It's National Brotherhood Week

In which your humble narrator feels a bit dyspeptic.

If you don't know Tom Lehrer, you should.

Ick

In which your humble narrator realizes that shutting down the internet for a few days after a national trauma would be a good idea.

In a time of tragedy, now is the time for all of us, as Americans, to come together to refrain from thinking before we speak, indiscriminately shoot our mouths off, try to pin the blame on the other team, refuse to take responsibility for our words, use someone else's horrific experience to reinforce our own sense of victim-hood,  form strongly-held opinions without a shred of evidence and above all refuse to learn anything from what's happened.

Conversational Torpedo in One Act

In which your humble narrator transcribes a recent conversation between Child #1 and Wife-a-roo.

Scene: At home, the office, the last day of 2010...

Wife-a-roo: Child #1, this is the last day of the year.
Child #1: (barely glances up) Yes.
Wife-a-roo: Tomorrow will be a new year.
Child #1: Why did you say that to me?
Wife-a-roo: Uhh... huhhh... what?
Child #1: (Insistently) Why did you say that to me?
Wife-a-roo: (Incredulously) Uhh... I though you would be interested.
Child #1: I wasn't.

I win at 2011

In which your humble narrator welcomes the new year belatedly and sets forth his agenda for 2011.

2010, that vile, skanky, hussy of a year has come and gone. First the good:

• Child #2 started daycare and proceeded to show the other munchkins what verbal development is all about.
• Child #1 started preschool which was not as calamitous as he had feared. 
• Child #2 finished teething. 
• Wife-a-roo became Dr. Wife-a-roo, Ph.D. in Educational Psychology (not procrastination as I originally feared). 
• Child #1 got potty trained.
• I got handsomer.
• New fancy phone.

And the bad:

• Child #2 got all of her teeth between March and October. It was unpleasant. She was an angry, drooling wreck.
• Child #1 made potty training a painful, horrible experience for everyone in the house, and possibly for at least the 20% of residents of our zip code who live within ear shot.
• A massive hail storm necessitating a new roof (again) and new siding.
• Sister-of-mine had her car stolen.
• Grandma died.
• Constant phone calls to the mortgage company to get the money for the insurance settlement processed.
• Sinus infections 1-3.
• Became a minivan driver.
• The great purge of 2010.
• Twins choke.
• Reds choke.
• Michele Bachmann re-elected easily.

Needless to say, I won't miss this year. Coming up in 2011:

• Will call it "twenty-eleven." Gotta make the switch sometime.
• Dr. Me, Ph.D.
• Benjamins. It's all about the Benjamins.
• Eat cheese.

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.