasn't it melted?" asked Sister Helga. "No it was still frozen," replied the little girl.

Sister Helga realized that the little girl's faith had kept it cold.

And that's how refrigerators work, boys and girls.


*Oooh! A delicious pun!
**No it doesn't.
***Nope.
****Who knows? Who cares?
*****Hadn't they suffered enough?

Smurf Impression

In which your humble narrator recounts his latest health care adventure.

Child #2 abruptly turned blue on Thursday. She got fussy, started panting, demanded to be held and turned blue in the arms, legs and around her mouth. Needless to say this put a damper on my morning. After several frantic calls to our clinic and some discussions with spectacularly unhelpful people, I packed her up and took her to the emergency room at Children's Hospital in St. Paul. Sister-of-me came over to watch Child #1 and to call Wife-a-roo.

By the time we had been through triage, Child #2 had slowed her breathing and turned a nice, healthy looking pink color again. The doctor checked her out and ordered a couple of chest x-rays to rule out any lung problems. In case you don't know, babies do not like being tied down to tables for x-rays.

She seems to be fine now. The doctor suspects that she has some vascular weirdness which is unsurprising since I have something called Raynaud's Syndrome which makes my blood vessels act all crazy in response to temperature fluctuations or stress. So I'm used to seeing my hands turn blue, but it's a little different when it's your infant daughter. 

I think I hate children's hospitals even more than the regular variety. The attempt to decorate in kicky, fun ways to lighten up the place always manages to sink me into a greater and greater depression. It's like hiring a clown to be a funeral director.

Inconsequential Truth

In which your humble narrator shares a fundamental truism of relatively little import.

It is an incontrovertible truth that it is impossible to look dignified while drinking through a straw.

Think about it. This is why you never see the Queen of England sippin' on a Big Gulp.

The Great Escape

In which your humble narrator throws off the shackles of viral-based confinement and high-tails it out of the house.

Having been infected with yet another virus this week, Child #1 spent 5 entire days home-bound. Being confined to the house makes Child #1 transform from a pleasant, agreeable Dr. Jekyll-type character into the 2.4 year-old version of Edward Hyde. Despite the hellish nature of his first 6 months on earth (colic), which were then followed by "The Great Unpleasantness" (6-12 months) he's been a rather amiable little chap ever since then. That is, unless you make him stay home for more than 2 days in a row. Then the evil begins.

It starts innocuously enough with fussing, whining and an overuse of the word "no." It then progresses to throwing things, slamming doors and tantrums. This continues to build until he reaches the stage of "Purposive Badness" wherein he starts doing weird stuff that he knows is completely forbidden, i.e., getting into the refrigerator by himself, pulling books off of shelves, and making a mess with whatever (usually liquid) substance that his fatigued, ill and stupid parents have left within his reach. Once he starts drawing pentagrams on the floor and trying to summon the demon Lord of Hell he gets put into a time-out.

Today, all of us having mostly recovered, I asked Child #1 if he wanted to go to Costco. Despite being in the midst of one of his weird little projects, he looked up and seemed to have a spasm of joy while he shrieked "YES!"

So Child #1, Child #2 and I embarked to Costco to buy toilet paper, baby formula and cheese. There was a space next to the cart corral when we got there, so I plunked both children into the cart (Costco has double seated carts) and we went inside where we walked virtually every aisle, just looking at stuff. After purchasing our items we had a delightful snack at the snack bar and spent 5 minutes looking at the demo Nissan Altima parked by the exit.

On the freeway on the way home, a small voice from the back seat inquired, "Can we go to another store?"

So we did. And after a stop at the Co-op, our arms full of Hippie Groceries, we returned home again, safe for at least five more days from the infernal one.

Virus Revisited

In which your humble narrator purchases stock in Kimberly-Clark, makers of Kleenex.

The third hideous virus of the winter has laid the entire family low. In one of last night's fever-dreams, I dreamt  that I died from this particularly nasty cold and went to the underworld where Charon waited in his boat to carry me across a river of snot to the far shore. I had no coin under my tongue and he wouldn't take the only thing in my pocket as payment, a booger-encrusted pacifier. Bastard.

 All I'm saying is this, my (expletive) kids better shell out for a pretty (obscene gerund) nice nursing home when I'm old and feeble.

Mailbag Monday is Late

In which your humble narrator answers the mail.

Dear Rotten Baby,
How do I convince my mother-in-law that she is totally capable of taking care of our wonderful children (ages 1 1/2 and 3 1/2) for just 48 hours so that my estranged husband and I can go to the Florida Keys for an all expense paid trip?
                                     Needing some alone time together

Dear NSATT,
First of all: where did you get an all-expense paid trip to the Keys? I want an all expense-paid trip. I would settle for an all-expense-paid trip to Dubuque, Iowa and be very, very happy with it. Actually, you know what? I'd settle for being able to go to the bathroom without an accompanying two-year-old and the inevitable discussion of whether I'm peeing or pooping in the potty.

But I digress. When I was just a wee little boy, before I became an internet sensation known to, literally, tens of people, my Grandma said to me the following: "If you want somebody to do something for you, it works best to let them think that it's their decision. If you can't make them decide to do what you want, then you put the screws to 'em and nail their ass to the wall."

As you may have guessed, my grandma was Lyndon Baines Johnson.

For Attempt #1, "Vanity + Guilt," you try to get her to decide to do it herself. This is best accomplished by making a dual appeal to both her vanity and her guilt. Like this: "Oh mother-in-law (MIL) you're the only one I trust to care for my precious children* and... and (fake cry here) I'm just not sure that your child (your spouse, NSATT) is willing to tell you HOW MUCH S/HE NEEDS THIS." See? Vanity + Guilt

If this fails, then you move on to Attempt #2, "Ass to Wall."

"Look, MIL. Do this for me... or the next time we're at your house for dinner I'm telling the kids that you're serving Muppet."

*Feel free to sell your own Mom down the river here if you think it'll help... after all we're talking about a vacation away from the children, any reasonable court would sanction anything up to involuntary manslaughter under these circumstances.

Overheard on Craigslist

In which your humble narrator offers up a risque Craigslist post for your perusal.

Courtesy of Wife-a-roo, who trawls Craigslist every night because we don't have any money to buy anything and she needs to get her shopping fix somehow:

"This gently used Fisher-Price baby rocker swings both ways."

Kinky. I'm glad my kids didn't need their baby-swing to also be some sort of pan-sexual freak-fest.

Lets Bring Back Shame

In which your humble narrator gets his scold on and rants about the sheer ugliness of the ethical egoism that permeates modern life.

What ever happened to shame? Having been raised by quasi-hippies with a wide puritanical streak, I seem to have this unpopular notion that when you do stupid/evil/nasty/rude/hypocritical things, you should experience shame. Good ol' Pascal said "the only shame is to have none." Of course Blaise was a little too in love with his ability to turn a phrase, but I admire the sentiment none-the-less.

This week we have a president seemingly torpedoing his own agenda because he's now only got +18 majority in the Senate. From the New York Times Caucus Blog:

“If there’s one thing that I regret this year,” Mr. Obama said, “is that we were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values.”

Goodness. Mealy-mouthed are we? This sounds like the trite response to the "what's your greatest weakness" job interview question.  "Oh gosh, America, I was just too darn focused on getting things done that I abdicated any responsibility for putting pressure on Congress to accomplish anything. Also I never bothered to communicate what it was that I wanted from a health care bill. I let opponents define the bill because I was too busy gettin'-r-done. Then I let the process drag on so long that Teddy Kennedy's seat is now held by a formerly nude Republican." Spare me the verbal curlicues, you tragic weiner.

Then there's our illustrious Supreme Court's conservative wing's (the one that has traditionally railed against judicial activism) decision to throw our 100+ years of precedent in a sweeping ruling where none was required. This was of course, not hypocritical. Just ask Antonin Scalia, he'll tell you so. Don't question him or he'll make a rude gesture to distract you while Dick Cheney sneaks up to shoot you in the face.

And last, on an entirely non-political note, what's up with the line-cutting, people? I frequently have middle aged persons try to cut in front of me in line. Are you all graduates of the Ayn Rand School for Tots?

Have you no shame?

Take that, hoop.

In which your humble narrator passes his preliminary exam and becomes a doctoral candidate.

After much fretting I sat for my oral preliminary examination this morning. Much to my delight, the questions were less "What business do you think you have here, miscreant, (probably retarded) urchin boy?" and more "So what do you think about this thing that you actually know about?"

Now on to other things. No, not a dissertation, gentle reader, the procurement of Kentucky Bourbon.

Wearisome Week

In which your humble narrator stares down the gaping maw of a test with no parameters and the beginning of another lousy semester.

Today is the first day of a new term, bringing with it new classes to teach, fresh undergraduate faces, an impending preliminary exam for my doctoral degree and a big old-fashioned bucket of glum. The enterprise of completing a Ph.D. seems less and less appealing since it seems apparent that it will result, not in a wood-paneled faculty office complete with tweed jacket and pipe, but rather a somewhat less glamorous job in the food service industry. "Would you like a thesis on the application of psycholinguistic research to reading comprehension tests with your burger and fries, sir? No?"

At least I'll be Dr. Impoverished Unemployed Person, Ph.D.

Friday brings with it my preliminary oral examination in which I will go into a room with my committee, give a 20 minute presentation and then hope and pray that I have actually learned something in my (too long) graduate career. I scheduled in for 9:30 in the morning, thinking that at least there won't be much of the day preceding the exam to spend agonizing over my impending doom. The lack of any set expectations for this exam is what sends my anxiety into full-on catastrophic mode: "What's that, simple boy? You're not ready for the physical challenge in which you wrestle with Jean Piaget's reanimated corpse?"

This may be the last post until after Friday as I plan to spend the next 60+ hours pulling the hair from my head strand by strand.

Wife-a-roo's Quotable Quotes

In which your humble narrator transcribes the wondrously weird wit and wisdom of Wife-a-roo.

"How did I get syrup on my butt?" (January 14, 2010)

 An existential question for the ages if I ever saw one. How, indeed?

Gratuitous Cuteness

GrIn which your humble narrator feels sorry for the parents of ugly children.

Child #2 sports a healthy vaseline sheen due to unremitting frigid, skin-drying temperatures.

Child #1 engages in imitative play by washing dishes in the bathroom sink. He washes dishes in the bath as well. He also pees in the bath a lot. I have yet to convince him that peeing in the dishwater is generally frowned upon.

Practical Jokery

In which your humble narrator discusses unimplemented plans for messing with his wife's head.

I actually almost never engage in practical jokery, which is sort of a shame since I'm really, really good at coming up with things that would completely annoy/surprise Wife-a-roo. It's a double pity because this is a woman who has gratifyingly large reactions to moderately startling circumstances. You can walk up to her, tell her that you now plan to hide behind a sofa and then jump out and yell "boo!" at her in exactly 43 seconds. She'll still jump when you do it. Here are some fun, unimplemented plans for messing with my wife's head.

1. Whenever I happen on the book that she's reading, I will flip one page forward. 
2. Reprogram Child #2's talking robot bear to say (and sing!) wife's name in that creepy robot bear voice it has. Then I shall put it on wife's pillow while she's mumbling about sleeping for "five more minutes*" and turn it on.
   
3. Pour regular cow milk into her rice milk cartons.
4. The next time I edit one of her papers on sexual health research, I will search for the term "sex" and replace it with the term "doin' it." "Sexual" will be replaced with "freak-nasty."
   

And last, even though I didn't do it, I should give an an honorable mention to Sister-of-me who changed Wife-a-roo's homepage to babyeinstein.com. Much flabbergasted sputtering ensued.


*Or, you know, 40 more minutes.

Crack

In which your humble narrator expounds upon his house's repeated attempts to drive him to penury and madness.

The drain pipe for the kitchen sink froze overnight on Monday. On Tuesday morning I came downstairs to find the sink full of dirty dishwasher water. Mercifully it did not overflow.

The plumber was called and I was referred to a sewer service. A pleasant gentleman came to the house within 2 hours and steamed open the drain pipe only to find a crack. The plumber was called again and came yesterday to effect a permanent fix for said drain pipe. We used this service call to restore hot water pressure to the kitchen sink as it had become very weak due to a copper/galvanized pipe junction that had become clogged.* I've have since nearly burned my hands twice due to the sudden surprising availability of hot water.

We have not been in this house for 2 years yet, and we have already replaced the roof, soffits, fascia, gutters, both toilets, the chimney liner, the front door, fixed the outside spigot, added insulation, and addressed some electrical issues. I estimate that this maintenance alone is running $250-300 per month.

We should have picked either having children or having a house.


*It really sounds like I know what I'm talking about here doesn't it?

Mailbag Monday

In which your humble narrator answers some mail.

Dear Rotten Baby,
Can I yell at my baby when he's bad?
                               -Disciplinary Donna in Denver
Dear 3D,
What the hell is wrong with you? You can't yell at your baby as a punishment. That will freak your baby out and he'll grow up to be like Gilbert Gottfried. You may only yell at your baby as a part of happy-fun-screamy-time (HFST). I have HFST with Child #2 once or twice a day. She likes to yell. I like to yell. She thinks it's hysterical when I try to match her pitch. I'm thinking that maybe we could join that Finnish Shouting Choir as a fun Daddy-daughter type activity. Remember 3D, yelling should be an act of exuberance, not discipline.

Dear Rotten Baby,
What's up with Twilight? Am I missing something or is it really just vampornomance for current and former adolescent girls?
                                -Abe von Holsing
Abe,
You hit that nail on the head, there buddy. I'm not going to say anything else because I live in mortal terror of several former adolescent girls that may be reading this letter. In lieu of commentary on the Twi-nomenon, I offer this link* to the stupidest Twi-products that Twi-commerce has made Twi-vailable to the Twi-masses. I'll never eat a Pringle again.

Dear Rotten Baby,
I am having recurring, and frequently erotic, dreams about Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace. While I find him comically inept as a "journalist" he keeps haunting my slumber. Is there anything I can do to stop finding him attractive?
                               -Foxy Lady
Foxy,
I suggest you get yourself booked as a guest on his show. That should clear everything up. But for the love of God, don't look into Brit Hume's eyes. He'll eat your soul (while emasculating Juan Williams).

That wraps up this edition of 'Mailbag Monday," boys and girls. To have your queries, imaginary or otherwise answered, send an email to:
rotten.baby.blog (at) gmail (dot) com.


*Mad props, yo, to Captain Cartwheel and her dumb brother, Shadoweyes who may send me email mash notes about how much he misses me, but still hasn't f*****g linked to me. You get lunch when I get a link, sucker.

Of Deviled Eggs, Bad Science and the Psychology of Stupidity

In which your humble narrator makes a mistake.

First, I confess. I read the Huffington Post. A college friend of mine used to work for her Greekness, and I've read it for years. I rationalize it by claiming that it's just like the New York Post, but for urban, liberal types.

Last night I made the mistake of clicking on the "Living" tab on Huffington Post. For the love of God, if you enjoy food, don't feel particularly like mediatating, doing yoga or actualizing your dream states, don't visit. All food is viewed through the prism of it's effects on your health. The headline article today is "GLUTEN: What you don't know might KILL you." This article takes a surprisingly individual tack toward self-diagnosis. First, the author tells you to cut all gluten from your diet, then reintroduce it. If you feel bad at all after reintroduction you should never eat gluten again. And this guy is an M.D. Really? A single trial test? Shouldn't doctors have some familiarity with, oh... I don't know, SCIENCE?

I think that the vast majority of these articles are really about two complementary psychological desires. The first is to find an explanation for your illness/addiction/fatness/compulsive sexual behavior with Peruvian mountain goats that relieves you of any responsibility at all. That goat was asking for it. And the second desire is to individuate oneself from all the other wealthy boutique liberals so you can be unique like everyone else. For additional examples of these two complementary psychological drives please see: Oprah, Dr. Phil, daytime medical television and the entire self-help industrial complex. I'm pretty resigned to most of this silliness, but please, leave food out of it.

To help us move past this idiocy, here's a nice picture of some deviled eggs from one of my Mom's family reunions a couple of years ago. They're a pain in the butt to prepare. They're not good for you. You should still eat them and enjoy them. I do.