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.