Frighteningly Validating

I'm not sure how I found it, but there is a series of Web sites where one can anonymously post "confessions" about things. There's one for moms (http://www.truemomconfessions.com/), one for dads (http://www.truedadconfessions.com/), one for people who toil in an office environment (http://www.trueofficeconfessions.com/) and for whatever reason, there's one for tree huggers (http://www.truegreenconfessions.com/).

Now before you jump over and check them out, let me warn you: THEY ARE ADDICTIVE.

One might immediately read about these sites and think to oneself, "Well, that's nothing but a way for mental voyeurs to get off," but in reality, the idea is genius, and of course as a reader, it's interesting to see if other people are thinking the same things you are thinking.

But there is a dark side to confessing one's secrets...sometimes your worst fear is realized--that you are alone in your situation. Sometimes when you post, such as the guy who wrote, "Dear Daughter, I'm sorry I ever hurt you," other people are either too ashamed to publicly empathize (by clicking the "me too" button) or they want to distance themselves from such an obvious confession that they pretend not to see it at all.

Overall, the dad's confessions are pretty obvious--not enough sex, tired of paying child support, I want to have non-missionary style sex, etc.--so for me, the mom's confessions are the real cream of the crop.

Primarily, you have SAHM (stay-at-home-moms) complaining about how much their kids drive them nuts or how much they hate their husbands. Some days the vitriole is really almost too much. I don't know how far reaching this site is (I have seen posts with decidedly British language used), but a college student looking for thesis fodder would be in hog's heaven as you get women from all walks of life socially, physically and mentally. Among the daily confessions, one can find women with eating disorders and (lots of) women having affairs. There are also lots of women who have had it up to here with being home all the time and years of jealousy and anger towards their families has built to extreme levels.

But while most of the confessions would tend to leave this writer saying something like, "Put down the prozac or bottle of wine; get off your ass and get a job," every now and then a true gem of honesty comes out...

"I miss the passion in my marriage."

In such a simple, yet touching confession, so much is expressed. It is these confessions that I admit may have changed my life. We are all guilty of "the rut." You know what the rut is right? It's doing the same thing over and over and over until it's ingrained in your day-to-day to the point that you don't see anything else. You don't see that while you're very helpful around the house, maybe you could hug your family more. You don't see that even though your job sucks the life from you every day, your spouse is going through the same thing and needs someone to talk to about it. And perhaps...just perhaps you see that maybe you should spend a little more quality time with someone in your family even if it means not going to bed at a decent hour.

For these things I would like to thank all of the miserable women who have posted on TrueConfessions.com. Whether their husbands ever read their fantasies, dreams and desires; this one did and I am eternally grateful.

"Oh pointy bird, Oh pointy, pointy bird" and other memorable quotes

I'm not sure what I miss most about the pre-children days. Is it the financial freedom that comes from not paying $1,600 per month for childcare? Is it the independence to just get up at random times throughout the day and go do something without having to pack for an entire flotilla of people and possible potty scenarios? Perhaps it's the sleeping in on the weekend rather than the "up at 5:30 a.m." scene we have going on every morning now with the baby (I'm trying to train him to go back to sleep, but when you walk in his room, he looks over at you and cracks up, it's hard to just walk away). There are so many things that I miss that I'm just not sure.

But you know when you're in the middle of something, that thing right there is always the worst "thing" or the most exciting "moment?" Well, that's how it is with me and movies right now.

Before our second child, I had joined NetFlix. If you're not familiar, it's an online movie ordering system and for various price levels, you can rent a certain number of movies each month. The differentiator used to be that you kept them as long as you want...but of course you're still paying a monthly fee (I pay around $15 p/month and I can have out 3 movies at a time) so it behooves you to return them for your next batch. I say that used to be the differentiator only because BlockBuster and others now offer similar programs, but I'm avidly anti-Blockbuster and Hollywood video because both of them employ low-paid teeanagers who apparently cannot scan in a movie correctly and for some strange reason, their corporate execs tend to believe their highly churned, low-paid workers over a long-time customer when it comes to figuring out what the hell happened to "Memoirs of a Geisha." Like I'd want to keep that movie???

Anyway, I suspended my NetFlix account after our second baby was born because I rightfully figured I wouldn't have time for movies. But then I started it back up a month ago because I suddenly had this hour of time from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. --the time between when we normally have all the kids in bed and the time I know I have to turn the lights off so I can mentally and physically be prepared to wake up multiple times in the night AND still function like a normal person at work the next day.

Finally, I got a movie in that I'd really been wanting to see, "Smokin' Aces." It's a 100% shoot-em-up guy movie and figuring I'd be able to get in a good bit of it last night, I threw on the headphones and kicked back. Unfortunately, my wife decided to hold off on her shower tonight (cuz going to the gym in the a.m.) and was sending out "the vibe." You know what I'm talking about--the vibe--don't pretend like you don't. So, I dutifully turned off the movie and gave my relationship the attention it deserves. Of course, by the time we were both ready for bed, it was 9:54 p.m. and I have to assume I'll be getting up at least once in the night AND again at 5:30 a.m. so I turned the lights off and went to bed.

On the upside, I was right and I did have to get up at 5:30, so at least I made the right decision in that regard.

But that got me to thinking...movies. Man, what I wouldn't give for a full day of doing nothing but catching up on movies that I've missed. Spider Man 3, Transformers, Smokin' Aces even. This 1-hour I sometimes have can't be counted on and there are few entertainment annoyances worse than having to stop and start a good movie. Especially when you think there's a twist in the movie that you've somehow missed.

I don't know...this too will pass I suppose. Maybe I'll have to take a vacation day and force myself not to do work around the house and instead, load up on good movies I've missed--sans family! It's sounding better by the moment!

I Shoot em up, I Shoot em down, I Shoot the Lost, I Shoot the Foooound

Santa Claus: How about a nice football?
Ralphie as Adult: [narrating] Football? Football? What's a football? With unconscious will my voice squeaked out 'football'.
Santa Claus: Okay, get him out of here.
Ralphie as Adult: [narrating] A football? Oh no, what was I doing? Wake up, Stupid! Wake up!
Ralphie: [Ralphie is shoved down the slide, but he stops himself and climbs back up] No! No! I want an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle!
Santa Claus: You'll shoot your eye out, kid.(A Christmas Story)

…sigh.

My adopted parents divorced when I was about 5 years old and for years afterwards, my brother and I spent the occasional weekend with my adopted mom at her place. Usually it was a dinky house on Dauphin Island, but every once in a while it was wherever her boyfriend (now husband) was working a contract job—New York, California—wherever.

One of the ways she would ensure that we wanted to come was by taking us to the toy store and telling us we could get one thing we wanted (within a spending limit of course). Being a young boy, there were tons of things I wanted, but one particular year, I wanted a BB gun. Thinking back, I can’t remember if I’d asked for one at home or not, so I don’t know if my dad had already put the kebosh on the idea, but by golly, she said I could have whatever I wanted, and that’s what I wanted.

As it turns out, my dad was none too happy, but not for the reason you might think. It wasn’t that he was against guns. No, in fact, he’d shown me how to shoot a .22 rifle and single barrel 12-gauge shotgun by the time I was ten. The reason he was so mad at my “mom” was because he felt that giving a young boy his first gun was a dad’s job and he was mad at her for usurping what he felt was a rite of passage. Even at such a young age, that made sense to me, but you know what? I didn’t care. I had my BB gun and frankly, I didn’t care who gave it to me. With two boys of my own, I understand his disappointment now and I feel bad that he was deprived of that responsibility.

With my BB gun I did the usual things a boy does with a gun, some cruel, but mostly I just shot at stuff. The aim on those guns is so poor anyway that most animals had a pretty fair chance at avoiding a “sting” from one of my little copper spheres of death. But the point is, that as an adult, I don’t own a gun now (but not because I fear them). I’m not scarred for life by having held a weapon as a child, nor do I suffer from nightmares stemming from hours upon hours of playing shoot-em-up in the dirt field across the way from our house. Upon that field, I’ve died a thousand childhood deaths as an indian, a cowboy, a good/bad guy from Star Wars, you name it.

So it is with great inner turmoil that I address this idea of playing guns with my 3-year old. There’s a little boy in my son’s daycare class whose dad is a soldier. As with most parents, their lives reflect their livelihood and so it is with this young boy. Right or wrong, this child has learned all kinds of war-like behavior and consequently all the other sponges in his class have picked it up too. And it’s not just a matter of going around “shooting” anything that moves and making those “pcuuuushh” noise that simulates gun firing; no, the boy apparently has a firm grasp on what it means to “kill” something. It is this, more than anything that strikes fear into my wife (moreso than me).

Just as I don’t understand how playing with dolls is a normal part of growing up for girls, my wife doesn’t understand about guns. For her, playing cops and robbers, or shooting the dogs with his pretend gun-hand is akin to sneaking into their room at night and slitting their throats. For her, there is no line between playing and reality and so she has put her foot down about playing guns.

You can see my dilemma right? I get it…this world today isn’t the same world it was 25 years ago when we were kids. Even taking a toy gun to school these days will land a kid in juvey and heaven forbid he says—even jokingly—to another boy, “I’m going to kill you.”

Just as I don’t think my son would understand a frank talk about guns and their dangers to society, I also don’t think that what he’s doing now is going to have any long-lasting effect. And where do you draw the line? Do you just tell your child that playing guns or knives is bad, or do you say, “No Timmy, you can’t play wrestling, boxing, good-guy/bad-guy…nothing.”

Violence is part of a boy’s growing up. It’s how pecking orders are established and by golly, my son will grow up knowing how to take care of himself, whether that be teaching him a few karate moves or showing him how to shoot a gun when he’s older in case the world is hit by a meteorite and we revert back to the iron-age and he must protect his family.

But for now, I’ll hold my tongue, or at least try and moderate his behavior. But deep down, I really don’t see the problem. He’s three…let him play.

There goes Santa Claus, there goes Santa Claus...

I took last Friday off to stay at home and pull old yucky wallpaper off as many rooms as I could get done in one day. I managed to remove the wallpaper in our main master bathroom common area and one of the sink/commode areas in the boys' jack-n-jill bathroom setup. I also got a skimcoat on both to fix those massive gouges I put with my scraper and to replace any sheetrock paper that came off with the wallpaper.

An interesting note: where the steam from years and years of showering has reached the wallpaper, the wallpaper is much more resistant to removal efforts. It took me nearly as long to do the boys' bathroom tiny area as it did to do the master bathroom area which is 5 times as large. Darn steam!

Anyway, now instead of mind-numbingly unnatractive wallpaper in our bathroom area, we have mind-numbingly stark white walls with no paint on them. And the real question is, how long is it going to take me to finish it all?
Which brings me to my blog topic for today. We're not talking about just schlepping some paint up on the wall and calling it a day. Nossir! We're talking about a full-scale, all-out assault on redecorating, which means:

• new light fixtures (2)
• new fan
• new towel rack (beause OMG what was she thinking buying that crappy silver towel rack at Target that shows the four honking screws in the front and doesn't match our gold fixtures? I swear sometimes that I should have been a homosexual since I have much better decorating taste (and sense) compared to many of the women I know)
• new paint for wall
• new trim paint
  and of course...
• new linens and such

All this adds up to mucho $$$ and even more time that I don't generally have. And with fall coming up (anyday now...hello?) I'll want to be outside, not cooped up inside.

But what's really bringing me down is my wife's idea to pay for all this; "Seriously honey, this can be my Christmas present; I don't really need anything." And before I knew what I was saying, I responded with, "Mine too!"

Wait! What? Did I just say that out loud? What the F*? No, I don't want my Christmas to consist of pretty red towels and hours upon hours of electrical work trying to figure out an outdated wiring code. I want clothes and...stuff!

So I'm kinda bummed about that. I mean, we did set ourselves a small gift limit to spend on each other so we will still be getting each other something, but still... What this at least does is free up money in my Christmas savings account to put directly towards the project. Hey, now we can afford the fan! Only 10 more things on the list to go!

Trick or Treat!

I read...a lot. I have two 7.5' tall bookcases filled with books. And on most of those shelves, the books are stacked two rows deep and sometimes rows on top of rows. Mostly I read paperbacks, in large part due to the fact that as much as I read, if I were to purchase hardcovers, I would quickly go broke. As it is, at $7.99 a pop for a paperback, I spend way more than I should.

As such, I'm always looking for a bargain and my local Barnes and Noble offers several islands of "bargain priced" books from which to choose. They have the cooking island and the historical island. They have the do-it-yourself island and the artsy island. But they also have the non-fiction island where a decent bargain can sometimes be found. It is from this pile o' books that I recently picked up a copy of Paul Auster's book "Oracle Night."

I mostly read science fiction and fantasy themed books, so cover art is usually a huge draw in the kinds of books I ultimately pick. But this book by Auster has a simple blue cover, with a very small graphic on the front. Perhaps it was this simplicity that drew me to it:

(the arrow here is an artifact from where I cut it off Amazon.com)

Now, one could logically deduce that if a book is on the bargain-priced chopping block, that it perhaps didn't sell well. So, I'm naturally suspicious about the quality of the book. I quickly read the inside cover to make sure it would be something I might be interested in--which it was--and then I flipped if over and read the back where there were several glowing reviews. These reviews sounded believable; not just the "...a fabulous tour de force" variety you often get, so I went ahead and purchased it for $4.98. Not a HUGE bargain, but still cheaper than a paperback.

These days I don't get huge blocks of time to read a book, so I have to catch a page or two where I can: eating breakfast, lying in bed at night, the...um...throneroom. Wherever. Yesterday as I'm fondling the book, I flip it over and look more closely at the back of the book and I notice the following:

A bit confused, I flip the book over to re-familiarize myself with the title and sure enough, the title of this book is "Oracle Night" and not "The Book of Illusions" as illustrated here. Even the reviews listed on the back (which helped influence my purchase) were for "The Book of Illusions."

I immediately felt outraged, ripped off, sullied! What a nasty trick! I bet the publisher put this new cover on the book after it failed to sell in hopes that cheap sucker-bastards like myself would pick it up and take it home. And it worked!

But ya know what? "Trick me once...shame on me. Trick me twice...shame on you." (actual quote modified for mine own purposes)

I'll take the blame for this one, but let this be a lesson for all of my three readers! Bargain-priced books...BUYER BEWARE!

Childhood Innocence

Thanks to the heat, we here in the South have been forced indoors in the afternoons. It's too hot to ride bikes; it's too hot to play ball; heck, it's even too hot to go swimming in the pool! What's a family of four to do?

Luckily, there are still some games around geared towards the young-ones. Interestingly, they are the same games we adults loved as a child--Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, Hi-Ho! Cherry-O. All classics and all pretty much the only games on the market for the "under 5" crowd.

Obviously we don't still have our childhood boardgames lying around so we went off to our friendly neighborhood Target and purchased a few games to while away those long hot summer afternoon. As it turns out, Candyland has become my three year olds favorite game; so much so in fact that while the board itself is still in fine shape, the flimsy cards have become so over-handled that I can't even put a proper poker shuffle on them anymore.

The funny thing about this game though, is how it's evolved over the years. Take note:

Notice how in the old version of candyland, the two kids are whitebread, blond crackers and in the new, politically correct version, we have a cross-sample representation of ethnicities and genders.

Why am I not surprised?

But anyway, my son loves this game, but more importantly, he loves to WIN! We've been very careful to explain to him that the game is random and anyone can win at any time, to which he responds, "But you can't win everyday." The truth is however, that by hook or by crook, he seems to win more than anyone, but it's never enough. Should you get up from the game to go stir the pot of soup, or to put fallen baby back up in a sitting position, he will sneakily look through the stack of cards for either the "lollipop" or "ice cream" cards, which move one near the end of the game and close to winning. Another of his tactics is to skip a color. So, if he pulls a card with one red square, he'll move two; if the card says two red squares, he'll move three. He's very sneaky.

We've tried to explain to him that this is cheating and I'm particularly careful to ensure that he follows the rules, but I will admit to "fixing" it on the rare occasion where we adults have consistently won a game or two just so he gets the satisfaction of winning. And of course he loves it. But he's coming around to losing with grace. Generally it involves him saying, "Ok, let's play again and I guess I'm gonna win."

Now if we can only teach him how to be a graceful winner, rather than cackling like a crow who just found a new shiny object, we'll be in business.

It's like a HEAT WAVE...oh yeah!

Have I mentioned lately that I'm ready for autumn weather? Well I am. Here's why:

It's the middle of August, which according to "averages" should be a wee-bit cooler than July here in Atlanta. Not so though! We are well above average AND in the middle of a drought. I enjoy summer, that is, until it turns perpetually 90 degrees-plus for weeks on end and then I'm just over it and ready to move on. But I love early summer when the plants I planted the year before burst out of the ground and we finally get some color. I love the first few trips to the pool, or the first (and usually only) trip to the beach. All very well and good, but all also very temporary.

About halfway through summer my mood always turns pessimistic. It's not like I'm not getting enough Vitamin E, because I certainly am. So I started thinking about this mid-summer crisis and I came up with a few possible reasons for why I feel like I do:

• It's too hot to get out and DO anything. This means that I'm inevitably stuck inside the house, or other similarly A/C'd place and I can't work off my energy.


• Same for the kids. Even though they are at daycare all day, if they don't get outside and exercise, they are little hurricanes when they come home at night. And this only leads to more "No, stop that!" and "Would you please stop talking for 5 minutes?" Generally things that make you feel like a bad parent later when you stop and think about it.


• Summer makes you do things you wouldn't normally have to do, which takes time away from things you want to do. For instance, watering outdoor plants. When I have to do it, it takes me almost an hour and a half to do it. An hour and a half when you have children, is like an eternity of free time just down the tubes. And sure, watering is easy and it's quiet, but you still sweat just standing there, so it's not fun.


• I also enjoy a nice walk after dinner to work off my compulsive eating disorder (it's all in my head) and you can't do that when it's so hot.


• It's too hot to play golf or even hit balls...my one hobby


• I'm tired of my summer wardrobe

And I think the weatherpeople around here are co-conspirators in that they keep tweaking the long range forecast. See, they start off by showing that it's gonna be really hot for three days, then they show a cooling trend. But then if you look at it the next day, it shows the same thing, just advanced one day. And the same happens the next day and the next day. It's like they know that people are looking to their long range forecast for just a little ray of hope--something to look forward to--and they don't want to ruin it by bald-faced admitting, "Yeah it's gonna be 98 degrees for the forseeable future. Sorry."

Anyway, I'm taking off this Friday despite it still being 94 degrees, but that just forces me to stay home and start pulling off that wallpaper rather than going and playing golf :( But you watch, one of the children will probably end up getting sick and instead of having a productive day off, it'll be Daddy Daycare with yours truly as the teacher, teacher's assistant, cleaning crew and chef.

Really...I don't ask for much...just some cool nights outside on my back porch listening to Audio Visions with a nice glass of Cabernet Sauvignon in my hand. Is that too much to ask? Is that so wrong?

Look me in the eye and tell me the truth...

Sometimes when you’re watching TV or a Disney movie, and there’s a really touching scene involving children and their parents—usually a culmination scene where a problem between the two parties is worked out—there is often a moment when the parent looks at the child (usually the father) and says, “Have I ever lied to you?” The child usually doesn’t respond because kids are smarter than we give them credit for and they have already rationalized, “I don’t know…have you?” but they know better than to say that out loud, so instead they externalize, “No daddy, you haven’t. I love you!” Then the music cues up, the credits roll and everyone lives happily ever after.

What a crock! Or, at least I hope so, because if I’m being honest, I will never be able to utter that line to my oldest son. Does that make me a bad parent?

Let me explain:
If you have boys, then you know who Thomas the Tank Engine is. If you’re unfamiliar, he’s this lovable little blue train made up in the mind of one Reverand Awdry way back in the day. He made up the Thomas character for his sick son, but some marketing genius over in the U.K. figured out what a cool idea it was and it has now become a worldwide phenomenon. And to be sure, we’ve done our part at enlarging the influence of the franchise by purchasing at least $600 worth of Thomas the Tank Engine merchandise and associated tracks, a table, etc.

Every year, a full-sized Thomas train comes to Chattanooga, TN, about an hour and a half drive from here. The drive isn’t so bad really, it’s the time of year. It always comes in the summer and quite frankly, the last thing I want to do is spend three hours in a car with my kids, only to stand around in lines with five thousand other people to spend 20 whole minutes riding on a train. It just doesn’t hold appeal for me.

Instead, I took my son to a Thomas and Friends play this weekend at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Hall. At $27.50 a ticket, it was no deal, but I figured after skipping out on the real thing, it was worth it. The play was well done and there were three of his favorite trains in near-life size on the stage, so he had a lot of fun.

There was also a miniature train out in the lobby that you had to buy tickets for to ride. When we arrived, the line was too long to ride, so I told him we’d come out during intermission and ride it, only to discover that the owner of said train didn’t want it to run during intermission. My son was pretty heartbroken; however, let me explain that just the day before, we had gone to Six Flags and he had ridden two trains, so personally, I didn’t see that this was a big deal.
Not one to miss much, my son said, “Well maybe after the show we can come ride it,” to which I simply responded with the non-committal parental catch-all, “Maybe.”

Our seats were situationed in the balcony and I knew that by the time the show was over and we could get downstairs, every other like-minded parent would be ahead of us, so when the show was over, I rushed him downstairs before the train started up and said, “Oh look, the train isn’t running” and then I took him home.

That was bad…I know it was, but I didn’t want to stand in line for an hour to ride a train around in a circle no bigger than our living room….and he had just ridden a train the day before.

To his credit, he didn’t pitch a fit or anything. I was shocked and proud of him at the same time, because if there’s one thing I want my children to be prepared for in life…it’s disappointment. That’s kinda sick though isn’t it?

Hey, I never said I was a good parent.

The gift of touch

Lord knows I love my wife. She’s a great mom, a great provider (though it shames me to bestow such a title on a woman) and she puts up with my moodiness, which is a pretty big deal. With all that, it’s a given that I would never do anything to put our relationship in jeopardy…well maybe not.

My wife’s birthday and my birthday are but three days apart (she’s older) and this year her parents splurged and got us a couple’s massage at a local spa. Renew Spa to be exact. Now, unlike most spas that do couples massage, here you’re not really in adjoining rooms where you can see each other, a feature I find a bit absurd anyway because the last thing I wanna do in the middle of my massage is look over at my wife and say, “Hey babe, does it feel good?” especially when she has a man-sseuse touching parts of her body that I generally regard as my own personal property. And anyway, this is one time where it’s “all about me” so I’m gonna enjoy it knowing that even if my wife is not enjoying her massage, there’s nothing I can about it anyway. So why worry I say?

We get massages, not regularly, but probably more often than other couples we know. But since this isn’t something that normally comes up in conversations with other guys, we could actually be getting them more or less often than our friends, you just don’t know. I’m guessing with the costs skyrocketing, massages are still a luxury for most of the people we run around with.

Anyway, lying there getting rubbed by a complete stranger is an interesting thing. Strictly speaking, getting that kind of—dare I say pleasure—from a woman who is not my wife might possibly be considered sinful (and probably is in some middle-eastern religions) and yet there I was at the blessing of my wife. Don’t get me wrong, these spas are a far cry from the massage parlors often potrayed in war movies where the men went and left with a smile on their face for a completely different reason. Nossir, I imagine even the hint of impropriety at one of these spas would be grounds for dismissal of the masseuse and banishment of the client, but still, you can’t lie there and not think about these kinds of things.

After all, happy feelings = happy thoughts. Am I right?

However, it does help that of the many massages I’ve had, only one or two of them were from a woman I found remotely sexy, so it’s pretty easy to keep the mind on relaxation and away from other things that are likely to get one in trouble when the clock hits the 30-minute mark and it’s time to flip over (don’t make me explain it).

But as good as a massage is, these days the lingering loveliness is nowhere near what it was pre-kids. Used to, we could come home and have a glass of wine and have a great ending to the evening, but now we come home and there are still kids to bathe and put to bed, dogs to feed—all the wonderful things that make home, home. As long as there are masseuses in the world, and as long as couples give each other their blessings for the other to go avail themselves of their services, there will always be that little fantasy. But that’s what they are…fantasies…no more, no less.

I've got an ice cream...and you can't have one...

From the very same institution (or at least a branch of it) that brought us taxes and war, has come the longer school year. For the kids here in Georgia--and the metro Atlanta area to be more precise--this means that next week marks the beginning of yet another year of substandard education at the hands of underpaid mother-in-laws. It also, unfortunately, means that my commute to work next week may very well signal the end of time--Carmageddon if you will. Because this is when all those teachers, who are use to sleeping late and arising well past the "safe to gas up your car due to smog" time has passed, will once again grab their half-caf-espresso with a twist of lime and head out the door clogging up the already busy lanes.

Which brings me (finally) to today's conversational topic-school. Georgia has never ranked very high in the national school rankings. In fact, in a recent 2007 ranking of public high schools in Newsweek magazine, good ol' Georgia only had one entry in the top 300 in the nation. Now some will say "It's just a southern thang," but even that's not accurate. In comparison, our border neighbors stacked up thusly in the top 300:

• Alabama came up with 4 top 300 high schools


• Florida came up with 40


• Even daggum Tennessee (nothing sucks like a big ol' orange!) got a bigger nod than we did with an astounding 3!

But statistics notwhithstanding, yuppy-snobs here like to brag about how smart their little whipper-snapper is compared to his or her peers. And it doesn't just start in middle school or high school when the young Democrat starts taking liberal arts classes either. Nossir it starts much earlier.

Try Daycare! Oh yeah, daycare is all the rage too. Well first, you have to find the proper audience. Utter the sentence "My wife and I both work and we have our children in daycare," in the wrong setting and at best you'll get condescending looks, and at worst, people will go "Sixth Sense" (can you believe that movie is 8 years old?) on you and pretend like you don't exist. But, in the right audience (i.e. dual income families with kids), if you utter the aforementioned death-cry, the ensuing "My daycare is better than your daycare" posturing can reach epic proportions.

And daycare is an interesting concept really, because unlike schools where children from generally one socio-economic area gather together and can revel in their similarities, daycare in a relative 10-square mile radius all cost the same and so the driving factor for what kinds of kids attend there is largely based on how convenient the facility is to one or both of the parent's offices. So, you can, and often do, get kids of all economic levels, ethnicities, etc.

So it is at my kids' daycare. My oldest son's two best friends include a little girl a bit older than he, whose mom recently got divorced and now has to move away for a job she hates. His other best friend is a boy his age whose parents are very similar to us. We knew that he would soon be moving on to the next class in daycare because they've moved a bunch of new kids in his class and him and his buds are nearly the oldest ones there now. But what we found out yesterday is that instead of moving him to the next class, they are moving him and his friends to the next-next class. Hippity hoppity ho!

My three year old is already skipping "grades." Well, not really but that's how part of me wants to spin it to all my friends. In truth, the reason probably has less to do with intelligence and more to do with economics--the daycare needs to make some room in his current class and in the next class because they moved a bunch of other kids a couple of weeks ago, and since him and his two friends are well potty trained and probably the three best behaved, it makes sense that if you need to move some kids to a different, older class, then moving their little group makes sense.

Don't get me wrong; my boy is smart, but I don't think he's a Mozart or an Einstein. And who wants their kid to be that smart, but socially inept anyway? Certainly not me. So, I'll go on being proud of him for all the other reasons; he generally listens, he's potty trained, he has a really gentle spirit, he loves his little brother and because in his eyes, daddy knows how to do just about anything.

Even if they wanted to put him in high school tomorrow and started calling him "Doogie Howser" I wouldn't be any more proud of him than I already am.

Every little thing (s)he does is magic...

Our second baby boy is almost six months old this month (19th). He’s beautiful, a joy, all the proper adjectives a loving parent could wish for. But he’s not been the easiest baby we’ve known. Since his birth, we’ve survived nearly 14 weeks of colic, and all the fun that comes with. We’ve made it through his first two teeth coming in, the drool, the biting, the whining. Diaper rash, the sniffles, some puking...the works.

After six months of saying, “Nope, no more kids,” we finally started getting a bit of a reprieve. Lo, he started sleeping at night.

He’s been holding himself up for months so we felt pretty safe putting him on his tummy where slept like…well, a baby. Now he’s sitting up and playing on his own and if he could just coordinate the arm pushups with the legs pushes, he’d be crawling.

And that, my friends, is where our newest challenge comes from. See, he doesn’t like sleeping on his back, so when you lay him down in his crib at night, you have to put him on his tummy or he immediately wakes up. The last few nights however, as soon as we put him down on his tummy, he tucks his legs under him and pushes his butt up in the air. Sometimes he’ll just stay like that, and heaven forbid you try and straighten his legs out, because 9 out of 10 times, you’ll wake him up. Instead, you just cover him up and pray he sleeps.

For the last two nights, he’s awakened himself by rolling over during his sleep and since he doesn’t like sleeping on his back, he wakes up and cries. We go in, cuddle him quietly, give him a sip of bottle and down he goes…only to wake up again a couple of hours later. The last two nights, we’ve gotten up four times both nights. This can’t go on.

Last night, we even tried the beloved swing, which we don’t generally like to use, but which usually works for 5-6 hours. No dice. Every 1.5-3 hours he woke up. I know babies are a challenge, but my Lord, can’t a parent catch a break? This is particularly troublesome because my wife is traveling for four days next month, leaving lil’ ol me to answer the midnight calls. I’m considering earplugs and toughlove. Cuz remember, I tried toughlove by itself a month ago when my wife traveled and I didn’t have earplugs. After 45 mins, I gave in.

You know what we need, a “Baby Whisperer.” Is there a TV show for that on the Discovery Channel? (Holy Crap! There is!) Here

If you want my body, and you think it's easy...

Ever since I hit the big “p” (as in puberty), and all the way through high school, I was a tad on the chubby side. Even after I joined the Air Force, I was heavier until one day I’d just had enough of it. I don’t remember the epiphenous (is that a word?) moment, but I’d bet the bag of Keebler Soft Batch I was eating at the time that it had something to do with self-loathing. The next day I walked the 75 yards over to the Army health club on the base I had to live on and made friends with the civilian guy who worked there. Over the next year and a half, I went from 170 lbs of mostly water, bone and fat, to 155 lbs of water, bone and lean muscle mass.

I would like to take moment here and personally thank Cindy Crawford for putting out “Shape Your Body,” without which, my winter workouts (and my fantasies) would have suffered.

Over time though, my overexuberant quest for physical perfection left me with multiple ruptured discs in my back, leading to two back surgeries after I’d left the military (you never let military surgeons open you up unless you have a bullet lodged in you and you’re bleeding out on the table).

It’s been twelve years since I got out of the military and since then I’ve gotten married and now have two kids, which, if you’re married, then you know…if there’s one thing that will derail your health regiment, it’s marriage and kids. I also unfortunately have a metabolism that quickly adjusts to any attempt to kick-start it by going into “starvation mode” and storing everything I eat on the off chance I’ll fall off a boat in the Adriatic Sea and need the added warmth that only a spare tire will afford.

But even with all these excuses, I’ve been pretty consistent, only missing the gym due to surgeries, sinus infections and vacation. But lately, the toll is starting to get to me. There’s not much that doesn’t hurt, my back most of all. Sitting is especially joyful, and working in a cubicle farm is a particular kind of hell from which there is little reprieve.

So my question is, when is enough…enough? At only 34, there’s no way I can give up working out, but at the same time—in my mind—why bother working out at all if you’re not trying to make gains? Sure, I could go in there day after day and go through the motions like all the other zombies, but my heart wouldn’t be in it, and would I really be doing any good anyway?

If my wife knew how much pain I was in, she would berate me to no end with something to effect of, “I don’t want to be married to a 45 year old man who can hardly walk! You need to stop.” At the same time, she also knows I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I had to stop.

So what do you do? I guess it comes down to what’s most important to me. Do I live life with a zealous “carpe diem” attitude and all the pain it entails, or do I listen to my body and take up namaste yoga and accept the inevitable weight gain and mirror avoidance that’s sure to follow?

Is there a happy medium? If so, it’s going to require more than just a change of exercise routine; it’s going to require a mindset change and that’s perhaps the hardest exercise of all.

Meanwhile...back at the Hall of Justice...

Just as surely as every mom lets her kids do things that daddy would never approve of (like giving them ice cream even after daddy told them “no peas, no desert!”), fathers similarly do things for their kids that mom probably wouldn’t like. I suspect fathers are even worse offenders, no doubt in part because kids are so enamored of mom that we fathers will do whatever we need to do to reclaim “most favored parental unit” status, if even for a moment.

I’m generally not a fan of forcing/allowing kids to grow up too fast, but that was (silly me!) before I had my own kids and had my life hijacked by Play Dough® and Thomas the Tank Engine®. Now, I can’t wait for my boys to get old enough to go and do things daddy enjoys, such as watch action flicks, play golf and buy a bass boat and go fishing.

As such, this past weekend I was basking in a free moment watching Spider Man-- part one I think—when my oldest son (of 3 years) waltzed in and sat down on the couch. Now, I had three choices here:

• Turn the TV off and offer to go do something else, something more age appropriate, with my son
  
• Turn the TV to something he would enjoy, but which would drive me elsewhere in the house, or
  
• Leave the TV there and let him watch it with me

The fact that I’m even blogging about this is sufficient to tell you of my decision. Yes, we watched Spider Man and yes it was great. My son actually seemed to enjoy it and I did my best to play off the Green Goblin as some mean guy whom “Spider man is going to make go away forever.”

It was a great time had by all…no harm no foul.

Until about 1:30 in the morning two days later. I’m lying there in sleepy bliss because my wife got up with the baby the first time and my time had yet to come, when I feel a shifting of the force…or wait…maybe it’s the mattress. Even as I was opening my eyes and sitting up to find out what all the hub-bub (bub) was all about, I knew it my son coming to get in bed with us, something that’s not generally allowed.

I was just about to pick him up and take him back to bed when he says, “Daddy, the green man scares me.”

Crap! There’s not much I could say after that, knowing damn well that it was my fault in the first place. So, I regretfully picked him up and put him between my wife and I where he hovered on my side of the bed the rest of the night poking and prodding my kidneys and buttocks areas looking for fruit snacks and Lord knows what else!

There are people who say I should just relax and enjoy these times in my kids’ lives, but…honestly? I don’t mind being a human bean bag cum nanny most of the time, but sometimes a guy just needs to be a guy—with all the sports watching and throne sitting that entails—without the burden of young minds. Hope springs eternal…

Letter to the Medela breastpump manufacturer

Dear Medela,

I am writing you to express my profound joy at never having to listen to the sound of your breast pumps again. After two children and nearly a year of my life watching my wife use your product, I am on my knees thanking the good Lord that we are done with your product and that I will never again be awakened to the sound of the in and out suction and whirring noise emanating from your pump that you have so cleverly disguised within a computer bag. In addition, here are a few other things I won't miss about your pump:

• Having to drag it EVERYWHERE we go; on vacation, to church, intermediate-length car rides, etc. You cannot imagine how awkward this annoying thing is...not to mention that in order to save time, my wife uses it whilst driving (to mine own horrid fascination). This is accompished under the cover of a poncho-like drape that conceals what's actually going on.


• The inevitable delay of my wife coming to bed due to having to pump before doing so. This is especially troubling because of the timing involved. As my wife and I equally share responsibilities around the house, each of us ends up putting one of our children to bed, then one or both of us shower while the other putts around filling bottles with milk for daycare the next day, etc. However, when I'm ready to crawl in to bed, my wife is not because she has to pump. Therefore, I turn on the TV and by the time she gets in bed, I'm into whatever it is I'm watching and "relations" subsequently suffers.
  
• That additional cord in the car so that my wife can pump whilst travelling. Between my Sirius radio tuner, my radar detector, and the DVD player for the kids, the last thing I want is yet another darned cord plugged into the cigarette lighter socket powering the pump. Not only that, but you have apparently designed your car adapter to blow fuses every month and unless the wife tells the husband what's going on, she assumes the entire apparatus is bad and spends another $14 on what is really a 25 cent fix. Shame on you!
  
• washing those darned tiny bottles. Nuff said!


• etc.

In short Medela Inc., you have stolen enough of my joy for one lifetime--time that I will never be able to reclaim--and for this I bid you goodbye, farewall, arive derche and adios!

Sincerely,

A Happy Man

Senseless acts of violence

Question: What do the following two things have in common?










Answer: They both were stolen off my truck yesterday. This is my 5th center cap stolen, and I can only imagine they are being sold on eBay; however, trick's on the theif! After my last one was stolen, I wrote "STOLEN" and put a big happy face on the back of each cap with a permanent marker. So, the thief can't sell them, or at least if he/she does, whoever receives it should turn the seller in.

What I can't figure out is why they stole the license plate. I mean, it IS pewter, but last I checked, that's not a precious metal. Maybe they were just mad over having popped off the cap and found what I'd done to it and just to be malicious, they stole my license plate too. Ah well.

Grand total ripped off: approx. $50. Maybe Santa will be good to me and stick some of this back in my stocking this Christmas.