The Listicle: 10 Things I've learned in my eventful absence

In which your humble narrator squeaks in with a September post, apologizes insincerely and lists 10 factastic aphorisms to tide over his adoring public until later.

1. Yeah, so, dissertating. It turns out this takes an ungodly amount of time. Sorry (insincere) about the lack of posts.
2. We went on vacation. To Maine. In the car. 3860 miles, roundtrip. Everyone survived. It was mostly fun. We saw a lot of Rust Belt, and went to Trader Joe's stores in many exotic locations, like Cleveland Ohio and Portland, Maine.
3. Maine is pretty. It is also eerily like West Virginia, only northern, and people have decrepit boats on their lawns instead of just cars.
4. "Concatenate" is a great word.
5. So much better than "listicle."
6. But unlike "concatenate," "listicle" is a portmanteau word.
7. "Portmanteau" is a great word.
8. Child #1 turned 4. He is no longer a rotten baby, but has matured into a rotten (but loveable) kid.
9. Child #2 has a thing for Elton John, whose name she pronounces "Molten John."
10. I have postulated that the universe exists on a continuum that runs from douchey to lame. The exact middle point of that continuum is occupied by the recumbent bicycle.

11. Bonus Item: I deeply regret (insincere) the pain that this will likely cause recumbent bicycle enthusiasts.

Accidental Profanity

In which your humble narrator recalls an inadvertent insult to his sister.

Child #2 is starting to get very interested in letters and colors, even though she's not yet 2 years old. This is because she is freakishly brilliant. Also evil. This child is ornery in a way that the other one never was. This reminded me this week of when Child #1 was learning letters

Sister-of-Me was sitting in our living room while Child #1 played with some brightly colored foam letters we had gotten for him. He selected a couple of letters and toddled over to my sister and said "Look, Auntie! F! U!"

It was indeed a purple F and a yellow U, and of course, completely innocent. I fear that if Child #2 learns F and U that she may mean it.

January Can Suck It

In which your humble narrator crowns a new most heinous month.

Named for the two-faced, Roman jerk deity, Janus, January is our most iniquitous month. It's cold. It's dark. It's still snowing, and it's long.

The furnace needs to be replaced. The new roof is leaking in at least one place, maybe two. There is nowhere else to pile snow from the driveway or the garage apron. I've taken to shoveling at night, filling a wheel barrow with filthy snow and surreptitiously dumping it on the property of neighbors who have offended my delicate sensibilities in some way.*

The newly Ph.Deeded wife has still not gotten a raise.

The children have been sick all month. Everyone had a horrible cold last week and both kids got pink eye. This morning I woke up unable to open my left eye. It was cemented shut with dried eye filth. Thank you, so much Child #2, who thought "NO TOUCHING DADDY'S FACE" was some hilarious invitation to a game of "smear mucus into Daddy's eyeballs."

It's an inauspicious start to 2011. February's probably going to suck too, but at least it's short and it can't possibly be colder and darker than it has been.

*"What a hideous jacket, you get three wheel barrows full of dirty snow on your doorstep."

How Dolly Parton Saved my Cousin's Life

In which your humble narrator explains, on the occasion of her 65th birthday, why Dolly is revered in his household.

My mother and her sister (my eldest aunt) are less than a year apart in age and have traditionally done lots of major life steps nearly synchronously. They married near the same time, had children at the same time and divorced at the same time. As such, sister-of-me and I spent lots of time with our similarly-aged cousins during the tandem dissolution of our respective parents' marriages.

This time together includes one particularly interesting vacation; two Moms, four kids go on the road for good times and adventure. Predictably the squabbling began almost as soon as we crossed the border from Ohio into Kentucky (about 20 minutes into the trip). Six people. One crew-cab pick-up truck. 3,675 lbs. of luggage (Mom and Auntie are not adherents of the "packing light" philosophy). We drove down. We stayed in a beach house for a week sniping at each other. At the end of the week we packed up and left for home.

By the end of the week, each of us was harboring murderous impulses toward my cousin (lets's call him Fusspot). Fusspot had spent the week complaining. About everything. All the time. He picked fights with his Mom, with his sister, with seagulls, with inanimate objects. In all fairness, it wasn't really his fault. There is a long standing rule in my family of origin that someone must ruin vacation. If the usual vacation ruiner cannot perform his or her duties, a replacement will be appointed and proceed to do everything in his or her power to provide an unpleasant experience. It has been this way since time immemorial, and so it shall be done until the end of vacations/time.

As we meandered northerly toward home, the air seethed with murderous intent. Fusspot continued to loudly air every grievance that entered his adolescent brain. At rest stops my sister and I debated whether it would be better to throw Fusspot off of a mountain top in rural North Carolina, or if we should simply make a break for it and start new lives as country western singers in Tennessee. The long knives were unsheathed.

And at about this time my aunt remembered that she had brought a book on tape. Perhaps that would help pass the time through the surprisingly heavy traffic. It was Dolly Parton's recently published audio autobiography, "Dolly: My Life and other Unfinished Business."

Her dulcet-toned delivery of the story of her hardscrabble* upbringing in Sevierville, Tennessee, her marriage to a recluse, her entertainment career, and her many reflections on her hairdos were the music that soothed the savage beast. Every single one of us was mesmerized by Dolly's harrowing tale of poverty and triumph. We were transfixed by her tendency to break into song while she told the story of her childhood. It was weird. Dolly is weird. Dolly's take on her experiences is blithely optimistic to the point of delusion, but sort of awesome?  But most importantly, Dolly did the talking. For a blessed four hours everyone shut the hell up, and we didn't commit murder. And that's how Dolly Parton saved my cousin's life.

*The use of the word "hardscrabble" is mandatory in any piece of writing concerning Ms. Parton.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Fat Capitalist Pig Fascist Controller - Sir Topham Hatt

In which your humble narrator delves deeply in to the political machinations of Imperialist Oppressor, Sir Topham Hatt and his hegemonic stranglehold on the Island of Sodor.

Apparently we need to take a careful look at the conservative indoctrination of our toddlers. Sister-of-Me sent me a couple of links regarding a political analysis of Thomas the Tank Engine. The next day it was picked up as a story on CBC's As it Happens,* the Canadian radio news magazine show.

Exhibit A (from Canada.com: a bitchin' Canadian News Aggregater):

"Shauna Wilton, an associate professor of political studies at the University of Alberta's Augustana campus in Camrose, Alta., analyzed two dozen episodes [of Thomas and Friends] and found a strong conservative political flavour to the show.

Thomas inhabits a world where efforts to gain individual power or to upset the social hierarchy are punished, good citizenship is the ultimate virtue and episodes revolve around the morals of everyone having a role to play and the importance of teamwork and doing a good job, she says.
"One thing that's really clear when you watch Thomas is that there's a really strong social hierarchy and Sir Topham Hatt, the controller of the railway, is at the top and the different types of trains and characters fall below him," Wilton says."

Oh horrors! A children's program extolling the virtues of good citizenship and emphasizing the importance of having a role to play? But how will the little darlings learn to express themselves?

"It's a recurring theme on the show that Topham Hatt has a duty for the trains to fulfil and they try to make him happy and do a good job, she says -- a helpful theme for raising co-operative preschoolers, but not so good for teaching them to think for themselves or to question things as they grow.
On the show, any attempt by the trains to act on their own or go against orders has "fairly disastrous results,"she says, citing the story in which Thomas is temporarily replaced by another engine after he whistles impatiently at a police officer."

For pity's sake. It's a show for pre-schoolers. We don't really need to to teach them to think about things or to question authority BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THEY DO. The idea that, as parents, we should be encouraging rugged individualism in 2-5 year-olds is unmitigated idiocy. There used to be a word used to describe a young child who insisted on always doing things his or her own way, never following the rules and not bothering to learn basic rules of manners and morals. That word was "brat."

Predictably the response I've read and heard to this analysis generally falls into the hyper-moronic, tabloid style that one sees in the U.K.'s Guardian. And that's too bad, because the issue isn't some stupid liberal trying to ruin the teevee for our kids. This issue is that this analysis entirely misses the point that the developmental differences  between children and adults demand that children's programs contain different messages. Toddlers need to understand the social power relationships in their family. And if that family is going to function in any reasonable way, the toddler better not be the one in charge.**

When people ask me about my political philosophy I tell them that I'm a liberal because I believe in progressive taxation and active government regulation of the markets. But I'm not into all that other hippie bullshit.

*Which you should listen to. 
** Because small children are insane.

Housebound Housewifery

In which your humble narrator comments on the banality of his day.

It snowed about 8 inches. It's only 10 degrees and very windy. I'm stuck in the house all day with the children.

Wife-a-roo sent me a link to a Salon blog by Aaron Traister which pretty much sums up my existence these days. A particularly salient paragraph:

"My view of parenting and its effect on the adult mind is particularly sour right now since my daughter has just entered into the most difficult stage of development. She is 10 months old, and while most people would point to the fabled “terrible twos” as the most challenging and exhausting time with their young ones, the interval between 8 and 15 months is almost indescribably difficult for me, especially because it is making me not good at words plus how to use them."

Child #2 is 7+ months old now and at the incredibly obnoxious stage where she is increasingly mobile, but only in uni-directional pathways. For example: she can maneuver from a seated position to lying either on her back or her stomach, but is unable or unwilling to move from either of those positions to any other, more satisfactory position. This necessitates righting her or rearranging her approximately every 2.5 minutes* since she doesn't like lying down: the position, but only lying down: the act. Thank God for overalls.

Last night I was in the kitchen with the children. Child #2 was sitting in her high chair screaming unhappily and refusing all toys or diversions while Child #1 was merrily running head first into the kitchen cabinets and trying valiantly to drop cast-iron cookware on his feet.**  Wife-a-roo was late because of the snowstorm and I was trying to cook dinner (modest pasta dish). It occurred to me: "If I'm going to live the life of a 1950's housewife, I'm pretty sure I deserve some of the pills."

* I have righted Child #2 eight times during the writing of this post.
** He still has a cold. Colds make him insane and self-injurious.

Hoop jumping

In which your humble narrator describes slogging through the writing of an academic paper with no parameters.

In my continuing quest to complete my Ph.D. in Educational Psychology so that I can become unemployed, I am currently involved in the revision of my oral preliminary exam paper. My department gives both written and oral preliminary exams  for doctoral students. I passed the written preliminary test when child #1 was 6 months old on the Saturday before we moved to our new house. It was a giant waste of time.

For the oral prelim, I have to write a 20-50 page review paper of some literature without providing any plan for my dissertation (that's part of the next hoop, dummy). It's ostensibly supposed to show my "evaluative skills" and prove to my committee that I can write a literature review, though I think it's actually just to provide some framework for what they might want to ask me about during this upcoming 2-hour fun-fest.

My adviser's instructions for writing this paper (as the department provides virtually no direction other than what I mentioned above) were to (wait for it) "write about something I know a lot about."

I wrote most of the paper this summer while I was teaching and was allowed to leave the house more than once a week. Now I'm reduced to working on it during the 24 minutes between when the children are finally settled in their beds and when my brain turns off and NASCAR starts seeming interesting. 

Perhaps it would have been better to finish this degree before transmitting my genetic material to another generation of crabby, demanding little persons.

Happy Pie Day, America

In which your humble narrator discusses the familial tradition known as "Pie Day."

It's Pie Day again. As I write, Wife and I have completed 7 pies with one in the oven and one yet to go. Each year, on the Wednesday that precedes Thanksgiving, we gather together to celebrate the making and baking of many pies twinned with a nod to those Puritan jerks by practicing discipline and self denial by not eating any of the pie until tomorrow. That way, we can experience true gratitude.

This year we're skipping the self-denial part because my Grandma's here and she gets crabby about waiting.

To help you initiate your own family tradition which explores the dualism of abundance and scarcity in a context rich with Americana, follow these simple steps:

• Step One: Take the Day off work (natch)
• Step Two: Plan your Pies and write down your schedule
• Step Three: Follow the rules of Pie Day

1. Don't talk about Pie Day
2. Don't talk about Pie Day
3. There are no rules
4. Make your own crusts, you lazy piece of #%@!
   
5. Make sure to make more pies than there are people expected at Thanksgiving. To achieve the proper sense of abundance, at least 1.5 pies/guest is recommended.