It's come to my attention that sifting through the letters I've sent your way, you two might be under the impression that I'm not anxiously awaiting your arrival. That because I don't find pink socks particularly exciting I don't care about your tiny feet. That because I harbor fears that my own life will soon be over that I'm not excited for yours to begin. That because I didn't particularly want kids, I don't want the two of you. Allow me to clear this up.
Based on the evidence I've seen, meaning the books, the surveys, and my own exposure to families, I don't think I'm really cut out for kids. I do not dream of picket fences or soccer games, packing lunches or playdates. When people reference these things I often fail to show the proper level of enthusiasm. When people used to ask me if I wanted kids, I would think of my friend's children, all of whom were wonderful people, but none of whom I really wanted to take home with me, and I would say no, not really.
I didn't really think I was cut out for marriage either. I spent several years trying to convince your mother that we should live in a commune, grow herbs, and rechristen ourselves with the names of wildflowers. Bluebonnet, I would say, why do we have to do what everyone else does? Why can't we just raise oregano and free ourselves from the little boxes that 'the man' is always trying to force us into? And then your mother would tell me not to call her Bluebonnet and the discussion would end.
The point is, I have a horrible fear of waking up one day and feeling like my life came from page 32 of some catalog. Oh, you got the one with the two kids and the Honda? My brother and my neighbor have that one. How's it working out? It's like driving through a suburban development where every fourth house is the same. I mean, your name's on the title, but if it's just like everyone else's, how can it really be yours? So when I think of marriage and kids in the abstract, that's what I think of, a house like 16 others on the block, and little terrors who try to pull it down when you put them to bed.
But I didn't marry an abstract concept, and to the best of my knowledge there's nothing theoretical about either of you. I married your mom, not because I was suddenly into the idea of doing what everyone else had done, but because I was madly, deeply, and ridiculously in love with her. And all my fears that simply going through with a ceremony would somehow make us like all those who had been through it before, were unfounded. I'm as stupid and she's as beautiful as we were the day we met.
So no, I don't want kids because I'm suddenly fired up about little socks and pink outfits, and when you ask me about those things I'm as likely to groan as I ever was. But when it comes to you two, the feet that kick my hand, the ears that have already suffered through my songs, the faces in soupy black and white, there's nothing I'm looking forward to more than shaking your hands and asking about the trip. After that I can't guarantee that I'll do a damn thing right, or that I won't occasionally panic about turning into everyone else and ask you to move to my herb farm, but that won't be because I don't care. It will be because I want you to be more mine, not less. Sometimes when you really want something to feel like it belongs to you, your biggest fear is that it will get mixed up with everyone else's.
Novel - 9 days until update
Dunking - I have several more pounds to move vertically
French - Bon nuit
Monday, December 31, 2007
Friday, December 28, 2007
Merry Pink Christmas
We did Christmas a little late this year, so all your unborn friends have probably been bragging about their haul for days while you two have been forced to wait. The upside is that you two cleaned up. You're not even born and I think you probably came out ahead of me. There were a lot of packages with my name on them, but unless I develop a use for half inch pink socks I think most of the stuff was for you. If I needed any reminders that people don't see me as a person anymore, but a father, I needed look no farther than the Christmas tree.
We got a big check that's supposed to go towards getting you guys some furniture, but I'm thinking about hijacking that for an Xbox. If that sounds like it's for me, you're confused. I'm just more concerned about helping develop your hand eye coordination than giving you a place to sleep. Does that make me a bad parent? Well, yes, I guess when you see it written down it does kind of point that way.
I blame your mom. Walking around with the two of you hanging off the front of her, it's an invitation to talk about the babies. I love you two, but it's too much for me right now. I need a week or two without answering questions about your diapers or college funds. I need a weekend where someone doesn't talk to me about sleep deprivation. I need a day without pink.
Maybe you'll be inventors and you'll come up with some sort of invisible baby belt that expectant parents wear so no one sees what's coming. You tell them you're pregnant, you have a chat about it, and then everyone forgets for nine moths, until presto, out you come. Maybe I'm in the minority. Maybe there's a legion of folks out there who can't wait to talk about poop and preschool, the sooner the better. But I doubt it. I kind of think that if you could put together an invention like that, one that lets you simultaneously be pregnant and have a conversation about something else, well, my people would rise up and clear them off the shelves. I kind of think that if you do that, you can put yourselves through college. And if nothing else, that's one less question I'd have to answer.
I wonder if there's a culture that doesn't have a word for pink. If so we might have to consider relocation.
Novel - Update this week
Dunking - New year, new program
French - Your aunt speaks German, we're seeing if she'll work for 45 cents an hour
We got a big check that's supposed to go towards getting you guys some furniture, but I'm thinking about hijacking that for an Xbox. If that sounds like it's for me, you're confused. I'm just more concerned about helping develop your hand eye coordination than giving you a place to sleep. Does that make me a bad parent? Well, yes, I guess when you see it written down it does kind of point that way.
I blame your mom. Walking around with the two of you hanging off the front of her, it's an invitation to talk about the babies. I love you two, but it's too much for me right now. I need a week or two without answering questions about your diapers or college funds. I need a weekend where someone doesn't talk to me about sleep deprivation. I need a day without pink.
Maybe you'll be inventors and you'll come up with some sort of invisible baby belt that expectant parents wear so no one sees what's coming. You tell them you're pregnant, you have a chat about it, and then everyone forgets for nine moths, until presto, out you come. Maybe I'm in the minority. Maybe there's a legion of folks out there who can't wait to talk about poop and preschool, the sooner the better. But I doubt it. I kind of think that if you could put together an invention like that, one that lets you simultaneously be pregnant and have a conversation about something else, well, my people would rise up and clear them off the shelves. I kind of think that if you do that, you can put yourselves through college. And if nothing else, that's one less question I'd have to answer.
I wonder if there's a culture that doesn't have a word for pink. If so we might have to consider relocation.
Novel - Update this week
Dunking - New year, new program
French - Your aunt speaks German, we're seeing if she'll work for 45 cents an hour
Sunday, December 23, 2007
$50 Movies!
I keep meaning to explain the depth and origins of my most apparent trait, cheapness, but my second most apparent trait, laziness, always gets in the way. I usually boil it down the following: if I was schizophrenic I probably wouldn't even share with myself. If I've used that line before, I apologize. Repetitiveness is my number 3.
Anyway, I was talking to some parents the other day, something I've decided I should probably stop doing, and they were filling me in on the cost of childcare. Apparently it costs around 15 bucks an hour to get someone to look after one of you, more for two. That means it would cost your mom and I 30 bucks minimum to leave the house for two hours. Assuming that we could somehow walk out of our front door and into a theater, by the time you added tickets and so forth, it would cost more than 50 dollars just to see a movie. I wouldn't pay 50 dollars to see a movie if I was starring in it and Angelina Jolie was playing my sexually precocious maid.
When my good friends had kids they always seemed to disappear. The rest of us would get together and wonder about them, remember them, pour beer on the sidewalk in memory of them. They seemed like prisoners. You can't come out for one drink? we'd say. You can't get away for one party? If they'd have said, 'look I like you, but you're not worth 15 dollars and hour' I would have totally understood. It's no wonder most of them haven't seen a movie since Titanic.
After I heard this I started looking at ads on craigslist for nannies and babysitters. One ad caught my eye as reasonable, 60 dollars a week for 12 hours a day. Sadly, it was someone offering to pay that amount, not someone offering to work for it. Presumably the people who would work for it had done the math and seen that it works out to 45 cents an hour. Now, that's in my price range.
The thing about me is that you never want me weighing things in dollar terms. I can spend twenty minutes in front of a value meal menu trying to figure out how to save a dime. If I have to start putting a price on GOING OUTSIDE then I'm going to go all hermit in no time. I will shun the light and grow a beard and stop communicating with the outside world just to avoid hearing about things that might cost 15 dollars to go do. If you knew how bad my beard looks you'd be as worried about this as I am.
I used to think that stage parents were some of the lowest forms of life, putting their kids in front of cameras in the hopes of vicariously living out their own failed dreams of stardom and vaguely hoping to get a cookbook deal out of the whole thing. Now I'm not so sure they're not just looking for a way to get some extra scratch so they can see a movie and grab a burger once in a while. Maybe this is why you see so many young kids dragged into R rated films. How many slasher films seem worth 50 bucks? Economically speaking, it makes way more sense to just scar your children for life. If you end up looking anything like me you probably won't have faces for the big screen, but given the numbers I'm afraid that we're going to have to seriously consider putting you to work somehow. Consider yourselves lucky we don't have any salt mines nearby.
Novel - Update after the break
Dunking - 29 inches. New program after the break
French - Saw and ad for a french nanny. Will let you know how she feels about 45 cents an hour.
Anyway, I was talking to some parents the other day, something I've decided I should probably stop doing, and they were filling me in on the cost of childcare. Apparently it costs around 15 bucks an hour to get someone to look after one of you, more for two. That means it would cost your mom and I 30 bucks minimum to leave the house for two hours. Assuming that we could somehow walk out of our front door and into a theater, by the time you added tickets and so forth, it would cost more than 50 dollars just to see a movie. I wouldn't pay 50 dollars to see a movie if I was starring in it and Angelina Jolie was playing my sexually precocious maid.
When my good friends had kids they always seemed to disappear. The rest of us would get together and wonder about them, remember them, pour beer on the sidewalk in memory of them. They seemed like prisoners. You can't come out for one drink? we'd say. You can't get away for one party? If they'd have said, 'look I like you, but you're not worth 15 dollars and hour' I would have totally understood. It's no wonder most of them haven't seen a movie since Titanic.
After I heard this I started looking at ads on craigslist for nannies and babysitters. One ad caught my eye as reasonable, 60 dollars a week for 12 hours a day. Sadly, it was someone offering to pay that amount, not someone offering to work for it. Presumably the people who would work for it had done the math and seen that it works out to 45 cents an hour. Now, that's in my price range.
The thing about me is that you never want me weighing things in dollar terms. I can spend twenty minutes in front of a value meal menu trying to figure out how to save a dime. If I have to start putting a price on GOING OUTSIDE then I'm going to go all hermit in no time. I will shun the light and grow a beard and stop communicating with the outside world just to avoid hearing about things that might cost 15 dollars to go do. If you knew how bad my beard looks you'd be as worried about this as I am.
I used to think that stage parents were some of the lowest forms of life, putting their kids in front of cameras in the hopes of vicariously living out their own failed dreams of stardom and vaguely hoping to get a cookbook deal out of the whole thing. Now I'm not so sure they're not just looking for a way to get some extra scratch so they can see a movie and grab a burger once in a while. Maybe this is why you see so many young kids dragged into R rated films. How many slasher films seem worth 50 bucks? Economically speaking, it makes way more sense to just scar your children for life. If you end up looking anything like me you probably won't have faces for the big screen, but given the numbers I'm afraid that we're going to have to seriously consider putting you to work somehow. Consider yourselves lucky we don't have any salt mines nearby.
Novel - Update after the break
Dunking - 29 inches. New program after the break
French - Saw and ad for a french nanny. Will let you know how she feels about 45 cents an hour.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Happy -.5 Birthday
Apparently you're halfway to zero. Congratulations. The fact that your mom insists on celebrating these milestones leads me to believe that there are going to be a frightening number clown and pony related parties once you start hitting positive numbers. Your mom also had a birthday yesterday and mine's right around the corner so it seems like as good a time as any to fill you in on how these work.
1-10 These are good the good ones. Clowns and ponies aside, you essentially get a bunch of your friends together, add sugar, and everyone wrestles. Well, that's what we did at my parties anyway. Actually, I might have just had the one party when I was eight. And come to think of it, I don't remember any wrestling at other people's houses, so maybe I've got this all wrong. If your pin someone the first time we send you to a party and people look at you like it's inappropriate, tell them it's your father's fault.
11-18 Increasingly object oriented. You want things. RC planes, game systems, newer game systems, cell phones, cars, etc. and you evaluate the quality of the birthday based on what you get, which is mostly clothes and savings bonds (again, I can only speak from personal experience). Parties become increasingly complicated. You can't just move the furniture and scream "Cage Match!" anymore (the more I dwell on this the more atypical is seems). Who gets invited, who comes, what they wear, who says what to who, all this crap eventually begins to seep in and pretty soon no one wants to come to your lasertag and putt putt extravaganza because having fun is lame. You anxiously tick off the years the way inmates scratch at calendars so that you can be an adult and sell your stupid clothes and savings bonds and buy important things, like 40 inch speakers for your 15 year old car so that when you drive around people will hear your loose trunk lid vibrating and know that you are not to be trifled with.
19-21 If you do it right you've gone away to school and these are your first birthdays on your own. Likely there is heavy, though not legal, drinking, and you spend the first day of each new year on a bathroom floor. Everyone agrees this is way fun. You kind of stop getting gifts, or they tend to be the kinds of things your friends found in their car on the way over. "Um, we got you this package of gum and 73 cents. Happy birthday" These are as close as you will come to the wrestling parties of old.
22-28 Oddly, the more legal your drinking becomes, the less aggressively you do it. Eventually you decide that vomiting is not the only way to end an evening. The parties get progressively smaller until you end up just eating dinner with some friends and begging the waiter not to sing to you. If you've been in a relationship for any amount of time, your presents start being things that you were going to buy anyway, but timing dictates that they get wrapped and presented as gifts. This is how you end up with birthday vacuums and printers.
29-30 Suddenly the calendar starts reading like a death clock. You probably throw a big 30th, embrace the reaper as he saws the 2 off the two in your decade count and replaces it with a 3, and depending on how closely your life resembles what you predicted when you turned twenty, you may once again end up drinking yourself into a night on the bathroom floor. Gifts become cards, or if you have kids at this point you start getting stuff that's really for them by proxy (strollers, toddler carrying backpacks, etc). People think you're joking about that Xbox, and any suggestion that there should be wrestling results in weeks of unreturned calls and emails.
30+ So far it seems like the key to these is whether or not you're still getting better at something. If you're say, an NBA player (or a 5'11 individual trying to dunk a basketball) then these all probably feel like nails in your coffin. If you're doing a job you've been doing for say, 8 or nine years that you thought you'd be doing for one or two then the approach of this day starts to sound like a fire alarm and you may or may not drink heavily, and may or may not start talking about moving to Guatemala or going back to school to become like, a geologist or something. You may act out by actually having your birthday at putt putt. People come out of ironic detachment but end up enjoying themselves until they're in line for the go carts and the babysitter calls to say that the toddler is chasing the dog with a butcher knife. You end the night laying out radical plans like so many new outfits that you're going to wear in the year ahead and whether you're planning on getting that promotion or digging that well in Uganda, you quietly say to yourself, "This year is going to be my year." Some year's you're right, some you're wrong. At some point you may stop saying this to yourself.
Only then do you get old.
Novel - CH14
Dunking - 29
French - Bon anniversaire
1-10 These are good the good ones. Clowns and ponies aside, you essentially get a bunch of your friends together, add sugar, and everyone wrestles. Well, that's what we did at my parties anyway. Actually, I might have just had the one party when I was eight. And come to think of it, I don't remember any wrestling at other people's houses, so maybe I've got this all wrong. If your pin someone the first time we send you to a party and people look at you like it's inappropriate, tell them it's your father's fault.
11-18 Increasingly object oriented. You want things. RC planes, game systems, newer game systems, cell phones, cars, etc. and you evaluate the quality of the birthday based on what you get, which is mostly clothes and savings bonds (again, I can only speak from personal experience). Parties become increasingly complicated. You can't just move the furniture and scream "Cage Match!" anymore (the more I dwell on this the more atypical is seems). Who gets invited, who comes, what they wear, who says what to who, all this crap eventually begins to seep in and pretty soon no one wants to come to your lasertag and putt putt extravaganza because having fun is lame. You anxiously tick off the years the way inmates scratch at calendars so that you can be an adult and sell your stupid clothes and savings bonds and buy important things, like 40 inch speakers for your 15 year old car so that when you drive around people will hear your loose trunk lid vibrating and know that you are not to be trifled with.
19-21 If you do it right you've gone away to school and these are your first birthdays on your own. Likely there is heavy, though not legal, drinking, and you spend the first day of each new year on a bathroom floor. Everyone agrees this is way fun. You kind of stop getting gifts, or they tend to be the kinds of things your friends found in their car on the way over. "Um, we got you this package of gum and 73 cents. Happy birthday" These are as close as you will come to the wrestling parties of old.
22-28 Oddly, the more legal your drinking becomes, the less aggressively you do it. Eventually you decide that vomiting is not the only way to end an evening. The parties get progressively smaller until you end up just eating dinner with some friends and begging the waiter not to sing to you. If you've been in a relationship for any amount of time, your presents start being things that you were going to buy anyway, but timing dictates that they get wrapped and presented as gifts. This is how you end up with birthday vacuums and printers.
29-30 Suddenly the calendar starts reading like a death clock. You probably throw a big 30th, embrace the reaper as he saws the 2 off the two in your decade count and replaces it with a 3, and depending on how closely your life resembles what you predicted when you turned twenty, you may once again end up drinking yourself into a night on the bathroom floor. Gifts become cards, or if you have kids at this point you start getting stuff that's really for them by proxy (strollers, toddler carrying backpacks, etc). People think you're joking about that Xbox, and any suggestion that there should be wrestling results in weeks of unreturned calls and emails.
30+ So far it seems like the key to these is whether or not you're still getting better at something. If you're say, an NBA player (or a 5'11 individual trying to dunk a basketball) then these all probably feel like nails in your coffin. If you're doing a job you've been doing for say, 8 or nine years that you thought you'd be doing for one or two then the approach of this day starts to sound like a fire alarm and you may or may not drink heavily, and may or may not start talking about moving to Guatemala or going back to school to become like, a geologist or something. You may act out by actually having your birthday at putt putt. People come out of ironic detachment but end up enjoying themselves until they're in line for the go carts and the babysitter calls to say that the toddler is chasing the dog with a butcher knife. You end the night laying out radical plans like so many new outfits that you're going to wear in the year ahead and whether you're planning on getting that promotion or digging that well in Uganda, you quietly say to yourself, "This year is going to be my year." Some year's you're right, some you're wrong. At some point you may stop saying this to yourself.
Only then do you get old.
Novel - CH14
Dunking - 29
French - Bon anniversaire
Thursday, December 13, 2007
All Hail Readiness
Sorry it's been a while kids. I know I've been busy, but it's hard to remember what I've actually done. That happens a lot. You two, however, continue to impress. The other night your mom and I just sat around feeling her belly until one or the other of you kicked us in the hand. Then one of us would look and the other and very excitedly say, "Did you feel that?" and the other would very excitedly answer, "I totally felt that!" We're very simple people. We also enjoy watching our microwave make popcorn.
My new favorite question is, "So, are you ready yet?" Wherever I go people seem to feel obligated to ask me that the way you'll discover grandparents feel obligated to ask eight year olds, "How's school?" I'm not really sure how they expect me to answer, but lately I say, "well, it's kind of like being on Death Row. Are you ever really ready?" That usually prevents any follow up questions, but it doesn't mean it's not true. In either case it's something you know is going to happen, you know when it's going to happen, and you know that nothing is going to be the same when it does. One day you're just one thing, and then another day, you're not. Of course, inmates can get a call from the governor. I'm kind of on my own.
I know about the books and the classes and the everything else, but I haven't seen anything titled Sleep Deprivation: It's Not That Bad, or Poop Is Awesome: You've Just Been Smelling It Wrong, so I'm skeptical about just how prepared they can make you. I think the hard parts are probably just hard. Obviously people have been pulling this off for quite some time, and in so far as I'm a member of my species, yes, I'm totally ready. But being bipedal and largely hairless looks like it might make up the majority of my preparation, so you should know what you;re getting into. Looking at it what way I can tell the next person who asks me that I was, in fact, born ready.
Actually, I was thinking maybe we could all strike some sort of deal to make this whole readiness question moot. Personally, I think things are awesome the way they are. We see you once a week, we take you everywhere, yet you sleep when we sleep, eat when we eat, and I haven't had to figure out where Nickelodeon and the Disney channel are. It's like you're away at a top notch boarding school, only the tuition is free and no one calls us to complain when you won't stop kicking each other. I think this might be our golden era as a family. Let's not just rush through it. I know you had your hearts set on this spring, but what if you take a year, possibly two, relax, get some perspective, and then maybe think about coming out. Backpacking around Europe is played, the womb is the next place to spend time finding yourself.
Of course we both know you're going to ignore my advice, and I'm sure that will just be the first of many, many times. So rest assured that I may not know how to hold a bottle, or change a diaper, or have any idea who the hell Miley is, but between you and me, I'm confident that when someone finally puts you in my arms I will be ready.
Just not a minute before.
Novel - Ch14
Dunking - 29
French - Je ne suis pas prepare.
My new favorite question is, "So, are you ready yet?" Wherever I go people seem to feel obligated to ask me that the way you'll discover grandparents feel obligated to ask eight year olds, "How's school?" I'm not really sure how they expect me to answer, but lately I say, "well, it's kind of like being on Death Row. Are you ever really ready?" That usually prevents any follow up questions, but it doesn't mean it's not true. In either case it's something you know is going to happen, you know when it's going to happen, and you know that nothing is going to be the same when it does. One day you're just one thing, and then another day, you're not. Of course, inmates can get a call from the governor. I'm kind of on my own.
I know about the books and the classes and the everything else, but I haven't seen anything titled Sleep Deprivation: It's Not That Bad, or Poop Is Awesome: You've Just Been Smelling It Wrong, so I'm skeptical about just how prepared they can make you. I think the hard parts are probably just hard. Obviously people have been pulling this off for quite some time, and in so far as I'm a member of my species, yes, I'm totally ready. But being bipedal and largely hairless looks like it might make up the majority of my preparation, so you should know what you;re getting into. Looking at it what way I can tell the next person who asks me that I was, in fact, born ready.
Actually, I was thinking maybe we could all strike some sort of deal to make this whole readiness question moot. Personally, I think things are awesome the way they are. We see you once a week, we take you everywhere, yet you sleep when we sleep, eat when we eat, and I haven't had to figure out where Nickelodeon and the Disney channel are. It's like you're away at a top notch boarding school, only the tuition is free and no one calls us to complain when you won't stop kicking each other. I think this might be our golden era as a family. Let's not just rush through it. I know you had your hearts set on this spring, but what if you take a year, possibly two, relax, get some perspective, and then maybe think about coming out. Backpacking around Europe is played, the womb is the next place to spend time finding yourself.
Of course we both know you're going to ignore my advice, and I'm sure that will just be the first of many, many times. So rest assured that I may not know how to hold a bottle, or change a diaper, or have any idea who the hell Miley is, but between you and me, I'm confident that when someone finally puts you in my arms I will be ready.
Just not a minute before.
Novel - Ch14
Dunking - 29
French - Je ne suis pas prepare.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
How Do Mormons Do It?
I'm not sure when your mother and I will ever have sex again. We've been meaning to, but we've also been meaning to unpack a closet full of boxes from when we moved in a year and a half ago. You'll learn that putting something on a to-do list is usually a sign that it's not going to get done.
At first your mom was sick all the time, which wasn't particularly romantic. Then came the sonograms. Once I looked through that little bulge and saw the two of you wrestling on the other side, it became impossible to forget you were in there. You may have noticed how often I grab and shake you, address questions to you when it feels like your mother isn't listening, or read your nascent minds and relay your thoughts to your mother, as in, "Ripley and Nixon really want you to get me some ice cream," or "Ripley and Nixon said they're never coming out if you don't stop watching The Young and The Restless". The point it, you're always there, and the degree to which you're always there becomes more evident everyday. Your mom strikes a Hitchcock pose (hopelessly before your time) so often in order to show you off that I'm thinking of getting her the theme music.
I've read where some men are more sexually aroused by their wives the more pregnant they get. All I can say is that there's something wrong with them or me, and usually in these instances it's safe to point the finger at me. I'm completely aware that you aren't harmed, can't feel, and won't remember any sexual activity, but I'm aware of all the same things when it comes to our cats, and I still have to throw them out of the room. It's not that I find your mother unattractive. To the contrary, she's more beautiful than I can remember her. It's just that it's the kind of beautiful that makes me want to squeeze her into a tiny ball and put her in my pocket. It's the kind of beautiful that feels like hugging a panda bear. Or three (counting you two) panda bears. Maybe these other men are also sexually attracted to panda bears and I'm just not in the loop.
Now that we're pregnant I find that we talk about sex the way people having sex talk about getting pregnant. Do you want to try that? Would this work? When's a good time for you? What does the book say? What does Oprah say? They're the kind of dialogs that could turn Penthouse Forum readers into monks. Seduction rarely begins with the words, "Well, I Googled this and..."
But it's only for a few more months right? I mean, those guys in the space station, they're up there for like, years. Surely, between insomnia, diaper changing, and feeding there will be ample time for us to return to the wild and crazy people capable of making you in the first place. I think this little piece of conversation illustrates how that's going to go.
Me: How long do you breastfeed?
Your mom: Months. Years.
Me: And people have sex while they're breastfeeding?
Your mom: Yes.
Me: Really?
I think sooner rather than later is our only hope. I'm going to go see if I can find one of those Jewish wedding sheets that just have a small opening in them. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Maybe that's originally Hebrew. I'll Google it.
Novel - Ch13
Dunking - 28.5
French - Bebe, je t'aime.
At first your mom was sick all the time, which wasn't particularly romantic. Then came the sonograms. Once I looked through that little bulge and saw the two of you wrestling on the other side, it became impossible to forget you were in there. You may have noticed how often I grab and shake you, address questions to you when it feels like your mother isn't listening, or read your nascent minds and relay your thoughts to your mother, as in, "Ripley and Nixon really want you to get me some ice cream," or "Ripley and Nixon said they're never coming out if you don't stop watching The Young and The Restless". The point it, you're always there, and the degree to which you're always there becomes more evident everyday. Your mom strikes a Hitchcock pose (hopelessly before your time) so often in order to show you off that I'm thinking of getting her the theme music.
I've read where some men are more sexually aroused by their wives the more pregnant they get. All I can say is that there's something wrong with them or me, and usually in these instances it's safe to point the finger at me. I'm completely aware that you aren't harmed, can't feel, and won't remember any sexual activity, but I'm aware of all the same things when it comes to our cats, and I still have to throw them out of the room. It's not that I find your mother unattractive. To the contrary, she's more beautiful than I can remember her. It's just that it's the kind of beautiful that makes me want to squeeze her into a tiny ball and put her in my pocket. It's the kind of beautiful that feels like hugging a panda bear. Or three (counting you two) panda bears. Maybe these other men are also sexually attracted to panda bears and I'm just not in the loop.
Now that we're pregnant I find that we talk about sex the way people having sex talk about getting pregnant. Do you want to try that? Would this work? When's a good time for you? What does the book say? What does Oprah say? They're the kind of dialogs that could turn Penthouse Forum readers into monks. Seduction rarely begins with the words, "Well, I Googled this and..."
But it's only for a few more months right? I mean, those guys in the space station, they're up there for like, years. Surely, between insomnia, diaper changing, and feeding there will be ample time for us to return to the wild and crazy people capable of making you in the first place. I think this little piece of conversation illustrates how that's going to go.
Me: How long do you breastfeed?
Your mom: Months. Years.
Me: And people have sex while they're breastfeeding?
Your mom: Yes.
Me: Really?
I think sooner rather than later is our only hope. I'm going to go see if I can find one of those Jewish wedding sheets that just have a small opening in them. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Maybe that's originally Hebrew. I'll Google it.
Novel - Ch13
Dunking - 28.5
French - Bebe, je t'aime.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
On The Contrary My Dear Fatso
Once I was sitting outside of a Starbucks when this incredibly fat woman came out drinking one of those giant whipped mocha caramel things that are the calorie equivalent of putting several cheesecakes in a blender. As she sipped her creamy artery grenade and headed for a van with a special door designed to handle her girth, I thought, 'She will not live long enough to drink all of that. Pathetic. There ought to be a law.'
Then two other people sitting nearby saw her walk past and turned to one another and said something along the lines of, 'Can you believe that? It's awful. Pathetic. There ought to be a law.' My next thoughts were pure reflex. 'Who are these two idiots? This is a free country, she can drink what she damn well wants. If it weren't for people like her, who would buy these specialized vans? You want a bunch of union guys to lose their jobs?'
The important thing to note here is not that I can see both sides of an issue, it's that when anyone is certain about anything I become certain about exactly the opposite thing, even if it means contradicting what I said five seconds before. It's called being a contrarian. It means you love a band or a song until everyone else does and then you think it's lame. It means you tell all your friends about a restaurant, and then when they start going you stop. It means you want everyone to agree with you right up until the moment they do, at which point they become idiots. Along with my cynicism and cheapness, it's one of the traits I hope you guys don't inherit from me. Of course that pretty much limits my potential contribution to a propensity for wearing the same clothes for weeks at a time, but I suppose I have to give you something.
I've been sending out the book chapters as I finish them to a small group of individuals, mostly to make myself feel obligated when deadlines roll around. Today one of my readers called to essentially say that reading them had been painful enough to injure her brain. She had clear and well thought out ideas about what had gone so wrong, which I will boil down for you by saying that she didn't care for the characters, story, structure, or execution. The font however, was presumably aces.
Not that I'm new to this. Remember the short story award that made me cry and earned me a free sandwich? Well, after I'd gotten the good news I continued to receive rejection notices from other places I had submitted it to for months. Most of the time a rejection slip is just a form letter, but a couple places took it upon themselves to provide feedback. One just wrote 'nonsense' on the slip and another told me in great detail why it was not just bad, but offensive. You would think, award in hand, I could just write these people off as cranks, but it doesn't work that way. You won't have to become writers (let me start pushing you towards law school right now) to know what this feels like. At some point you'll go to a party, meet ten people, hear that nine of them loved you and one thought you were an asshole, and all you'll be able to think about is that one. The words 'You Suck' have a way of sticking while 'great job' goes in one ear and out the other. Everyone will tell you that it's the other way around, but everyone will be wrong.
When this happens, you'll do exactly what I did, try to obtain overwhelming evidence in your favor. Long before I heard you two were on the way and got back to the book, the first few chapters had been circulated by my agent and met with positive feedback. Today, I suddenly wanted him to get all these people on the phone. Why did they like it? Were they sure? What did they like? Did they like me? Would they mind writing that down and swearing to it on a stack of bibles? Could I just stop by to have them pat me on the head and tell me I'm good?
But in the end, there aren't enough people in the world to convince you you're good if you don't believe it yourself, and no amount of positive feedback will restore your faith in your work if you don't have it yourself. When someone knocks you down you don't get up because a survey says that enough people think it's worthwhile. You get up because eventually we all get tired of being down.
Being a writer is the only job you just announce you have. You can't just decide you're an airline pilot or a nuclear physicist. There are rules, tests, qualifications. The only qualification for my job is access to pencils. This means that there's a lot of us who should be doing anything else. I've had jobs reading awful scripts, and if I could have gotten the authors on the phone and begged them to stop I would have. When you give someone a bad review, you don't do it to injure them, you do it to help, to save them from themselves. You're telling them it's bad. You're trying to keep them from making it worse.
But when people get bad reviews, they all tend to discover their inner contrarian. Tell a friend you hate their spouse, you practically guarantee they'll see their fiftieth anniversary. Tell them they can't sing, they'll do it louder. History is littered with people who stormed out of rooms saying 'I'll show you'. Most of them never do. I realize that putting Matt Lauer and a talking beaver in a manuscript is probably not something anyone would describe as 'wise', but I'm honestly comfortable with what I've written and what's to come. If I wasn't I wouldn't dare to put it in front of anyone. Whether that's because it's good or I'm an obstinate jerk only time will tell. What I think we can be assured of is that long after you two get here I will still be receiving rejection letters, some of which will inevitably include the word 'nonsense'.
Novel - Nonsense
Dunking - Wk7
French - nunucheries
Then two other people sitting nearby saw her walk past and turned to one another and said something along the lines of, 'Can you believe that? It's awful. Pathetic. There ought to be a law.' My next thoughts were pure reflex. 'Who are these two idiots? This is a free country, she can drink what she damn well wants. If it weren't for people like her, who would buy these specialized vans? You want a bunch of union guys to lose their jobs?'
The important thing to note here is not that I can see both sides of an issue, it's that when anyone is certain about anything I become certain about exactly the opposite thing, even if it means contradicting what I said five seconds before. It's called being a contrarian. It means you love a band or a song until everyone else does and then you think it's lame. It means you tell all your friends about a restaurant, and then when they start going you stop. It means you want everyone to agree with you right up until the moment they do, at which point they become idiots. Along with my cynicism and cheapness, it's one of the traits I hope you guys don't inherit from me. Of course that pretty much limits my potential contribution to a propensity for wearing the same clothes for weeks at a time, but I suppose I have to give you something.
I've been sending out the book chapters as I finish them to a small group of individuals, mostly to make myself feel obligated when deadlines roll around. Today one of my readers called to essentially say that reading them had been painful enough to injure her brain. She had clear and well thought out ideas about what had gone so wrong, which I will boil down for you by saying that she didn't care for the characters, story, structure, or execution. The font however, was presumably aces.
Not that I'm new to this. Remember the short story award that made me cry and earned me a free sandwich? Well, after I'd gotten the good news I continued to receive rejection notices from other places I had submitted it to for months. Most of the time a rejection slip is just a form letter, but a couple places took it upon themselves to provide feedback. One just wrote 'nonsense' on the slip and another told me in great detail why it was not just bad, but offensive. You would think, award in hand, I could just write these people off as cranks, but it doesn't work that way. You won't have to become writers (let me start pushing you towards law school right now) to know what this feels like. At some point you'll go to a party, meet ten people, hear that nine of them loved you and one thought you were an asshole, and all you'll be able to think about is that one. The words 'You Suck' have a way of sticking while 'great job' goes in one ear and out the other. Everyone will tell you that it's the other way around, but everyone will be wrong.
When this happens, you'll do exactly what I did, try to obtain overwhelming evidence in your favor. Long before I heard you two were on the way and got back to the book, the first few chapters had been circulated by my agent and met with positive feedback. Today, I suddenly wanted him to get all these people on the phone. Why did they like it? Were they sure? What did they like? Did they like me? Would they mind writing that down and swearing to it on a stack of bibles? Could I just stop by to have them pat me on the head and tell me I'm good?
But in the end, there aren't enough people in the world to convince you you're good if you don't believe it yourself, and no amount of positive feedback will restore your faith in your work if you don't have it yourself. When someone knocks you down you don't get up because a survey says that enough people think it's worthwhile. You get up because eventually we all get tired of being down.
Being a writer is the only job you just announce you have. You can't just decide you're an airline pilot or a nuclear physicist. There are rules, tests, qualifications. The only qualification for my job is access to pencils. This means that there's a lot of us who should be doing anything else. I've had jobs reading awful scripts, and if I could have gotten the authors on the phone and begged them to stop I would have. When you give someone a bad review, you don't do it to injure them, you do it to help, to save them from themselves. You're telling them it's bad. You're trying to keep them from making it worse.
But when people get bad reviews, they all tend to discover their inner contrarian. Tell a friend you hate their spouse, you practically guarantee they'll see their fiftieth anniversary. Tell them they can't sing, they'll do it louder. History is littered with people who stormed out of rooms saying 'I'll show you'. Most of them never do. I realize that putting Matt Lauer and a talking beaver in a manuscript is probably not something anyone would describe as 'wise', but I'm honestly comfortable with what I've written and what's to come. If I wasn't I wouldn't dare to put it in front of anyone. Whether that's because it's good or I'm an obstinate jerk only time will tell. What I think we can be assured of is that long after you two get here I will still be receiving rejection letters, some of which will inevitably include the word 'nonsense'.
Novel - Nonsense
Dunking - Wk7
French - nunucheries
Monday, November 26, 2007
The Non Oprah Approve Nightmare That Awaits You
Pretty much everything in our house is either hard or sharp or both. Wood and concrete floors, pointy tables, broken glass thrown about for decorative effect, it's not exactly kid friendly. This didn't occur to me until a friend brought her toddler over and wherever he headed in looked like stitches or a concussion was imminent. Welcome home.
We've recently been contemplating how or if we can bring a highly fragile duo like yourselves into this joint. In addition to lacking soft surfaces, it's not terribly large, and the only candidate for a nursery is downstairs while we're up. At first I thought that sounded perfect. Who wants to sleep in a room near a crying baby? Apparently when it's your baby you're supposed to do more than just put an additional pillow over your head. Also, your mother and I routinely ask one another to throw things down or catch things that are being thrown up to avoid having to traverse the stairs, but somehow 'Toss me the baby' sounds like it's going to get a different reaction than 'Toss me my keys.' We've entertained everything from moving to buying a bubble wrap factory, but none of these seem like good solutions. I mean, people in NY get by raising families in glorified closets, so surely we can make a two bedroom, one office, concussion generator work. Kid friendly it's not, but it's nice to me and I was here first.
Your mom has also begun researching and purchasing the vast quantity of crap that it apparently takes to help you sustain life. You haven't been born yet, so you don't know, but pretty much all baby furniture looks horrific. You have two style choices: things that a fairy tale threw up or things that your grandmother's house threw up. When I heard we were getting a glider I was confused but excited. Perhaps this was how we planned to deal with tossing you up and down the stairs? But it's not that kind of glider. It's an incredibly ugly chair that appears to function by sucking up the soul of those who sit in it. Then there's strollers. Twin strollers. For newborns. And then the ones for not newborns. And the ones for toddlers. And car seats. A neighbor wanted to give us her car seat, an 11 month old car seat that's verifiably never been in an accident of any sort, but your mom says it's not safe. She says you can't use a used car seat. Period. I asked if this meant that all car seats had a shelf life of about a year and that landfills should be filled with carseats the minute a baby gets out of them. She said yes.
All of this points to a bigger issue that makes me want to put my head into any one of the numerous sharp corners avaliable to me: baby advice. To be clear, some advice is welcome. Don't reuse diapers, avoid flammable clothing, your baby cannot fly, all seem like nuggets that will be good for all of us. But the fact is there is no shortage of 'experts' willing to prey on the desire of every parent to raise a happy, healthy offspring, and no shortage of products they're willing to sell that will get the job done. Food, clothing, and shelter don't cut it these days. Our job is now to stimulate you with colors, toys, and sounds. To foster the development of your language skills with endless chatter, your dexterity with clay and playdoh, your motor skills with physical activity, your brains with word games, your sense of self with positive reinforcement. We should shower you with praise but never criticize or physically punish you lest we destroy your self esteem or perpetuate a cycle of violence. You'd think that before all these advice books came along we raised kids like veal.
The truth is that almost all of this advice comes from useless studies with abhorrent methodology and a knack for confusing correlation with causation. I'll tell you more about it later since it's the study of twins like yourselves that have gone a long way toward debunking them, but the important point is this. Your mother and I will do everything we can to provide a stable, warm, nutritious, glider filled environment. We will read to you, we will play with you, we will encourage you to play with others. We will do this because we plan to like you and like spending time with you, not because we think it is the key to getting you into a good college or preventing you from being serial killers. I used to tell people that if it were an option I would gladly have created you in a test tube, selecting hair and eye color, maximizing IQ and height, minimizing any resemblance to myself. They told me I was a monster. But once you're here I'm supposed to buy you Baby Motzart cds, or take you to Gym Crawlers class in order to accomplish exactly the same things (well, technically there is no class for avoiding a resemblance to me). And if I don't, well, I'm back to being a monster. The irony is that no one disagrees that me putting you together is a lab would make a difference, while no one has shown that what I buy you once you're here makes any.
That said, you will be getting new car seats. Science is one thing. Sleeping on the couch is another.
Novel - If I'm not finished with Ch12 by the end of this week I will just write "Scene Missing" on about 20 pages and hope that no one notices.
Dunking - The workouts don't seem to be paying off in inches, but they are killing me, which should count for something. But doesn't.
French - To stimulate your language development.
We've recently been contemplating how or if we can bring a highly fragile duo like yourselves into this joint. In addition to lacking soft surfaces, it's not terribly large, and the only candidate for a nursery is downstairs while we're up. At first I thought that sounded perfect. Who wants to sleep in a room near a crying baby? Apparently when it's your baby you're supposed to do more than just put an additional pillow over your head. Also, your mother and I routinely ask one another to throw things down or catch things that are being thrown up to avoid having to traverse the stairs, but somehow 'Toss me the baby' sounds like it's going to get a different reaction than 'Toss me my keys.' We've entertained everything from moving to buying a bubble wrap factory, but none of these seem like good solutions. I mean, people in NY get by raising families in glorified closets, so surely we can make a two bedroom, one office, concussion generator work. Kid friendly it's not, but it's nice to me and I was here first.
Your mom has also begun researching and purchasing the vast quantity of crap that it apparently takes to help you sustain life. You haven't been born yet, so you don't know, but pretty much all baby furniture looks horrific. You have two style choices: things that a fairy tale threw up or things that your grandmother's house threw up. When I heard we were getting a glider I was confused but excited. Perhaps this was how we planned to deal with tossing you up and down the stairs? But it's not that kind of glider. It's an incredibly ugly chair that appears to function by sucking up the soul of those who sit in it. Then there's strollers. Twin strollers. For newborns. And then the ones for not newborns. And the ones for toddlers. And car seats. A neighbor wanted to give us her car seat, an 11 month old car seat that's verifiably never been in an accident of any sort, but your mom says it's not safe. She says you can't use a used car seat. Period. I asked if this meant that all car seats had a shelf life of about a year and that landfills should be filled with carseats the minute a baby gets out of them. She said yes.
All of this points to a bigger issue that makes me want to put my head into any one of the numerous sharp corners avaliable to me: baby advice. To be clear, some advice is welcome. Don't reuse diapers, avoid flammable clothing, your baby cannot fly, all seem like nuggets that will be good for all of us. But the fact is there is no shortage of 'experts' willing to prey on the desire of every parent to raise a happy, healthy offspring, and no shortage of products they're willing to sell that will get the job done. Food, clothing, and shelter don't cut it these days. Our job is now to stimulate you with colors, toys, and sounds. To foster the development of your language skills with endless chatter, your dexterity with clay and playdoh, your motor skills with physical activity, your brains with word games, your sense of self with positive reinforcement. We should shower you with praise but never criticize or physically punish you lest we destroy your self esteem or perpetuate a cycle of violence. You'd think that before all these advice books came along we raised kids like veal.
The truth is that almost all of this advice comes from useless studies with abhorrent methodology and a knack for confusing correlation with causation. I'll tell you more about it later since it's the study of twins like yourselves that have gone a long way toward debunking them, but the important point is this. Your mother and I will do everything we can to provide a stable, warm, nutritious, glider filled environment. We will read to you, we will play with you, we will encourage you to play with others. We will do this because we plan to like you and like spending time with you, not because we think it is the key to getting you into a good college or preventing you from being serial killers. I used to tell people that if it were an option I would gladly have created you in a test tube, selecting hair and eye color, maximizing IQ and height, minimizing any resemblance to myself. They told me I was a monster. But once you're here I'm supposed to buy you Baby Motzart cds, or take you to Gym Crawlers class in order to accomplish exactly the same things (well, technically there is no class for avoiding a resemblance to me). And if I don't, well, I'm back to being a monster. The irony is that no one disagrees that me putting you together is a lab would make a difference, while no one has shown that what I buy you once you're here makes any.
That said, you will be getting new car seats. Science is one thing. Sleeping on the couch is another.
Novel - If I'm not finished with Ch12 by the end of this week I will just write "Scene Missing" on about 20 pages and hope that no one notices.
Dunking - The workouts don't seem to be paying off in inches, but they are killing me, which should count for something. But doesn't.
French - To stimulate your language development.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Monkiers
I measured my vertical leap today. After 5 weeks on the program, I'm afraid I've only improved an inch and a half, bringing my leap to 28.5 inches, which you may recall was the number posted by countless 300 pound linemen in the NFL draft. At this rate I will be able to dunk a marble by the time you get here.
Other bad news, I'm hearing that you might be ugly. At least when you get here. Apparently twins come early and look sort of strange. You will probably grow out of it, though that's what people have been telling me my whole life and I'm still waiting.
On the upside, now that your girl parts have been confirmed you're ready to graduate to your real names. Honestly, I forget which one of you was Bear and which was Danger, but I've got a system for which goes with which this time. When I face your mom the one of you on the right is Ripley Finn. The one of you on the left is Nixon Jones. There you go. Two kids, four last names. You will undoubtedly meet people who will tell you that you were better off as Danger and Bear, but trust me, when you're in a class with five Addisons and ten Ashleys you'll thank us. Nixon, it took your mom a while to come around on your middle name, and she still reserves the right to freak out and change it, but I think it's going to stick. Now that we've got you identified we've started asking you to stop doing things to one another like real parents, i.e. Ripley stop sitting on your sister's head, Nixon stop punching your sister in the liver. This isn't so you can get used to following directions, it's so we can get used to you ignoring us.
Have run into a sticky chapter, so I continue to fall behind you two on that score. It's really intimidating to sit here staring at a blank screen and realize that whether I get anything done or not, you're still growing, still kicking, still coming. I have a history of finish line surges, so I'm not licked yet.
And frankly, I'm pretty excited about having daughters named Finn and Jones. Please remind me of that when we're all on a plane for the holidays and you two won't stop crying and everyone wishes we would die.
Novel - Ch12
Dunking - 28.5
French - Joyeux Thanksgiving
Other bad news, I'm hearing that you might be ugly. At least when you get here. Apparently twins come early and look sort of strange. You will probably grow out of it, though that's what people have been telling me my whole life and I'm still waiting.
On the upside, now that your girl parts have been confirmed you're ready to graduate to your real names. Honestly, I forget which one of you was Bear and which was Danger, but I've got a system for which goes with which this time. When I face your mom the one of you on the right is Ripley Finn. The one of you on the left is Nixon Jones. There you go. Two kids, four last names. You will undoubtedly meet people who will tell you that you were better off as Danger and Bear, but trust me, when you're in a class with five Addisons and ten Ashleys you'll thank us. Nixon, it took your mom a while to come around on your middle name, and she still reserves the right to freak out and change it, but I think it's going to stick. Now that we've got you identified we've started asking you to stop doing things to one another like real parents, i.e. Ripley stop sitting on your sister's head, Nixon stop punching your sister in the liver. This isn't so you can get used to following directions, it's so we can get used to you ignoring us.
Have run into a sticky chapter, so I continue to fall behind you two on that score. It's really intimidating to sit here staring at a blank screen and realize that whether I get anything done or not, you're still growing, still kicking, still coming. I have a history of finish line surges, so I'm not licked yet.
And frankly, I'm pretty excited about having daughters named Finn and Jones. Please remind me of that when we're all on a plane for the holidays and you two won't stop crying and everyone wishes we would die.
Novel - Ch12
Dunking - 28.5
French - Joyeux Thanksgiving
Monday, November 19, 2007
Shooting Guns and Smoking Pot
Experimentation is generally considered a good idea. It's cured diseases, determined the age of the universe, and led to self cleaning litter boxes. At some point in your lives people will encourage you to try everything from eggplant to skydiving. Even if you hate them, you'll be told that just trying will make you a better, more well rounded person. This weekend I tried hunting and getting high. Taken together they should not only make me more well rounded but unelectable in every state in the union.
Luckily the hunting came first. If it were second I might have actually killed something. Personally, I'm not really much of a killer. When I find a roach I generally build an elaborate maze leading from where the roach is to the nearest door and spend about an hour trying to help it find its way outside where it inevitably crawls back into my walls and lays millions of eggs. This kind of thinking doesn't really wash in Texas where there's certain things you're just supposed to do when you're a man. Hunting, fishing, and drinking beer are among the top three, and I'm not into any of them. I'll take your fruitiest cocktail over a cold one any day, I hate fish, and when I was a kid I shot at a bird with my BB gun and then tried to nurse it back to health when I actually hit it. It died and that was the end of my hunting career. Until this weekend when I upgraded to a 16 gauge shotgun.
The frightening thing is how good it feels to fire a gun. If I owned one I would be tempted to just sit around blowing holes in my walls and ceilings. The effort (moving your finger a fraction of an inch) and the outcome (KABLAM!) are so disproportionate it's a little like being a superhero. A superhero who kills things and blows shit up. Unfortunately, hunting is not nearly as exciting as shooting holes in walls. There's a lot of walking, standing, and dead animals involved, none of which are among my favorite things. In our case, the experienced hunters killed birds quickly and then took to flushing them out for the rest of us. When they would get a bird to fly past us we went off like an anti aircraft battery, guns blazing as a wall of sound and lead filled the air. And then whatever we were shooting at would continue on its way as if nothing had happened. The closest I came to actually killing a quail was when one hit my car. If I could have just condensed all of my wild shooting into the air into about a half hour and gone back to watching football, I'd not only be on board, I'd probably do it every weekend. As is stands I will continue to get my meat at the store and my drinks with umbrellas in them.
Which brings us to marijuana. When I was in high school I joined the Young Republicans and my brother got busted with pot. At the time it seemed like his actions were the dangerous and irresponsible ones. Who knew how bad the Republicans would turn out.
In high school the most important thing in your life is being cool. It influences what you wear, listen to, talk about, and do. I was never remotely successful at it. When you're as hopeless as I was, you sometimes go the other way, meaning that before all the various groups can disown you, you disown them, tell them you don't want to be in their stupid gang anyway, and you start cutting your own hair and buying Cure albums. Being anti-drug was less a philosophical decision for me than an avaliable niche. It was sort of like I showed up late on the day they hand out high school personas and ended up with Young Republican. I'm sure if they'd have known I was going to hate hunting and beer they would have kicked me out as well.
That said, the following is my experience with pot. In high school I smoked oregano with a bunch of other people and then spent an hour debating whether or not it was oregano. This put me off for many many years. Another time a good friend felt that it was absurd that I had achieved nominal adulthood without ever smoking and took it upon herself to get me high. This was almost as successful as the oregano and resulted in a lot of yelling about how I wasn't doing it right. Which brings us to this weekend.
This time the marijuana was baked into brownies according to a highly complicated and not well followed recipe. I ate a brownie. Then another. And another. And then one more. I felt nothing. Others were laughing, grinning, thinking deeply about the nature of the universe, but not me. Again, there was a lot of yelling about how I wasn't doing it right, how I wasn't 'open' to the experience. Say what you will about my umbrella drinks, it doesn't really matter whether or not you're open to them, after four or so you will be willing to show everyone how well you can do the robot whether they want to see or not. An hour after my last brownie, we declared the experiment a failure and I went to bed, still unclear why this was such a big deal for so many people.
Then I woke up. I have no idea what time it was. I had a series of thoughts, five of them to be exact, the third of which was that I was incredibly thirsty, and the last of which was something about being in a field. And then I had that same series of thoughts, in that same order. Over, and over, and over. If I tried to think about something else, dogs, toilets, being a Young Republican, I could hold it for a second or two and then, WHAM, I was thirsty, I was in field, etc, etc, etc. Each time the cycle repeated itself I got more and more freaked out until your mother woke up to use the bathroom and I tried to explain my predicament with panicked talk about fields, dry mouth, and fear that my brain was stuck on repeat. Tried, is the operative word. It really just came out as paranoid incoherent babbling and she rolled over and started ignoring me about the fifth time I said, 'there it goes again, see, I'm thirsty, see, now I'm in a field'. When I woke up the next day I was incredibly thirsty, not in a field, and not wild about anything that moved or produced light. That's it. What can I say. Not really the kind of experience that would make you an addict. Every time I see other people doing it, it looks like a ton of fun, and I'd love to have that experience. I just don't think I'm cut out for it. For me it's more eggplant than skydiving.
Which I guess brings us to the obligatory parent/unborn child drug talk. Here's the thing. If pot is the stupidest thing you ever try then I'll count myself lucky. I know it's not in my top ten stupidest things this year, let alone this lifetime. As a source of recreation it hasn't really worked out for me, but the idea that it's something we lock people up over while Budweiser sponsors the Superbowl strikes this Young Republican as ridiculous. As a father it's hard to see how I'd ever be okay with the idea that you might drink, have sex, or do drugs. But you will. Everyone I know has, and I don't think any of their parents were cheering them on. If the promises of every school sponsored film or 'just say no commercial' that I saw as a child had been fulfilled, the doctors and lawyers I know today would dead or knocking over 7-11s for their next fix. But life isn't that simple. It can't be reduced to a slogan. If being a parent or being a child were as easy as feeling one way or another about dead birds and dime bags then this whole thing would be a piece of cake. It also wouldn't be very interesting. I'll be glad to tell you about all the way I think I went wrong and the few times I think I got it right, but there are some things you'll simply have to decide on for yourself, even if it takes three decades to do it.
Novel - Ch12
Dunking - Wk5
French - Pomme de terre.
Luckily the hunting came first. If it were second I might have actually killed something. Personally, I'm not really much of a killer. When I find a roach I generally build an elaborate maze leading from where the roach is to the nearest door and spend about an hour trying to help it find its way outside where it inevitably crawls back into my walls and lays millions of eggs. This kind of thinking doesn't really wash in Texas where there's certain things you're just supposed to do when you're a man. Hunting, fishing, and drinking beer are among the top three, and I'm not into any of them. I'll take your fruitiest cocktail over a cold one any day, I hate fish, and when I was a kid I shot at a bird with my BB gun and then tried to nurse it back to health when I actually hit it. It died and that was the end of my hunting career. Until this weekend when I upgraded to a 16 gauge shotgun.
The frightening thing is how good it feels to fire a gun. If I owned one I would be tempted to just sit around blowing holes in my walls and ceilings. The effort (moving your finger a fraction of an inch) and the outcome (KABLAM!) are so disproportionate it's a little like being a superhero. A superhero who kills things and blows shit up. Unfortunately, hunting is not nearly as exciting as shooting holes in walls. There's a lot of walking, standing, and dead animals involved, none of which are among my favorite things. In our case, the experienced hunters killed birds quickly and then took to flushing them out for the rest of us. When they would get a bird to fly past us we went off like an anti aircraft battery, guns blazing as a wall of sound and lead filled the air. And then whatever we were shooting at would continue on its way as if nothing had happened. The closest I came to actually killing a quail was when one hit my car. If I could have just condensed all of my wild shooting into the air into about a half hour and gone back to watching football, I'd not only be on board, I'd probably do it every weekend. As is stands I will continue to get my meat at the store and my drinks with umbrellas in them.
Which brings us to marijuana. When I was in high school I joined the Young Republicans and my brother got busted with pot. At the time it seemed like his actions were the dangerous and irresponsible ones. Who knew how bad the Republicans would turn out.
In high school the most important thing in your life is being cool. It influences what you wear, listen to, talk about, and do. I was never remotely successful at it. When you're as hopeless as I was, you sometimes go the other way, meaning that before all the various groups can disown you, you disown them, tell them you don't want to be in their stupid gang anyway, and you start cutting your own hair and buying Cure albums. Being anti-drug was less a philosophical decision for me than an avaliable niche. It was sort of like I showed up late on the day they hand out high school personas and ended up with Young Republican. I'm sure if they'd have known I was going to hate hunting and beer they would have kicked me out as well.
That said, the following is my experience with pot. In high school I smoked oregano with a bunch of other people and then spent an hour debating whether or not it was oregano. This put me off for many many years. Another time a good friend felt that it was absurd that I had achieved nominal adulthood without ever smoking and took it upon herself to get me high. This was almost as successful as the oregano and resulted in a lot of yelling about how I wasn't doing it right. Which brings us to this weekend.
This time the marijuana was baked into brownies according to a highly complicated and not well followed recipe. I ate a brownie. Then another. And another. And then one more. I felt nothing. Others were laughing, grinning, thinking deeply about the nature of the universe, but not me. Again, there was a lot of yelling about how I wasn't doing it right, how I wasn't 'open' to the experience. Say what you will about my umbrella drinks, it doesn't really matter whether or not you're open to them, after four or so you will be willing to show everyone how well you can do the robot whether they want to see or not. An hour after my last brownie, we declared the experiment a failure and I went to bed, still unclear why this was such a big deal for so many people.
Then I woke up. I have no idea what time it was. I had a series of thoughts, five of them to be exact, the third of which was that I was incredibly thirsty, and the last of which was something about being in a field. And then I had that same series of thoughts, in that same order. Over, and over, and over. If I tried to think about something else, dogs, toilets, being a Young Republican, I could hold it for a second or two and then, WHAM, I was thirsty, I was in field, etc, etc, etc. Each time the cycle repeated itself I got more and more freaked out until your mother woke up to use the bathroom and I tried to explain my predicament with panicked talk about fields, dry mouth, and fear that my brain was stuck on repeat. Tried, is the operative word. It really just came out as paranoid incoherent babbling and she rolled over and started ignoring me about the fifth time I said, 'there it goes again, see, I'm thirsty, see, now I'm in a field'. When I woke up the next day I was incredibly thirsty, not in a field, and not wild about anything that moved or produced light. That's it. What can I say. Not really the kind of experience that would make you an addict. Every time I see other people doing it, it looks like a ton of fun, and I'd love to have that experience. I just don't think I'm cut out for it. For me it's more eggplant than skydiving.
Which I guess brings us to the obligatory parent/unborn child drug talk. Here's the thing. If pot is the stupidest thing you ever try then I'll count myself lucky. I know it's not in my top ten stupidest things this year, let alone this lifetime. As a source of recreation it hasn't really worked out for me, but the idea that it's something we lock people up over while Budweiser sponsors the Superbowl strikes this Young Republican as ridiculous. As a father it's hard to see how I'd ever be okay with the idea that you might drink, have sex, or do drugs. But you will. Everyone I know has, and I don't think any of their parents were cheering them on. If the promises of every school sponsored film or 'just say no commercial' that I saw as a child had been fulfilled, the doctors and lawyers I know today would dead or knocking over 7-11s for their next fix. But life isn't that simple. It can't be reduced to a slogan. If being a parent or being a child were as easy as feeling one way or another about dead birds and dime bags then this whole thing would be a piece of cake. It also wouldn't be very interesting. I'll be glad to tell you about all the way I think I went wrong and the few times I think I got it right, but there are some things you'll simply have to decide on for yourself, even if it takes three decades to do it.
Novel - Ch12
Dunking - Wk5
French - Pomme de terre.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
The One Where I Try To Make Failure Sound Noble
Let me start by saying that, in my defense, I can't tell you how many times before we were married that I tried to impress upon your mother how much better she could do. Get yourself a nice surgeon, or an investment banker, I said. Do you really want to spend your life with someone who clips coupons for ramen noodles? I'm not totally blameless. The gay guy in the aforementioned hot tub was a surgeon and if she'd gotten him to touch her breasts maybe they would have hit it off. That one's my fault. But, beyond that it's really just your mother's poor judgment that's kept us together. How's that for luck? She has one fault and it happens to benefit me.
Now as soon as you become humans you're going to be fascinated by all the things you can do. Reading, speaking, running on your hind legs while waving your opposable thumbs in the air, it's all very exciting. And then one day you'll realize that there's someone, or more likely lots of people, who can not only do those things better than you, but they look and sound better while they're doing them. And that's when you'll discover the most critical tool in the human shed, self deception.
Show a bunch of positive words to a human, they'll explain how each of them seems to describe them. Negative words, they'll detail how none of them really apply. Show them where they've made an error, they'll show you where the problem was poorly designed, the test poorly graded, or the Do Not Enter sign too ambiguous. It sounds like a bad thing, but if each of us had to face the day with a true accounting of how smart, attractive, or capable we were in relation to the rest of humanity, no one would get out of bed. The ability to believe that, in spite of evidence to the contrary, there's something different, something special, about each one of us isn't what holds us back, it's what makes us go.
Self deception is tricky since its job is to tell you that you're doing the right thing no matter what you're actually doing. When you get in your car after nine margaritas self deception doesn't tell you that you're going to run over a light pole, it says that you're going to glide home on a little cloud. Once you run over a few light poles you realize you aren't always the most reliable judge of your own abilities and that maybe you should listen to the four identical spinning people who are demanding your keys. And of course the minute you give up the keys you'll convince yourself what a smart move that was and how you're really awesome for making it.
So how do you know when to listen to the little voice and when to tell it that it's ruining your driving record? How do you know when you're fooling yourself as opposed to the only one who really knows what's up your sleeve? I don't really have a good answer for that, but I do have a horribly uninteresting story that I hope explains why I keep getting behind the wheel (have I gotten enough mileage out of that metaphor for you?).
I was working construction in Los Angeles and had spent the entire day crawling around in a ceiling and arguing with my boss about how much I sucked at construction and crawling around in ceilings. After work I went to get a sandwich, still covered in dirt, ceiling guts, and an odor that made other people reconsider eating. My phone rang and, thinking it was my boss who'd come up with another reason I should be fired, I answered it by just yelling, What? And then this very polite person on the other end told me that a story I'd written and submitted so long ago I'd forgotten about it had won an award. And then I started... I'm trying to think of a manly word for crying... bleeding salt water from my eyes? To be clear, we're talking about an award no one has ever heard of in a magazine no one had ever heard of. To this day I doubt more than 200 people have a copy of it, no more than 20 have read it, and only 2 thought it was worth printing, and they're both related to me. But there I was, bleeding from my eyes. I thanked the person, hung up and tried to pay for my sandwich, but the cashier, mistaking my eye blood for tears told me that there was no charge and that, 'things would be okay'.
So what was the big deal? It barely paid anything, no one read it, and when I try to tell the story the reaction I usually get is something like, 'you skipped law school to write because you cried and got a free sandwich?' The problem is that there's really no way to explain the feeling. How do you explain what it feels like to connect your own dots? All I can say is that up until then I knew a lot of people who didn't know what they wanted from life, and I envied every one of them. When you get handed your life it's just this pile of clay. Everyone else seemed to be able to make anything they wanted out of theirs, and more importantly, to be happy with whatever they made. Having a dream, a desperate need to make the clay look like something in particular, felt like an affliction, and if I could have taken something for it I would have OD'd on it. But in that little moment I got to feel what it would be like to have your life follow directions, to turn the amorphous blob of years into something that makes you cry to look at it. That moment wasn't great because it made me rich or famous or even employable. It wasn't great because it made me anything. That moment was great because I made it.
So as for moving on, I'm afraid I'm hopeless. As humans we know we're weak. When something's hard we talk ourselves out of it. Invading armies used to burn bridges behind them so that turning back wouldn't be an option. I got a film degree which is kind of the same thing. Does this make me a good husband or father? No. If they administered tests for either position I'm sure I would fail. And I may well fail at being a writer too. If I weren't trying to be all three it probably wouldn't be an issue. But here we are.
You'll find out soon enough that most of what I say should rightfully be ignored and that leading by example is not my strong suit. But if I'm able to teach you anything, I would hope for it to be this: When you're young someone will ask what you want to be when you grow up and they'll tell you can be whatever you want. Sadly, if that were true we'd be a country of 250 million astronauts. But what they don't tell you is that that 'what you are' can't be expressed as a job description or a title someone slaps on a brass nameplate. The truth is, what you are is much bigger than that, and it really is in your hands. Accountants or opera singers, I don't give a damn. What I hope you grow up to be is the kind of people who never stop trying to bend and shape the life you get until it looks like the one you want. It will rarely cooperate, but the moments when it does, however brief, will be the ones you never forget. I've had two: one in a sandwich shop, and one at the end of an aisle with your mother. These moments don't pay, you can't live in them, they don't last, and if they could be bought there would be nothing else for sale. But until you have one, I'd argue you won't really know what it means to be alive.
Novel - Chapter 12
Dunking - wk5
French - C'est la vie.
Now as soon as you become humans you're going to be fascinated by all the things you can do. Reading, speaking, running on your hind legs while waving your opposable thumbs in the air, it's all very exciting. And then one day you'll realize that there's someone, or more likely lots of people, who can not only do those things better than you, but they look and sound better while they're doing them. And that's when you'll discover the most critical tool in the human shed, self deception.
Show a bunch of positive words to a human, they'll explain how each of them seems to describe them. Negative words, they'll detail how none of them really apply. Show them where they've made an error, they'll show you where the problem was poorly designed, the test poorly graded, or the Do Not Enter sign too ambiguous. It sounds like a bad thing, but if each of us had to face the day with a true accounting of how smart, attractive, or capable we were in relation to the rest of humanity, no one would get out of bed. The ability to believe that, in spite of evidence to the contrary, there's something different, something special, about each one of us isn't what holds us back, it's what makes us go.
Self deception is tricky since its job is to tell you that you're doing the right thing no matter what you're actually doing. When you get in your car after nine margaritas self deception doesn't tell you that you're going to run over a light pole, it says that you're going to glide home on a little cloud. Once you run over a few light poles you realize you aren't always the most reliable judge of your own abilities and that maybe you should listen to the four identical spinning people who are demanding your keys. And of course the minute you give up the keys you'll convince yourself what a smart move that was and how you're really awesome for making it.
So how do you know when to listen to the little voice and when to tell it that it's ruining your driving record? How do you know when you're fooling yourself as opposed to the only one who really knows what's up your sleeve? I don't really have a good answer for that, but I do have a horribly uninteresting story that I hope explains why I keep getting behind the wheel (have I gotten enough mileage out of that metaphor for you?).
I was working construction in Los Angeles and had spent the entire day crawling around in a ceiling and arguing with my boss about how much I sucked at construction and crawling around in ceilings. After work I went to get a sandwich, still covered in dirt, ceiling guts, and an odor that made other people reconsider eating. My phone rang and, thinking it was my boss who'd come up with another reason I should be fired, I answered it by just yelling, What? And then this very polite person on the other end told me that a story I'd written and submitted so long ago I'd forgotten about it had won an award. And then I started... I'm trying to think of a manly word for crying... bleeding salt water from my eyes? To be clear, we're talking about an award no one has ever heard of in a magazine no one had ever heard of. To this day I doubt more than 200 people have a copy of it, no more than 20 have read it, and only 2 thought it was worth printing, and they're both related to me. But there I was, bleeding from my eyes. I thanked the person, hung up and tried to pay for my sandwich, but the cashier, mistaking my eye blood for tears told me that there was no charge and that, 'things would be okay'.
So what was the big deal? It barely paid anything, no one read it, and when I try to tell the story the reaction I usually get is something like, 'you skipped law school to write because you cried and got a free sandwich?' The problem is that there's really no way to explain the feeling. How do you explain what it feels like to connect your own dots? All I can say is that up until then I knew a lot of people who didn't know what they wanted from life, and I envied every one of them. When you get handed your life it's just this pile of clay. Everyone else seemed to be able to make anything they wanted out of theirs, and more importantly, to be happy with whatever they made. Having a dream, a desperate need to make the clay look like something in particular, felt like an affliction, and if I could have taken something for it I would have OD'd on it. But in that little moment I got to feel what it would be like to have your life follow directions, to turn the amorphous blob of years into something that makes you cry to look at it. That moment wasn't great because it made me rich or famous or even employable. It wasn't great because it made me anything. That moment was great because I made it.
So as for moving on, I'm afraid I'm hopeless. As humans we know we're weak. When something's hard we talk ourselves out of it. Invading armies used to burn bridges behind them so that turning back wouldn't be an option. I got a film degree which is kind of the same thing. Does this make me a good husband or father? No. If they administered tests for either position I'm sure I would fail. And I may well fail at being a writer too. If I weren't trying to be all three it probably wouldn't be an issue. But here we are.
You'll find out soon enough that most of what I say should rightfully be ignored and that leading by example is not my strong suit. But if I'm able to teach you anything, I would hope for it to be this: When you're young someone will ask what you want to be when you grow up and they'll tell you can be whatever you want. Sadly, if that were true we'd be a country of 250 million astronauts. But what they don't tell you is that that 'what you are' can't be expressed as a job description or a title someone slaps on a brass nameplate. The truth is, what you are is much bigger than that, and it really is in your hands. Accountants or opera singers, I don't give a damn. What I hope you grow up to be is the kind of people who never stop trying to bend and shape the life you get until it looks like the one you want. It will rarely cooperate, but the moments when it does, however brief, will be the ones you never forget. I've had two: one in a sandwich shop, and one at the end of an aisle with your mother. These moments don't pay, you can't live in them, they don't last, and if they could be bought there would be nothing else for sale. But until you have one, I'd argue you won't really know what it means to be alive.
Novel - Chapter 12
Dunking - wk5
French - C'est la vie.
Monday, November 12, 2007
The One Where I Briefly Consider Being A Good Husband And Father
Your mom and I aren't really fighters. By my count (she probably has a different one, but she's wrong) we've only fought twice in nine years. Once she was drinking in a hot tub and kept challenging a gay guy to touch her breasts. Another time she ruined the end of a movie for me. In retrospect the second one seems kind of stupid. Maybe I was still pissed about the first. Anyway, it's not that we don't disagree, we're just more into debate than door slamming. I always thought that was a virtue, but maybe slamming a few doors isn't so bad. Everything your mom and I had to talk about this week, we've know about for years. Maybe if we'd just fought it out then we wouldn't be here now. But it's like someone told us we had a broken leg a long time ago and we've just been trying to walk it off. Thursday we finally fell down.
If I haven't made it plain on other occasions, the broken leg is me. Here's how I addressed it in my wedding toast (the fact that it had to be addressed while she was still in her dress kind of says it all):
What can I say, it sounded better in person. Anyway, while you could certainly say that I've been lucky to find such a patient partner, you could also say I've been incredibly selfish to take endless advantage of that patience. But if you put it that way it would sound awkward in a toast.
For a lot of years your mom was doing what she wanted to and what I did made no difference. I guess we just thought that by the time it mattered I'd have gotten something going. Well, with your imminent arrival that time has come. If this were a slasher movie now would be the part where the ax murderer is bearing down and the cute girl just can't get the car to start. You two are the ax murderer. I'm the cute girl.
The short version is that your mom doesn't love her job. What I mean by that is that she gets depressed and yells before she goes to it. You know what sounds like a good job to your mom? Turns out it's taking care of twins. But since the only house my writing could provide would have to be made out of my actual pages our options seem limited. That's why I finally said what we'd both been thinking. That's it time for me to give up.
The truth is I feel guilty sitting here stringing together sentences that can't finance the computer they're typed on while your mom wades around in other people's barf and blood (that's how I picture it anyway). Whether the roles of men and women are the result of innate differences or playing with Barbies instead of Tonka trucks, it doesn't really matter. The fact that your mom has to work while I sit around chasing rainbows just feels wrong to both of us on some deep, politically incorrect, get fired from Harvard for mentioning it level. She's given me years to do my thing. It's her turn now. And yours. Someone has to make sure that you have every opportunity to do what you want to do, right? If someone has to do something they hate, it should be me.
That's what we agreed on. Sadly, it's not even a matter of just getting a job. I have to get trained to do something useful first. It would be some time before I could shoulder much of the burden, but just knowing that it was coming seemed to perk your mom up.
So, I sat down and I wrote all this up for you guys. It looked like I said all the right things. Growing up, facing reality. The end was something like 'dreams are what you have when you're asleep, a job is what you have when you're awake'. Incidentally, it's just that kind of hacky writing that's gotten me where I am, but that's not the point. The point is that I didn't send it. I don't know, I guess when I read it over it said what I thought it should say, what I'd already said to your mother, what a bigger, less selfish, more responsible, more fatherly person would say.
But I kind of thought it sounded like a bunch of Dr. Laura bullshit.
If you didn't have the attention span of bees and I didn't have to feed a cat through a tube I could tell you why. But, like your mother before you, you'll have to wait a day to hear me take it all back.
Novel - Ch12
Dunking - wk 5
French - unit 2 lesson 2
If I haven't made it plain on other occasions, the broken leg is me. Here's how I addressed it in my wedding toast (the fact that it had to be addressed while she was still in her dress kind of says it all):
What I’ve chosen to do with my life isn’t easy and it certainly doesn’t pay well, and if at any time she’d ever asked me to stop, to give it up, I’d have done so in a heartbeat. It’s a testament to just how incredibly lucky I am that the only times she’s used the words stop or give up, they were directly preceded by the word never.
What can I say, it sounded better in person. Anyway, while you could certainly say that I've been lucky to find such a patient partner, you could also say I've been incredibly selfish to take endless advantage of that patience. But if you put it that way it would sound awkward in a toast.
For a lot of years your mom was doing what she wanted to and what I did made no difference. I guess we just thought that by the time it mattered I'd have gotten something going. Well, with your imminent arrival that time has come. If this were a slasher movie now would be the part where the ax murderer is bearing down and the cute girl just can't get the car to start. You two are the ax murderer. I'm the cute girl.
The short version is that your mom doesn't love her job. What I mean by that is that she gets depressed and yells before she goes to it. You know what sounds like a good job to your mom? Turns out it's taking care of twins. But since the only house my writing could provide would have to be made out of my actual pages our options seem limited. That's why I finally said what we'd both been thinking. That's it time for me to give up.
The truth is I feel guilty sitting here stringing together sentences that can't finance the computer they're typed on while your mom wades around in other people's barf and blood (that's how I picture it anyway). Whether the roles of men and women are the result of innate differences or playing with Barbies instead of Tonka trucks, it doesn't really matter. The fact that your mom has to work while I sit around chasing rainbows just feels wrong to both of us on some deep, politically incorrect, get fired from Harvard for mentioning it level. She's given me years to do my thing. It's her turn now. And yours. Someone has to make sure that you have every opportunity to do what you want to do, right? If someone has to do something they hate, it should be me.
That's what we agreed on. Sadly, it's not even a matter of just getting a job. I have to get trained to do something useful first. It would be some time before I could shoulder much of the burden, but just knowing that it was coming seemed to perk your mom up.
So, I sat down and I wrote all this up for you guys. It looked like I said all the right things. Growing up, facing reality. The end was something like 'dreams are what you have when you're asleep, a job is what you have when you're awake'. Incidentally, it's just that kind of hacky writing that's gotten me where I am, but that's not the point. The point is that I didn't send it. I don't know, I guess when I read it over it said what I thought it should say, what I'd already said to your mother, what a bigger, less selfish, more responsible, more fatherly person would say.
But I kind of thought it sounded like a bunch of Dr. Laura bullshit.
If you didn't have the attention span of bees and I didn't have to feed a cat through a tube I could tell you why. But, like your mother before you, you'll have to wait a day to hear me take it all back.
Novel - Ch12
Dunking - wk 5
French - unit 2 lesson 2
Thursday, November 8, 2007
10 Items Or Less
Last time we talked I was burying a cat. Today we're having a feeding tube surgically installed in another one to try to avoid a repeat performance. Pets are a lot like children in that the things you're willing to do for them seem absurd from the outside and obvious from the inside. I have trouble justifying the additional cost of putting cheese on my hamburger but would gladly trade my laptop so that our cat can continue sleeping for 23 hours a day and walking on my head for the other one.
As for you two, we visited the doctor who is sending us to a new doctor that will be better equipped to handle your twinly needs. We've been told that it's essentially inevitable that despite my warnings you guys are going to put your mom down with some extended bedrest and possibly a host of procedures designed keep you in that little bubble relentlessly punching each other (yes, we saw that). I tend to think that with her bedridden for weeks and me desperately trying to finish a novel in the same house, we're setting up a very Stephen King situation. I don't really have time to explain that to you, but imagine axes, sledgehammers, and pre-birth post traumatic stress disorder.
On the other hand, your mom is getting a little burned out on work. Maybe time off will make her fall in love with it again. Or make it impossible for her to go back. That's what really kills me about our collective situation. For all I know your mom would love to stay home tending your every need as much as I would love to avoid it. I just don't know how to make that happen. Various strikes and so forth have made the movie look impossible for the foreseeable future. Millions of books are written and never published, most of which probably aren't handicapped with a beaver character. And it's hard to see how dunking will improve my breadwinning skills unless there's a circus somewhere that needs me. The truth is, despite accumulating impressive amounts of school debt, I'm not qualified for many jobs that don't directly relate to the movement or checking of groceries. I said you guys worried me because I hadn't really done anything with my life. I think you really worry me because the reality of you will finally make it impossible to keep sitting on the beach imagining a large ship headed my way. On the upside, I really think I could kick ass in an express lane.
Novel - CH11
Dunking - wk4
French - Je suis faim.
As for you two, we visited the doctor who is sending us to a new doctor that will be better equipped to handle your twinly needs. We've been told that it's essentially inevitable that despite my warnings you guys are going to put your mom down with some extended bedrest and possibly a host of procedures designed keep you in that little bubble relentlessly punching each other (yes, we saw that). I tend to think that with her bedridden for weeks and me desperately trying to finish a novel in the same house, we're setting up a very Stephen King situation. I don't really have time to explain that to you, but imagine axes, sledgehammers, and pre-birth post traumatic stress disorder.
On the other hand, your mom is getting a little burned out on work. Maybe time off will make her fall in love with it again. Or make it impossible for her to go back. That's what really kills me about our collective situation. For all I know your mom would love to stay home tending your every need as much as I would love to avoid it. I just don't know how to make that happen. Various strikes and so forth have made the movie look impossible for the foreseeable future. Millions of books are written and never published, most of which probably aren't handicapped with a beaver character. And it's hard to see how dunking will improve my breadwinning skills unless there's a circus somewhere that needs me. The truth is, despite accumulating impressive amounts of school debt, I'm not qualified for many jobs that don't directly relate to the movement or checking of groceries. I said you guys worried me because I hadn't really done anything with my life. I think you really worry me because the reality of you will finally make it impossible to keep sitting on the beach imagining a large ship headed my way. On the upside, I really think I could kick ass in an express lane.
Novel - CH11
Dunking - wk4
French - Je suis faim.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Via Con Dios Marvin
Well kids, Marvin died today. It's a long sad story that doesn't get any happier if you add words, so suffice it to say that my first effort at parenting was a total disaster. Hard to get much confidence out of the fact someone like Britney Spears can raise two kids and I can't keep a poor kitten alive for two weeks.
I don't really think that I can explain why I cried like a four year old over the death of an animal I'd known for less that the amount of time it takes my mother to program a VCR, but I think it was the sense that I had so totally failed. Failure itself I'm familiar with. I do it often, and like anything it gets easier with practice. It was the idea that someone else was counting on me not to screw up, or cut corners, or try and do better the next time, that I was unfamiliar with. Done right, failing yourself is inadvisable, but eventually tolerable. Failing someone that depends on you just to so they can keep breathing is a special kind of hell. I liked it better when the consequences of poor performance on my part were limited to feeling bummed out and eventually having someone send me a toaster.
I suppose this would be as good a time as any to tell you that all kittens end up in heaven and that Marvin is sitting among puffy clouds and Popes just waiting for us all. I don't happen to believe that, but after spending part of my day with a shovel in my hand I certainly understand the appeal. Personally, I think this is the good part, whether it lasts a day or a decade, a month or a millennium, and if you really appreciate how miraculous it is then you can't help but want to suck it dry. The only way I'm completely confident you can stick around is in the minds of those you happen to bump into along the way. Marvin showed that you don't have to do more than spend a couple weeks crapping on hands and asking to have your belly rubbed to secure a spot in someone's head for the long haul. And while I hope it's for more than my crapping and belly habits, if people manage to remember me half as fondly as I'll remember him I'd consider my time well spent.
I'm almost positive that there aren't any parenting books that say you should eulogize a dead cat to your unborn children, so please accept my apologies. I don't even pretend to know what I'm doing. It just seems important for some reason. I thought Marvin was going to teach me how to take care of you guys. Instead, he taught me never to take you for granted.
What a smart fucking cat.
Novel - Ch11
Dunking - wk4
French - Je suis desole.
I don't really think that I can explain why I cried like a four year old over the death of an animal I'd known for less that the amount of time it takes my mother to program a VCR, but I think it was the sense that I had so totally failed. Failure itself I'm familiar with. I do it often, and like anything it gets easier with practice. It was the idea that someone else was counting on me not to screw up, or cut corners, or try and do better the next time, that I was unfamiliar with. Done right, failing yourself is inadvisable, but eventually tolerable. Failing someone that depends on you just to so they can keep breathing is a special kind of hell. I liked it better when the consequences of poor performance on my part were limited to feeling bummed out and eventually having someone send me a toaster.
I suppose this would be as good a time as any to tell you that all kittens end up in heaven and that Marvin is sitting among puffy clouds and Popes just waiting for us all. I don't happen to believe that, but after spending part of my day with a shovel in my hand I certainly understand the appeal. Personally, I think this is the good part, whether it lasts a day or a decade, a month or a millennium, and if you really appreciate how miraculous it is then you can't help but want to suck it dry. The only way I'm completely confident you can stick around is in the minds of those you happen to bump into along the way. Marvin showed that you don't have to do more than spend a couple weeks crapping on hands and asking to have your belly rubbed to secure a spot in someone's head for the long haul. And while I hope it's for more than my crapping and belly habits, if people manage to remember me half as fondly as I'll remember him I'd consider my time well spent.
I'm almost positive that there aren't any parenting books that say you should eulogize a dead cat to your unborn children, so please accept my apologies. I don't even pretend to know what I'm doing. It just seems important for some reason. I thought Marvin was going to teach me how to take care of you guys. Instead, he taught me never to take you for granted.
What a smart fucking cat.
Novel - Ch11
Dunking - wk4
French - Je suis desole.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Do You Guys Have A Snooze Button?
First of all, I feel like I'm getting some things worked out. For instance, you're both aware that I really don't find babies very attractive, that I'm in fact creeped out by them and would rather have a dog lick my eyeballs than a baby try to touch me. But Halloween has taught me that children can be cute as long as they're dressed up as small animals. So far I know that duck and lion costumes work and I assume there must be others. If not you can just rotate between those two outfits every few days for the first few years. And all this time I thought I'd have no interest in buying you guys clothes.
I'm also getting more comfortable with crap. Marvin, he's that kitten I'm bottle feeding, doesn't know how to crap on his own. I have to rub his butt with wet toilet paper in order to stimulate him. That often stimulates him into crapping all over my hand. If I'm lucky enough to put him down before he goes he tends to walk through his crap and drag it all over the place, meaning that one way or another I get to clean it up. Of course, I doubt that your mother is going to let me get away with just holding you under a running faucet and throwing you into a pile of towels the way I do Marvin, but we'll see. Maybe I can convince her it's a French thing.
I also find myself very interested in the color and consistency of Marvin's crap, something I hear parents talking about all the time. It seems that until you're able to start getting A's or applying to law school parents are still obligated to find something to brag about and early on feces is popular. I worry about it being too runny, or not runny enough, too brown, or not brown enough. It's like opening an oven to check on cookies only it comes out of a cat's butt and kind of makes you never want to eat again.
But every time I get used to one thing you two throw me another curve ball. It seems that in addition to your new due date you're now planning to put your mom down with bedrest for some extended period of time. Maybe you've forgotten who wears the pants in our family. It's not that I don't earn enough to bring home the bacon, it's just that once I've actually purchased the bacon I won't have enough to cover the mortgage, utilities, or another groceries we might want to eat. I can't stress enough the degree to which you are biting the hand that feeds you. Unless the thought of a bacon filled yet domicile free future appeals to you I suggest you sit quietly and keep your mom on her feet until someone shoves a speculum in there and politely asks you to come out.
Also, we were hoping the barfing would be ending soon, but somehow having two of you in there means there's ten times the hormones floating around so the sickness may never end. To be honest, your mom's gotten so used to it that she can pretty much be right in the middle of a story, run to throw up, and then continue \without missing a beat. My real beef is that it offends my cost conscious nature. I can't tell you how many times we've gone out to eat and by the time we drive home your mother has thrown it up. When she says we should go out for pizza I just want to give her ten dollars and say why don't you just put this in the toilet and we can skip the drive.
But the adjustment that's killing me is the lack of time. I remember watching the Olympics as a kid and wondering why the people who were losing the races didn't just run faster. Then I joined track and learned there are some things you just can't outrun. In my case it was anything speedier than an overweight junior high girl. This is my first week trying to do two chapters and I'm already behind. According to my schedule I need to not only successfully do it this week, but thirteen more times before you show up. And the truth is, even before you're here, you're here. You're here in doctor's appointments and showers and nursery decorating and cloth diaper research and stacks of books that I'm supposed to be reading but keep avoiding because they have pictures of babies not dressed as small animals on them. How can anyone with unborn children find themselves applying to a day care and still pretend that they're not yet a parent?
I'm the kind of person who spent his life asking teachers for extensions and postponements, and while I may be clinging desperately to the last bits of my youth, I'm too old to actually start taking deadlines seriously. I know it's crowded in there, but really, if you could just hit the snooze button for a few weeks it would really help me out. I had three decades to grow up and I didn't get it done. The least you could do is give me the full nine months.
Novel - Chapter 11
Dunking - wk3
French - Learning French nursery rhymes that have been guaranteed to make you fluent, or that was my understanding when they were given to me. Have added ants to my vocabulary.
I'm also getting more comfortable with crap. Marvin, he's that kitten I'm bottle feeding, doesn't know how to crap on his own. I have to rub his butt with wet toilet paper in order to stimulate him. That often stimulates him into crapping all over my hand. If I'm lucky enough to put him down before he goes he tends to walk through his crap and drag it all over the place, meaning that one way or another I get to clean it up. Of course, I doubt that your mother is going to let me get away with just holding you under a running faucet and throwing you into a pile of towels the way I do Marvin, but we'll see. Maybe I can convince her it's a French thing.
I also find myself very interested in the color and consistency of Marvin's crap, something I hear parents talking about all the time. It seems that until you're able to start getting A's or applying to law school parents are still obligated to find something to brag about and early on feces is popular. I worry about it being too runny, or not runny enough, too brown, or not brown enough. It's like opening an oven to check on cookies only it comes out of a cat's butt and kind of makes you never want to eat again.
But every time I get used to one thing you two throw me another curve ball. It seems that in addition to your new due date you're now planning to put your mom down with bedrest for some extended period of time. Maybe you've forgotten who wears the pants in our family. It's not that I don't earn enough to bring home the bacon, it's just that once I've actually purchased the bacon I won't have enough to cover the mortgage, utilities, or another groceries we might want to eat. I can't stress enough the degree to which you are biting the hand that feeds you. Unless the thought of a bacon filled yet domicile free future appeals to you I suggest you sit quietly and keep your mom on her feet until someone shoves a speculum in there and politely asks you to come out.
Also, we were hoping the barfing would be ending soon, but somehow having two of you in there means there's ten times the hormones floating around so the sickness may never end. To be honest, your mom's gotten so used to it that she can pretty much be right in the middle of a story, run to throw up, and then continue \without missing a beat. My real beef is that it offends my cost conscious nature. I can't tell you how many times we've gone out to eat and by the time we drive home your mother has thrown it up. When she says we should go out for pizza I just want to give her ten dollars and say why don't you just put this in the toilet and we can skip the drive.
But the adjustment that's killing me is the lack of time. I remember watching the Olympics as a kid and wondering why the people who were losing the races didn't just run faster. Then I joined track and learned there are some things you just can't outrun. In my case it was anything speedier than an overweight junior high girl. This is my first week trying to do two chapters and I'm already behind. According to my schedule I need to not only successfully do it this week, but thirteen more times before you show up. And the truth is, even before you're here, you're here. You're here in doctor's appointments and showers and nursery decorating and cloth diaper research and stacks of books that I'm supposed to be reading but keep avoiding because they have pictures of babies not dressed as small animals on them. How can anyone with unborn children find themselves applying to a day care and still pretend that they're not yet a parent?
I'm the kind of person who spent his life asking teachers for extensions and postponements, and while I may be clinging desperately to the last bits of my youth, I'm too old to actually start taking deadlines seriously. I know it's crowded in there, but really, if you could just hit the snooze button for a few weeks it would really help me out. I had three decades to grow up and I didn't get it done. The least you could do is give me the full nine months.
Novel - Chapter 11
Dunking - wk3
French - Learning French nursery rhymes that have been guaranteed to make you fluent, or that was my understanding when they were given to me. Have added ants to my vocabulary.
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