Backpacking Dad

This blog has moved.

2009-07-19T08:27:00.000-07:00

I am now fully moved over to BackpackingDad.com

Please come by, update your bookmarks, etc.

Thank you.

Southern California Road Trip: Part One

2009-07-17T23:43:00.001-07:00

We arrived at our Orange County hotel at three in the morning on Tuesday, just six hours after we’d left the San Francisco Peninsula on our dead-of-night escape.

Tuesday (part two, because part one was spent driving and then sleeping) was a family visit. Emily’s uncle’s family lives in Yorba Linda, and despite his house being damaged in the last round of fires and flooded when a toilet overflowed (forcing the family to live in a hotel for 45 days in a row), it was beautifully restored and it was relaxing just to hang out there. But Erin, the tiny princess of Finding Things That Will Hurt, kind of miserabled herself by falling down stairs and whacking her head on things. She liked the dog, though.

This is Lucky. He’s a service dog for Emily’s cousin J, the flower girl at our wedding who is old enough to drink now but never would. J doesn’t move very quickly, hear or see very well, hence the dog, but she loves Erin and Erin loves her so much she can hardly contain herself.

Wednesday we visited a cousin at work, in a new parent store with a play area for the kids. Erin superheroed it up when she found the costume bin.

Then we went to the uncle’s beach house in Newport Beach and strolled along the boardwalk at Erin’s pace. She was easily distracted by sand.

She spent a lot of time riding on J’s lap in her wheelchair. There was ice cream to be dribbled down her chin, birds to be chased, and boys who had frisbees.

Thursday was Disneyland Part One. It was Adrian’s First Visit, Erin’s Fifth Visit, and my birthday. Happy birthday to me. I love going to Disneyland and I’ll never stop loving it. I don’t care that Disney wants my money and my soul. They can have it. Star Tours rules.

We took Adrian on his first ride, and stank up the submarines with his first on-ride Crapola Diaper. It was intense. And where do you go when you’re on a fucking submarine? Nowhere. You’re welcome, Korean Disney Fans who were on the ride next to us. Greetings from America.

Want to see a picture of Erin pretending to be tired?

I say “pretending”, because that kid burned with vibrant, ridiculous energy right up until we got back to the hotel after closing the park down at midnight. She was unbelievable. She could not see enough or do enough. Adrian, on the other hand, pretty much slept the entire time we were at the park, with the exception of the Jungle Cruise ride. The puns pissed him off and he cried most of the trip. But he liked his ears.

Grandma grandma grandma. What would we do without grandma? She came to the park with us and watched the kids so Emily and I could go on rides on our own. She took Erin on the Buzz Lightyear ride so that someone could ride by himself and look cool while kicking ass with the lasergun.

Friday morning we went to breakfast and then began our drive to San Diego for Southern California Road Trip: Part Two. But first we stopped so that Erin could play at a park and burn some energy off before her destined nap in the car. So she ran around the park until she saw the tire swing, then she exploded into a version of the Sesame Street Theme that, we’ve come to realize, asks “Can you tell me how to get, how to get some friends in the street?” I’ve no idea what mayhem she plans for those friends, but they’d best guard themselves. This kid plots evil.

More road trip stories and pictures to come. I will bore you in four parts. But the four include the prelude that most of you read and decided was a clear indication that I should keep my day job: My “forsooths” and “inasmuches” fell on unimpressed eyes. Verily.

The Worst News

2009-07-14T10:20:00.000-07:00

It seems as though the moms who became friends through the Day One playgroup two years ago are steadily proceeding into round two of baby-making. Emily wasn't the first, nor will she be the last, as it looks like our group has booked the hospitals solid through November.

One of our friends, C, was checked in to the hospital with a high blood pressure problem at around 36 weeks. It's the kind of problem the worsening of which requires the immediate delivery of the baby. Her little boy is at home with dad and the grandparents, prepping the baby's room and watching the boy grow up, ever so slowly, in the weeks mom has been in a bed away from home.

It's a stressful time. And we've been waiting, just like everyone has been waiting, for news that the new baby has arrived and both mom and the baby are doing well.

We're worried. We're away from home and there's nothing we can do to help, or to prevent disasters. We're powerless, and the world is going to do what it wills and we're none us strong enough for what it will throw at us.

Emily's phone chimed with an incoming text message from C, and we knew the news was bad. Emily read the message slowly, and then emitted the despairing gasp I'd dreaded, and then a soft "Oh no."

"What is it, lady? What happened? What's wrong?"

"It's gone...the Chili's by our house is gone."

How do you ever recover from a loss like that?

I should write a parenting book

2009-07-11T17:03:00.001-07:00

"I don't know what it is," I began as I grabbed a pillow and began twirling it by the bunched opening of the case, "but I just had this overwhelming urge to hide behind the door until Erin came through and then BAM! Nail her with the pillow."

"Well, you get what you pay for." Emily sardonicized at me.

"What does that mean?"

"I mean this fatherhood gig you signed up for that doesn't pay you."

"What? I think that would be an awesome fatherhood moment."

The Super Ninja Secret Ambush With Pillow lesson: Fatherhood Year Three.

While you’re waiting…

2009-07-10T17:53:00.001-07:00

While you’re waiting to find out the answers to questions like:

Did our favourite dad blogger make it to Disneyland without getting sucked into the vortex of doom swirling around Michael Jackson’s memorial at Staples?

Did the Burns’ get to take yet another photo with Mickey Mouse and does the mirror in the hotel make Shawn look fat or is he actually fat?

How many hours of sleep can a toddler go without a nap before degenerating into an insane rambler and singer of “Row Row Row Your Boat (alt. lyrics)”?

Can you have too many onion rings with raspberry sauce?

How long does it take to get to check in to a hotel in San Diego?

You can check out something I wrote for Blogs.Com about some of the dad blogs I read. You should read them too. Go here now.

Thirty-two

2009-07-09T08:31:00.000-07:00

"So, Shawn. You've made it through another year of grad school, the birth of another child, the beginning of the terrible twos, more delays in your house remodel, and the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression. What are you going to do now?

I'm going to Disneyland.

Southern California Road Trip: Prelude

2009-07-06T22:02:00.000-07:00

We plotted to leave very early Tuesday morn for Parts Unknown and corners where there be dragons.

One final night of rest in my bed before embarking on a Quest for Mickey Mouse would have pleased me.

Alas.

'Tis 9pm and the kids are snuggled up warm in their car seats. Visions of cartoons flicker across Erin's face from the soul-draining glow of the portable DVD player we purchased this week.

Their night, and mine, has been sent careening from the predictable mile upon which it was given to travel. Innocence has been stolen, and by who else than that Pan of Lost Boys, perpetual child and thief of glittery pirate hands:

Jaxon.

Realizing all of the sudden that we had timed our crossing of the City of Angels to coincide with the Jaxon's family's attempt to send their most damaged boy to join the Choir by dazzling the dazed denizens, we recalculated:

"'Sooth, goodwife, we are doomed. We shall ne'er free ourselves from the Vortex the Jaxons have called forth from the bowels of the earth to ensnare unwary travelers such as we, offering up our children in the mad ceremony that calls the godhead down upon their Son."

"Nay, tremble not, mine husband. Must needs we brave the dark, the lonely moonlit paths, til we arrive at our awaiting Castle 'fore dawn. Yea, before e'en our enemies ha' bestirred their bones to be about their bloody business."

"You are a wise and beautiful woman, wife. For you alone would I risk certain crankiness and foul midnight diaper changes in the Caves of Denny or the House of Fruit."

"And you are a handsome, brave, and amusing man, husband. Cleave to me and every wish you have will come true. Except for that one. Meantimes, let us make out, and then after much embracing we shall depart."

"Agreed. Let us proceed with alacrity."

And that, my friends, is how we found ourselves winding through the mountains and across the plains. Our enemy, the Jaxon, shall be foiled, for true love and decent mileage (for an SUV) are on our side.

Corn on the Cob

2009-07-05T20:08:00.001-07:00

Erin and I scythed through the grocery store, intent on our goals, when we were abrupted in our progress by the Stereotypical College Guy.

Stereotypical College Guy had been thinking about his workout all day long. He began thinking about it early in the morning while he was still sleeping off the whiskey sours and tequila shots from the night before. He continued to think about it while he dressed himself from the “Not quite Sentient” pile of clothes in the corner of his room. He sorted through the white t-shirts and ridiculously long shorts on the floor until he found some that could take another workout, then he selected one set from his four pairs of high top running shoes and bolted out the door, ready to hit the gym for squats and chest presses, it being Friday, and Friday being Legs & Chest day.

He realized as he was leaving that he was out of groceries. He’d been eating in more often as the summer progressed and the on-campus eateries lost their bustle and luster. Eating alone was easier at home than at the cafeteria in the middle of the summer, when the odds of being approached at table by people he’d never acknowledge except to mock with his friends increased exponentially. Rather than face the press of lonely nerds, he would cook for himself, as far as he was able.

So instead of heading straight to the gym he reluctantly approached the grocery store to stock up on supplies. It was his misfortune, and mine, that he happened to be in the produce section at the exact moment Erin and I approached with our cart. We were after some ears of corn, because I was going to make a roasted corn and black-eyed pea salsa for a 4th of July barbecue the next day. I searched out the closest bag dispenser to the corn and found it situated adjacent to Stereotypical College Guy. He was unrolling the roll, and muttering to himself as he did so.

“…so that’s four, and what the hell? Where am I…hmmm….”

He sensed me standing next to him with my cart and my kid and my corn, and he spent some more time rolling, and unrolling bags.

Then he stopped, unstooped himself (the dispenser being located in the body of a bin rather than on a hook above) and walked away with his head held high and shoulders back, with someplace very important and deliberate to go and no time to waste on boring things like corn.

I watched him march away to the other side of the corn bin where he stood, staring at a wall lined with flowers for sale. Ah, a floraphile who’s just realized that hibiscus were in season, no doubt.

I reached down, tore off one of the many bags he had rolled away from the dispenser and dumped my husks inside. Then Erin and I continued through the produce section (mushrooms, an onion, some bananas, and a red bell pepper were all on my list, though not all for the salsa) while I kept a suspicious eye trained on Stereotypical College Guy.

He confirmed my suspicions and my disappointment in humanity when he returned to the bag dispenser soon after I’d left it to tear off a single bag at the now-obvious seam, open the bag, and place an ear of corn inside.

But what earthly reason could he have for thinking that he could cook corn if he couldn’t even figure out how the bag dispenser worked, cuffing away at it like a Neanderthal at a vacuum cleaner?

“Erin,” I said as I pushed my cart with head shaking ruefully, “that is why you aren’t allowed to date boys until you are thirty.”

I’m kind of a big deal on the Internet

2009-07-01T20:38:00.001-07:00

The lovely folks over at Label Daddy have inexplicably chosen me as their Dad Blogger of the Year. I think this means you all have to bow down before my awesomeness.

Waiting…

Thanks Label Daddy.

They played jump rope but the rope it broke…

2009-06-29T20:53:00.001-07:00

I drift into semi-senile codgery more often as I watch my daughter sponge the world’s cultural scum, or as I see it creeping toward us in the temporal distance: Pink! Hannah! Montana! Everything!

“Back in my day, we had decent cartoons on Saturday mornings like Superfriends and Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors and G.I. Joe and we learned about storytelling and heroism and how to only fight half the battle and get out of the pool when a thunderstorm came up. Now, kids these days. They don’t even have the buddy cop show Simon and Simon to sneak up past their bedtime to watch. Or Moonlighting. Instead they have a wash of pink vapidness. Who will save them from stranger danger? Or teach them to eat their veggies? Or tell them about the magic of the conjunction (junction, what’s your function?)”

Back in my day we also had the best in non-commercialized educational programming, pre-Elmo Sesame Street.

Growing up along the Canada-U.S. border I would receive both PBS and CBC broadcasts of Sesame Street, and I watched a lot of it. (It wasn’t until I was in high school that I realized the Americans didn’t get all of the segments in French, or that Canadians didn’t get the segments in Spanish. This ignorance on my part was akin to another border-ignorance I had: until I was 18, yes 18, I thought you could walk into any place in the U.S. and give them Canadian money and they would take it at the daily exchange rate. I walked into a Safeway in San Jose and tried to buy a Pepsi with some Canadian change and the cashier looked at me like I was insane. He looked at me like I was dangerously insane when I met his incredulity with “What do you mean you don’t take it? It’s Canadian.”)

Ten years ago Erin would have been doomed to some marketed, packaged hell that had neither 80’s cartoons nor classic pre-Elmo Sesame Street. But now we have the internet, and the internet provides.

This was my favourite Sesame Street clip growing up, and it’s Erin’s favourite too. Across the span of decades my daughter and I are joined in our learning to count to 12. Tiny Shawn looks into the future and knows he must learn the lyrics to this song because his daughter will one day demand not only that he play the clip at every opportunity, but that he sing the song to her. And when he gets to the part where they stand around and tell knock-knock jokes she grins and knocks on her own head.

Summer Sale at the mall

2009-06-27T14:11:00.000-07:00

We're at the mall on a Saturday because it's 93 degrees today and my apartment has whatever the opposite of air conditioning is, and it's on all the time, except in winter when I will suddenly have whatever the opposite of heat is.

Wandering away from the Baby Mosh Pit to reclaim some hearing I was led by my lovely daughter straight to one of those gimmicky photo booths.

Five dollars later (five dollars!) I was the proud owner of a Fold-It-Your-Damned-Self Foto Cube.

The instructions were simple: peel here, tear at perforation, fold here, stick together, voila! Foto Cube!

But the "peel here" instructions, so convenient and necessary, were, as it turned out, printed on the side of the paper that one would not, in fact, wish to peel off. Moreover, the paper was only perforated on the side that, ha ha, you would not wish to tear off.

So I am now the proud owner of a Fold-It-Your-Damned-Self Foto Cube. And three small rectangular stickers. Rather, Erin is the owner of the stickers.

I would be disgusted and disappointed and annoyed at my fortune in this matter, but for the 30 seconds of distilled joy Erin and I drank while making stupid faces for the camera. Five dollars.

Only five dollars?

How to Attend BlogHer As a Dude

2009-06-23T12:11:00.001-07:00

In the next month you will read post after post about OMG BlogHer I Can’t Wait To Go! or Damn BlogHer I Hate Those People Why Can’t They Shut Up About It?

You will read tips on how to interpret apparent standoffishness as shyness, snobbery as insecurity, hilarity as drunkenness. You will read about all the parties you will rock or feel outcast at. You will read…no, maybe you’ll just delete these posts, because they will become boring and repetitive.

But only here at Backpacking Dad will the MEN get the insight they’re looking for. Only here will the MEN attending BlogHer receive the reassurance they need to engage comfortably in a setting of a thousand women.

So, a list.

1. Figure out why you are there. Seriously, why are you there? Why? It’s called BlogHER, man, so what the hell are you doing there? And no, it isn’t enough that you take it seriously as a social media conference, or that you are interested in pro tips from the panelists, or meeting up with readers or friends or networking with powerful and influential people who happen to have vaginas. No. You are a dude. You have no business going to BlogHer despite how open and lovely everyone in the BlogHer organization is about including men. You have no business because someone in that room you are standing in will think you are a skeevy perv. So, unless you really are a skeevy perv you are going to have to do some thinking about yourself: Are you comfortable with your reasons for attending? If you are not, then the terrorists win. Fuck the terrorists.

2. Do your best not to hang out with other dudes. It’s BlogHer, man, and the point really is to interact with, and learn from and about, women. No matter how tempting it might be to form a circle of guy friends and hang out with them for three days in a sea of female writers and PR folks, this is a recipe for disaster. First, because guys have a tendency to reinforce guy-ness when they are around guys, and that inevitably means that your attempt at finding a safety zone will result in creating a permanent Dome of Awesome Hotness that the women won’t be able to breach. And then you’ll have spent all weekend in a Dome of Awesome Hotness and you could have done that at a bar at home. Also, guys in a Dome of Awesome Hotness have a tendency to start to whip ‘em out and pee on each other to reduce the hotness. You will start showboating, peacocking, competing, and generally turn into a dick, Shawn. Find female friends to hang out with and engage with other men as opportunity allows, but do not rely on them for comfort and inclusion.

3. Bring a nice shirt.

4. Make sure you really really really have something valuable and original to add to a conversation before asking for a microphone during a panel and putting in your two cents and your balls. Maybe the room has something to learn from you, but be certain that you aren’t just talking to hear yourself speak and to look cool in front of everyone, Shawn.

5. Take lots of pictures, but do not allow pictures to be taken of yourself. You look terrible, and you don’t need those memories.

6. Always be more sober than the person next to you. Because it’s completely awesome to let them go on and on and start to say insane things, but odds are there is a video camera around somewhere and you don’t want to be the star of Dudes At BlogHer Gone Wild.

7. Do not wear your cargo shorts, Shawn.

8. You will be memorable. You will not be able to remember everyone. The disparity will fuel your ego while also spiraling you into despair. Forget about it. It’s not about you. That is, you aren’t memorable because of how awesome you are, but because of how male you are. You might also be awesome. But so are a thousand women in the room and I’ll give you odds that you get more attention than 75% of them. Don’t let it go to your head. Also, don’t let it go to your head. And don’t let it go to your head. Behave like someone who deserves to be a rock star, not like someone who is a rock star. Be cool, man. Just be cool. It’s not up to you to be the life of the party. Find someone else to pressure into being the life of the party.

9. Do your utmost to give unsolicited advice to other male BlogHer attendees. It will endear you to them and they will want to be your friend. They don’t have any influence, though, so make sure you spurn them for someone who does at the first opportunity.

10. Write a post-BlogHer post about all the people you met, but wait until six or seven months have gone by so that you can really strain your memory.

Any other advice for the guys going this year?

Ladies, feel free to offer up your “skeevy dude” stories and then feel utterly remorseful about assuming that about him. But yeah, I saw that guy. What a perv.

Site Stuff

2009-06-21T09:09:00.001-07:00

So, apparently Blogger has broken things and the fancy URL I’ve just begun redirecting my blog to is not being found in Safari or Internet Explorer, and works only with a click through some warning page in Firefox. This is a system-wide Blogger problem with custom domain redirects.

(Did I sound smart and tech-y there?)

I own the site http://www.backpackingdad.com, and well I should. I’ve been planning a whole redesign and move from Blogger to Wordpress and in anticipation of that I starting redirecting http://backpackingdad.blogspot.com to http://www.backpackingdad.com, just to get people used to the address. It was timed with this awesome Blogger failure and now I think I’ve also ended up breaking my feed because I’m an idiot.

So I temporarily switched back to the blogspot address to post this. I’m all done with breaking things for now. But know that in the very, very near future I’ll be switching to my own domain, and breaking my feed again, then burning the house down and quitting the internet in frustration.

See you later.

Ease

2009-06-20T22:16:00.001-07:00

I love my kids.

Kids.

Emily turns to me every now and then to say “We have kids. We are ‘Emily and Shawn and the kids.’” I gently correct her: “Shawn and Emily and the kids.” And then she rolls her eyes at me so hard she sprains her forehead.

My son hasn’t pooped in a day.

My daughter, who drifted off to sleep while I played soft songs on my guitar last night, shouted at me to put my guitar away and belted out “Itsy Bitsy Spider” at the top of her lungs over my version of “Can’t Help Falling In Love” tonight. Eventually I gave up and started accompanying her with a blues riff.

My son is sleeping with his mouth open in a still swing, thinking hard about soft and how good it will feel when he finally get this one out.

My daughter is sleeping now, exhausted from endless solos performances of “Row Row Row Your Boat” in the dark.

When Erin removed her diaper yesterday in the swimming pool locker room and demanded to go pee on the potty I gave her three gummi bears instead of the two she usually gets after a swimming lesson. It was a Three Gummi Bear Pee. When she ran away from me on the sidewalk in the morning while I was pushing Adrian in his stroller outside the Tech Museum I chased her down and put the fear of Car into her. “No runnin’ naway from daddy,” she repeated over and over again all morning, “my bonka my head. Onlee wocking, slowee.”

When Adrian started offering small smiles with his eyes and mouth the other day I entered that 37th stage of New Fatherhood: Reflection. Instead of looking to him for signs that he was seeing the world and reacting to it I started grinning right back at him, my own eyes shining into his, my deep laugh lines presaging where his will be someday, letting him show me what a smile ought to look like and then showing it right back to him.

Being a parent is hard even when it’s easy. It’s hard because there is an entire life of non-parenting out there, somewhere, in my memory and when I look back on it I can see how radical this change has been, how much attention I pay now to a hundred items a day in time that I could have been sleeping or leveling that paladin up.

But being a dad…being a dad is easy, even when it’s hard.

LL Cool Dad

2009-06-16T12:53:00.001-07:00

Some days are better than others for the ego. Not that I have much difficulty in the self-esteem department, but even someone with as over-inflated an opinion of himself as me can have his spirits buoyed even higher by the right interactions with people.

First came the e-mail from Carla, @babyjidesign on Twitter, who is a local photographer. She’ll be at BlogHer as a photographer and she was looking for some bloggers to feature on her business cards to demonstrate her work and asked me if I’d like to pose. In other words, I’m so beautiful that I could be a part. time. model.

Who turns that down? Not this guy. Not this guy whose Smurf name would be Vanity Smurf if there wasn’t already a Vanity Smurf and so he’ll instead have to settle for Vain-but-Envious Smurf.

Carla took some really fantastic shots of me and Erin, and a bunch of terrific ones of Erin herself. It was a fun shoot out at a park with plenty of “okay, now walk like you’re just walking but turn when I say and look like you’re just being casual” and I was all “I can do that. I can be fake-casual like nobody’s business.” Erin also managed to look fake-casual, although I suppose one might confuse that look for constipation.

She’s getting pretty big for that backpack. I remember when she was small enough for me to zip up the sides of my Deuter with her legs inside.

The secret to a great photo, I learned, is a ladder. This is my favourite Backpacking Dad photo now:

See? You can’t see the innertube around my waist or my neck fat or anything. Carla rules.

Emily and I went to the movies (again, always, and forever going to movies with a baby. We’re very, very good at it) on Monday. After the movie was over Emily went to the restroom to change Adrian’s diaper and I waited in the hallway with the stroller. A pair of lovely older women approached me to get a peek at the baby, who wasn’t there. They gushed a bit about being grandparents and great-grand-parents and then they walked away. One of them came back a few moments later:

“Can I tell you something? My friend and I were just talking and…who do you look like? Do you know? Who do people tell you you look like?”

“Uh, well, that depends on if they like me or not I suppose.”

“If they don’t?”

“Robert Goulet.”

“Yes! That’s it. That’s just what we were saying. Something about the eyes!”

Really?

I can only hope they had the younger Goulet in mind. The Goulet who was hot when they were hot.

I’m choosing to believe this is what she meant. Not bad. And hey! I have that outfit.

Although mine looks way sweeter with the corsage on my lapel. Yes, that’s a corsage. I was pinned with the wrong accoutrement when I arrived for my wedding. It snuck into a few photos before the bouttoniere was found to replace it.

Emily arrived during the Robert Goulet remark and the ladies cooed appropriately over Adrian. I noticed that he was missing a sock and went back into the theater to find it. When I returned the old ladies were gone, but another woman had approached Emily.

“I was just telling your wife that I’d overheard the Robert Goulet comment. How could you be expected to know what he looked like when he was younger? Anyway, I was saying that you look like someone else entirely.”

Ah, who will it be, I wonder. Robert the Bruce? That’s one I’ve gotten before. I basically look like everyone with a goatee.

No, it was the one people offer up if they like me: Leonardo DiCaprio

However, I’d like to point out that I was rockin’ the facial hair long before he was.

So, that’s how my ego-inflating weekend was. I’m off to star in my next Hollywood blockbuster: Backpacking Dad Is On A Boat.

Although I’m changing my name to OLL Cool BPDBHLLRG. (Old Ladies Love Cool Backpacking Dad Because He Looks Like Robert Goulet)

Congratulations Mahmoud

2009-06-15T23:15:00.001-07:00

It’s not every day that someone so obviously well-loved by his people gets re-elected in a complete landslide so crushing that it reeks of election fraud. Hooray for freedom!

P.S. I know someone who has a crush on you. Do you want to go out with him? Check one:

Yes___________

No___________

Maybe_________

For the Canadians here's an audio only version of the video from YouTube. Sorry Hulu hates you.

How to watch Disney-Pixar’s ‘Up’

2009-06-14T20:30:00.001-07:00

When you see Up, or the next time you think about it if you’ve seen it already, imagine that when Carl goes inside his house after being dropped off by the police that he goes upstairs and dies quietly in his sleep.

Then you won’t be watching a fairly good adventure film, but a really good movie about the journey to Heaven.

"Just so you know, Dad, they didn't win the year Erin was born either."

2009-06-12T19:53:00.000-07:00

Well kid, you're wiser and more at peace about this than I am. I think the term is "equanimity" and you've got it in spades.

But just so you know, kid, we're watching every Red Wings game together next year. Your sister and I did that last year and I'm pretty sure that was the difference maker.
And you know what? I'm still pretty happy. Happy to see you every day. Happy to hold you when you cry. Happy to bounce you to sleep in my arms.

See you after your nap, kid.

Routine

2009-06-10T22:53:00.001-07:00

There aren’t too many dramatic things going on in my life right now. It’s all routine. I wake up, take Erin to school, come home, take Adrian somewhere so Emily can sleep, spend the afternoon at home or on my bike, pick Erin up from school, come home, make dinner, put Erin to bed, wait out Adrian’s four hour spazfest, bail, go to sleep and hope Emily doesn’t wake me up before 6am. She almost never does. I don’t know what that’s about.

I’ve managed to go to the movies with Adrian, once with Emily to see Land of the Lost, and once without Emily to see Dance Flick. Adrian did pretty well at the movies, but I’m no novice at this. For those who care: Dance Flick was a lot funnier than Land of the Lost. Not that it was all that funny, but Land of the Lost was as boring as The Barefoot Contessa. I don’t know what that’s about.

One thing that never seems to be part of my routine, but always arises as some kind of surprise, last-minute chore, is doing the dishes. Although I wash them every day it always seems like there’s a pile in the sink and I’m always playing catch up. I don’t know what that’s about.

Adrian has some reflux, and we just started him on medication tonight. His nightly spazfests are at least in part due to his reflux. But Erin was also a spaz during the early evening hours, so I don’t know how much of his annoyance has to do with it. He is not having any trouble gaining weight though: he has put on almost three pounds in three and a half weeks. I don’t know what that’s about.

I’ve been re-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I watched the entire series for the first time in the months leading up to Erin’s birth. I started again in the weeks leading up to Adrian’s. I don’t know what that’s about.

I’m not directing my days at anything except being, although I should be working on a dissertation. I have books to read, and things to write, and I know I’ll be dragging my feet about it. I don’t know what that’s about.

I’ve been watching the Stanley Cup Playoffs with almost religious devotion, although I should say that in all honesty I’ve devoted more time, thought, effort, argument, and attention to hockey than I ever have to any of the various forms of Christianity friends and family have offered up to me. I don’t know what that’s about.

Despite my apparent indolence I’ve still managed to fall days, and maybe even weeks behind on e-mail correspondence. If I owe you an e-mail I’ll get to it. Eventually. Maybe after a bike ride. I was riding my bike with underinflated tires for a long time, and it was slowing me down but I just couldn’t be bothered to inflate them to pressure until yesterday. I don’t know what that’s about.

So. How’s your day?

SAHPs vs. WOHPs

2009-06-05T15:34:00.001-07:00

It’s about that time, summertime, when kids transition from school to home, and that means that some parents will notice their kids around more often, and that will spark a small flame of interest in the question of whether it’s better to work or stay home with the kids. And that small flame will spread from the parents with school-aged kids to parents in general, until several small conflagrations dot the parental landscape and Smokey the Bear starts tromping everywhere saying “Only YOU can prevent forest fires.” It’s the most fun time of the year.

Basically, the “debate”, when it reaches martyr pyre status (which is not to say there isn’t a legitimate question about what’s best for kids overall, but that level of reasonable discussion isn’t what I’m talking about here) looks like this:

From the Stay at Home Parents: Parents who work and rely on daycare instead of raising their own kids have no soul!

From the Work Out of the Home Parents: Parents who sacrifice income and their kids’ quality of life and futures have no brains!

I’ve seen this debate before.

Liberals: Conservatives don’t care about anyone. Their policies are heartless. Conservatives have no soul!

Conservatives: Liberals are bleeding-hearts who can’t see that their policies are disastrously stupid. Liberals have no brains!

And I’ve seen yet another version of this debate:

Zombies: Vampires are demons inhabiting the undead and reanimated corpses of real people. Vampires have no soul!

Vampires: Zombies are shuffling, decaying undead and reanimated corpses of real people. Zombies have no brains!

Guess what? These criticisms only work against zombies and vampires. Because they’re not real.

A Composer of Unrivalled Skill and Inspiration

2009-05-31T11:35:00.000-07:00

"Twinkle twinkle little star
Let's go Red Wings let's go Red Wings.
Hockey hockey hockey dude.
What you what you what you are.
What's your name what's your name.
There it is; the other one.
Where did that dinosaur go?"

Let’s Go Red Wings!

2009-05-30T17:54:00.001-07:00

This is the key to victory:

California Supreme Court: “Do we contradict ourselves? Very well then, we contradict ourselves, (We are large. We contain multitudes.)”

2009-05-26T12:07:00.001-07:00

In what can only be interpreted as a “punt” the California Supreme Court today ruled both that Proposition 8, which amended the Constitution to read that marriage is only between a man and a woman, did not violate the California Constitution and that despite what the definition of marriage in California is there are still 18,000 gay couples who are “married.”

Hell.

I’m offended.

I’m offended as a philosopher.

The Court effectively created three classes of citizens in California today (Bonus! Extra class! There used to be just two in the “marriage” discussion.) There are heterosexual couples, who are the only couples who can be married in California and whose domestic partnerships can be called “marriages.” There are homosexual couples, who cannot be married in California and whose domestic partnerships cannot be called “marriages.” And there are other homosexual couples who are married and whose domestic partnerships can be called “marriages.”

The Court has declared that the Constitution of California recognizes more inequality than even Proposition 8 would have introduced to it.

What the Court hasn’t done is settle the matter. The voters of California want marriage defined a certain way; the California Constitution now protects that definition; but it is also clear that California does recognize gay marriage. So, what about recognizing gay marriages performed in other states? Should the rest of California’s gay couples who want to marry do so in Vermont then dare the California government to refuse to recognize those marriages? Should a challenge be immediately issued in the Federal courts under the Equal Protection clause? (Because really? The only difference between legitimate and illegitimate gay marriage in California is calendar date? Rights don’t evaporate when Monday becomes Tuesday.)

Even more annoying: California’s Constitutional Amendment process that requires only a 50% majority has been demonstrated to be the process that holds sway on questions of marriage rights. Proposition 8, the Court ruled, was not a revision of the Constitution, which would have required legislative approval before being put to the voters. Proposition “To Hell With 8” in 2010, then, will not be a revision either, so it will only require a 50% majority to change the Constitution to explicitly recognize gay marriages. And the direction of the support for gay marriage in California has been up over the years, not down, so the likelihood of an amendment recognizing gay marriage is higher than it would have been ten years ago. Maybe it can be passed.

And around and around and around it will go. This either ends with the U.S. Supreme Court or it never ends.

The California Supreme Court made no decision at all today, except that they didn’t want to be called “activist” again. Well, congratulations, Court.

You are inactivist judges.

Childbirth Doesn’t Break Your Funny Bone or Your Sappiness Ligament

2009-05-22T20:41:00.001-07:00

I handed an ibuprofen to my charming, beautiful, intelligent, saint of a wife who less than a week earlier had squozen my son from her Woomba® and asked her what I, a mere male mortal, might procure for her in order to slake her thirst and wash down the only comfort afforded her.

“Oh, just a Vitamin Water®. I think there’s a half-drunk one in the fridge.”

I immediately thought up my witty hand-off remark and prepared it as I grabbed the beverage from the fridge and carried it over to the chair in which my glorious, perfect wife was sitting.

“Well, this one was stumbling around a bit and yelling at cops.”

“That’s awesome. But is that really half-drunk?”

“Yeah, I guess not. That’s all the way drunk.”

“This one was talking to girls who were totally out of his league.”

Me too, lady. You’ve always been out of my league.

Adrian

2009-05-19T01:16:00.001-07:00

After a week of teasing, slow contractions, Adrian arrived with sudden and surprising alacrity. There is a long story about Emily’s induction being pushed back and back and back and the room being unavailable, then available, then unavailable, and finally available for good. The story also introduces Backpacking Dad’s delivery room snack regimen, the Irish nurse from Belfast, the room next door to the one Erin was delivered in, and lots of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares streaming over the free wifi the hospital offered.

But I won’t tell that story. I keep looking for something funny and all I end up with is something amazing.

My son, Adrian Cashel Burns, was born at 8:44pm on May 16th, 2009. He was over a pound heavier than his sister, but scored lower on his Apgars. His feet and hands were less wrinkled rubber than his sister’s, but so was his head less hairy. And that’s all the comparing I want to do between Adrian and Erin. Erin has been stunning me for two years, and I don’t want to water that down; Adrian has been stunning me for two days, and I don’t want to treat him as Second and only Second.

He sounds like a kitten when he cries.

He slept in the crook of my arm for part of his first night in the world.

His diapers are so small; his pants are so big.

Erin loves him already. She assures us that he’s sleeping, assures him that “It’s okay, Adrian,” and keeps trying to grab his face so she can look at it.

Emily thinks she screamed during labour. She didn’t; not once.

It’s all gone tiny hands and tiny toes.

This is my son, Adrian.

Nesting Again

2009-05-15T14:44:00.001-07:00

We’ve been dealing with off-and-on labour pains for a week. Emily’s had a hard time sleeping, we’ve passed our official due date with no sign of my son. I was certain he would show up during Game 7 of the Detroit-Anaheim series because the universe (in the tradition of things which commit actions being described by those actions, like one who commits felonies being called a felon) is an iron.

I am very aware that “ironic” is not something that can properly describe events in the world, but only events a writer conjures up for the purposes of literary effect. Nonetheless, had my son showed up during the Game I’d have yelled along with Alannis that things merely badly timed or predictably perverse were IRONIC. And I’d have punched you in the neck if you’d offered, during my expression, that I was using “irony” incorrectly. You would have felt awesome. (See that one? That one is ironic. You wouldn’t really have felt awesome and I was not intending that you should think you really would have felt awesome. You know that I meant “awesome” ironically. And that’s the key. Irony is participatory.)

In preparation for my son’s arrival we moved Erin out of our bedroom, into the spare bedroom filled with books for big people and a desk for big people and the cat, the poor, fat, diabetic, scared-y cat. So long as Erin spent most of her time out of that room he was content to just hid in the chest his litter box sits in (it’s a pretty cool custom wooden chest with a lid on hinges and a hole cut in the side that looks like furniture and traps a lot of the smell), and being worried about him ever getting used to Erin we figured just tossing them in a room together would allow him to get more used to her and eventually not care so much that she squeals when she sees him and tries to pet him like a pugilist pets his opponent. (Another use of irony.)

It has actually worked, to some degree. Our fat, diabetic, scared-y cat has ventured out of that room with more and more frequency, and he isn’t afraid to eat even when Erin is in her crib and staring at him.

But sometimes, in the dark as she falls asleep, she’ll hear him eating and wake up. And she’ll cry for daddy then explain her distress: “Kitty eating; kitty eating, daddy. Dat not scare you. Kitty hiding inna box; kitty hiding. It’s okay. It’s okay daddy.” And I’ll hold her a little, and explain that the kitty is just eating (which she knows) and that she is safe (which she knows) and that it’s time to sleep (which she also knows).

Even worse, though, is when he cries. He doesn’t cry because he’s afraid of Erin and her breathing in the dark, but because he’s about to vomit or shit a river all over the fucking carpet. He woke Erin up at 5:30 this morning with his wailing and gnashing of teeth and taking of craps on the carpet outside his litter box. He also dropped a nice one in his litter box, but he’s a decade old and still has no idea that the purpose of scratching is to cover the shit. Being an imbecile he just scratches the wall and hopes things will all work out. His scratching, crying, crapping, and vomiting at 5:30 in the morning were not well received. But this is life with a diabetic scared-y cat.

I suspect he was just after a little vengeance, tormenting the child who wants to pull his ears and who yells “No hitting kitty!” when he finally swipes at her after being cornered and getting his forehead awkwardly, but firmly, stroked.

But he is a cat with no concept of causation, so he scratches at walls instead of covering his shit, and this plan for revenge only means that I get to clean the carpets. Sure, Erin’s sleep is a little disturbed, and her mom wakes up and entertains her in the early morning by baking muffins (nesting, folks, means muffins out of nowhere), but the real victim of his vengeance is me.

I walked out to the living room in the morning to discover this lovely sight:

Those are all puddles of projectile vomit. The shit was in the bedroom, and somewhat contained. But he fired off bile into the pile like he was a gunner in a turret charged with mowing down Nazi infantrymen.

As I was drawn into the living room by the smell of fortunately fresh muffins and unfortunately fresh puke I caught Emily’s eye. “We’re getting a carpet cleaner,” she announced, lips in a firm, tight line. “Get this one.”

That’s the Bissell “SpotBot” with blah blah blah and blah blah blah. You set it down on a spot and then go away. (It is not cordless. This picture is just a far shot and not an action shot. You have to plug it in. Which is fine with me because we also have a battery-operated Bissell that doesn’t last long enough to clean anything worthwhile in a house with a diabetic cat, so I’m done with cordless.)

Or, if you’re a real gamer you can use the hose and nozzle thing to clean the spot yourself. Unfortunately unless your spot is less than about 8 inches in diameter you probably won’t get much use out of the automatic cleaning feature. For instance, if your cat projectile vomits in a stream 10 inches long you are going to be stuck using the hose.

However, the results using either the automatic or manual settings are pretty decent. Better than I get by just sitting there scrubbing or blotting.

Once again, Emily’s nesting takes the form of baking, and mine takes the form of dealing with bodily fluids and waste. Seems fair to me. (Hey, look, another use of irony as a literary device. Because it does not in fact seem fair to me. However, I don’t have to gestate, contract, push, scream, or enslave my nipples to a little organism that will slowly develop teeth. So maybe it really is a fair trade. Or, I suppose, it probably remains an unfair trade but unfair from Emily’s perspective now and I’m no longer certain if I’ve actually used irony.)

(In the interests of full disclosure I should admit that I have never been approached by Bissell to review their product, been sent any product by Bissell or anyone representing Bissell, or been paid or compensated to write this mini-review. In fact, if Bissell had contacted me to do a review in exchange for a cleaner or money or something I’d have probably declined. If, however, Bissell wants to compensate me in some way NOW for the lovely things I’ve said about their product, well, I wouldn’t immediately tell them to fuck off. I could use some of the cleaning solution now, since I used basically an entire bottle of it to clean all of the vomit and shit my cat vengefully left all over my apartment.)

Still no baby. But we’re having labour induced at 9am tomorrow (Saturday May 16th). Hopefully my son will be born and I’ll have pictures by Sunday. Also, hopefully, the pictures will be less disgusting than shots of chunky cat vomit.

My Son Gets Two Minutes For Delay of Game

2009-05-11T17:08:00.001-07:00

Friday was upon me before I really had a chance to realize how little work I’d done during the week. I was anxious, awake late into the night with a racing heart awake too early in the morning when my daughter would make her presence known, and, if she had a toy within reach, felt.

A new dresser purchased at Ikea lay on the bedroom floor, awaiting assemblage. It’s for the baby’s clothes, and Erin’s clothes, since for the moment (if “moment” can mean “two years”) Erin’s clothes are in our dresser. There are six drawers in our dresser, and we each have two of them. I’d like three. Emily would like three. Without a new dresser Emily and I would be down to one each. So, a new dresser purchased at Ikea lay on the bedroom floor, awaiting assemblage.

Emily has been on maternity leave for a week or so, taking advantage of the pre-baby time to see some movies, get some pedicures, have some lunches with friends, and in no way advise anyone about trademarks. She’s also preparing for the baby, nesting (in that weird “I’m going to bake at 2am” way that she has developed).

But on Friday afternoon, when her contractions started with regularity if not severity, we were still unprepared. Her suitcase wasn’t packed, the birth plan wasn’t printed, the champagne and glasses weren’t in a bag, nor was the iGroove dock. I had no playlist of relaxing ocean sounds ready, nor a “welcome to the world, son” playlist. Cameras were strewn about the apartment. Infant car seat bases remained uninstalled in our cars. Friday afternoon, for an hour before we had to leave to go to Erin’s swimming class, we packed and prepped furiously. And we did it all, and we got it all into the car, and drove to swimming and called Emily’s mom and told her to get on a plane, and after swimming we had dinner with our friends (with whom we had shared a party a couple of weeks ago, since their daughter is Erin’s best friend and one day older) and told them to be ready for a late night phone call. They had volunteered to watch Erin while we were in the hospital, which is why we love them.

After dinner the contractions grew more regular, and I picked up Emily’s mother at the airport and I made calls to my mother, father, and sister letting them know that the kid looked like he was making an appearance. I drove Erin over to our friends’ house and put her down for the night, then stopped at Target to buy a plunger.

This may take some explaining. “Shawn, you idiot, your wife is in labour and you are stopping at Target to buy a plunger? Are you, perhaps, less smart than a monkey? An armadillo? A golden retriever eating his own shit?”

Late on Friday afternoon, while Emily and I were packing furiously, Erin was busy (a) using one of her plastic blocks to drink water out of the toilet bowl, which was a fantastic parenting moment for us and (2) flushing that block down the toilet.

If you know anything about plastic blocks you probably know this: they don’t dissolve in water.

So, knowing we’d have company over the weekend, or at the very least that we’d have to use the toilet once or twice before going to the hospital, I determined to get the block out. Because my nesting takes the particular form of needing to fix things.

The plunger was ineffective. It lacked the penis part and was instead just a plunging vagina, so there was nothing to insert into the opening at the bottom of the toilet and so I couldn’t create a seal and then suck the water back out of the flushed toilet by drawing the plunger back up. All I could do was push things further in. Vaginas are good for pushing, not sucking.

So, what do I do at 11pm on a Friday night while my wife is in labour, my mother-in-law waits in the living room, and my daughter sleeps over at a friend’s house? My wife says “How about a coat hanger? Can you unbend a coat hanger and then use it to catch the block?”

Apparently what I can do is unbend a coat hanger and get it stuck in the toilet. Now what?

I took the damned toilet apart, flipped it upside down, and pushed the blocked into the bowl from the other end of the pipe. I was very manly and strong and there were tools and sweat and probably urine involved. Then I grabbed some needle-nosed pliers to twist the wire hanger out of the toilet, and emerged from the bathroom completely victorious (although covered in what I think wasn’t urine, but I can’t tell for sure so you probably shouldn’t hug me).

Despite all of my efforts, my dedicated nesting and the packing and driving around and picking people up and dropping them off and going to Target…my son refused to show up. Emily’s contractions got a bit worse, then she fell asleep. She woke up, they got a bit worse, then she fell asleep. They never reached a “damn damn damn damn damn ooh eeh ooh eeh” stage.

But on Saturday morning she hadn’t felt the baby move in a little while, and had been in labour for 15 hours, so we went to the hospital just to check things out.

Our uncooperative son was there, fine, and the contractions were 5 minutes apart, but only going halfway up the little graph thingy on the printout. The nurse said “Could be today, could be next week.” Thanks, nurse.

We picked Erin up after her fun-but-unnecessary sleep over, then met grandma for lunch. Emily’s contractions persisted, but we said “Screw It” and sent grandma home with Erin while we went to see Star Trek.

Star Trek was great. It was a great Star Trek movie and a really good action film. It’s also heavy on the fatherhood angle, and I appreciated that.

What Emily didn’t want was to be in the hospital on Mother’s Day. “Oh, how great! You’re here on Mother’s Day and you have a new baby! That’s so great!” The thought of enduring person after person saying something stupid like that to her was enough, I think, to convince my son not to poke his head out for a look the rest of the weekend.

On Sunday we waited, and the contractions seemed to be gone. We spent the day coddling Erin and eating frozen yoghurt and (me) watching the Wings-Ducks game before taking Emily’s mother back to the airport in the evening.

Overnight, Emily’s contractions grew stronger, strong enough to keep her awake most of the night, and then she fell asleep. They were consistently strong most of the morning, but in the afternoon they settled down again.

So we went for massages.

And now here I sit watching hockey and making a roast as we wait another evening for this kid to show up.

Comisery

2009-05-06T17:24:00.001-07:00

A mom is running down a sidewalk that lies adjacent to a quiet parking lot. She carries a purse and a small backpack in her hands, flouncing at the ends of her arms. She looks like she was sheveled at some point, but that point is not dis one.

She is trailing behind a small boy who glances back at her every few strides. He is having the time of his life.

"Evan STOP!" she shouts. "Stop. You stop right now."

She finally catches up to him and snags a trailing limb. His joy turns to sorrow in her grip. Shame follows.

"When mommy tells you to stop you need to stop!" mom growls, teeth grit and jaw clamped as though to keep her from barking madly into his face.

She looks ridiculous and over-cautious and too emotional and more than a little terrified. Too scared, given that he was only two steps away on a sidewalk next to a quiet parking lot.

But.

Been there.

Using My Powers for Good

2009-05-05T20:58:00.001-07:00

Emily joked the other day that maybe now there are three choices. We can use our powers for Good, for Evil, or for Social Media.

I think mostly I use mine for Social Media.

But today I’d like to try to do some good. And it’s something that will cost you nothing, except for a little time (a very little) and the payoff is objectively small, but subjectively huge.

Chez Bez is a dad. He’s a blogger. He is a father of four kids, including a newborn, and with only one working vehicle in the family he is often forced to beg for rides or walk to work. It’s a 6.6 mile walk.

I’ve done my share of walking, with and without Erin in the backpack, and 6.6 miles isn’t a horrible distance, but it’s not easy either. And it’s especially not easy if you are running even a little bit late for work. Imagine running late for work for 2 hours, worrying the entire time about making it.

A fellow blogger, Jeffreham, is trying to help out. He is trying to win Chez Bez a scooter by entering a video contest. You can help him do this simply by registering at the contest website and voting his video up on this page (and the other videos down on their pages). Look for “Jeffreham Prestonian”.

I don’t know Chez Bez. I don’t know Jeffreham. I don’t know this contest website (www.if.net). I am choosing to believe that Chez Bez needs a scooter, that Jeffreham will give the scooter to him if he wins, and that If.Net is not a useless spam-site. I choose to act as though these things are true because I went over a year with only one vehicle, walking or taking public transit to most places while I was home with Erin, and I have extraordinary sympathy for a dad who is in that situation and who also has to work. I never had to be anywhere at a regular time. I lived without pressure. He doesn’t.

So, help if you want. I’m using my powers for Good today rather than just for Social Media. (I only rarely use them for Evil.)

And a special thanks to MonsterMash40 for brining this dad, his need, his benefactor, and this opportunity to my attention.

Against Beauty Pageants

2009-05-03T01:03:00.001-07:00

I was reading this thing on the Huffington Post about how the Miss California pageant organization helped or encouraged or arranged or paid for Miss California to get breast implants before the Miss U.S.A. pageant. But the weird thing for me was that while the official being interviewed about the breast implants was defending the help to Miss California (“Oh, we are concerned with her overall self-esteem….”) he also listed off other things contestants do to get an edge, especially during the swimsuit competition.

The interviewer asked, pointedly, “Wouldn’t she have a better chance of winning if she were more proportioned?” That is, wouldn’t she have a better shot if she didn’t have implants?

To which the official replied: “Well of course she does. But there’s plenty of ways of getting to more proportion without doing breast implants.”

I want to leave aside how confusing this answer is for a second because the very next thing the official said really threw me for a loop.

“Many of the girls use chicken cutlets.”

I don’t understand why this is even an option in a beauty pageant. Why doesn’t anyone say anything? Are they really that much of a joke that women can stuff poultry down their tops and saunter onto the stage with a Hey, look at my perfectly proportioned totally-not-enhanced-by-poultry torso?

I mentioned this statement by the pageant official to Emily, and her reply was nowhere near as outraged as I was. In fact, she seemed to think it was funny that I cared at all that the pageant enforce some kind of standard.

“Where do you draw the line?” she asked. “Do you tell contestants they can’t dye their hair?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess…”

But, really? It sure seems like this is a clear case in which we should just say no. No to the chicken cutlets. No meat products allowed during a beauty pageant. No murdering helpless animals and stuffing them down bikini tops.

Just no. It makes beauty pageants even more of a joke than they are.

*********************************************************************************

I pressed Emily again on this whole abuse of poultry thing. “But look, even though we can’t draw a line I think we should just keep the poultry out of the pageant.”

“It’s not chicken. Dumbass.”

Guys, apparently “chicken cutlet” is a euphemism for a gel-insert or something.

The more you know. *rainbow*

There’s no crying in hockey.

2009-05-02T11:29:00.001-07:00

My darling monkey, climber of reckless, jumper of daring.

She clambered up the back of her high chair, purposed to dive headlong into the seat. I watched hockey, attending the flying bodies and brutal hits and players getting to their feet with blood streaming from their foreheads and waving off trainers. “I’m fine,” I can see them mutter before getting ten stitches and returning to the game.

Her foot lost its footing on a foothold, and down tumbling she came, tiny butt cushioning her collapse, lollipop head snapping backward to ring off the glass door leading out to the patio.

It was a dull ring, a low tone, but louder than the cheers and whistles and slapshot sounds coming from the television. I turned my head to examine her predicament with every corner of my eyes.

Face scrunched. Certain that crying was warranted. “Dat scare you?” she asked.

“Did that scare you?” I repeated, clarifying.

“Yeah,” came her breaking reply. Taking my comprehension as confirmation, she let the tears come. “Are you cwying?”

Often, usually, her hurts are scripted: Did that scare you? Are you okay? Are you sad? Are you crying? Let me see. You’re okay. Dust yourself off. Let me kiss it. You’re okay. You’re okay.

This time I watched her tear up and I did not offer to examine her gaping wound.

She stared into all the corners of my eyes, replacing conviction with hesitation. Then she turned into a hockey player.

“I want TRY AGAIN!”

Nesting

2009-05-01T13:45:00.001-07:00

I don’t really understand the link between hormones, brains, and behaviour.

I don’t understand what it is about the change in brain chemistry during pregnancy that makes a woman like my wife suddenly need to make CD jewel case covers at two in the morning. I mean that although I understand that the chemical change is supposed to be responsible for this sudden craftiness I don’t understand the mechanism at all. How does the brain figure out that what it needs in order to satisfy it’s new chemical overlords (Hail Chemicals!) is to decorate things.

I also don’t understand the connection between pregnancy and sudden midnight acts of baking (with Rice Crispies, a delicious cereal product made by Kellogg, as someone pointed out on my last post and really what that means is that I owe Safeway a dollar because they mistakenly gave me a dollar off the Rice Crispies with my General Mills Buy 3 Get $1 Off each coupon.) I also don’t understand the connection between chemistry and inspiration. She baked Rice Crispy Treats with regular marshmallows (Air-puffed) and the Yellow Moons, Purple Goats, Green Broccoli, and Blue Shamrocks from Lucky Charms (a General Mills cereal that I’ve enjoyed since I was a wee lad. Best when accompanied by a cup of Lucerne Vitamin D milk and eaten out of bowls purchased from IKEA.)

But I especially don’t understand the connection between chemistry and cleaning (with Seventh Generation cleaning products purchased at Target).

In particular, I don’t understand the connection between her hormone levels fluctuating and my sudden need to clean the kitchen.

(Editor's Note: Yes, I cannot spell "Rice Krispies." This is yet another reason that I will never actually get paid to do product placement posts.)

Cereal

2009-04-30T22:02:00.001-07:00

Emily, 10 months pregnant and gravid as…a very gravid woman…sent me to the store tonight for cereal. Being the discerning consumer that she is she only chooses the most nutritious and delicious cereals made by the most ethical, socially responsible, and environmentally friendly companies.

“I want Lucky Charms. And Cinnamon Toast Crunch. And Rice Crispies.”

Realizing that I had a coupon for one and only one cereal company I asked: “Are those all General Mills cereals? I hope so. Because General Mills is the only cereal company that Backpacking Dad endorses. Also, I have a coupon for $1 off if I buy three. They knew you’d be asking.”

“I also want whatever you need to make Rice Crispy Treats.”

“Would that be Air-puffed Marshmallows and Land-O-Lakes butter? Because although I don’t have a coupon for them, I am happy to purchase products from those companies.”

“Just go.”

I went. I used a coupon. I returned.

“Is that an hourglass?”

“You mean inside the Cinnamon Toast Crunch that I purchased in the convenient 1lb box?”

“Yes.”

Emily wolfed down a bowl of delicious Cinnamon Toast Crunch and came back for seconds.

“I don’t think I can control time with this hourglass. That’s kind of a rip-off.”

I could see why she would think that. But, not wanting the great General Mills thought of as less than considerate, I offered:

“Call the Enterprise.”

“What? This hourglass calls the Enterprise?”

“No. But there’s a communicator in the Lucky Charms.”

And she went away, yet another satisfied General Mills customer.

General Mills. They sure do make cereal.

Debate: Gay Adoption

2009-04-28T21:34:00.001-07:00

This post represents a deliberate attempt to enflame the passions of the internet and drive traffic to this blog so that I can make tons of cash from all of my advertisers.

I would also like to say (and this may sound a bit off-topic, but it has to be said): Pepsi is the most spectacularly tasty beverage ever made and Coke really can’t hold a candle to it.

Now, to the issue at hand:

I read somewhere in a report from someone to some political body in Europe that if homosexual couples are allowed to marry, and thereby gain all of the protections and rights of such a relationship, that it would be way easier for them to adopt kids. And that, in the opinion of the group responsible for this report (I don’t know who they are, but I read it on the internet so just trust me: it is very very credible), this was the primary reason to not allow homosexual couples to marry. Because we shouldn’t, in the opinion of the writers of the report, make it as easy for gay couples to adopt; that a homosexual marriage would not, in general, be a good environment in which to raise children. Maybe some gay couples would be great co-parents, but they’d be the exception, and the rule requires that this be discouraged. So: no gay marriage because no gay adoption.

This argument was not deployed during California’s Proposition 8 campaign. Not that I recall, anyway. Maybe it was. I’m not a very good payer of attention. But if it wasn’t, why not?

Is the premise true (that as a rule a gay marriage is not a good environment in which to raise children?)

Is the alternate premise true (that it is better to raise children in heterosexual families and so, as a rule, gay adoption should be impeded or at least the process more selective?)

Is the Precautionary Principle of any help here?

Do you know what else is awesome (sorry, again a little tangential)? Huggies diapers. They have Mickey Mouse on them and Erin loves Mickey Mouse.

Here’s my two cents: the opinion that an average gay marriage poses a greater risk to child development than an average heterosexual marriage is based on no respectable empirical data. Why? Because gay marriages have been so few and far between and so recent that there is no data set to sample from for us to be able to tell if the kids are turning out worse or being damaged in some particularly gay way.

And deploying the Precautionary Principle without understanding what parameters need to regulate it (I have a friend who does nothing but think about the Precautionary Principle all day long and how it is misapplied all over the world and particularly in international environmental regulations) is overzealous. At that extreme level of precaution we should also be building space defenses against alien invasion…just in case: We have no data that says aliens are likely to invade, but if they did it would be really bad.

As for a priori reasons to think that children of gay couples will, necessarily (that’s what it would mean if the reason is a priori) be damaged…what? On what grounds would we think that they’d have to turn out worse or damaged? I don’t mean on what empirical grounds, because we already know we have none of those (see above re: poverty of data sets). I mean on what logical, conceptual grounds. What is it about the concepts of parenthood, family, homosexuality, and childhood that would tell us that kids with gay parents would be worse off, as children and later as adults?

Toyota makes some pretty good cars and SUVs. We only buy Toyotas.

What do you think? Do you think, like a crazy person, that letting The Gays adopt kids is worse than the Holocaust, which, according to you, never happened? Or do you think that every loving couple who wants to raise children is perfectly suited to do so (which is what you should think if you are at all intelligent and not a total racist)? You are either one or the other. You are either a crazy Holocaust denier racist or a rational human being.

Which one are you? Please explain your reasons.

Also, please buy Pepsi, Huggies, and Toyotas.

A Birthday in Suburbia

2009-04-27T19:49:00.001-07:00

In the end even though she was only turning two we invited something close to eighty people.

In the beginning even though she was only two we held a joint party with her best friend.

In the middle even though the cake had been cut and served a second wave of guests arrived, extending the party out for another hour.

In the beginning even though it was her birthday party we insisted on No Gifts.

In the middle we saw that some people had brought gifts along anyway, and we knew Erin would love them like she loves everything else in her piles of toys and books stored on the edge of a dining room without a table.

In the end we raised 228 lbs of food for the Second Harvest Food Bank.

In the middle there were bubbles everywhere.

In the end there were once-more empty tables.

In the beginning Emily decided to bake Cup Cones for the party.

In the beginning we wondered how to throw a suburban birthday party for a kid who is just as happy to wander on her own as to see her friends from around town.

In the middle we were surprised at how much fun it all was.

And in the end our little pink butterfly had a pretty good birthday party.

Happy Birthday, Baby Girl

2009-04-23T21:59:00.001-07:00

A second birthday. My first daughter’s second birthday. My daughter’s first second birthday.

Not that she’s planning on having a second second birthday.

She’s smart and funny and cares about other people, and she also sometimes only likes them because they have macaroni.

She’s beautiful and perfect and I’m trying to teach her how to say “My irrational intractability is infuriating to my parents.”

She’s sweet and loves bedtime and hates being interrupted as she goes about her business.

She’s my daughter. She’s my first. She’s my baby girl. She is always my baby girl. Even when she tries to bite my face off or scratch my eyes out. She’s the most exuberant person I know.

Happy Birthday, Baby Girl.

This planet sucks. Let’s get a new one.

2009-04-22T00:32:00.001-07:00

I think that despite my social liberalism I’m kind of a “I don’t give a crappist” when it comes to the planet.

No. Not so extreme. I’m a “roll my eyes at you in your Prius while you wear your hemp shirtist” when it comes to environmentalism.

I love the world. I don’t love people. People are often deplorable to one another for stupid reasons. I’m sorry I didn’t vote to fund more protection of the California Wild Peanut Ant. It didn’t feel important when I lined it up against other things. Stop egging my house with your organic eggs.

I’m the worst member the Green Party has. Because I don’t sign on to the belief that environmentalism is a political philosophy that ought to determine how we behave toward one another (and that’s what it is, in the long run, since it would tell us where money goes, who is lauded and despised, which actions are permitted and which resisted by force). Because I, unlike probably most people on the planet, think that the point is to go out.

The point is to move. Maybe to return here, from time to time, as the sun cooperates and doesn’t annihilate the planet. But the point is motion, the constant rebellion against entropy, the revolution against stasis.

So while it’s cool not to burn down the rainforest, that’s not the top priority. The top priority is survival.

Environmentalists know this too, and they will present their arguments in terms of our own species’ survival. And it’s just true that if we wreck ecosystems we are dooming ourselves, if we haven’t figured out how to leave.

If we haven’t figured out how to leave we will fight population wars as the civilized West Greens itself right into a position of self-defense against countries who over-pollute and over-populate. And all the work we’ll have put in to reducing our waste won’t mean a thing, because now we have to treat other people like animals in order to save ourselves.

…

We’re never going to leave, are we?

Oh well. Best get to recycling then, and hope for the best.

Happy Earth Day.

How many kids do you want?

2009-04-16T23:31:00.001-07:00

When she asks this question I often answer: “five.”

I don’t know that I’m serious. But I don’t know I’m not. I don’t know what the right answer is, I don’t know if I’m hiding my real answer or if I even have a real answer. But some questions and statements require a response and I always provide a response.

Emily knows this about me by now.

“But if we have five,” she protests, mildly, “we won’t be able to afford to send them all to college.”

(pause)

“Don’t say something stupid.”

Who? Me?

Lose Your Excuse

2009-04-15T07:37:00.001-07:00

Emily and I were watching tv the other minute and saw a Lose Your Excuse ad called “April”. It shows a young girl being interviewed by a young boy in an hard-hitting reporter style about the cell phone charger left plugged into the wall socket.

“That’s not my charger. I don’t even have a cell phone,” April protests before being betrayed by a ringing from her pocket.

“Unplug Phone Chargers” comes the admonition at the close of the ad.

“See,” offers Emily, “now that’s brilliant.”

“Compared to what?”

“Compared to, you know, ‘Don’t run your dishwasher during this hour’ or ‘Compost!’ You have to be kind of a greenie already to pay attention to that kind of stuff…”

“You mean the Earth Hour stuff?”

“Yeah. But this? This is what people need. Unplug your phone chargers. And what about if I just used some toilet paper to wipe my nose? Is it better to flush it or throw it away? A short spot that tells me the answer to that question will stick with me.”

“My cell phone charger is still plugged in.”

“Yeah, mine is too.”

…

“But, I’m unplugging it right now. And I’m not going to compost.”

I think the Environment gets to call this one a win.

Because I’m a good dad…

2009-04-13T22:38:00.001-07:00

Because I’m a good dad I took Erin to the mall to see the Easter Bunny.

Because I’m a good dad I bypassed the time-wasting “Sign Up Here!!!” tables advertising a hunt for plastic Easter eggs around the mall; Erin would have no fun looking for them.

Because I’m a good dad I ignored the “Sign Up Here!!!!” table in front of the Easter Bunny’s little grotto, privileging time with Easter Bunny over opportunities to participate in “Fun! Mall! Things! Give us your money!”

Because I’m a good dad I noted the very, very short line, over on the side, to get in to see the Easter Bunny, and I stepped into it.

Because I’m a good dad Erin was in the backpack and not running around in a crowd of kids who were focused on Easter eggs and not toddlers underfoot.

Because I’m a good dad I took Erin out of the backpack and plopped her down with the Easter Bunny to take some pictures.

Because I’m a good dad I offered to buy a picture. When the camera dude, who had given out a coloured, hard-boiled egg and a plastic bendy-rabbit toy as we entered, told me the big photo I wanted was $20 and that they didn’t take credit cards, I replied with “What can I get for $10?” that being all I had in my wallet. Because he was a good camera dude he said: “You can have the big one for ten bucks.” Thanks camera dude. You can’t always be a good dad on your own; sometimes you need help from camera dudes handing out coloured, hard-boiled eggs and plastic bendy-rabbit toys.

Because I’m a good dad I plopped Erin back into the backpack with her coloured, hard-boiled egg and plastic bendy-rabbit toy and high-tailed it out of there. I had accomplished my objective: Go to the mall and see the Easter Bunny. I was a Navy Seal, an Airborne Ranger, precise, focused and competent. Because I’m a good dad I use military metaphors a lot.

Because I’m a good dad I made it halfway out of the mall before the protests began. “My bunny!! I want bunny! My puh-ple bunny!!!” So close. “Oh, kid, we’re not going back to see the Easter Bunny again. You saw him; you took a picture with him; now it’s time to go to a park!” (Because I’m a good dad I use bribery/distraction/misdirection to get out of trouble.)

Because I’m a good dad I noticed that she was really pissed off about leaving the mall. “Bunny!!!!!!! I want puh-ple bunny!!!!!!!!” Pointing back into the mall densely packed with screaming kids I actually contemplated going back in to see the Easter Bunny. Because I’m a good dad I didn’t give in.

Because I’m a good, dad when the shaking, shivering, tears, and mad pointing got a little out of hand I considered that she was in fact talking about some bunny she saw in a storefront that I had gone by too quickly. “Did you see a purple bunny somewhere kid?” “Yeah.” “Where? Show me where.” “Right der.” Her vague pointing back into the mall was entirely unhelpful though. I retraced my steps for a few yards to see if I could spot this novel bunny, but I didn’t see anything. Just the act of turning around seemed to have calmed Erin though. Because I’m a good dad I took this momentary relief to complete our exeunt from the Mall of Infinite Bunny Distraction and returned to the car.

Because I’m a good dad I removed the backpack to take Erin out before buckling her into her carseat for the drive home (safety first, folks; don’t drive with a kid on your back, or a kid in a backpack, or leave a kid at the mall instead of buckling her into a car seat).

Because I’m a good dad I took her coloured, hard-boiled egg out of her hand before taking her out of the backpack so it wouldn’t get jostled while shifting her from backpack to carseat.

Because I’m a good dad I also noticed that her plastic bendy-rabbit toy was missing.

Because I’m a good dad I replayed all of her pathetic, heart-broken protests in my mind. She had been crying about her lost bunny the entire time we were walking out of the mall, and I had ignored her or misunderstood her, or interpreted her as whining when she was feeling a despair of loss that I can only imagine now.

“Oh, baby. Were you telling me that you had dropped your bunny back there in the mall?”

“Ya.”

“Oh, baby girl. I’m so sorry. Let’s go look for it.”

“Ya!”

Because I’m a bad dad I loaded her back into the backpack, head hung low in shame, and frantically returned to the mall to retrace steps and look for a plastic bendy-rabbit toy in a crowd of children who were being told to look for special things all over the mall and stick them in their baskets.

It was hopeless.

Because I’m a bad dad I gave Erin her coloured, hard-boiled egg to hold during our mad search for the only thing in the world she wanted more than that coloured, hard-boiled egg. Because I’m a bad dad I didn’t know it was a coloured, hard-boiled egg; I assumed it was plastic or candy or something. Because I’m a bad dad I never looked very closely at it.

Because I’m a bad dad I let her drop it during our mad search. That was how I discovered it was a hard-boiled egg. It cracked, shell spider-webbing and chipping apart, and because I’m a bad dad I could think of nothing better to do than to pick it up, hand it back to Erin over my shoulder, and gently suggest she not eat it. I couldn’t handle more despair.

Because I’m a bad dad I had cost her her two great trophies. Because I’m a bad dad my surgical strike on the mall lasted three times as long as it should have.

Because I’m a bad dad I returned to the Easter Bunny grotto, and approached the camera dude again.

“Hey, do you have another one of those pink plastic bendy-rabbits?”

Because he is the dude who helps dads be good dads, he whipped out another one immediately and handed it over without a beat.

“Thanks.”

Because I’m a good dad I gave Erin her plastic bendy-rabbit and proceeded once again out of the mall. Because I’m a good dad I also invited her to throw away her cracked, coloured, hard-boiled egg instead of eating it.

But because I’m a bad dad I would like to point out that the bunny was, in fact, pink. Not purple.

Pink.

Because I’m a good dad I’m going to concentrate on teaching Erin the difference.

Happy Easter

2009-04-12T09:50:00.001-07:00

Even though around here today is mostly about eating ham, or finding chocolate eggs, or sitting on the Easter Bunny’s lap and asking him for a new bike or Nintendo Wii while he repeats “I’m not Santa” over and over again…

Happy Easter, from our family to yours.

Oh, and Easter Bunny? I cleaned the chimney just for you.

What Can You Do?

2009-04-10T15:39:00.001-07:00

Maddie Spohr

2009-04-08T12:10:00.001-07:00

Dear Maddie,

I welcome you to my dreams. I am sorry we have to meet there.

Parable

2009-04-05T21:31:00.001-07:00

I spent the end of the week and much of the weekend dealing with computer issues.

My computer was playing with some “friends” I don’t know and I don’t know where their parents live or if they only drink organic water and wear hemp shoes like all good parents do, or if they let their computers drink from the tap and spend Save-African-Babies-money on Nike shoes. All I know is my computer came home from hanging out behind the mall and it reeked of some kind of smoke and it was scratching its arms and fidgeting. Eyes totally bloodshot.

I knew some serious intervention was in order. Medicine was no good. Whatever the strange computers had passed along, whatever new habits they had instilled, they were clearly bacterial and addictive in nature. Anti-virals had no effect, at least not after the fact. I was going to have to send my computer off to boarding school, and hope that it came back a changed laptop, pure and innocent again, ready for the impressing of hard codes of conduct so that it would never succumb to the influences of nefarious computers ever again.

But before the drastic boarding school option, a boot camp of character formation, could be implemented I needed to pack away all of my computer’s stuff, so that it would all be here when it came back, glowing and shining and with no memory of its trauma. But the damned tweaker computers had stolen the keys to the closet where I keep all of my computer’s stuff. So not only could I not pack away what my computer was wearing and carrying with it when it got home from the mall that night, I couldn’t even get into the closet to see what was in there. For all I knew the tweakers had burned it all.

There was some very important stuff in that closet. There was plenty of important stuff in my computer’s pockets too, but the closet was important.

Damned tweakers.

Instead of packing away the personal effects in the closet then, I had to hold my computer down and steal the stuff out of its pockets and shove it into small ziploc baggies. Occasionally my computer would have a seizure, and I’d have to spend time reviving it before I could continue to raid its pockets. But eventually I had everything I needed.

And I sent my computer to bootcamp. It came back all “yes sir, no sir” and I couldn’t wait to unload those ziploc baggies.

But I was still pretty pissed about that closet. It was full of stuff, and I was pretty panicked about it.

Some help from a friend, Runtime, and I was able to drill a hole in the wall next to the closet and slowly pull the stuff out. Some of it I gave back to my computer, because it was being so very polite and respectful. The rest I had to pack into a wall safe I spent too much money on (the tweakers had changed the combination on me, so I couldn’t use it until my computer came back from boot camp and confessed the new combination) when I was still trying to avoid the ziploc baggies, and into, yep, more ziploc baggies.

I have ziploc baggies everywhere full of my computer’s belongings.

Contemplating what to do about this closet now (should I buy a new closet? Try to get that door open?) I invited another friend, Acronis, over and he said “Well, here’s your problem: Those tweakers stole all the shelves, and your computer’s stuff is just lying around on the floor. Here, I’ll build some more shelves and put the stuff back where it was, and then you’ll even be able to open the closet door to boot.”

Runtime gave me peace of mind about the stuff, but I really wish I had invited Acronis over in the first place. Seriously, I have ziploc baggies everywhere. And the hole in the wall was completely unnecessary.

But, on the other hand, my computer is being very solicitous right now. And it’s promised to never play with those tweakers ever again. I don’t know if I can trust it…computers will be computers, and addicts are really good at getting others to get high with them so they can feel normal or in control. But I hope I’ve instilled some good core values now and my computer will know, not to just say “no”, but to say “You won’t drag me in to your misery.”

I hope. All I can do is hope. The world is full of evil bastards.

Commitment

2009-03-29T19:54:00.001-07:00

I think it’s possible for the very same person to be “the marrying type” and “a commitment-phobe”.

For instance, I moved across the continent for some girl when I was nineteen, married her at twenty-one, and didn’t blink when we found out Erin would be making her presence known.

But for the life of me, I can’t commit to bringing the free yellow pages in off the stoop. I walk past it at least twice every day and can neither bring it to the recycling with me, nor pick it up and put it next to the phone.

It’s too much pressure.

I’m not as weird as this makes me seem.

2009-03-28T12:41:00.001-07:00

I can’t always think of things to do with my time. But thankfully, Jenny the Bloggess is doing some of my thinking for me. I ripped off her idea for time-wasting and made a movie.

I’m not really as interested in ritual suicide as you might think, though.

I don't care what you say. I get to see the most adorable girl in the world every day.

2009-03-27T01:00:00.000-07:00

Photo courtesy of Disneyland Grandma, who graciously babysat for an entire weekend in January as we ran away for our 10th anniversary. Also, I totally edited out the huge snot trail coming out of her right nostril.

Party Politics

2009-03-25T16:41:00.001-07:00

Erin is turning two years old next month.

Now she can enter the Terrible Twos. I’m looking forward to comparing the Terrible Twos with the Whiny One-and-a-Halfs, the Tantrumy Twenty-Month-Olds, and the No-No-No-Nineteen-Month-Olds.

Erin’s second birthday will be both more and less outlandish than her first. Her first, the actual day, was spent at Disneyland. The day before she had a small “here, smash a cupcake” party with her baby bff and a small group of baby friends who have been a circle of friends forever. (Not their choice, of course. But until she moves out I’m going to be choosing her friends based on how cool the parents are. Dad has a golf cart to run errands? Sorry, you can’t be friends with Jane. Mom has an Iroc-Z that she stole from an ex-boyfriend in high school when he dumped her at a Weezer concert? Yes, yes you can play with Dark Galadriel.)

Her actual party was a family event held down in SoCal, apart from her baby friends, and mostly attended by people she had to crane her neck to see properly. There were jellyfish decorations everywhere, and a jellyfish cake, and I made some jellyfish trivia game and…I don’t even remember what else. I think there were jellyfish toys to go home with for the kids who were there.

It was elaborate. But the effort and guest list made sense. Just family and old family friends.

This year we are staying home and we are having a park party. We have booked some picnic tables and we are co-hosting the party with the family of Erin’s closest baby friend, a little girl who is one day older than Erin. And now the logistics get crazy.

Not only because of the “how many from your side?” kind of arrangements (which I don’t really care about), but also the “Who, in our wide realm of toddler acquaintances do we invite?” kind of questions.

Of course all of the baby friends who were at her first not-party. And some family who can make the trip up north. And who else?

There are people with kids who we’ve spent a lot of time with, and whose parties we’ve attended. Last year we didn’t have to wonder if we should invite them, because we were out of town. Now, do we keep it low-key? Do we make it a broader toddler-community event? Our two families overlap with a lot of acquaintances and maybe-friends (like, we’d be friends if the opportunity allowed, but opportunity never does…), so does sharing a maybe-friend between two families elevate that person to friend-friend status and demand an invitation? Further, most of the people who are definitely getting invitations also know a lot of the same people, and might even be closer to them than we are, and now it’s all political.

That will probably sort itself out. I’m leaning toward sending out invitations to everyone whose e-mail address I can track down and who we have spent significant time with, even if it’s been a long, long time since we’ve seen them. I can’t think of anyone I wouldn’t want to have at the party. Is that too liberal?

(Oh, crap. What do we do about gifts? Will this just seem like I’m trying to get more crap for Erin? Trying to get invites to more parties so that we can remain in the “scene”? Hell, this really is political.)

But you know what? Erin hasn’t spent a ton of time with a lot of those kids in a long while. She has spent a ton of time with her friends at “school”. Two months ago I’d have just said “hell no” to school invites, because I don’t really know many of the parents at all well, and it’s not as though Erin would be wondering where her classmates were. But we do kind of know a couple of the parents. Do we just invite them? I might think “Of course” and that there would be no further discussion about it. But some of the parents passed out “hand made” valentines last month.

Hand made. They cut out little hearts and cards and dragged their child’s hand through paint and glitter and whatever else and dropped the cards in the cubbies at school. Come on. That’s not about the kids at all.

Is it?

But if it isn’t about the kids, then it’s about the parents, wanting to build a group or live vicariously or keep up with the Joneses or whatever but the end result of all of the wondering about “Why valentines?” is that not inviting everyone in the class, especially someone who dished out a valentine, is controversy if we invite anyone at all. It’s “not participating in the community”, or the game, or the fantasy or whatever and that means opinions and talk and gossiping and…then Erin doesn’t get into Stanford after high school because one of these parents will turn out to be the Dean of Admissions in a dozen years. Or Erin won’t get a job at Google because one of the parents will have become CEO between now and then. Or she won’t get accepted into nun school because the head nun is the aunt of one of the snubbed kids. Or she won’t be the lead guitarist of Copperhead Death Kabob because the bassist didn’t get to eat cupcakes at the park with her when he was two, and his mom is fronting all of the band’s touring expenses.

I may be letting my imagination get the better of me here.

Further complicating the matter is that the co-host parents, Erin’s little bff’s parents, are thinking about inviting kids from their daycare, because, quite reasonably, those are the kids their daughter knows best. And they know the parents to some extent, or are at least part of a community with those parents (it’s a sort of work-specific daycare) that would be benefited or harmed to an even greater extent depending on whether the kids were invited or not.

What. In the hell. Am I. Going. To do?

Who doesn’t get invited? How did you decide?

Because, frankly, I don’t want to make a hundred cupcakes. With butterflies on them. (It’s a whole butterfly thing this time around. I promise: lasers and dinosaurs next year.)

I need some help.

Academic Success

2009-03-22T09:40:00.001-07:00

I don’t know what the secret is.

But I may be the only person in history to write his dissertation the night before it is due. I seem to be constitutionally incapable of starting a paper early.

I’d rather Erin not use her father as a model for success in school.

Study hard. (Do not watch Battlestar Galactica while you should be reading papers.)

Prepare thoroughly. (Do not figure out at the last minute what your research topic is going to be, and then hope the books you checked out are in any way relevant.)

Ask for help. (Do not pretend that only the professor is smart enough to understand what you are saying.)

Take lots of notes. (Do not underline phrases in books without noting what is important to you about them. “Purple rutabaga” will make no sense to you out of context.)

Review all of those notes. (Or else, what’s the point?)

Pay attention. (Knowing the plot to every Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, while valuable, is usually not going to help you do long division. So maybe you shouldn’t try to reconstruct the episode where Buffy’s mom is dating John Ritter while you are supposed to be learning about the difference between determinism, fatalism, and pre-destination.)

I Still Have A Sense of Humour

2009-03-18T19:27:00.001-07:00

While I wilily while, Erin stubbornly stubs.

I think I hit my head on some low, overhanging, dark matter the other day.

Erin, Erin, quite contrarian, how does your garden grow?

“I no like it, garden!!!”

“Ok, kid. I’ll take it away.”

“Garden?? Garden?? I. Want. Garden?”

“Kid, you just said you didn’t want it.”

“I want garden!”

Not really about a garden. But it is about a garden, in the sense that it’s about any damned thing, any arbitrary thing; it’s a general truth that Erin love-hates everything right now. So it could be a garden.

“Ho-ny?”

“Kid, I’m telling you. There’s a ‘g’ in that word. Also, you just threw your food across the room, so I don’t believe you.”

“Hung-y? I want dinner?”

“I’m not falling for it again.”

At bedtime it’s a struggle into pajamas, then some quiet time with some milk that she doesn’t drink; she just holds the cup tightly against her chest, pretending to sip every few minutes. Half an hour later and she knows it’s time for bed.

But I’m not finished with the milk, guys. You can’t put me to bed until I’m finished with the milk.

She understands this pattern, but not the reason for it. She has mistaken a correlation for a cause. You do it too. Don’t pretend you don’t. Toddlers reason fallaciously.

A fanatical protest against bedtime, and I hold her in my arms as I click the light off all by myself. Tonight she doesn’t offer to help, so I have to figure it out on my own.

“Milk? Milk? I want milk?”

“No, kid. You so didn’t want that milk two minutes ago.”

“Thirsty? Milk? Water? Water?” Anything? Can I have anything, guys?

I admit, I cave a little. Maybe she is parched. I give her a sippy cup with some water in it, and lay her down in her crib.

“Goodnight Erin.”

“Daddy! Daddy? I want out? Mommy? I want owuht!”

“Goodnight, baby girl. I love you.”

I close the door behind me, then endure a fifteen minute list of demands from the leprechaun-sized terrorist in the next room.

“No milk! No water! Water? Yes? Daddy? I want piggy! I want bunny? I want lion. Want giraffe.”

Most of the items on her list are, in fact, in the crib with her. I hold out.

I stay silent throughout the self-destruction happening, the embittered, overtired cries for attention.

Then I hear, I swear I hear, I swear I hear my frustrated, darling daughter, my overtired offspring, complain:

“Fucking bunny.”

Then silence.

Family Guy, Maturity, and Conscience

2009-03-15T23:32:00.001-07:00

Something has changed.

I was a happy Adult Swim viewer a few years ago, discovering Family Guy for the first time during the stoner hour on Cartoon Network every night, when Fox Television rejects were resurrected like Lazarus by a geeky Jesus. And I was a happy Fox Television viewer when Family Guy was resurrected like Jesus, seemingly out of its own being, because of the good it had contributed to the world, the sacrifice it had made for the cultural benefit of us all: the satirical lens focused on everyone, and actions or trends were ridiculed with the fierceness Christ displayed in the Temple when he discovered the unconscionable practices going on behind those doors.

The show has appeared to lose something in its new incarnation, as though instead of being happy with the time it was given to do more good works it is desperate to prove that it deserves more than a short coda. The new jokes are concentrated stoner-joy, but at an hour the stoners aren’t paying attention to. And I think desperation has sunk in. Like South Park, which decided that it wasn’t enough to push arbitrary cultural and political boundaries and instead began trying to trigger America’s gag reflex with a Paris Hilton-Mister Slave gross off, Family Guy has become too hard to watch.

I’m not talking about the extended Conway Twitty performance on tonight’s episode (either a desperate time-fill for a show whose writers are dry, or a genuine joke for a show whose writers are boring). I didn’t even see that part of tonight’s episode, because I had already turned the show off.

Tonight Seth McFarlane decided that it would be great (hilarious? controversial? thought-provoking? satirical?) to joke about Peter shaking his first son, Peter Jr., to death because he wanted the baby to be quiet.

I couldn’t watch any more of it after that.

Although I’ve been writing this as though what’s changed is the show, really it’s me. I doubt that three years ago I’d have seen that segment and reacted at all severely. But it’s clear that I am no longer Family Guy’s audience. Because Seth McFarlane and his writers don’t have respect for the same things that I do. Maybe we agree about a wide range of cultural practices that can be mocked or satirized. Maybe we agree about politicians and entertainers being fair game for ridicule. But I can’t hear a shaken-baby joke and think “hilarious!” or “yeah, stick it to those parents, taking infant mortality so seriously! Lighten up.” It’s clear that I don’t have the same sense of humour anymore.

This isn’t a “come boycott Family Guy” with me message. It’s not a “Family Guy needs to change!” message. I don’t care, at all, what Seth McFarlane has to say on his show anymore; I’m not starting a crusade to get it off the air. I’m not even sure that the joke itself is unconscionable or anything so dramatic. It just occurs to me, now, that I am a different person and this is part of what it means to have a child of my own.

It means I laugh when my daughter says “ribbit!” for no reason whatsoever.

Discount Ice Cream

2009-03-15T20:57:00.001-07:00

For some reason I owned a copy of humourist P.J. O’Rourke’s Modern Manners when I was in high school. I read it. I read it more than once. I laughed, because he’s kind of funny. (Recently he’s become hilarious and turned his eye on Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, if I’m remembering that Daily Show interview correctly.)

One chapter/lesson in the book, and the only one I remember with any clarity, was entitled “Never Give Your Cat Cocaine.”

Tonight, because we had a 2-for-1 coupon for Baskin & Robbins we learned “Never Give Your Toddler Ice Cream At Night.” It’s not that Erin didn’t love the Oreo Cookie ice cream she ate (all by her going-away-to-college-soon self), because she did. And it’s not that she scratched the hell out of the drapes (as a cocained cat might do). But she transformed, in the space of four bites, from mildly “hey-this-is-interesting-and-this-is-interesting-and-this-is-interesting Erin” into “Dad-I-can’t-believe-you’re-eating-my-ice-cream-o-m-g-O-M-G-Waaaaaaaah Erin”. She calmed down almost immediately, but then she became ridiculous.

The entire car ride home from the ice cream parlour (I’m not certain there’s a “u” in there for Canadians, but I like to err on the side of caution. Word up, Canada.) was one long staccato monologue from my suddenly completely wired tweaker daughter.

“Yes? Yes no. No nap. No. Yes. Doggy. Doggy. Doggy. Mickey Mouse. Mickey. Doggy. Woof. Woof. Woof. Dinosaur!!”

And I thought “Didn’t I just read somewhere that the whole “don’t give your kids sweets before bed” thing was bogus? That the time of day didn’t matter, it was something to do with over-sugaring your kids overall that would wire them?”

I’m no scientist, but this sure seemed like pretty good evidence against. My daughter was incapable of thinking still, much less sitting still.

Erin has always been excellent about bedtime. I think since the third night we put her down on her own (she cried for the first 20 minutes or so the first couple of nights, but adjusted stunningly quickly) she’s been falling asleep all on her own. She’s demanded on several occasions that we “just put me to bed already, guys. I’m exhausted!”

But it sure looked like ice cream before bed was going to be our undoing.

We arrived home, and changed her into her pajamas, gave her some milk, and sat down to watch some Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. She calmed immediately, then cuddled in with Emily in the chair. Calm as could be.

Hmm. So much for my debunking of that thing I read on the internet at some point last week.

“Ribbit! Ribbit! Ribbit!!!!”

Ah, that’s more like it. Time to hide the drapes.

Orange County Road Trip: part two

2009-03-13T16:40:00.001-07:00

We left Anaheim late in the afternoon, skipping Erin’s normal nap because she was having fun with grandma and her cousins and because we’re not stupid: Why waste naptime in the hotel when we could enjoy a blissful drive through L.A. that didn’t involve repeated demands for Finding Nemo?

Erin did sleep through most of the stupid Orange Crush traffic (on a Sunday? People are crazy. Where are you going? Stop going to my house.), but she woke up twice, dreamily:

“Big hug Mickey Mouse? Fun Disneyland? Hug?” Oh, dear child, I didn’t think you could be any more adorable.

“I love Elmo? I love Nemo? I love Marlin? I love Mickey Mouse? I love Daddy? I love Mommy?” I’m glad that we made the list, kid.

I wish I had dreams like hers. Although she was so sad when she woke up, knowing that Disneyland was retreating into the past, that grandma and Mickey hugs were done with, for now, that if I had been driving I might have turned the car around.

But I wasn’t driving. I made my pregnant wife drive through L.A. traffic. In fact, I made her drive the entire way home. Because I’m a feminist.

Erin eventually woke up for good just in time for a Denny’s dinner, during which she revealed even more hidden adorableness. When my sliders arrived, with their cellophane toothpicks embedded through the buns, Erin took one look at the plate and shouted “HAPPY CAKE TO YOU!!!!!”

She likes to think about birthdays.

She was so convinced that I was eating cake that Emily had to give her a piece of one of the buns just to calm her down.

“Here. Have some cake.”

She tasted it, then gave Emily one of her “what the hell, mom?” looks: “Bread?” I could hear her calling us both bastards under her breath.

After dinner Erin settled in with her borrowed portable DVD player and some Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and just zoned for the rest of the way home.

Look, I know. Toddler! Zoning! Evil! It’s not like I made her eat a bunny.

Driving through Pacheco Pass we put on some Pink Floyd, because “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” is the best night driving music ever written.

We arrived home just before 1am. Erin was passed out, victim of Dad’s playlist and the pulse of the tar road seams thunking gently under our tires. We got into bed and dreamt Orange County dreams.

This Year Will Be Better

2009-03-09T01:21:00.000-07:00

I posted here in this space for the first time one year ago today.

What started as a time-waste turned into an obsession, and then matured into a complicated relationship. I just wanted to tell stories and work out what my opinions were about parenting, and fatherhood, and being a dad in a predominantly moms' world.

I also wanted to leave little traces of myself around so that I wouldn't forget, so that Erin would see her dad the way he thought himself.

This was never really a "keep the family up to date" kind of blog, although it works as such, indirectly, at times. It was just this place I could write, I could imprint on culture a little, I could figure out how to get better at manipulating words in order to transform minds.

Before this identity, this Backpacking Dad thing, developed I was always very secretive about my thoughts. This hampered me a lot in academics, because I would turn in papers that had only ever been seen by one person, containing ideas only ever discussed with one person, and I had no desire to participate in the vast feedback loop of academic development. So another thing I planned to get out of this space was to get over my reluctance to share my deliberate thoughts with people and to let them tell me what, if anything, they were worth outside of my own head.

That was a long paragraph about, oh my god, how shy I am, really, no really, I swear I am really. But this activity has really been life-altering, and I came to it not thinking very much of the endeavor.

But I read. And I was read. And I met people. And I argued with people. And I agreed with people. And I made friends. And I made enemies. And I embarrassed myself. And I embarrassed other people. And I became entangled in other lives, just as strangers were getting entangled in mine.

I told Emily once that I don't like people in my house. That's still true, to a certain extent. But I think I have all of you to thank for being willing to consider having houseguests.

This year will see a lot more changes. I no longer write about my experience as an at-home dad, because I'm not really one anymore. I will very shortly no longer be able to write about being the parent of a single child. I don't know whether what seems to be my trademark sappiness will endure, or if being the exhausted father of two will make me want to dive into a six-pack and just watch the game instead of waxing about how much I love my kids. I suppose I'll just keep writing whatever I feel like writing. Mostly I just like to tell the stories that are laying around. I'm not good at fiction.

I am a dad. I have a backpack. My daughter rides around in the backpack (occasionally....). My son will ride around in the backpack. And you will get to read all about it during the second year.

Thanks for reading. You have made an unforseeable difference.

Orange County Road Trip: part one

2009-03-07T14:13:00.000-08:00

We left the tree peninsula at 10:30am on a Friday. We drove through garlic and apricot blossoms and grapevines and more cowbell please, trying to hit the old orange groves before dark, before the doormouse donned his cap and robe.

The timebomb ticked, delayed by stickers and books and snacks. After lunch the ticking stopped; stopped until the incline of the car flipped the switch back to "on" as we started up the mountains.

But it never went off. Coming down out of the mountains into the valley and into the holly it threatened again, but a portable DVD player, reserved for emergencies, fixed attention on moving pictures and happy music.

But the valley and the holly were densely overgrown, over-RUN, with beetles and beemers choking the life out of the body, congealing its arterial blood.

The doormouse went to sleep while we were still squishing bugs.

But family was awake, and grandma and aunts and uncles and cousins erased all the tense memories, the worries about the bomb going off, the stress of getting to the old orange grove in time.

We stayed up too late, but the bomb never went off.

It slept like the happiest baby in the world and let everyone sleep in the next morning.

What's That You Say? It Was Raining This Weekend?

2009-03-01T21:16:00.001-08:00

Erin has rainboots.

Erin has a raincoat.

Erin has mad puddle jumping skillz.

I can't take credit for the director of photography's choice of angle near the end of the video, however.

Capricorn

2009-02-26T11:36:00.001-08:00

"Was that a goat?"

Was it? The car hit something, and Patrick Warburton wants to know. Because it is just so outrageous that you can be driving down the road on your way to a Florida airport with something to do, like save a planeload of Gator fans from being incinerated by a bomb in a trunk, when all of a sudden this goddamned goat comes out of nowhere. You strike it, or it strikes you. You aren't quite sure. But you see in the rearview that the goat is fine; your car is less so; your equilibrium remains, but only as a facade now. And instead of being able to scream at the top of your lungs "I don't like the fact that I am so very nervous and anxious about the world and that we've just hit a goat! I'm barely holding it together!" all you can do is utter: "Was that a goat?"

Come on, Puddy. You know it was a goat. Just admit that you are suddenly very aware of how little control over your environment you have. The goat is a message.

**********************************************************************************

Sometimes Emily just wants to sing Ace of Base at the top of her lungs. When we were in New York she karaoke'd the hell out of "The Sign". She's a Capricorn. Capricorns are "independent" (read: stubborn). They accomplish what they want to accomplish and sometimes you are in the way.

The Universe is a Capricorn. And you, Patrick Warburton? Sometimes you are in the way.

**********************************************************************************

I was up too late one night last week. I was up too late because I had to listen to music I had just downloaded from iTunes. I have never spent so much money on music before. Some people spend a lot on music, regularly; I am not one of them. But I couldn't stop listening and buying. I had been thinking about the music all day, ever since Sweetney had offered up a couple of songs on Blip. One was called "No Children", from an album called Tallahassee that is about a couple who move to Florida and they are so very nervous and anxious about the world and are barely holding it all together.

The other song she offered, by the same group, was a cover of "The Sign"."

Over and over and over and over. I listened to the music over and over.

The Universe is a Capricorn; the band is The Mountain Goats.

**********************************************************************************

The music was like a gift. Well, yes, I paid for it, but still it was like flowers on Valentine's Day when you never get flowers on Valentine's Day. The Universe is a Capricorn, but just because she hits your car and leaves you a bit bewildered doesn't mean that you aren't better off for it. You are aware of things.

**********************************************************************************

I saw this Tweet from Heather Spohr while I was listening to the music: "They changed the diagnosis from pneumonia to RSV. So her illness is more serious, but she is stable. Phew." Tracking back through Twitter I found this one: "If my sad little hospitalized baby doesn't make you want to donate to my March of Dimes team you are made of" and then it abruptly cut off. Clicking through to the picture I was punched in the face, my car was hit, and I was enlightened. "stone. Or poo." That's what I would be made of.

Was that a goat?

Suddenly my Dionysian gluttony, my musical insomnia, was put into a little bit of perspective. I was so happy to have this music. I had no regrets about spending the money on it.

But if I could do that much just because it made me happy, could I not do a little bit more, to help someone? To help someone I know?

I'm not suggesting that I applied some rule of charity to my conduct. I don't give programmatically. Sometimes I am inspired to charity, or to gifts, or to whatever. Sometimes I am not. I have no rule about it.

Was that a goat?

It was a goat. The Universe is a Capricorn. "The Sign" playing over and over again; another song about a couple self-destructing in Florida, where, Puddy will tell you, goats just hit your car while you are on your way to the airport to be about your business of saving Gator fans, a couple with no children and the consequences of that fact on their relationship, alternating with "The Sign" in my ears.

My wallet was still next to my laptop. It was easy to click through to Heather's March of Dimes Team Page and offer up just a little bit more than I had spent on myself.

**********************************************************************************

Heather is raising money for a walk on April 25th (although you'd think they'd call it a "march", right?) She is just over $300 shy of her goal. You don't have to donate money to her, to the March of Dimes, to anyone at all.

But if the Universe hits your car while you are driving to a Florida airport to save some Gator fans maybe you can do more than just ask: "Was that a goat?"

Connection Comedy

2009-02-24T10:57:00.001-08:00

I'm sitting in a Starbucks. (Is there an apostrophe anywhere in the name? I don't see one on any of the signage. But I've always thought of it as "the coffee shop that belongs to Starbuck", so it's strange for me to think of there being no apostrophe. It makes it look like they offer starbucks, some pluralization of "starbuck", for sale. "Gitchyor starbucks yere! Frish starbucks! Straight off the starbucks boat!")

I'm sitting in a Starbucks despite my aversion to coffee in general and Starbucks in particular because I felt like sitting somewhere that wasn't my office for a little while. I wanted to be able to open my laptop and finally use that T-Mobile pre-paid card I've had in my wallet since the BlogHer conference in July of last year (that should show you how uninterested I am in entering Starbucks'. Starbuckses?)

I entered the fine establishment on California Avenue in Palo Alto about 15 minutes ago to mingle with the moms from the running club, people writing in their spiral notebooks, other laptop folks, and the dilapidated old hooker who has been fascinating me for 10 minutes. She's really amazing to see.

I purchased a Vitamin Water, because I don't drink coffee. I paid $1.85 for it. I prefer to buy them by the case for less than a dollar each, but I suppose the other eighty-five cents is for atmosphere. See "dilapidated old hooker" above.

I sat down on one of the available cushy chairs. The only one. It's right by the front door. I think the dilapidated old hooker is coming over now and she's going to be able to see what I'm writing about her. Wait for it....

...

Nope. She went out the side door. She has places to go, trailing a small carry-on bag on wheels behind her. I think she had some boxes earlier. I don't know where they went. But wherever they are, the getting of them to that destination inspired in her a need for a coffee. I don't understand coffee.

Anyway, I sat down, pulled out my wallet with my T-Mobile card in it, removed the card, and opened my laptop. I looked for a T-Mobile network on the list of wireless servers and I didn't see one.

But there was AT&T, shining full at me in green bar glory. I looked around, at the decals on the door to the Starbucks, and I saw that there was no T-Mobile decal anywhere. Just AT&T. What the hell, Starbuck's? When did that happen? Not that I've been paying close attention, but my pre-paid T-Mobile card from July of 2008 clearly lists Starbuckses as locations where I might find wi-fi sustenance.

Well. I was here. I had an open laptop. I thought I might want to try to write a story about the shoe-mania affecting the little girls at Erin's daycare: Erin knows who belongs to every shoe in the place, and if someone abandons his or her shoes somewhere Erin announces "Erin turn!!" and slips them on her feet. This behavior got her ribs gnawed on by a "mine mine mine" girl yesterday, while I was standing two feet away. I'll call her "Tara." Erin's pathetic, betrayed sobs broke my heart and had me wondering, a little, what I'd have done if it were a dog, and not Tara, that had done that to her. I think this just proves that I really do think children are different from dogs, in many important and significant ways. Last night, as we were driving home from dinner at the Olive Garden (I love the Olive Garden), Erin offered, softly, from the backseat: "I no like it Tara." Word, kid. You have TBC ribs: Tara Been Chewed.

Wanting to tell a story I connected to the AT&T network, and opened up a browser to go through the connection/signup/pay money rigmarole. It was $3. Three dollars to write a story? Was it worth it? Ah, but look up in the top right corner of the webpage: "If you have a roaming account with another carrier, please select from the drop-down menu." T-Mobile was on the list. I didn't know if I had a roaming account. Actually, I was pretty sure I didn't have an account at all. So, I plotted, I'd set up an account with T-Mobile, then connect to AT&T here in this Starbucks using my new T-Mobile account.

I opened a new browser page to carry out my plan and went looking for T-Mobile's web page. I located it, navigated to the "new account" page, opened an account, entered my pre-paid card number, and then closed the window. I went back to the AT&T page, selected T-Mobile from the drop-down menu of roaming carriers, and entered my account information. Voila! Internet at Starbucks.I could now navigate to pages other than this silly AT&T page and explore the internet a little.

I'd like you to re-read that last paragraph again.

Then I'd like you wonder, along with me, why I am so stupid. The old, dilapidated hooker with her boxes and her carry-on has it all figured out: deliver boxes, get coffee, go do something else that isn't completely, utterly, and totally redundant.

Erin Goes to Seattle

2009-02-16T10:30:00.001-08:00

"Let's go away for the weekend. Let's just go."

"Where? Ugh, it's such a pain in the ass to pack up all of Erin's crap. Just for a weekend? Seems like a waste."

"So let's not bring any of it."

"How do we go on a trip without bringing the car seat? The stroller? The pack n' play? Especially anywhere interesting that isn't just a place we've driven to twenty times already? We can't rent a car if we don't have the car seat, and I don't trust rental car company car seats."

"You are Backpacking Dad. Let's take the backpack for her, and a small carry-on for us, and go somewhere we won't need a car to get around."

"Seattle?"

"Seattle."

And that's how we found ourselves on a plane out of San Jose International on a September morning, holding Erin on our laps as we sat just a little bit stunned at the freedom we felt traveling in the fashion we were. A few diapers were in the backpack, along with a cup, a plastic fork, some wipes, and a couple of changes of clothes for Erin. We'd need more diapers, and food, and milk, and probably countless other things, but most things could be purchased in discrete quantities in a city like Seattle. The flight wasn't so long that we needed to load up with distractions for the kid.

We left the car, and the car seat, in the airport parking lot, having found that the downtown hotel shuttle was a large bus, not a van, making a car seat unnecessary. We booked a room at a fancy downtown hotel, splurging on a room close to the center of the city in order to both cut down on distance travel and to ensure that the quality of crib offered would be superior enough for us to feel comfortable letting Erin sleep in it. It was a two-room suite, expensive, but worth it if it meant Erin could sleep in her own room.

As it turned out whoever designed the two-room suites at the fancy hotel never thought guests would actually want the rooms to be, well, separated. French doors divided the bedroom from the living room, but instead of anything remotely sound-damping like glass, or even wood, the doors were just frames draped with linen. Translucent linen at that. So not only were they not sound-proof, but they weren't even opaque enough for genuine privacy. They might as well have just drawn a line on the carpet and labeled it "door".

The weird two-but-really-one-room suite setup was a detraction, but the crib set up was fantastic. The crib came with a full set of baby bath products and powders and soaps, all the things we didn't bring with us but thought we'd buy at a local store then have to leave behind because they were liquid and we flew on an airplane with only carry-ons and the TSA would have a fit if we tried to bring shampoo on an airplane. What's more, there was a stuffed animal in the crib and also the cutest baby robe I've ever seen.

You can't tell from the picture, but that sucker was monogrammed. Of course we stole it. Or I think we did. I mean, I'm sure it ended up coming home with us but they never billed us so I'm not sure that it wasn't just a free baby robe to begin with.

Outside of the room we wandered...

Down to Pike's Place Market and Victor Steinbrueck Park, where Erin strutted about and Emily mom'd it up.

Backpacking around the Market we stopped at the world's first Starbucks.

I dad'd it up by sticking things on Erin's face and taking pictures of it:

We ate at small cafes and at a family seafood restaurant, at the mall and at a food court next to the Space Needle with tiny chairs for tiny people.

We traveled by backpack, by monorail, and by Duck Boat.

We went to the aquarium:

And to the Children's Museum, where painting happened:

And to a video arcade with its own carousel:

And to the tiny amusement park at the base of the Space Needle...

....where Erin joined an old busker's act and tried to steal his stuffed lion:

At the end of the trip my back was sore, and we were exhausted, but in a very happy way. We saw a lot of the touristy parts of the city, all without a car or taking a taxi anywhere. Dreading the trip home, scheduled as it was for a nap time that might never happen, we returned to SeaTac not knowing if the trip was going to be capped by a massive spaz-out on the flight home. We were pleasantly surprised by the huge playroom at the airport: Seattle is not populated by dummies. If you want a kid to sleep on an airplane you need to tire her out first.

Wouldn't you know it? Erin slept for nearly the entire flight home. She whispered "happy" as she lay in Emily's arms, and then I took her and sang a made up song as we took off, and by the time the seat belt light was turned off she was asleep.

Postscript

It was after we arrived home that night, tired and relaxed, that we opened a bottle of wine to cap our long weekend together before Emily went back to work for the week and I prepared to return to school full-time, my days of being an at-home dad behind me. It was a bittersweet evening, as I realized my time with Erin was going to be severely reduced. I had known nothing but fatherhood for a year, and I was nervous about going back to school, and about putting Erin in daycare.

After I poured the wine Emily looked over at me as I sat pondering the changes the future was going to bring. "You know, it's been a while since my last period," she commented.

"Maybe you're pregnant," I joked back, thinking about class schedules and students and daycare teachers who were going to screw it all up.

"..."

"Wait, how long is 'a while'?"

It was long enough. That night, September 15th, 2008, we found out about this one, my son, due May 15th, 2009:

Bittersweet indeed. We had enjoyed our free-wheeling trip to Seattle so much, just we three, that it was a bit of a shock to be faced with the reality of a second child, a sibling, when all we'd known was life with Erin.

I drank Emily's wine and life went on.

Redneck Shower

2009-02-13T13:30:00.001-08:00

Redneck Shower: A coffee mug's worth of Sanka residue and cold water thrown in your face as you sleep on the couch.

Redneck Baby: A five year old that you just now realize is your kid.

Redneck Baby Shower: (1) A watering can emptied over the kid's head after he's played with the pigs for an hour. (2) A party for a new mom that involves lots of old flannel and cowboy boots.

Tanis, The Redneck Mommy, has had a Redneck Baby. That is, she's had a five year old. I know. She's hasn't had any of the long lead time that someone who has a baby the old fashioned way, after getting knocked up at the drive-in, would have. It's happened so quickly: the idea was conceived, the thought gestated and developed, soundings taken and the first introduction made, laborious, sweating effort through bureaucratic contractions was endured, but suddenly, there's a little dude sitting there at her ranch.

I can claim some small knowledge of matters redneck: I've had the coffee mug of Sanka and cold water thrown in my face as I slept on the couch. I've milked cows. I attended an elementary school you had to pass a pig farm to get to. I read Playboy magazines in a hayloft and swam in a sand quarry. No matter how suburban my existence now, I'll always be a bit of a redneck.

But I've got nothing on Tanis. Her kids are doomed, and this new one, her son, a son she didn't even know for five years but who is so obviously her son no matter that the government calls it an adoption, well, he is doomed thrice over. Because not only will Tanis be raising yet another redneck, but her already rednecked brood can help destroy this kid's dentition and fashion sense. Lookout dude, they're coming for your sophistication and they're bringing you some overalls.

Congratulations Tanis. I'm awed and proud.

Daniel Webster

2009-02-11T14:52:00.001-08:00

We went to Disneyland for Christmas. If you know us at all well, you would know that you could probably insert just about any X for "Christmas" and you would still have a true statement:

"We went to Disneyland for a birthday."

"We went to Disneyland for dinner."

"We went to Disneyland for a slumber party."

**********************************************************************************

In early December I was asked by Jane, co-founder of the Hot Blogger Calendar and co-founder of MomGenerations, if I wanted a camera.

"What?"

"You told me during the calendar photo shoot that you thought the little RCA video camera I was using was cool. They want to give you a camera. Do you want it?"

"You are a strange person. No. Well, hang on. Do I have to sell my soul to RCA if I accept their camera?"

"What's a soul?"

**********************************************************************************

Is this a post about Disneyland or a camera review?

I don't know. The camera, I suppose. It is kind of cool. It has some pretty basic functionality, shooting either low-quality clips for fast upload to YouTube (it's co-produced by YouTube or something) or higher quality clips for really really really slow upload to YouTube, where you don't notice the quality difference at all because it all looks grainy anyway so you might as well shoot everything low res. It has a flip-out viewscreen so you can film yourself and watch yourself at the same time, which you can't do with point-and-shoot cameras with built in video recorders.

Is it a camera for me? Maybe. Probably not though, because I'm an insane father and I bought an insane camcorder right before Erin was born because I didn't care about going into debt for life I was going to be a father and I needed to document every detail in high quality clips!!!!!

I also already have a point-and-shoot pocket camera that has a decent video recorder built in. We have a bad track record with these little cameras though, so it's nice to have a more durable feeling one that I can take out somewhere the more delicate point-and-shoot wouldn't like very much.

It probably wouldn't be my default for grabbing quick video. In fact, I shot some video last night and I pulled out the insane camcorder rather than the RCA, because, as I mentioned, I'm an insane father and I record for personal saving, mostly, not for quick public broadcast. I like ultra-high-quality video.

But you can plug the RCA straight into a USB port for downloading video to the computer, so there's no fidgeting with memory cards or cords. And hell, the thing is small. It's a pocket camcorder.

I guess its real advantage is the integration with, and optimization of video for, YouTube. I'm just not that much of a YouTuber, so it doesn't occur to me to take video for the purpose of uploading quickly. I don't even post video here on the blog that often, so I miss out on what is the main benefit to using the RCA Small Wonder. I don't know that having it will change my habits. It's probably perfect for a teenager with limited funds to buy and bring to a party so he can catch Michael Phelps smoking a bowl.

**********************************************************************************

Videos:

Here is a long-ish video of Erin wandering around the park, interfering with the flow of traffic, and inspiring people to give her things.

Some footage of Erin having potatoes and playing peek-a-boo:

And here is my favourite video from the trip. It's just so full of dad-ness and relationship-ness, even though it's only forty seconds or so.

And although you can't tell from the footage unless you have already been, we really were at Disneyland.

To sum up, although RCA didn't sponsor our trip to Disneyland they sure as hell gave me a camera, and I used that sucker. So thanks RCA!

Economics and Guilt

2009-02-07T12:44:00.001-08:00

As Emily and I chased Erin around the grocery store during a quick stop to buy milk I was addressed by someone I had never expected to see again. I'm certain I'll never see her again now.

"Shawn?"

I turned to face this inquisitrix, a brunette with long curly hair, and although I could not immediately place her I offered a pleased "Hi!" in return.

Dammit. Who are you?

I experienced some really deep feelings of guilt when I met her gaze.

But why? Who is this person?

"Is this the little one?" she asked, indicating Erin.

Emily was walking along with me and Erin was dashing away toward the blue hyper-entertainment-center-shopping-carts parked at the edge of the store. "Blue! Cart!"

"Yeah," I replied. But knowing the rest of the conversation was going to require introductions, and having a terrible history involving the introduction of women to each other, I sought an escape, or at least a delay so I could remember who this person was and why I should feel so guilty about seeing her.

Nodding toward my daughter as she took off in a "I'm sorry, I can't stay to chat" kind of way, I followed Erin to the blue carts and caught my reflection in a mirror.

Ok, dude. Dude. You're blushing. What the hell is wrong with you? Why is it bothering you so much that you ran into this person? Although it's good that you ran into her today, clean-shaven and with your hair actually brushed and in place and nicely cut instead of on one of your scruffy days.

Nicely cut...

And then it crashed down upon me, who this woman was and why I had hoped to never see her out in public. She was my hair stylist from The Man Spa, and I had canceled on her to go to my old barber. I had cheated on her, and all for the sake of saving some money in the new economy; not caring that she would miss me; not caring that she also could use some extra cash during hard times.

That's the problem with the natural instinct to save during recession; it's completely reinforcing of the recession. Confidence is low because the chances of the money continuing to flow to consumers look reduced; but since confidence is low consumers save rather than spend, which guarantees that money will not flow to other consumers, who then are uncertain about the economy and do their own best to save, spiting everyone's faces and flinging severed noses everywhere.

Thankfully, by the time I had returned to the spot whence Erin and I had made our exeunt she was gone, and I confessed to Emily who the strange woman had been.

"Ah," she said, "she might as well have caught you with your tongue down some other woman's throat."

I'm sorry, Stylist. My barber may be blind, but he's cheap and doesn't force me to reflect on myself too much. He doesn't make me ask hard questions about the image I want to portray to the world. When I sit in his chair he just says one thing:

"So, looks like you need a 'medium'."

And that's the kind of relationship I need right now, in these uncertain times.

"Jeremy Is Here": A Nightmare from 1983

2009-02-05T14:59:00.001-08:00

My six-year-old astral projection wandered a zoo in the early morning. Because it was a dream there was fog everywhere. Because I was six there were monkeys everywhere. Sound bounced around in a stratus igloo and I was surrounded by a wall of simian screeching, a primate a capella Spinal Tap cover band barraging me with their greatest hits, "Lick My Feces" and "StoneFeces."

I was alone for a long time. But soon a shape suggested itself in the fog, impossibly tall. It didn't make any sense until it entered my clearing. It was a man, in slacks and a short-sleeved polo shirt, with dark sunglasses, holding a wooden, spoke-backed chair high above his head. A little boy sat in the chair, looking either calm or resigned.

"Jeremy is here," said the man in the short-sleeved polo shirt. Then he turned and walked back into the fog.

I didn't recognize him, but I felt as though I didn't ever want to meet him again.

Later I was in the yard of the farmhouse we lived in, just outside of Carp, Ontario, across from the police station. The tall hedgerow shielding our yard from the country highway just beyond rustled, responding to a transient wind. The wind died and the rustling continued. I looked up and a man emerged from the hedgerow. He was in slacks and a short-sleeved polo shirt, with dark sunglasses, holding a wooden, spoke-backed chair high above his head. He was not the same man as the stranger at the zoo. But the same little boy sat in the chair, looking either concerned or desperate.

"Jeremy is here!" shouted the man in the short-sleeved polo shirt. I couldn't tell if he was angry, accusing, or territorial. But I felt as though I didn't ever want to meet him again.

Even later I was in my neighbour's living room, in the house to the left of mine along that same stretch of highway. The living room looked out on the front lawn through a large bay window, and the entry hall was blocked from view by a short wall. I sat on the couch watching wrestling while my neighbour entertained George and Weezie Jefferson, all finished movin' on up and preferring to live in the country. Weezie sat to my immediate left on the couch, and George on hers, while my neighbour sat across from us in an old chair, her back to the bay window.

"Well, back then George was a policeman," Weezie was saying as I began to pay attention to the conversation, "and do you know where we lived? At the police station!" For some reason this was the funniest thing Weezie had ever heard herself say, and she laughed her deep raspy laugh while George smiled at my neighbour.

Weezie's laughter was startled to an end by a pounding at the obscured front door. The pounding repeated, then ceased. I could hear the creak of the door, and then solid footsteps in the entry hall. A man turned the corner. He was in slacks and a short-sleeved polo shirt, with dark sunglasses. He was the first man, from the fog-swamped zoo. He was holding a wooden, broken, spoke-backed chair high above his head. The boy was gone, and the man was furious.

"Jeremy is not here!!" he growled. Then he hurled the broken chair at my head as I sat on the couch next to Weezie Jefferson.

But I wasn't on the couch. I was sitting in the chair as it flew threw the air at an empty spot on the couch. As I landed face-first I felt the broken spokes slam against my head. I heard the man stomp back toward the door, open it, and then close it, while the Jeffersons and my neighbour screamed.

From my position on the couch I could still see the bay window and the front lawn, and the man came into view from the right, walking in front of the window and staring in. I closed my eyes to slits like any child feigning sleep and willed him not to see me there in the wreckage of the chair. Somehow I knew that if he saw my eyes he would see me, and he would come back for me.

He criss-crossed the lawn, growing ever more distant, getting closer to the country highway as he strode back and forth in front of the bay window. And the lawn began to turn to red brick beneath his feet. When the lawn was fully transformed his entire body slowly turned to red brick from the bottom up. And just before his face changed, as he reached the edge of the lawn and the far left edge of the view from the bay window he was joined by the second man in the short-sleeved polo shirt. They turned and walked along the road, crossing back in front of the bay window, turning into red brick until only the sunglasses directed at the window gave any indication that they were still intelligent, directed beings.

Searching for Jeremy.

Confessions of a Shoppaphobic

2009-01-31T16:04:00.001-08:00

"You're going to Target today, right? I wrote a list of some things I need."

"Good. Yeah, I have some things I need to get too."

I added my items to the list on the partly-crumpled page of notepad paper. Hers were Health & Beauty items and some cat litter; mine were "I don't want to go to the grocery store today so I'll stretch out our pantry for one more day with a little supplementation" items. I wanted milk, bread, and maybe something to drink.

I pocketed the list, dressed Erin, and took off with her while Emily went to work. On the way to an unfamiliar Target (I had some other errands in that area) I was distracted by racks of clothes outside a Sears to which I'd never been. I remembered that both of my pairs of jeans, more accurately both of the pairs that were comfortable and stamped with measurements that did not make me feel guilty about that resolution to cancel my gym membership, had holes in the right knee and in the crotch.

"A-ha!" says I, "I should finally explore this Sears and see if I can buy a pair of jeans for less than $40," the exorbitant price of jeans being the main reason I wore two pairs into holey oblivion.

The only shopping I really like to do involves either ill-lit bookstores in the countryside, or grocery aisles under radioactive lights. I go to the mall at Christmas because I like Christmas-y things, but I don't like the shopping aspect. I don't like the mall at all, really. I don't like shoe shopping, preferring to wear a pair down to muddy latticework before going to the store to find, hopefully, a pair that looks almost exactly like the pair I was sending to a haz-mat disposal site.

I especially don't like clothes shopping.

And thanks to Abercrombie and Fitch I really hate jeans shopping.

**********************************************************************************

(Begin Long Aside About Abercrombie and Fitch)

Once, on a trip to Portland, I spilled something on the one pair of jeans I brought with me. I decided to add to my wardrobe, so I went wandering around looking for clothing stores. I walked into that sensory date-rape, Abercrombie and Fitch, drawn along by the mannequins modeling denim in the window.

"A-ha!" says I, "here is where I will find jeans. And I will, apparently, have to wear them until I am dead because holy-mother-of-god-on-a-skateboard these are expensive."

My optimism was matched in its vastness only by my waistline. I haven't been a skinny rail since high school graduation, but by the time of this Portland trip I had been steadily accumulating girth, a process accelerated drastically when I stupidly quit smoking (for, what? Health? Bah. All of those years smoking takes off your life come at the end anyway). I was hefty. Solid. I think the clinical description was "obese", although I don't think it's fair to just throw that label around if there are no cranes involved in getting oneself into and out of bed. But I wasn't thin, although I didn't view myself as particularly large.

Abercrombie held me down while Fitch punched me in the (over-hanging) gut over and over again. As I was looking for a pair of jeans that would encircle my waist in anything approaching comfort it struck me that there were no numbers in sight that I recognized.

"Who are these men with 32-inch waists?" I wondered. "Where are the real pants?"

"You. Are. Too. Fat. To. Shop. Here," the labels taunted as I grew more frantic in my search for pants.

Fuck you, Abercrombie. Fuck you, Fitch.

After Erin was born I dropped about 40 lbs. For the hell of it. I felt like riding my bike all the time and I didn't have any classes and Emily was on maternity leave, so I had all of this time to just exercise and think about food and cooking. Every few months I would go to the mall to buy a new pair of jeans. And my first stop would be Abercrombie, where I'd try on a pair, note the new reduction in my waistline, and then walk over to The Gap to buy my jeans there instead.

Fuck you, Abercrombie. Fuck you, Fitch. You weren't there when I needed you.

(End Long Aside About Abercrombie and Fitch)

*******************************************************************************

I was wearing a pair of those Gap jeans as I spotted the Sears. I needed jeans badly enough that I was willing to overcome my intense dislike of clothes shopping to actually enter the Sears, browse the aisles, and try on about six pairs, all with Erin in tow in a cart.

Erin was less and less excited about her predicament as each new pair made an appearance, so eventually I rushed the decision a bit (but not before noting that no matter what the labels say, two "identical" pairs of jeans can fit remarkably differently) and brought three pairs to the counter to buy. With sale prices in effect I spent, for those three pairs, what you might spend on one pair at (fuck you)Abercrombie and (fuck you)Fitch. They fit fine. Maybe a little more loosely after wear than I'd like, but they aren't going to fall off of me.

Then I took Erin to our actual destination, Target, that magical land where $200 always seems to disappear out of my wallet, stolen by the Target elves.

Looking down at the list I read that Emily's first entry was some kind of facial cleanser, explicitly named for ease of locating. But I couldn't find the bottle she appeared to want. To use a car analogy, if she wanted a Toyota Camry XLE, then all I could find were Toyota Camry LE's, or Toyota Highlander XLE's. Not knowing which alternative she'd have preferred had she been there herself I bought both. (It is likely I would have been inclined to do the same thing with the cars.)

This took a while (since I was pretty damned thorough in this search for the mystery car, er, cleanser), and Erin, already unhappy about being in her second shopping cart in as many hours, was making her dissatisfaction known. A box of diapers on an end-cap display caught my eye and I thought "A-ha! I remember noting that we are out of diapers at home, but I didn't write it down on the list. I will purchase these diapers now and be ahead of the game!" So I added them to the cart. The same thing happened with the toothpaste I saw while walking along. Not on the list, but added to the cart.

There didn't seem to be a pet care area, nor a grocery section at this strange Target, but I was a little distracted by screeching coming from the mite in the cart. I rushed through checkout, and unloaded the cart into the trunk where the diapers I bought joined a completely full box of diapers that had been in my trunk the entire time.

After leaving Target with the exhausted, annoyed Erin I took the list out of my pocket and it occurred to me that the reason I hate shopping is that I'm just not good at it.

Do you know what it means to not be good at shopping?

It means being capable of going out in the morning, spending $150, and buying not one damned thing on a list you are carrying with you and ALSO buying things you already have.

"A-ha!" says I, "I am terrible at shopping."

Faith

2009-01-27T20:40:00.001-08:00

Emily says "I have faith that we can do it. I think I understand faith a little bit better now."

How do you explain how radically life changes when you become a parent without making it sound like a cautionary tale? Without confirming all of the worries your childless friends have about parenthood?

Weekends in Napa, time spent in smokey bars making contributions to the atmosphere, spontaneous date nights, entire days spent out of the house together, flights longer than two hours, road trips, putting off grocery shopping for one, two, or five more days while the supply of frozen french fries dwindles and the size of that orange cheese block shrinks.

Waking up every morning three or four hours earlier than ever before, and even that much sleep is a luxury compared to the constant interruptions of the first few months. Piles of diapers. Worrying about nuts. Buying kegs of milk. Knowing that the intro/theme to Sesame Street has changed. Hitting all the "Kids eat free" restaurants. Planning days around naps, weekends around cribs, and weeks around daycare.

Those changes loom. They impend. They are an exchange of radical freedom for shackled duty. They are the reason for the doubt. "Can we do this? How can we do this? How can anyone do this?"

I would look to the future from our moment and I was incapable of seeing the long staircase or the magic switch that would make those changes something other than soul-crushing. But I'd say things like "ah, we'll figure it out."

But it always sounded like a lie. It sounded like a lie because I had heard something in a similar tone, in a fake Irish accent, years before: "Aw, kids are easy. You just put them in your pocket." That was the line Dana Carvey jokes his Irish mother, a parental conspirator, would feed him. It's such an obvious lie, but backed by so much convincing confidence, that you can be lulled by it.

Can I just put them in my pocket? Everyone seems capable of making this change; why do I doubt myself so much?

Because the change is drastic. It is the most drastic. Imagine being told that tomorrow you need to be able to run 100 meters in ten seconds. Imagine being told you need to figure out how to flap your arms and fly. And that the consequences of not being able to do so will not only be terrible for you, but terrible for a stranger you have a a sudden duty toward.

Somehow we figured it out. Somehow the change was only drastic in retrospect. Somehow Erin turned out to be easy; I just put her in my pocket. It feels like I've always known how to do this. And I smugly assure my childless friends that kids are easy, that their doubts and worries are, not baseless, but irrelevant. Because they won't care.

That's what's happened. The world we knew before, the one with the things like lazy Sunday naps and lazy Wednesday naps and hip Saturday scenes (there were fewer of these than I'd prefer to admit) was stunningly, horrifically incinerated. And I fiddled and danced while it burned. Because I didn't care. I don't care.

The world of my twenties wasn't bad, or sad, or innocent, or deplorable. It just was. There is no loss, there is just was. It was and now it isn't. The future stretches out, uncertain, terrifyingly uncertain. And I don't care.

Except that I do care. I have another child on the way. Another! And although I feel easy enough about being a father I have those same panicked doubts about being a father to two, to a son. How can people do this? What is the magic switch that will be thrown to make it seem normal? We've been good at parenting in our infancy, when we were overwhelmed by the wonder of it all. But it's inconceivable that we can be good at it in our adolescence, when we are selfishly enamoured with our own interests and brook no interference with our agenda. How will our son not bear the brunt of those growing pains?

But, myself tells my self, kids are easy. You just put them in your pocket. And although I rightly doubt the truthfulness of this, it is backed by so much convincing confidence that I am lulled by it. I don't know what the magic switch looks like, I just know what the nursery looks like when the light is on.

Call the Coreys

2009-01-23T12:23:00.000-08:00

I hate this craptop

2009-01-22T09:56:00.001-08:00

I tried blogging with the Blackberry. That lasted for, I think, two posts.

I tried blogging with this old laptop (purchased in 2003) that can handle neither the infinite nature of the internet nor the infinite nature of this guy right here.

And finally I tried not blogging at all.

It's not that I have writer's/writers' block. It's not that I have nothing to say or that I no longer wish to participate or that I don't want to post cute pictures of my daughter or video of her at Disneyland or tell, finally, the Erin Goes to Seattle story that I've had on the backburner since September.

It's that I can't stand writing on this...thing...and I don't have any of my pictures or videos easily accessible.

I hate it so much that I haven't even replied to comments in what I feel is a month.

All of this pales in comparison to world hunger and Darfour etc...but I actually don't hate world hunger or the "situation" in Darfour. I'm too distanced from them to hate. I don't hate politicians, or serial killers, or white supremacists or arms dealers. I don't hate homophobes or religious zealots. I don't hate apathists (although they, obviously, couldn't care less). I don't hate pundits (although there are some areas that don't require pundits: sports punditry? What difference does having an opinion about the performance of a sports franchise or player actually have on the performance of that franchise or player? Political punditry I at least understand, because it sways opinions leading up to an actual process where opinions get counted and impact policy. But sports pundits? Although I do participate on some hockey blogs. But hockey is different. It really matters what hockey fans have to say about hockey, and what hockey pundits have to say about hockey. I swear.). I don't hate homelessness. I don't hate petty crime.

I do hate bad drivers who cut me off when they are Twittering on their iPhones, but I have no self-loathing about Tweeting on my Blackberry. Because objectively I'm a good driver and this does not distract me at all, but in their case they are abominations. Plus they use iPhones. They're probaby Mac people too. I'll leave it an open question whether or not I hate Mac people. I think I hate those Mac commercials, and I'm sure I hate those "You're stupid for thinking corn syrup is less healthy than sugar" commercials. But I don't hate childhood obesity or diabetes.

And I hate this craptop.

A Decade Ago in Short Conversations

2009-01-16T08:29:00.001-08:00

“Shawn, what the hell are you thinking? It’s 2 in the afternoon. Emily is still getting her hair done. Are you going to pace around in your tux for three hours before we go? Idiot.”

****************************************************************************************************

“If you don’t shave that goatee off for today all of the guys are going to hold you down and we’ll shave it off for you.”

****************************************************************************************************

“Hey Denise, can you do me a favour and go to my car and get my Star Wars Soundtrack cd and give it to the DJ?”

****************************************************************************************************

“Hey Shannon, can you do me a favour and help arrange a table for the eight extra family members who just showed up after traveling across the entire country to be here today but who also didn’t RSVP?”

*****************************************************************************************************

“I do.”

******************************************************************************************************

“What the hell?? I thought you said we weren’t going to do the cake-in-the-face thing.”

*******************************************************************************************************

“I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day….”

*******************************************************************************************************

“I don’t want to leave yet. Let’s pay the limo driver to stick around for another hour.”

And so we did.

Jurassic Love Triangle

2009-01-10T11:57:00.000-08:00

The Dinosaur Boy loves dinosaurs. During playtime outside he will carry at least two plastic dinosaurs with him at all times. On Wednesday it was a stegosaurus and a hadrosaur (duck-billed dinosaur), one in each hand.

Erin took a little interest in the dinosaurs, and when Dinosaur Boy put the hadrosaur down for a moment to play with a shovel Erin picked it up. When Dinosaur Boy noticed someone else playing with one of the toys he forgot all about the neat shovel he had discovered and went off in pursuit. Erin had no desire to surrender her trophy, and she eluded him by hiding behind my legs while screeching at the top of her lungs. Dinosaur Boy also screeched, brandishing his stegosaurus and pointing at his betrayer. As he pursued her around my legs she evaded by dashing behind the wooden fence separating the lawn from the ramp up to the door to the daycare room.

Dinosaur Boy charged up to the fence, having noted her location on the opposite side, determined to retrieve his reptile, arms outstretched. But he was unprepared for Erin's defensive acumen, and she fought him off easily and simply.

"Hi!" she unleashed, as she poked her face through the fence. "Hi. Hi. Hi," she repeated, and with a big smile at him he was undone. A trade was proposed, and he gave up the stegosaurus for the much smaller hadrosaur and the hope of more shared glances. As he looked down at his diminished bounty a smile lit up his face, and he sought out her grin again. But she was already gone.

She ran up behind one of the boys whose names she had been reciting at home for two weeks and she enveloped him in a big hug from behind. He resisted a little, but eventually turned around and returned her innocent embrace. But I still felt like I had to interject, and probably not for the last time, "No tongue."

Dinosaur Boy laughed when he saw this happening, and ran off in pursuit, hoping to participate in the hugging and kissing. But Erin and her crush were oblivious to everyone else. Eventually the moment ended and Erin wandered back toward me, a happy grin on her face. As she came down a low rise from the scene, Dinosaur Boy stopped in his following tracks and stared at her departing back, still holding the hadrosaur he had traded for his heart.

"Erin," I said, "I think Dinosaur Boy wants a hug too."

And that daughter of mine spun around and ran up the hill to deliver a bone-crushing hug and to plant a kiss on his face. Then she dropped the stegosaurus she was carrying and ran back over to me.

My doom hid behind my legs again, and I surveyed the carnage.

Saber

2009-01-09T10:43:00.001-08:00

Have I ever told you about the old cavalry saber my father had hanging in the living room?

I invaded two countries with that sword.

After my parents separated and my father left, my mother and sister and I moved off the rez into the the smelly little industrial town across the river. I was thirteen and I stopped cutting my hair and I skateboarded and I smoked and I had an earring and I wore a jean jacket with buttons on it that said stupid things. I still had the cavalry saber. It was a token, protection, symbolic. It was my father's. It was mine.

One night I drew the saber and walked into the living room of our basement apartment. The tip of the blade went against the throat of the sleeping sack of shit on the couch, the drunk piece of white trash who had somehow entered our lives.

I stood there over his body and faced my eternities. Some choices are weightless. Other choices are endless.

"You breathe now because I permit it." And I went back to my room.

A Note on Pronunciation

2009-01-06T20:51:00.000-08:00

Dear Erin,

This will matter further on up the road. Pronunciation, correct pronunciation, is the hallmark of an educated person. In all of your future endeavours you will be judged firstly and most harshly on your ability to communicate the ideas in your head. No matter how brilliant you are and become, if you can't communicate your ideas then you are mute: you will contribute little to society. One of the easiest ways to communicate is through the spoken word, and it is of supreme importance that you be able to say exactly what you mean when you mean it to whom you mean it.

There is an "r" in both "shirt" and "fork". Make a note.

Surprise

2009-01-05T22:44:00.000-08:00

I never thought I could crave a snot-filled kiss
or a sugar-sticky finger in my eye.

Just think, kid, if you were a stranger
I'd punch you in the balls for that.

Not cool, Willy

2009-01-03T12:21:00.000-08:00

At some overpriced barbecue joint with horrible customer service in Monterey next to the IMax theater. Willy Something-or-Other.

O Hai Eight Is

2009-01-02T09:41:00.000-08:00

I went on a self-imposed vacation from the internet: stopped blogging, commenting (though I was still reading....shhh) and Tweeting, and answering e-mails sporadically or not at all. Because I don't care. I'm cool; you can tell because I say that I don't care when I really do and then act like I don't and sabotage my own integrity and self by not doing things I like just to confirm how much I don't like them.

I actually "owe" a couple of posts. Not to you. You can go to hell. But I owe a video post/review of a little camera I was given and took with me to Disneyland. Corporate-sellout blogging comes before sappy posts about my daughter handing my wife a candy cane and saying "Open candy pease." I also owe a guest post to Sarcastic Mom. And I owe a guest post to Sarah Morgan (from I think 2007).

But they'll just have to wait. Screw the corporate Man! And the non-corporate Women.

Actually, see how I didn't link to them? That's not out of shame. I can't. I'm writing this on my Blackberry because at the end of my vacation from the internet I broke my laptop and now it has to be sent off to be fixed and although all of that is free because I bought a kickass warranty two years ago I don't get a loaner so I will be computer-less for another week-and-a-half to two weeks.

If you need me I'll be over here. Send me an e-mail so I don't get bored.

Geeky Twitter Aside:

I love my Blackberry, and Twitterberry is a neat application but I follow over a thousand people and I can only do that with any success at all by using Tweetdeck. Without my laptop I'm limited to "@" replies and DMs, and if I pull the DMs with Twitterberry I can't reply directly unless I type "d whateveryournameis" and that's enough of a pain in the ass that I don't reply to DMs on my Blackberry that often. "@" replies yes.

So, if you really want to send me a message in the next couple of weeks (and I encourage you to do so, because I get lonely if I don't have a thousand people wondering what I'm doing) and you actually want a reply, then send me an e-mail. My Blackberry kicks ass at e-mail.

My daughter also asks for "mo' candy", "mo' cooookie", "mo' cake" and "mo' joooce". She has all of her teeth and they're all sweet.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Slipped my mind

2008-12-24T11:13:00.000-08:00

I think I'm supposed to write something about Happy Holidays and cherishing family and joyous wonder, peace and equality and respect and resist consumerism and do good works and what are my hopes for the New Year.

Suck it I'm going to Disneyland for Christmas. In fact, I'm next door right now and if it weren't for the whole "you have to spend time with family at Christmas, so go visit relatives" thing (which I am completley okay with and enthusiastic about, seriously, because I love these people, but Disneyland has Star Tours) taking up time today, I'd be at Disneyland right this very second as well.

Cya!
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

A++

2008-12-21T23:00:00.001-08:00

That place, that well-spring of violence and condescension, of fevers, earaches, scratches, bruises, tears, blood, and No, God Please Don't Bring Any Juice, is, after all, not entirely evil.

Erin is actually learning some things in the daycare environment that are not pounded into her by older kids or grown from the seeds sown by her slightly-negligent father. She has learned how to put her baby doll down for a nap. And she has also learned how to save her dad some quarters at the laundromat.

Our first couple of weeks at daycare were Shakespearian tragedies starring Erin's accoutrements. The teachers refused to put bibs on the kids, and expected them to sit in their little tiny chairs at their little tiny tables with open cups of milk and bowls of yogurt, and like the asylum inmate confirming everyone's suspicions, they expected different results from the same actions every day.

And we washed. Erin went through two or three changes of clothes every day.

And while I was there during snack time to co-op each week Erin was standing up every two minutes to take a lap, trailing her yogurt spoon behind or dropping pieces of whole wheat (No God Please Don't Bring Anything with Eggs) bagels on the floor. It was utterly demoralizing to see that she just wasn't as polite or patient as some of the other kids. It had everything to do with me as a parent. I never enforced sitting down, staying still, not-wandering-off time at home and now everyone was paying the price because I sent a wild monkey to daycare. She was getting her first "F" in life, and it was at "Manners."

Now, though, as if to deliberately thumb their collective noses at all of those people who define insanity as "doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results", the daycare teachers have succeeded. Erin comes home now in the same outfit she was sent in. She sits through her entire snack. She drinks from open cups and wields her spoon with surgical dexterity. And her cute factor has increased exponentially.

"Mo' pease," she says. Or "mo' mik pease." And now that she is a fully developed little adult, tossing her mature requests about, I suddenly can't keep up.

I used to feel like she was changing and maturing no faster than I could adapt; that I was growing as a father as quickly as she was growing as a child. But now she's shifting gears. She is speeding up to take the green flag and I'm the pace car leaving the track after a couple of laps. (Cars has been on all day today. This post does not exist in a temporal or cultural vacuum. Disney owns part of my soul.)

I know I ought to be learning how to decline requests just as quickly as she is learning how to make them; that when she asks for her 80th oz of milk in the day that I should say no. But her casual "mo' pease" is like a tunnel under the fence: it breaches my defenses before I even realize I'm under siege. (I was also remembering my Caesar and Vercingetorix and you can bet the Romans are thankful that the Gauls didn't try using cuteness to break the Siege of Alesia.)

What makes it even more irresistible is that she signs her requests; she is more emotive and compelling when she puts her fingertips together for "more" and then swoops her hand around her chest for "please". I feel like I might be able to keep up, to fend her off, if she weren't also assaulting me with her cute little gestures.

And so she's been getting a lot of milk lately. Dad can't say no.

Today for some reason her language exploded again and she started putting even more polite requests together. "Mo' tota pease" when her grandmother called; "Mo' juice pease"; "Mo' piggy pease".

"Mo' kiss pease," just before bed as we were kissing her goodnight.

"Mo' kiss pease," and she urged us to delay the end of day.

"Mo' kiss pease," and her mother obliged over and over and over, like any sane person expecting the same result each time.

But Erin's daycare teachers have made us question what we know about sanity: Erin can drink from a cup and only wears one shirt each day. And she's outpacing her mother too.

"No mo' kiss. Night-night."

That's how you have to be when mom won't stop kissing you goodnight and just let you go to sleep already even though you're the one who started it. And that's how you get an "A++" in "Manners."

Rez Stories: Christmas Wheels

2008-12-19T01:08:00.001-08:00

One of the great recreational activities for kids on the Island, and on much of the Rez it seemed, was to ride ATVs. Four-wheelers and three-wheelers seemed to be everywhere. The kid down the road from me had a full-on Fat Cat motorcycle.

I had a ten-speed. Someone else's ten-speed. I think it was my aunt's.

I used to take my borrowed ten-speed and pedal my way up and over the Seaway International Bridge (not quite as long as the Golden Gate Bridge, but not much shorter), inexplicably fearless of the traffic on the bridge and the lack of a bike lane. I pedaled across the bridge at 10, 11, and 12 to get to the smelly little industrial town on the Canadian side of the St. Lawrence River; the town where my skate-rat friends lived and my middle school used to be.

I was pretty envious of the kids and cousins who had full-sized and miniature ATVs to sport around the Island; to take the back trails down by the river or to ride the paved road from one side of the Canadian Customs Crossroads to the other. To an adolescent with a ten-speed the ATVs were ubiquitous. And fast. And awesome. They were an escape that didn't involve a ride over a terrifying bridge hoping that today wouldn't be the day a car spun you over the safety rail into the St. Lawrence below.

It never crossed my mind that we were poor, even by rez standards; that we just couldn't afford the kinds of toys some of the other families could, or that no one (apart from me) put much value in those big outdoor toys when compared to things like making the bathroom in the house safe for human use. I don't think we were poor. But I don't know. I had a Nintendo. And a Power Glove. And a tv in my room. But maybe we really were poor. One Christmas the Basket Wagon showed up with a food and gift basket for us. That was weird and unexpected, and my mom wasn't home when they arrived so when my sister and I opened the two gifts in the basket I ended up with a pink plastic doll set and she ended up with, I think, a bunch of cars. That one Christmas may do a lot to account for how I am now.

Another Christmas my grandfather, my tota, showed up with a gift for me that I could never have imagined. He was always taking a special interest in me, or so I felt; my sister and I lived off the rez for most of our childhood, but he was a fixture in our lives even off the rez: he was a legendary lacrosse player, and he taught me how to play well enough that I was moved up a couple of levels in the Nepean Knights lacrosse organization as a kid; seeing how scrawny I was he tried to teach me how to box, because there was authority in violence on the rez; noting my interest in pool he helped teach me in his bar and his basement; discovering that I was thinking about delaying my entrance to the University of Toronto for lack of funding (I didn't apply for any student loans until late) he brought me back to the rez and pressed a roll of hundred dollar bills into my hand and told me I was going to school; I was supposed to be the first Burns with a college degree (despite his efforts I still managed to drop out after a year, move in with a girl, and stay out of school for a long time; my sister was the first, and she's the writer of the family). I never felt like anything except his grandson when I was around him. I never felt like the white kid in an alien world.

That Christmas he brought me outside and opened the garage door, the garage door to the house my family was living in, the house he had built decades earlier to house his own growing family. He revealed, behind that door, my very own motorized vehicle. He must have heard my bitching and moaning about the other kids and their ATVs; he must have known that I was feeling, once again, like a bit of an alien on the rez. I was the kid without a four-wheeler; the kid who flipped three-wheelers over on himself; the kid who didn't understand how to ride one while owning the throttle. I was the kid who biked off the rez, over the bridge into the smelly little industrial town at every opportunity, to play with skate-rats and smokers, non-Indians and white-trash, because I never felt at home on the rez.

But being a grandfather he could hardly be expected to understand that bringing me a mo-ped wasn't exactly going to make me one of the cool kids on the Island. It was orange. It had pedals. It ran on some mixture of gasoline and oil that I never did figure out.

I was miserable in my gratitude. I understood what he had done, but I also understood precisely how he had gotten it all wrong.

I feigned enthusiasm, and I rode the mo-ped. I used it like a bike (being between ten-speeds at the time), but it didn't have the kind of pedal power to take me over the bridge. Being young and underappreciative I never tried to fill the tank with the gas/oil mixture it required to run; I would use it as a bike, but I'd never embarrass myself by trying to out-motor the kids who had real ATVs.

When I wiped out on the ice the first time and bent the right pedal arm far enough that it struck the motor housing every time I pushed, I was certain my days of riding it were over. But I had no other transportation. So I rode it, pedal-click, pedal-bink, pedal-rattle, pedal-crack. When I wiped out on the ice the second time (I kept taking it on the back trails as I would a bike, but it wasn't a bike) and broke the hand-brakes off the handlebars I had to stop riding it. I had no way to brake. So not only was my propulsion impeded by the clicking pedal and the lack of multiple pedaling gears, but my braking was at an end. I could neither go nor stop on this orange geek-maker.

And so I returned my moped to the garage attached to the house my grandfather built to house his growing family, the house now occupied by his daughter and her two children, and I hoped another bike would come along. Because in the realm of ATVs I couldn't be seen on an orange mo-ped with a bent pedal and no brakes. That would be wearing not only my geekiness, but my poverty on my sleeve for everyone to see.

I did have a Nintendo and straight A's. But I couldn't ride a four-wheeler to save my life.

And when a bike came along I once again returned to the smelly little town across the river, and forgot about the orange mo-ped in the garage with the bent pedal and broken hand brakes. And about the effort my tota once made to try to make me feel at home.

An Entirely True Ghost Story

2008-12-16T22:57:00.001-08:00

The hotel looks gothic, and then Southern Gothic, and then like a Catskills resort. It spins through incarnations of hotelier fantasies, and my back tires spin in the ditch.

I resign myself to approaching an obviously haunted hotel because, as the wheel turns, there is nothing to the world beyond the short stretch of road I've managed to evacuate. The world emerges from fog behind me, and disappears into fog ahead.

Why is it always fog that confounds existence in terrifying stories? Makes us doubt the reality of the world beyond? Fog is a metaphor: Recollections are hazy, drinking clouds the mind. Fog is a good metaphor, because in the real world fog is more occluding than nightfall. In the dark at least there is no illusion of reality, just certainty of solitude. In the fog the world taunts with its absence. Fog offers hope of reality just outside of view, hope where there is none.

Hope that there is a world beyond the hotel. The creepy, eerie hotel coalescing out of the fog as I approach.

And why are hotels such eerie edifices? Is it that they are by nature waystations, places of waiting with no permanent residents, un-homes full of the un-homed and therefore easily associated with sad spirits. Is it that hotels are metaphors, metaphors as good as fog but precisely opposite? Fog wards existence round; hotels are existence, writ small and manic.

This hotel in particular is eerie just because of its appearance. It looks like a trap.

Of course it's a trap. It is a building with no distinct shape rising out of a shifting fog on a road to nowhere from nowhen. But it is irresistible.

I cross a threshold exposed by slowly swinging doors, and step onto a carpet worn thin by use rather than mystic age. The foyer of the hotel is cold, and hallways disappear into the darkness to the left and right. The carpet leads to a wide staircase with wooden banisters. But as I step onto the stairs to begin a necessary ascent they writhe beneath my feet and transform into a dank stone spiral. I use the now-stone wall to support me in my climb to the distant top.

As my eyeline crests the ultimate stair I take in the expected scene: an endless hallway lit by ensconced torches. It is so predictable that I can't even muster nervousness, much less the quaking fear it seems the hotel hopes to inspire. I begin a routine stroll down a hallway free of dust and cobwebs but completely obstructed by cliche.

And then the hotel reveals its bait, a diaphanous, glowing form with an ageless face but ancient eyes. She waves me forward and I comply, sighing inwardly at the cloying tradition of it all.

"So. Now we spend eternity together in a spinning dance of hopelessness?" I ask, knowing the answer will only confirm the suspicions I have had ever since my car found the muddy ditch in the fog.

"No, there is no dancing. There is no touching. I cannot touch you. That is not why you are here."

"Ah. So, perhaps I am here because I am a striking copy of your long-dead lover who betrayed you and only now joins you in your damnation?" I've seen too many movies to not be able to eventually figure out what the future holds for me in this in-between place.

"No. You are not here for me. You cannot save me, or join me. You are not here for me. You are here for him." And she points her insubstantial but lovely chin over my shoulder. I turn and there is another glowing form standing in the hallway, this one apparently male, but completely nondescript, forgettable.

"What do you want, ghostly form exuding menace?" He doesn't answer. So I ask the other, "What does he want?"

"Food," comes her sad reply.

"Food? I'd prefer to stay here and dance." Turning back to face the diner I mock, "And besides. You can't even touch me. You're a ghost in an eerie hotel. You can't touch me."

"Yes," he ripostes, "I can."

And he can. He's worn the carpet down, and I am another victim of the lying fog.

**********************************************************************************

Sometimes I hate waking up in the morning. But not that morning.

Discipline and Manipulation

2008-12-14T12:02:00.001-08:00

The Terrible Two's have come early. I'm going to blame daycare rather than my particular brand of lax parenting during Erin's first year and a half. I'll say that the increasing incidents of biting, pushing, and hitting have everything to do with what Erin is learning from a slightly older, out-of-control girl at daycare and nothing to do with me doing everything possible in her first year and a half to ensure that she always felt like she owned the world.

I have experimented a little with different forms of behaviour modification. Once, when Erin persisted in standing up in the bath tub I unleashed my Dog Voice on her. This isn't a yell. It's a bark: a sharp, loud, clipped delivery that grew out of years of living with dogs. It works perfectly on them.

"ER!!-in. SIT. DOWN."

She sat. And she cried. Betrayed.

What an unfair dilemma. I have a way of inspiring canine obedience in her, but it also destroys her innocent soul. The Dog Voice is an Apple from the Tree, and if I offer it to her she learns too much, too early, about the world.

Another method I've tried is Outlast Mode. Emily has really lucked out in in marrying someone who is as childish as her toddler. I've won lots of games of "Down?"--"No. I love you" that involve me holding a squirming Erin who wants to run around in some unsafe environment. As many times as she can say "down" in a row, I can keep going on "No. I love you" autopilot forever. Eventually, she gives up. But Outlast Mode really only works for verbal behaviour that needs to be changed. I can't play the "Stand up" "No. Sit down" game forever in a situation like tub-standing. I need her to know that it isn't okay to stand up in the tub, and I need her to know it immediately.

But without making her cry. I think. I think I need her to know it without making her cry. But as she gets older I get less nervous about just throwing that Apple at her.

There are other situations that seem to warrant Apple-throwing, and since daycare has entered our lives these situations are multiplying. She wants to hit, now. And she wants to push. Pushing is a weird game with her. She'll ask, "pu-ush?" while she grabs my hand and pulls until she lets go and then drifts backward, arms flailing in a Horizontal Vertigo. She's framing me for pushing her.

Her hitting and pushing of other kids looks so detached, so unemotional, that I almost worry that she lacks empathy. "It's not that I think she's a psychopath," I assured Emily one morning after dropping Erin off and watching her little games at daycare, "it's that I think these are the things psychopaths never outgrow." (That was a joke, folks. I made a baby-psychopath joke. It's okay to laugh. It's okay not to laugh. I'm not really funny.)

But then she'll spend even more time consoling hurt toddlers, patting them, wondering what made them so sad (if it wasn't her, that is, since in that case she knows perfectly well what made them so sad), that I'm certain she doesn't lack empathy at all: she's a font of it. She loves to hug and kiss, and if these weren't also usually unwelcome by nervous toddlers she'd have a reputation as the friendliest kid in town.

She could be faking it, though. She could be a brilliant manipulator. In addition to the pushing (mostly of the girls, mostly of a smaller girl just as she is pushed and hit by a larger girl, and mostly of a smaller girl who also gets most of her positive attention), when she has seen that pushing is not approved by her victim or her teachers, she'll start to offer kisses. And it's usually the boys who get those kisses. And it's usually the boys who have something she wants who get those kisses. (Shoot me.)

While I'm more and more motivated, recently, to unleash the Dog Voice when I see behaviour like pushing or hitting, it isn't going to work with more subtle behaviour like being manipulative. And shifting into Outlast Mode doesn't seem right here either.

The last weapon in my arsenal is the Telepathic Staredown. Once, when she was rocking a glider ottoman too fast and violently, about to knock her snack plate off (why was the snack plate even on the ottoman, dad? Oh, right. You were too lazy to put her into her high chair for snack. You brought this on yourself, you know.), I started a contest of wills with her. I froze her with a Telepathic Stare and I used every ounce of strength I had to not crack a smile, because I knew smiling meant defeat.

She smiled first.

But I didn't immediately relinquish my control of her soul; I kept staring, sending her the silent message that it was not okay to push that ottoman over, and eventually her smile faded and she looked contrite. I had won! I had won a battle of wills with a wilful toddler!

And for the next fifteen or twenty minutes it really seemed to have changed her behaviour in a genuine way. She started looking to me for permission to do things, assurance that it was okay. It was such a drastic difference from the effect of the Dog Voice, which was immediate compliance accompanied by intolerable distress, that I banked it for later use.

So today when she insisted on pulling a drawer out of the small table in the hallway, a drawer at head height that can possibly be pulled out enough to land on her head and leave her in a slobbering puddle, I initiated the Telepathic Staredown.

And proving that I'm not he only one who is learning how to handle unwelcome behaviours my Little Innocent came running at me with pursed lips, promising a kiss. And when, surprised and pleased, I broke the stare and ceased sending the telepathic signals to her brain I pursed my own lips and opened my arms wide, she stopped, smiled an evil little grin, and went back to pulling the drawer out.

"I win, guys."

Little Guru

2008-12-12T13:11:00.001-08:00

It is easy to forget, in the middle of the night when she insists that she is certainly no longer tired and that she would like some water, milk, pizza, a Nintendo Wii, or Australia, that she is an adorable little guru, teaching deep lessons deeply at the same time that she is learning deep lessons deeply.

I infer that one of the routines at daycare, one of her lessons in childhood, is a naptime ritual. They will pull the mats out, lay the kids out on them (though not with a left hook), cover them with blankets, and then use a series of soft pats and back rubs accompanied by "shhh. shhh," to put the kids to sleep (though not in the Sending to a Farm in Upstate New York sense).

I infer this because she will, on occasion (every day, six or twenty times), pull a "mat" out (in actuality a seat back pocket storage bag for the car), lay her baby doll out on it (though not with an uppercut), cover it with a blanket, and then use a series of soft pats and back rubs accompanied by "shhh. shhh," to put the baby doll to sleep (though not in the Goldfish Toilet Funeral sense).

She has learned this lesson deeply.

This morning as I sat her in her high chair for breakfast, buckling her in for safety before setting down her plate of eggs, buttered whole wheat mini-bagel and banana, I was arrested in my progress by the most distressing sight I can imagine.

She had pulled the mat out, lain her baby doll out on it...

...and then nothing. Because dad swooped her up and buckled her in her high chair for safety before setting down her plate of eggs, buttered whole wheat mini-bagel and banana.

But she teaches her lessons deeply, my guru. Because without so much as an imploring gaze or whimpering mewl about an incomplete routine, without any indication at all that she was interested in the world beyond her plate of eggs, buttered whole wheat mini-bagel and banana, I reached down and covered her baby doll with a blanket, and then used a series of soft pats and back rubs accompanied by "shhh. shhh," to put her baby doll to sleep (in the Kid, You Made Me Dad sense).

I am not just her dad because of her. I am Dad, overflowing with Dadness.

Mortality and Murder

2008-12-11T20:33:00.001-08:00

The small spider in brown inched across the carpet, and the small toddler in brown followed behind.

"I want to know what you are doing, Mr. Spider. What is it you are doing? Hey guys, what is Mr. Spider doing?"

As she peered at him, and crouched to take a closer look, the tall woman in blue interrupted. "Oh, baby, let's get a piece of paper and put the...."

And the tall man in black pressed his foot in Nike down, sponging the carpet but not enough to save the spider, victim of a father's casual over-protective murderous instinct.

"Pidey?" "Mr. Spider? Guys? Where is Mr. Spider guys?"

"I was going to say "Let's get a piece of paper and put the spider outside.""

"Oh. Sorry. I didn't hear you." Stifled laughter in spurts erupted out of the tall man in black, casual murderer of small spiders in brown.

"Pidey? Buh-bye pidey."

Occasionally, when she is feeling unusually patriotic the tall woman in blue will ask the tall man in black if he would like, in addition to whatever questionable activity he is enjoying, to go club some baby seals. This is her way of noting that he is originally from that miserable tundra north of the Lakes and River and Parallel known as "The Village", or "gu-NA-da" where his aboriginal cousins supplement their annual incomes with seal hunts on the ice flows in Labrador. Baby seals are particularly prized, and not because of their cuteness. He usually laughs it off, and remarks that it's the baby seals who make the best coats, and not because of their work ethic.

He is a murderer, and not to be trusted. His murderous ways are bound to influence and transform his innocent daughter into a casual Shiva, an indiscriminate assassin, a Sweater-unraveling un-Knitter. She is doomed to destroy.

The small toddler in brown returned to the tiny chalk outline over and over. "Buh bye pidey. Pidey? Pidey? Ba-bye!"

Eventually the tall woman in blue realized that the small toddler in brown was still in brown, her brown, as-yet-not-unraveled Sweater.

"Hey, take off your Sweater and stay a while, kid."

"No." The small toddler in brown is perfectly articulate in defiance.

"Baby, don't you want to take your Sweater off?"

"No. Pidey?"

"Are you going out? Do you want to go out?"

"No."

"Are you all dressed up? Do you want to go clubbing?"

"No."

And the tall man in black pounced on the moment like a toddler in brown pouncing on a pidey, or a pidey pouncing on a fly.

"Baby, do you want to go clubbin'.....baby seals?"

"Yes."

And there was no denying whose casually murderous daughter she was. She was dressed in brown, but cloaked in black, just like her father.

Almost

2008-12-09T19:28:00.001-08:00

"Pap-pa?"

"No, baby. We can't call grandma right now."

She lifts the receiver from its cradle and listens, laughing at the solid tone she hears.

"Pap-pa?" she asks.

"No, baby. That's not grandma."

"If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again..."

"Pap-pa!!" she announces triumphantly.

"No, baby, "that's definitely not grandma."

"beepeebeepeebeepeebeepeebeepee"

"Oh, sweetie, that's too loud. Let me turn it off."

Eep. Op. Ork.

"Pap-pa?!?" she inquires, confused by the intermittent beeping that's replaced the frustratingly loud, angry tone of the unconnected call.

"No, baby. That's not grandma. Can you turn it off?"

eep. op. ork.

"Almost, baby. You turned it down. We need to turn it off."

eep. op. ork.

"Almost, kid. More. Can you turn it off? Let me have it. I'll turn it off."

She shies away from my outstretched hand, protecting the receiver from me. She is certain there is someone worth talking to on the other end of the line.

"Al-most?"

I saved them all: A linkbait post

2008-12-09T13:32:00.001-08:00

I bet when you had those business cards made you thought they'd just be thrown out by 95% of the people you gave them to. I bet you thought they'd be thrown out within days of handing them out. I bet you thought they'd definitely be thrown out by that dude skeeving out all the women, and you thought "Why the hell am I even bothering to give this dude a card?"

I came home each night during BlogHer '08 and added those cards to a growing pile, and eventually moved them to a zip top bag. I've been staring at them in that bag since July, saying to myself "Self, you will eventually get around to writing about each and every one of those things and the people responsible for them. You will do this because you are a loser with an abundance of free time suddenly and feel no guilt about blogging while your daughter is in daycare today instead of home with you and you need to kill some time before going to the movies in the middle of the day, again, while your daughter is in daycare responsible blogger, and each one of them, in their own way, was responsible for the great time you had and this is the least you can do."

But, memories being what they are, and my memory for names and people and faces being what it is, frankly I don't remember each and every person who gave me a card. And I've been surprised at how often I won't remember the person but I'll remember where I was standing, or who I was with. So yeah, sometimes I won't be able to write anything too personal, and you (the person who gave me the card) might think "That bastard. I talked to him for like 4 hours and he doesn't even remember me enough to say I had nice hair or told a great joke or asked him to please stop hitting on me?" and so, preemptively, for those I don't remember clearly and who are going to be ill-treated a little by this: you had awesome hair. It's kind of the reason I was hitting on you. That and the joke you told about the nun and the pastry chef; that was killer. I couldn't help myself. But I was way out of line, I agree.

Although this post is full of a lot of names and links to other people, always keep in mind that it's about me. I write about me. Even when doing so reveals how much of an ass I am.

The List, in a particular order (not of awesomeness or anything, just in the way I organized the cards: I put all the little ones together, all the regular sized ones together, all the over sized ones together, and all of the cards-that-aren't-cards together. So I'm starting with the non-cards, then the big cards, then the regular cards, then the little cards. No. Actually, I'm going to go the opposite way so that the little cards come first because I really believe it when everyone says "size doesn't matter" in that really patronizing way and I want to recognize the people with the little cards first. Not, though, because of any deep psychological reason. Stop laughing.) is as follows:

Jessica Spiegel and Sara Rosso: I was standing around talking to *name drop alert* Mike and Graham, forming a little Triangle of Bay Area Dad Blogging Fabulousness, when we were scythed by these two who stand out in my mind mostly because of (apart from the hair and the joke and the hitting on) the fact that they were both Italy bloggers/travel bloggers. Italy is cool.

Charlene from Crazed Parent: This is where I embarrassedly insert a comment about your hair and that joke about the wallaby and the kangaroo in the ass-kicking contest.

Christina from A Mommy Story: we were talking to *name drop* Liz from Mom101 in one of the conference rooms. Christina and I both write for Savvy Source (she's the City Editor for Columbus) and I gave her a chocolate bar. Because I am awesome.

Kim from Simply Me and Kim Orlandini Photography gave me her card, probably at Macy's. I don't remember if she told a joke because I'm pretty sure I was just too busy hitting on her despite everything *namedrop* Casey could do to stop me. The eyes.

Heather Spohr gave a card to me at one of the times I took a picture with her. For some not inexplicable reasons, I have more pictures with her than with anyone else. One reason? Her husband *namedrop* Mike wasn't around to stop me (although he was there, somewhere). Also, wine. I kept forgetting if I'd taken a picture with her already or not. Every day.

Graham, already mentioned in this post, gave me the best card of the weekend: Under his name it just says "dad". What he wants people to know about him the most is that he is a dad. Graham also writes for Savvy Source now, although at the time Mike was holding down that fort in San Francisco. And now Graham is a dad twice over.

Jen from One Plus Two has lovely hair, told awesome jokes, and was saved from me hitting on her by her chaperone, Tanis. Jen and I tried bonding over geography and political issues but Tanis just kept smuggling her off out of my clutches.

Heather from Desperately Seeking Sanity was the very first person to recognize me. We both wrote chapters of the Novel-in-progress at ChapterBytes, and we bonded over that and then later bonded over me embarrassing the hell out of her for personal amusement. I'm sure she's forgiven me by now. Maybe.

Victoria from VDog & Little Man gave me her card. And then I noticed how great her hair was and she told a fabulous joke about a woodpecker and Jerry Orbach, but I really wasn't listening because, you know, hitting on her. And although that's all I remember about our meeting we have subsequently become acquainted better (because Twitter has done what none of the business cards could, which is make me pay attention on a daily basis) and also she now writes for Savvy Source. And I think she really could tell a wicked joke about a woodpecker and Jerry Orbach.

Nadine from Martinis for Milk slipped me a card, and then gave me the slip before I could tell her how great her hair looked. As she was running away she shouted back "and then the horse says to the veterinarian..." and the rest was lost to carpeted corridors of the Westin.

Tanis, The Redneck Mommy gave me a card. Once it became clear she wasn't going to let me hit on Jen I tried hitting on her instead, because her hair was great, but she told a joke about me and that time I tried out for the high school basketball team, and I had to go find some wine to try to recover.

Marie Millard gave me a card and then I went a-rhyming. I am confused by the other name on the card: Nancy. Could it be that her name is not, in fact, Marie Millard? Another example of Twitter's superiority over physical business cards: I actually read a post about menopause over on her blog the other day just because she Tweeted the link.

Carmen of Mom to the Screaming Masses gave me a card and Headless Mom gave me a muffin that Carmen had made her walk all over San Francisco to go buy. Carmen also gave me a Zwaggle t-shirt. Carmen kicks ass. Really. She could kick my ass.

Casey from Moosh in Indy gave me a card, and it may have been while we were lounging on couches upstairs at Macy's. She has fabulous hair, but it was her friend I was hitting on. Casey also writes for Savvy Source; she's the City Editor for Indianapolis.

Let me just say this about The Weirdgirl: She has weird hair. It freaks me out. But, that didn't stop me from hitting on her while she tried to distract me with a joke about George Bush and Rasputin.

I have a card from Zip 'n' Tizzy. I can't remember her hair, because apparently she wears a box on her head while she walks around. Yeah, I think I remember someone walking around with a box on her head the whole weekend. And I definitely remember hitting on that box.

Christine at Watch Me, No Watch Me! (which is probably the best name for a blog I've ever seen and cracks me the hell up) handed me a card then used her hair like a kung fu master's braid to whip me in the face so I'd stop hitting on her. And she just inspired me to go check out my Safeway Club Card points to see if I can get gas for .38/gallon.

Average Jane handed me a card at the BlogHims session that *namedrop* Karl was chairing and Brian attended, bringing the total of dad bloggers in the room to two. I don't remember much of that session, but I did mention my reluctance to talk during any of the other sessions because it didn't seem like my place to do so. One of the ladies in the room (possibly Average Jane, but I honestly don't remember) disagreed very strongly with that. And now I butt in everywhere and damn the "appropriateness" of it.

Schmutzie handed me a card in the lobby of the Westin as she was being maneuvered through the hall by a group of handlers. Or so it seems to me in my foggy memory. No time to chat! But she did stop for a second to say hi. I think she was going to the Cheeseburger Party. I never did make it up the elevator to that before it got shut down.

Michele from Sparks and Butterflies gave me a card and told a very off-colour joke about a monk and a weasel and said "touch my hair!" and I did because it is amazing.

I have a card with a dog tag on it from Military Mama. I'm pretty sure her hair kicked ass, her joke kicked ass, and she would have kicked my ass if I tried to hit on her. Dog tags are awesome.

Adrienne of Adrienne's House gave me a card, and then watched from her Macy's couch perch as I embarrassed myself posing for a picture. Then she called me cute on Twitter.

Lucretia of Geekmommy was sitting with Adrienne, I think, and was also there on Thursday night when I was walking around with a bottle of vodka and making people take shots in honour of Aunt Becky who couldn't be there.

I have a cool spiral graphic card from Shannon of Shannon Sez So. Her hair was amazing: it was like a red, orange, yellow, and purple...uh...spiral. And not only did I hit on her: I chimed in on the punchline to the "How many nuclear physicists....?" joke. "Not if we don't get him down from there we won't!"

I met Jenny of Absolutely Bananas and Seattle Mom Blogs at the People's Party and it was remembering that there was a Seattle Mom Blogs site that helped streamline the planning for our weekend in Seattle in early September. So, thanks Jenny :}

I met Lawyer Mama?? So, I know most of my "I don't remember this but here's some hair funny" entries are annoying. And I would do another one here, but here is a person I knew of before BlogHer, met, continue to follow after BlogHer, and I have no memory of meeting her. It's like someone else gave me her card. What the hell? Oh, and nice hair; lawyers are hot; and that "how many philosophers does it take to screw-in a lightbulb" was hilarious.

Diane from Of the Princess and the Pea (another fabulous blog name) made me beg her for a card. Like I was going to just throw it away if she gave me one. I can understand her reluctance, though, because it is a striking card. The graphic, a pea with a tiara on it, in black and white, is just perfect. When I tried to hit on her she looked down her nose at me and said "Peasant! Hast thou heard'st the one about the three-legged astronaut and the robot from 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'?"

And another Momocrat that I really ought to remember meeting because I knew who she was before BlogHer rolled around: Glennia Campbell. Where the hell was I while all of this meeting was going on? It would be like going to a Star Trek convention and meeting Brent Spiner and then getting home to discover Brent Spiner's autograph on your forehead and having no recollection of ever meeting Brent Spiner. (Sorry, I like Data.)

Missy from Meanwhile Back at the Ranch, an Aussie visiting from, uh, Australia, sat down with me while I was sitting at a big lonely table in the big hall during the BlogHer keynote. She gave me a card and a pencil I believe and her enthusiasm about meeting me really made my day. Because really? It's like I'm famous in Australia. Or so I will tell my grandkids someday: "Kids, gramps is pretty sure he is famous in Australia. Let's ask Missy."

Anne from Tales from My Tiny Kingdom left me her card and with a broken heart. Her perfect hair, her excellent dirty limericks. They were overwhelming and I certainly behaved in a most uncouth way. So, I'm sorry for that. But I DON'T REGRET IT!!

Oh, The Joys is smart and all, but she's a total fangirl. I didn't even have time to hit on her for her awesome hair before she was hitting on me for my awesome hair. And where did that leave us? Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria. That's where.

Sarah, of Sarah and the Goon Squad and her awesome bottle opener non-card. It's been used to open a Stella Artois. She also went off with that bottle of vodka I brought and I've no idea what became of it because she claims not to like vodka.

Elizabeth of Table 4 Five gave me a card that is actually a refrigerator magnet. Which is good because I need something to hold up that note on the fridge that says "Nice try. I know how great my hair looks. But let's stay friends. Hey, what's the difference between a microwave and a Snicker's bar?"

Digital Sista slipped me a note. She had run out of cards but insisted that I take her note with her info on it anyway. And I did. So, Digitial Sista, you did not waste your time by hand writing a note to me. I saved it!

Kaiser Alex gave me what looks like just a picture of her boobs in a tank top. It's not even a card. It's on Kodak paper. It is also dated on the back and the date is my birthday, so I'm just going to go ahead and pretend this was a birthday present for me and that no one else got one.

And last, but not least, is the best card I was given all weekend (Sorry Kaiser Alex, but this one wins): Naked Jen's "I Got Naked at BlogHer08" card that is just a picture of her. Topless. Her hair? Smokin' hot dreads. Her joke? "Here, have a 'card'." Hit on her? I think I'm still hitting on her just by looking at the card.

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And that, folks, is the longest entry I've ever written. It was filled with lies, but they ought to be easy to figure out. It was filled with truths, but also, they ought to be easy to figure out.

It was also the most topical entry I've ever written. Because BlogHer only happened, what, five months ago?

If you think you gave me a card and you wonder why you aren't on the list here, it's because (a) I accidentally dropped it somewhere or (b) NO YOU DIDN'T BECAUSE SERIOUSLY, LOOK AT THIS LIST. I KEPT THEM ALL.

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As I was going through these cards I was flipping them over (many were double-sided) and I came across one very special one. On the back this person had written their telephone number.

Someone slipped me their digits! And I didn't even notice until today!

I won't tell you who it was. Because it's awesome to not know. Suspect everyone! Ask your friends if it was them, then don't believe them because it totally was! What's this? This is me starting trouble for my own amusement!

Have a nice day. :}

Seven things to do

2008-12-07T13:04:00.001-08:00

If you tell a joke and nobody gets it, but a tree falls on a mime, is it a good day?

Ya lost me.

So "Buy this vacuum" wasn't the most obvious of references. And nobody got it (although a couple of people got the concept right without knowing the origin). Someone still gets a calendar, because I'm not going to punish YOU for the fact that I'M fond of obscure references. So a winner was chosen at random. The winner of her very own copy of the Hot Blogger Calendar 2009 (Guys), modified by me in any way she wishes, is:

Mama Smurf! (Please contact me at your earliest convenience with address/request information).

In other news, I've decided that I'll be donating the money raised through your clicks through the "Click Here" button on the sidebar to families staying at the Ronald McDonald house at Stanford Hospital in the form of gift certificates to places like Target, Wal-Mart, and Longs. Every charity is worthwhile. But Erin was born at Stanford and I bike past the Ronald McDonald house all the time and the house families are especially needy of the flexibility these cards afford them while they are away from home for extended, stressful periods of time.

So, that's it for today's edition of Obscure Reference Blogging. Congratulations again to Mama Smurf. I'll write something non-Calendary related later. And maybe it'll be funny. Or maybe it'll be a lecture about something. Exciting right? You never know what's in store for you when you stop by Backpacking Dad.

Buy This Vacuum

2008-12-03T12:49:00.001-08:00

I still can't quite believe that it ever happened. I kind of remember the flight to JFK, and walking around New York, and taking my shirt off a couple of times in what they assured me was a photographer's studio.

My surreal memories notwithstanding I have confirmation that I really did go to New York one weekend in the fall of 2008. And I don't just mean my annoying Tweeting about it. No, the Hot Blogger Calendar (2009) is shipping out and you can order yours now!

There is a calendar full of crazy Hot Ladies, like Amy (Permission to Peruse), Jill Notkin (The Daily Grind), Miss Britt, Chic Shopper Chick, Katja Presnal, and Casey (Moosh in Indy), to name just a few of the ladies I know in real life.

But the one you'll be wanting to get your squeeing little hands on (because I know who reads this y'ere blog) is the one full of crazy Hot Guys, like Jim (Busy Dad), Peter Shankman, and NYC Watchdog (again, namedropping people I've met in real life, although I've also met Wil Wheaton in real life and he totally isn't in the calendar).

Oh, and me. I'm heating up September. My number is 9, folks, and 9 is the number of the month whence I'll be staring at you. And my page is special, because it comes with a tiny, tiny, tiny webcam that will let me see into whatever room my page is in. That's right. Just as your dog is staring at me, I'll be staring right back. It's a special feature only available to the calendars purchased by first clicking on the link over on the right where it says "Click Here". (Editor's Note: None of that is true. There is no camera. Relax and/or stop posing in front of the picture and/or stop trying to make me look at what your kid threw up into that cup.)

I think I'll donate all proceeds from this to charity. Because that's what you do with this sort of thing, right? So here I'm accepting nominations for charities to donate the money to (I'm going to make you do-gooders fight it out over who dos the goodest). I'll decide by this Saturday at 11:59pm PST which charity/cause the money will go to (and I may trump all of you and pick one on my own).

Further, I will be using the calendars as a giveaway. I don't know how many I'll give away, but I'll do at least one, starting right now!

What the hell does the title of this post mean/refer to?

Answer that question in the comments (in the same comment you recommend a charity or in a different one; your choice) and you will be entered into a random drawing for your very own 2009 Hot Blogger Calendar (The Guys). And I'll autograph it for you if you want. Or write a poem for you. Or draw a moustache on Jim's picture. Whatever you want to have happen (within reason, of course). Contest ends on Saturday December 6th at 11:59pm PST.

A Speech (shelved)

2008-11-30T22:33:00.001-08:00

"When you disparage, demean, trivialize, mock, or patronize the parenting of fathers, whether from afar or in the very act of their parenting, you are resuscitating the stilling world of damaged gender role stereotyping that ought to vanish into history. Ma'am, respect male parents as parents, refrain from the cheap humour made available by our cultural immersion in sitcom fatherhood, or in exchange you must not only accept the diminished role you will see fathers take in the lives of their children, with all of the attendant costs associated with that absence, but you must also remain silent in the face of those workplace jokes about your "emotional" nature. Because that is the world you are endorsing. Is it worth it? Is it right?"

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A lot of the world can be contained in, and expressed by, an inflection.

Erin climbed the jungle gym reserved for 5-12 year olds with her usual derring-do, and I followed close behind. She charged past the two emaciated adult forms at the top on her way to the 10-foot slide. If they weren't at a park at the top of a jungle gym I might have taken them for a starving homeless couple. But given our geography, the time of day, and the presence of three miniature versions of themselves I hastily concluded that they were yippies (hippies who owe their yuppie income to the organic food/alt. lifestyle pop culture movement rooted in the Bay Area).

Erin crouched and moved her legs into position to begin her ride down to her smiling mother's open, encouraging arms. A small ridge at the top of the slide impeded a smooth transition from a crouching position to a seated one, and Erin started moving forward with her feet slightly beneath her as her shoes caught this ridge. Her awkward pose quickly turned into a more elegant but less slide-appropriate kneeling position, which in turn transformed into a full belly-flop as she gained momentum traveling down the ten feet to the bottom. Her mother caught her in case her inertia would have carried her face-first off the end of the slide onto the wood chips carpeting the ground.

Unnerved by her unanticipated Olympic Skeleton qualifier and poked in the face a little while being rescued at high speed Erin expressed her discontent with some pathetic wails as her mother consoled her.

And from the yippie mom standing next to me at the top of the jungle gym came a startling "Da-ad." It was a mixture of disapproval and humour, both an assignment of blame and an attempt to soften the blow with a joke. I was supposed to be in on the "da-ad", and recognize my role as the bumbling, unaware male who was incautious and slightly incompetent; I was supposed to be an enlightened token of a ridiculous stereotype: a sitcom dad who was aware of the nature of the sitcom and who was invested in the success of the show.

I was embarrassed that I hadn't seen Erin catch her foot on the top of the slide in time to stop her from tumbling. I was embarrassed as a parent. But it wasn't until I heard "Da-ad" that I realized I was supposed to be embarrassed because I was a father. That is, it wasn't the fact that Erin had tumbled and I hadn't caught her that was of concern; nor was it the fact that as a parent I had given her the headway to take on her own challenges; it was the fact that I was a father and, per stereotype, the expectations for me were lower and I had met them. And having met them I could be boxed up and delivered back to my wife, her surrogate-in-momhood at the top of the slide having done her part.

I am more embarrassed at my response than I was at Erin's fall. I slipped all-too-easily into the role of a sitcom dad. Instead of letting myself show any distress at all that my daughter had just gone face first down a slide and might not feel that great about it I let the "Da-ad" admonition corral my genuine feelings and I offered up a sterilized model to the world. Or I let it goad me into being unfeeling so that it wouldn't look like I cared what the yippie had to say, so that I wouldn't let her win. I'm not sure which is the truth. But I let Emily do the comforting while I grinned a defeated rictus grin from the top of the slide and asked Erin if she wanted to go again while she sobbed on her mother's shoulder.

I seethed. I seethed at this woman's ignorant inflection. I seethed at my own response. I seethed at the playground equipment designer who had included a tripping ridge at the top of the slide. I seethed out of irrational embarrassment and out of righteous indignation. And while I seethed I wrote a speech in my head.

I never did deliver it. I decided that I was reading a lot into an inflection and that maybe with the benefit of the doubt "Da-ad" might have simply been the interjection of a friendly do-gooder park parent; maybe she would have offered an equally disapproving but humourous "Mo-om" if Emily had been the one at the top of the stairs. And while this might mean that she deserved some kind of reply I only had the one speech written. So I shelved it.

And Erin climbed the stairs and slid down the slide for 5-12 year olds over and over again while the yippie kids played around her.

It was unexpectedly good

2008-11-25T17:50:00.001-08:00

The four tween girls blocking the theater door, giggling, and dancing over the threshold in some weird game that only makes sense to tween girls should have been my omen: I had made the choice that was bound to make me the most uncomfortable.

Earlier in the day I had announced my boredom with Holocaust movies and asked which of Twilight or Bolt was less creepy to see by myself. Replies were mixed, but definitely skewed toward seeing Bolt.

I should have listened to this slight majority.

But no, instead I "excuse me'd" past the girls and walked up the stairs to the back row of the theater and settled in for the "clueless kid meets another kid, an "other", a foil, with unhealthily pale skin and messed up teeth and together they challenge the oppressive blond enemy and teach him a lesson" flick.

Oy.

Oy?

Surprisingly, I found their fantastical relationship really believable. I didn't expect to. There were a lot of ways the director and the actors could have failed, and they just didn't. Every detail, like the pale kid's obsession with his food, made everyone seem more human, not less. It worked. I bought it all. And I was really, really invested in their relationship, and affected by the stress their being together brought into not only their own lives but into the lives of those around them. As I said, it was the uncomfortable choice.

Holocaust movies always are.

P.S. As I was watching it I kept thinking "this is really a movie that ought to be watched in conjunction with Pan's Labyrinth." And there are a lot of reasons why that is the case, and I thought about writing this post as a compare/contrast/argument review of both movies. But this was more fun.

Bowls

2008-11-22T14:19:00.001-08:00

This is the label from a package of bowls we just bought at Target.

They seem to be fine bowls. Nice picture of a kid there on the right.

There are many things written on the back of this label, among them:

"Fun design lets your child eat from a fish bowl."
"Great for mom to feed baby or child to use at mealtime."

I'll ignore the obvious problem of Munchkin amputating their market and offering a tacit insult to dads in general, involved dads a little less generally, and at-home dads in particular. Well, I'll ignore it starting now. No, now. Now? (#munchkindads)

I ignore it because I need to move on to that circle in the upper right corner of the label, just next to the "Munchkin" logo.

Yeah. That says "Munchkin's pet division."

So...I understand that the bowls haven't actually been used by pets before I bought them. And that just because they are designed with pets in mind has nothing to do with whether or not they are just as good at containing kid food as kitty food. And that Munchkin is definitely not suggesting that parents should or ought to treat their kids like animals (#munchkindads).

But come on. At least lie to me and tell me the bowls were made in the Happy Rainbow Children's Dinnerware Kingdom by magic elves or something. At least tell me that someone didn't see sales of dog dishes falling off and think "You know who would buy the hell out of these things? Parents."

Oy.

Here kiddie kiddie.

Or puppy puppy.

"Grrrr, guys. Grr and woof woof."

The Slick Wrench

2008-11-22T09:34:00.001-08:00

These are notes I've jotted down and meant to go back to but I have little intention of doing so. And in some cases I don't even remember why I was making the notes to begin with. This is what a writer's/writers' block purge looks like.

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Fairies

Green Fairy: adolescent, drunken-ness. Perpetual childhood (Tinkerbell, absinthe)

Blue Fairy: reality, growing up, responsibility (Pinocchio's angel, Glinda the Good witch)

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Plato for Preschoolers

This is Plato. He looks like Santa.

Plato likes smart people.

Plato does not like the dark.

Plato thinks if you know what is good you can't be bad.

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And then, like a flash, he was gone....

Dawn dawned, as dawns tend to dawn, over Portland that dawn. As the city awoke its citizens pumped through the cosmopolitan arteries, little realizing that a hero was walking among them...

I have a Latin teacher who really deserves to written into a character in a novel, because he is just so unusual and confident at the same time. He likes to use examples of academic prowess and moments of revealed character to inspire his students to study and work hard to achieve something, but he has no modesty in his small frame so his examples all involve himself: He is the world's leading James Joyce scholar, he will say; he once killed a water moccasin that was sneaking up on Clarence Thomas; as he would walk down the cobbled streets in Oxford people would trail after him, fans of some quiz show he had appeared on.

He must be rubbing off on me a little because I've had this overwhelming urge to tell one story in particular over the last couple of days.

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Six Quirky Things

iMommy tagged me to write six quirky things about myself.

(Editor's Note: FAIL)

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Worst Marketing Campaign Ever

"Enter to win a FREE CREMATION!"

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Tiger Tiger

When he was 17 he lied about his age and joined the army, to serve his country in Vietnam. Or so I'll suppose. Blah blah blah...what's up with the huge tattoo of a tiger's head on your engorged abdomen, dude? And why do you have to be lying on that particular grassy knoll with your pants undone, Flashing the Tiger while you doze?

Parts of this poem are good

2008-11-19T15:06:00.001-08:00

Ruminate on expectations, drudge cogitating snot.

Exsanguinate crimson corpuscles, suck chuck-muck.

Porous veil, lacy gently wafting; Gottado Watta.

Reveal the cellar door, abort the slick wrench.

Illuminate, intimate, procreate. Vomit, belching, bile.

Accomplished. Final.

Final, this Curate's Egg.

(This inexplicable post is a writer's/writers' block alleviation that owes itself to the #goodwordsbadwords challenge on Twitter from Her Bad Mother. Although I ignored her word choices because I was in the middle of writing this when I received her suggestions.)

McStepford: A lesson in Cool

2008-11-15T17:39:00.001-08:00

One of Erin's baby friends, whose name I will change to Froggy for no nefarious purpose but merely because he was dressed as a frog for Halloween last year, moved into the neighbourhood across the street a few months ago.

It is an intimidating neighbourhood. That is, when Froggy's mom was greeted with welcome baskets of cookies and muffins and frankincense and myrrh she was also greeted with the ominous: "We go all out for Halloween here."

She wasn't quite sure what to make of this, but she heard it over and over again from neighbour after neighbour: "We go all out for Halloween." Veiled behind this description was an instruction: "You will go all out for Halloween here."

"All out" meant decorating and giving out candy on an enormous, four Costco bags scale; no matter that Froggy is too young to go trick-or-treating himself: "Don't disappoint the neighbours by failing to fully participate in Halloween." It meant that one family set up a haunted house, while another one was known as the "water station" for the parents, where "water" means "definitely not water." Playtime at the park with other families new to the area was filled with conversations beginning with "Have they come by to tell you about Halloween yet?"

As Halloween approached and the decorations and candy were purchased Froggy's parents grew bored with the idea of answering the door every 30 seconds to dish out a handful of candy to the kids who were coming from all over (some were dropped off in cabs. I'm not joking.) Halloween can be tedious if you let it be. The neighbourhood's reputation was built on opulence: impressive decorative displays and magnanimous distribution of candy. Froggy's parents had the candy but the decorations weren't keeping-up-with-the-Joneses. And they didn't care. They were going to insert themselves into the neighbourhood and stamp it with their idea of fun rather than let the community mold them into the perfect McStepford household.

A table was set up on the front porch. A hand-scrawled sign was made that read "American Idol Auditions", and a toy microphone and speaker set were brought outside. And then, with the help of some friends who came over for the evening, Froggy's parents played "American Idol" judges for hours and hours while forcing the kids in the neighbourhood to sing for their Costco candy. They stayed in character (Simon, Paula, and Randy) whenever there were kids around and the line to sing sometimes stretched down to the street.

You'd think the kids would have been shy. In fact, Froggy's parents figured no one would sing and this experiment in scrounged conceptualization and personal enthusiasm would be an epic fail. But the kids sang.

The adults sang. The grandparents sang. The preschoolers sang. Even, toward the end of the evening, the teenagers. The self-conscious, easily embarrassed teens stepped out of their cocoons of faux-coolness to sing songs of their own choosing in front of total strangers, risking that fate worse than death to a teen: mockery. But just as the teens were uncharacteristically brave, so too were their contemporaries uncharacteristically joyous and encouraging. There was no room for cynicism on the porch.

Once, as one crowd of singers and groupies dissipated three figures materialized out of the darkness, stepping forward into the porchlight.

Figure 1: "You have done the neighbourhood proud."

Figure 2: "Very proud."

Figure 3: "Too proud."

All Together: "Ha. Ha. Ha."

Figure 1: "You have set the bar high for next year."

Figure 2: "Very high."

Figure 3: "Too high."

All together: "Ha. Ha. Ha."

And with that the Wyrd Neighbours cloaked themselves in darkness once again and returned to the "water" house.

Coolness, the teens realized and Froggy's parents demonstrated, is what happens when you embrace even your meager resources with enthusiasm. It is giving a shit, completely, about what you give a shit about, not pretending that you don't. It is not keeping up. It is remaining yourself, and thrusting yourself into the world, not like it belongs to you, but like you don't belong to those around you.

Froggy's parents offered the best, most enduring Halloween experience for everyone who came by, and it wasn't because they spent the most on candy or decorations, but because they spent the most of themselves. And doing it because they thought it would be fun and hoping it would entertain the kids meant that even that cost was minimal: a little laryngitis the next day; a dead battery in the scrounged mic-and-speaker set.

Next year they're going to make the kids dance too.

Speechless Wednesday

2008-11-12T16:22:00.001-08:00

May 15th, 2009

Hugs and Cuddles and Things That Make You Feel Sick

2008-11-10T23:02:00.001-08:00

I don't quite remember when Erin started giving hugs voluntarily instead of out of self-defense as her mom or I tried to squeeze her joy into the world. And I don't remember when she started running up to us and hugging our legs just below the knees.

There was a gap, a long period in which she was no longer helpless (and so couldn't struggle away from us), but too excited about exploring the world to remember to return to us, her lifegivers, and reward us with some spontaneous affection.

She does offer up the occasional hug now. And she'll lean in with a kiss and a loud "mah!" When she hugs she says "awww" and pats my shoulder as if to reassure me: "You are doing a good job, guys." But she still isn't a stay-at-home-kid. She isn't one to sit in a lap and watch the world.

She owns the world, and she needs to explore her fiefdom as often as possible.

We know other toddlers who are much more willing to sit with mom or dad. Erin is wriggly. She learned the word "down" and she isn't afraid to use it. We wonder sometimes what the world is like for parents who have stay-close kids. Who, when they put their toddler down in the middle of a patch of grass she doesn't immediately run to the edge and try to leap into the street. Do they feel more rested? My legs get tired chasing that kid around.

Her daycare teachers described her as "busy" after her first day. I think that was polite code for "what are you feeding her?" or possibly "You will have to teach her to settle down and eat her snack or she will always come home with milk on her shirt."

As of this weekend though, proving that parents are rewarded for patience, we've figured out what slows Erin down and turns her into a cuddling homebody: a fever of 102.

She developed a fever over the weekend and she's been adorably, uncharacteristically needy. Emily wanted to keep her up late just to get in more hug time, because Erin has been laying out on our chests like she hasn't done since she was a squalling infant. She'll rest up a little, then get playful again, then get tired and crawl up into a lap. And today was the first time in months that she has fallen asleep in my arms.

I miss that, so much. I'm not sure I miss it "watch a fever of 102 for a couple of days and listen to the occasional miserable whimper" much. But a lot.

I love that kid. I don't want her to be sick. I want her to go off and own the world again. But those spans of time when she forgets to dish out some spontaneous affection had better abbreviate. I don't want to have to carry a vial of flu virus around with me when she's in high school just to make sure I get a hug before prom.

(Editor's Note: I figured that I kind of owed a daddy blogger post. Especially since this site was inexplicably included in Sweetney's 10 Favorite Dad Blogs and On Teens Today's Top 50 Dad Blogs list. Sweetney's list I understand because I can and will quote from Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog at the drop of a hat and that makes me objectively awesome. But the On Teen's Today list was a real surprise. Teens care what dads think? I hope that stays true for at least 18 more years.)

Circumlocuting Thanks

2008-11-10T12:18:00.001-08:00

This is the most awkwardly expressed post I can remember writing. I know that because I've trashed four versions of it. It's important that I say what I'm saying, but I just don't know how to do it properly, so I end up writing incoherent, babbling, sentences that are barely related to each other. Ever happen to you? Also, it's all wrapped up in this "I just want girls to like me" meme that has been reproducing itself and directing my actions since high school, and it's hard to look that right in the face, but I have to if I'm going to understand all of the reasons this needs to be written.

Anyway.

I don't think I voted in the state election immediately prior to this last one. It was utter laziness. When we moved to the Bay Area I never updated my voter registration. It took someone literally shoving a clipboard into my hands at WonderCon this year for me to finally register. And even then I might not have done it if the line I was standing in hadn't been so long.

Before this year I was a fairly apathetic voter. I've had periods of high interest and low interest, but mostly I just didn't care. I could talk about politics as much as any other suburbanite driving an hour to get to work in the morning and listening to talk radio could do. But I didn't really care. Not enough to update my voter registration when I changed my address.

Maybe it took having a daughter who was growing up in a world affected by public policy for me to really start caring. Enough to fill out a piece of paper while standing in line to do other things, at least.

But I can't credit Erin with all of the interest I've had in this most recent, most historic election. And I don't think it has much to do with me.

It's them; not the big red ants; but the big red (and blue) bloghers, who have generated and maintained my interest in politics and who have inspired me to participate and think about what is going on around me instead of remaining at a cynical distance. Their earnestness and effort shamed me into activity. And the bullshit they have to put up with for not only writing about politics, but presuming to do so in an environment that mantles itself in misogyny when arguments fail, spurred me to be better than the anachronistic reactionaries permeating the political ether.

It isn't that there aren't male bloggers out there who could have inspired this same kind of attention in me; but for whatever the reason (*cough* I want girls to like me *cough*) I just don't read them. And if I did I can't be sure that they would have had the same effect on my political psyche. I did listen to male talk radio hosts for years without ever experiencing the same kind of excitement about politics. Of course most of them were insane blowhards, because that's who gets to host radio shows. But still, I've never cared as much as I do now.

So, Erin, Liz, Julie, Dana, Stefania, Jill, Joanne, Debbie, the Momocrats and BlogHers who have not sat idly by while other people decide what kind of world my daughter will inherit:

well...

you know.

Simple

2008-11-08T11:35:00.001-08:00

This is why we never buy toys.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Proposition 8: A Glimmer, A Glimpse, of Hope

2008-11-05T23:52:00.001-08:00

Acting with a swiftness that suggests, to the ironically-minded, a Boy Scout's preparedness, the ACLU very quickly filed a petition with the court today that provides a small ray of hope to the thousands of same-sex couples in California who face having their right to marry stripped from them by a ballot proposition amending the California Constitution.

The issue? Proposition 8 was an inappropriate vehicle for eliminating the right to marry. Instead of an amendment, approved by a majority of the voting population, the ACLU alleges that what is required to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry is a revision.

What the hell is the difference between an amendment and a revision and why does it matter?

The ACLU petition asserts that Proposition 8 "would work a dramatic, substantive change to our Constitution's "underlying principles" of individual equality...[prohibiting] California courts from exercising their core, traditional, constitutional role of protecting the established equality rights of a minority defined by a suspect classification...[effecting] a far reaching change in the nature of our basic governmental plan.""

This, the ACLU thinks, is enough to call what Prop 8 does to the Constitution a "revision" rather than a mere amendment. That is, it does more than insert a line of text that only affects the laws of the state: the insertion of that text changes the relationship of core components of the makeup of the state, in particular the courts' ability to apply the principle of equal protection to an identifiable minority group. To make this change is a revision, not an amendment.

A revision, according to Article 18 of the California Constitution requires a 2/3 vote of the legislature just to call for approval of a convention of electors (voters) to decide the fate of the revision. An amendment, according to the same article, may be enacted by the electors themselves by simple initiative (like Proposition 8). That is, while an amendment only takes one act of decision-making, a revision requires three (legislature, voters, convention).

If the argument is successful then Prop 8 is dead because it was never the right vehicle for the elimination of the right of same-sex couples to marry.

Ironically, had Prop 8 been proposed years ago, instead of the overturned Prop 22 (which was a simple law and not an amendment) then this challenge to the Proposition might not even exist. It is because marriage is recognized by the courts as a fundamental right, and because it was recently ruled to apply to same-sex couples as well as heterosexual couples, that the bold argument that what Prop 8 attempts to do is revise the Constitution can even be made. Before the courts' overturned Prop 22 it was not nearly as evident that denying same-sex couples the right to marry was denying them a fundamental right. It is that judicial history now that leaves the door open for the challenge from the ACLU.

Backpacking Dad is not an attorney but he sure has seen a lot of Law and Order episodes.

Bard

2008-11-03T20:43:00.001-08:00

"Sing a song for me," the boy demanded of Coyote.

"You will have to catch me first," replied Coyote.

And the boy chased Coyote around and around, through furrows and sorrows and marrows. And when he thought he could run no longer the boy saw Coyote look back over his shoulder, and saw Coyote's tail slow its recession. With one finger the boy touched Coyote, and Coyote sang a song for him.

"That's a good song," the boy said to Coyote.

"It is a song, like other songs," replied Coyote. "But with that one ringing your ears your mind is sifted. Now hear this song. It is a special song."

And the song chased the boy around and around, through furrows and sorrows and marrows. And when it sang that it was coming to an end it caught up the boy's mind. With one note the song touched the boy, and the boy spoke a word for it.

"That's a good word," Coyote said to the boy.

"It's a word, like other words," replied the boy.

"No," said Coyote, "it is a special word. It is a story word."

"What does a story word say that other words do not?" asked the boy of Coyote.

"There are three: the argument word, the poem word, and the story word. You have said the story word. The story word says what is."

"How have I said this story word when before I said only words like other words?" asked the boy of Coyote.

"The song," replied Coyote. "When your mind is prepared through sifting, when it hears this song it surrenders the story word."

"What is the name of this song?" asked the boy of Coyote.

"It is the World Song," replied Coyote. "But now that you know you must say the story word and be forgotten."

And the boy said his story word and was forgotten.

And Coyote laughed.

Citizenship

2008-11-02T21:15:00.001-08:00

I've been a terrible citizen lately, and I've been called on it. I have been taking, and doing a lot of shouting, but doing very little conversing and interacting. The strength of a society lies in the coordination of its members; the coordination of interests, the accommodation of radically different interests; the identification of incompatible interests. And that coordination takes interaction, communication.

And I haven't been doing my share.

But, hell. Maybe it only seems like I haven't been doing my share lately because I was so over-participatory before. You could hardly go anywhere without seeing a little bit of graffiti that I'd left behind, declaring my favour or disfavour toward something somebody said in the society. Maybe I've cut back to normal levels for a member of society.

Or maybe I am just inconsiderate.

In any case I don't see being any better about it in the near future. I can't participate at the level that I used to, and I can't bring myself to tailor my participation to the needs of the individual members of the community.

I can and will only operate whimsically and opportunistically, not strategically.

In case I'm being too cryptic I'm talking about blogs, blogging, commenting, etc....I haven't even been as good about replying to comments on my own blog as I used to be, and I've been much, much worse about commenting on the blogs I have on my blogroll, and I've been much, much, much worse about commenting on blogs written by people who stop by here. I participate as time and fancy co-ordinate.

So. I'm a bad blog citizen right now. I don't know what else to tell you.

Sorry?

BBQ Sauce

2008-11-01T20:22:00.001-07:00

On the way home from Baby Loves Disco tonight it was requested of me by my lovely wife that I stop at the market to get some baked beans and some barbecue sauce to make some chicken breasts that tasted like barbecue sauce.

I was inclined to acquiesce to her request.

My grill is out for the count, so I did a quick broil job on the chicken. I made a rub, rubbed my meat, and then broiled the chicken for ten minutes. Then I mopped it with some sauce: Stubb's Barbecue Sauce. I let the chicken go for another couple of minutes, turned it over and mopped the other side and broiled it for another couple of minutes to finish it off.

The chicken breasts that tasted like barbecue sauce were a hit. Erin loved it. Emily almost made me swear never to make anything else ever again. And I thought they turned out to be pretty tasty.

As we were eating we flipped over to Back to the Future because Emily has requested that we institute a new "no shows that are too severe" rule in the house as Erin has grown older and seems to understand more of what is going on. CSI was right out.

We intercepted the BttF broadcast just as the "Enchantment Under the Sea Dance" was starting. We watched the incestuous make-out session between Marty and his mom. We watched the attempted date-rape of Marty's mom by Biff. We watched the gang-violence assault on Marty by Biff's cronies. And we watched those same cronies call one of the Marvin Berry band a "spook" and then refer to them all as "reefer addicts." And we watched George slug Biff so hard that the 200 lbs bully was spun right around and knocked unconscious.

Our other option was The Wedding Singer, but we had tuned in just as one of the kids was calling Sandler's ex-fiancee a bitch.

I'm not wagging an ironic finger at Emily. It only occurs to me, now, just how mature the scenes in BttF are. Well, I'm not wagging an ironic finger at her yet.

Back to the past: As dinner was cooking I was flipping through the channel guide and I saw the details of a show or mini-series or something called "Legend of the Seeker", and when I saw that it was a television adaptation of Terry Goodkind's fantasy novels I exclaimed, quite uncontrollably and disgustedly, "Oh shit!" Because Goodkind has menaced geeky fantasy readers with badly argued Libertarian political philosophy for years. Heinlein at least did it well, and passionately. Goodkind abuses his readers. He also wrote himself into a horrible corner and had to turn his hero into a god in the last twenty pages of a series that ran in the thousands of pages. And yes, I own all of the books. I am large.

Anyway, I exclaimed, quite loudly, "Oh, shit!" And Emily, understandably, said "Watch your language!" and indicated Erin, who looked just as disgusted as I was about Goodkind's show.

Back to the future: we settled on Back to the Future, and started in on our chicken breasts that tasted like barbecue sauce. And Emily exclaimed, quite uncontrollably and disgustedly, "Oh fuck!" because she had just spilled some of Stubb's barbecue sauce onto her shirt.

I turned to Erin and asked "Did you catch that?" Wag, wag, wag.

Future to the future: As George wound up for his gigantic punch to Biff's head a thought occurred to me. And like so many of the thoughts that occur to me, I believed in my heart that Emily needed to know this right now.

"You know, this story isn't a fantasy about a kid traveling back to the 50's and changing his future by changing what happens in his parents' high school. This story is a fantasy about an adult changing what happens to him in high school, and his future. This is George McFly's story. Marty is just a tool of time travel. He is like a human DeLorean."

And Emily exclaimed, quite uncontrollably and disgustedly, "Did you use the Philosophical Barbecue Sauce? Because mine hasn't kicked in yet."

So it goes.

A Harmonic Insomniac Journey

2008-10-31T00:43:00.001-07:00

Or, reason number 143 why you shouldn't click on any Twitter links after 11pm.

@karlerikson, aka Secondhand Karl, tweeted a link to this pretty daunting video. On Youtube. I'm sure you've all wandered down Youtubian roads and ended up in unexpected places. But dammit, I had to go to sleep. Nevertheless, I clicked. And watched.

How had I never heard of this multi-tracking self-recording phenomenon before? I needed to check out some basic works after that; some ground floor stuff.

And scruffy haired/bearded guy was pretty good. Also? He had recorded a couple from "The Music Man". Because if you are at all interested in barbershop type stuff you know "The Music Man". I was in the barbershop quartet in "The Music Man" myself.

But then the lingo started dropping. This is the guy who introduced me to the term "tag". He hasn't dropped any phat multi-tracking tags in a while though. Because he has a part in "The Music Man" that's keeping him busy.

I saw a couple of names crop up here and there, "FineyLee" and "VancePerry" so I went looking for them. This right here is a fantastic tag, if I understand what "tag" means, by FineyLee.

And this is an overtone.

But then someone in the comments was all "I just find it easier to hear overtones when I listen to bhsnerd's tags." And I was all "Oh snap!" So, still not really knowing what an "overtone" was I clicked over onto a bhsnerd clip.

And figuring I'd learn about overtones through osmosis I just kept clicking.

Although, to me, bhsnerd sounds overproduced. Nice, but it's not "street". You know? So what about VancePerry?

This was a little more "street", because dude is rockin' his girth like nobody's business. But still a little too studio. Like he's selling out. Just keep it real, yo.

This was more like it. Just a bunch of guys who can't afford a webcam singing some barbershop. And I realized that's really what I was after. Not multi-tracking or single tags. But full-on barbershop. Multi-voiced rather than multi-tracked. And video. Because honestly who knows if that last one was different guys. It kind of sounds like the same guy, but with a picture of four guys up to trick you. No more tricks.

So I found a barbershop quartet.

But there, leaping out at me from the sidebar, was a fabulous word:

Octet.

And once you've toked a quartet and snorted an octet there's nothing left for it but to mainline a whole chorus.

But I felt like I was going to OD. So I did a simple search for "barbershop quartet", just so I could take the edge off and go to sleep.

Stop dancing. It doesn't make it less racist.