Beta Dad

Me at Aiming Low: "From Hell's Heart I Stab at Thee"

2012-02-29T06:00:00.000-08:00

Like many modern parents, I worry that my children's lives are too easy. We live in a kids' paradise here in San Diego, and if we ever had to move to someplace harsh and isolated like, say, San Francisco, they'd probably wither up like hothouse flowers.

That's why, when the opportunity arose, I figured it would be a good time to take my two-and-a-half year old twin girls on a whale hunt. What could toughen them up more quickly than being involved in an epic battle with a leviathan on the high seas?

I was disappointed as we boarded the whaling ship to find that accommodations were not nearly as spartan as I had hoped. There were comfortable benches on the top deck, and cushy chairs and tables on the lower two. I had looked forward to a diet of salt-pork and rum during our voyage, but it seemed that corndogs and margaritas were the staples of the galley.

Nor were our fellow sailors the salty characters I had hoped would thicken the hides of my delicate children. Rather, they appeared to be mostly rank landlubbers, stumbling around the deck with their cameras and nachos, taking pictures of one another in decidedly un-seamanlike poses.

Read more at Aiming Low...

***

Here are some photos we snapped of our adventure. All taken post-seasickness

Seals hanging out on buoy. Maybe they're sea lions. Who knows?

Cobra zipping me up

The many moods of Butterbean

More pics after the jump...

Not too bad for an iPhone shot, eh?

Read the rest of the story at Aiming Low

Potty Training is Turning my Children into Horrible People

2012-02-24T06:00:00.000-08:00

I wrote a post on Aiming Low a while back about my concerns surrounding the prospect of potty training the twins (19 months old at the time)--something I thought was going to start happening within a few months of its publication. I got scores of suggestions from readers about how to approach the process, and most of them stressed the importance of waiting until the kids were ready. Only a few recommended books or videos. They made it sound like it was something that would just happen, that we simply needed to support and encourage the kids along the way.

And here we are, a mere year after I wrote that post, just starting to get into potty training in earnest.

Back when I wrote about potty training the first time, I have to admit that I felt a little competitive. Part of me wanted my kids to be out of diapers by the time they were two, so people would believe that they, and their parents, were geniuses.

Then I started thinking about it more practically. I looked at all of the disgusting public places that I would have to take them to do their business, realized that some of our favorite playgrounds have no restrooms at all, and thought about the potential trauma (to me mostly) of taking two little girls into men's rooms. Would we all cram into one filthy stall? Would I let one of them roam around among the urinating creeps while I dangled the other over the skanky toilet, waiting for her to pee as my spine slowly collapsed? Changing diapers on a park bench suddenly seemed not so horrible.

So we read them cute little potty books, let them watch the Elmo potty video, furnished both the bathrooms with potties, and waited for the kids to be ready. A few months ago, there was a little flurry of potty usage, and then they lost interest. But now, as they say, It Is On. We've been staying at home more than usual, the kids running around either in "nekkid guy" mode or in their undies; and using the potty has become the central activity.

It's pretty exciting. We've gone two days now with no diapers (except when they're sleeping), and no accidents. (I know: I just jinxed myself with that bit of hubris.)

I'm still blown away by the idea that kids do this willingly. I mean, obviously most children get potty trained somehow or another. Even terrible parents have kids who know how to use the bathroom. Still, I half expected to encounter complete resistance to the idea. I should know better by now, but I'm skeptical every time they approach a developmental milestone. Not long ago it seemed inconceivable that they would walk or talk.

But one of the reasons they're so eager to adapt to the societal expectations regarding poop is the same reason they're breaking their old man's heart: avarice. On the advice of a lot of reliable sources, we've started rewarding them with candy. Peeing in the potty earns them a Skittle. Pooping is good for an M&M Easter egg. This might not sound like much, but they haven't had a lot of candy before. Baked goods, sure, but not the shiny, colorful little sugar pellets we now have displayed in jars in the bathrooms.

I fear they will stop at nothing to acquire it.

They have become greedy little candy fiends. Within just a few days, they've trained themselves to release short bursts of urine into the potty every ten minutes or so, to maximize their access to the rainbow of fruit flavors throughout the day.

Up until now, they had hardly ever tried to deceive us, as far as I know. When asked who made a mess or broke something, they would cheerfully drop dimes on themselves. When they wanted something, they asked nicely or they screamed, with varying results. But given this new world of commerce, there are ways they can game the system, including outright grift. When they can no longer squeeze any currency out of their bladders, they simply sit on the potty seat over the grownup toilet, where it's hard to tell if they've actually produced anything, and lie right to my face. "I peed!" they shout with glee, even though they just did so two minutes earlier.

If only we could isolate the traits from each age that we wanted to preserve, and move past the unpleasant ones. I love that the girls are more independent now, and it will be great when I don't have to be so involved with their bodily functions. But it saddens me to see them catching on to the potential benefits of deception, like little flimflam artists or Fortune 500 CEOs.

I'm afraid they've got me on the ropes. I've accused them of lying, only to find droplets of evidence that they were telling the truth, which makes me feel guilty. But I'm sure I've been scammed out of way more Skittles than I have withheld unrightfully; and as they're becoming more devious, I'm becoming less vigilant. At least they haven't duped me into giving them the premium treats reserved for pooping, try as they might. That's much easier to verify.

Video Response to Rootin-Tootin, Laptop-shootin' Cowpoke Dad

2012-02-13T07:00:00.000-08:00

I'm not totally obsessed with this Pistol-packin' Papa guy; but because of his ubiquity and the discussion going on in the comments on my post from last Thursday, he has been on my mind.

I got into a Twitter chat with one of my imaginary friends, @iMommygame the other day, and somehow that evolved into my making a silly (and SFW) video while my kids were napping.

So far, a couple people seem to think it's pretty funny. If you agree, please don't hesitate to share the video by copying the URL (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kLnbLbF39jc), or just share this blog post using the handy buttons at the bottom. Stupider things have gotten popular on the YouTube.

Have a nice day, y'all.

Gun-toting Disciplinarian Dad is an Idjit

2012-02-10T01:34:00.000-08:00

You've probably seen this video elsewhere since it's been on about a million websites, and even all up on the Tee Vee too. Let me warn you, if you haven't seen it yet, that you might not want to watch it. It's very long, boring, and even the end where [SPOILER ALERT] the dad pumps his daughter's laptop full of lead, is anticlimactic.

Despite all his macho posturing and promise of the obliterating power of his .45 caliber hollow-points, all he does is shoot some little holes in a computer. A shotgun would have been much more dramatic.

Obviously, in addition to the cinematic failure of this video, the guy is demonstrating some patently crappy parenting skills. The reason he kills his daughter's laptop is because she was being a rude little ingrate on Facebook and complaining about what tyrants her parents are. In the video, he reads the post that was the death-knell of his daughter's machine, and sure, she sounds kind of like a bratty 15-year-old. But his response to her grievances hardly sets a good example for how to properly resolve familial differences.

This grown-ass man sits there on camera, cig in hand, and addresses his daughter's complaints, essentially explaining why she is full of crap on each account. You know, kind of like a 15-year-old who got dissed on Facebook would. I don't think he ever refers to her as a "hater," but I had to fast-forward through much of his monologue, so he very well may have.

Finally, he pulls out his pistol, and continues his monotonous diatribe as he pops a bunch of rounds into her laptop.

I've gotten angry at my kids before. I'm sure I'll get angry at them in much more complex ways by the time they're teenagers. I've acted childish and vindictive in the moments of pure frustration a couple toddlers can cause over the stupidest things in the world (OH...YOU DON'T WANT TO WEAR YOUR NEW SPARKLY SNEAKERS?! HUH?! HOW 'BOUT IF I JUST *THROW* THEM ACROSS THE ROOM FOR YOU?! YOU LIKE THAT?!). And then I skulk around and clean up after my moment of impotent rage, feeling like a total asshole, thanking god that no adults witnessed my outburst, and hoping that my kids will forget about it, even though I never will.

The computer shooter, though, coldly calculates his tantrum, and arranges for it to be made visible to the largest audience possible. At some point--while he was scouting locations for the carnage, printing out the Facebook post, setting up the tripod for his camera, loading his pistol--did he not cool down enough to think, "Wait a second...what am I doing? This is ridiculous." Not even, "What kind of person humiliates his own daughter publicly?" (because he clearly thinks he's doing her a favor); just: "How much of a douchebag am I gonna look like?"

Not surprisingly, out of the few dozen responses I could bear reading to various postings of this video online, most of them have been in support of the gunslinging dad. This turd is an internet hero now. Which, I suspect, was as much his ambition as was "teaching" his daughter a "lesson."

I feel bad for this guy's daughter, of course. Not that, as most of the commenters on the YouTube video suggest, her dad exposed her for the horrible, entitled punk she really was, but for having to live under the rule of a such a childish egomaniac. I hope for her sake that after the inevitable father-and-daughter morning talk-show appearances and celebrity family counseling sessions they'll undergo, her dad realizes that bitching about your parents on Facebook is age appropriate, but taking violent (if only symbolically), public revenge when your child hurts your feelings is just plain shitty.

Me on DadCentric: Jaws Was Never My Scene and I Don't Like Star Wars

2012-02-09T09:44:00.000-08:00

"Dude."

It was Simmons.

"What's goin' on, man?"

"I've got some Donald Duck, dude. Wanna go see Star Wars for a buck at Leohman's ?"

"Go see...wait...Donald Duck?" I said.

"It's blotter, dude. I got some..."

"Yeah, yeah, I know what it is," I said. I had never done acid before, but I knew the lexicon. Just needed some context. "Umm...Star Wars? I thought they were showing 2001: A Space Oddysey."

"No, dude, Star fuckin' Wars! Huh huh huh. C'mon, let's go! My mom'll drive." Star Wars had come out three years prior.

"Nah, dude," I demurred, "I gotta wash the fuckin' van today. I can't get out of it."

"All right, loser. Have fun," he said. Later."

"Later."

I walked the yellow receiver back to the kitchen, untangling fifteen feet of boinging spiral cord from the basement stairs, and clacked it onto the wall, averting my eyes from Mom's scrutiny.

If the second-run theater had been showing 2001 that day, it could very well have been my first LSD experience. Simmons was one of my buddies from shop class. He was the guy who had felt compelled to involve me in his acid trip while I was spot-welding a sheetmetal tool box. "Hinds," he lisped, sticking out his tongue to display the dissolving tab, "check this out." Fuckin' burnout, I thought. Of course, he passed the class. I was the guy who got kicked out halfway through for turning custom-made hardwood bowls on the lathe and selling them for five bucks a pop. [Mr. Stansbury: I know what the hell that is, Hinds...I seen them seniors makin' 'em...that's a pot pipe (pronounced pawt pahp).]

Eighth grade can be rough.

By the time Simmons invited me to tune in and turn on, Star Wars was old news. I had seen it. Everybody had seen it. T-shirts had faded. Lunchboxes were dinged and rusted on the corners. Kids still wore their #2's down to the wood drawing Darth Vader in their notebooks, but it was more out of habit than passion. read the rest on DadCentric

***

And if you haven't done so already, you can witness me ranting about how obnoxious sick kids are over at Aiming Low. So horrible, in fact, that they call into question basic evolutionary theory.

I Should Have Gotten the Haircut First, then the Acupuncture

2012-02-02T14:25:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went to my first of what will probably be many sessions of acupuncture that may or may not lessen the pain in my back and legs from the herniated disc in my spine. It's way too early to tell if it will do any good, but I enjoyed the experience. Hanging out in the funky little holistic medicine clinic right in my neighborhood (next door to the store where we fill up our drinking water jugs, down the street from the gay erotica shop and the "Afro-centric" barber, and of course, nestled between the many head shops) made me feel pretty cool, and the "initial visit" interview gave me a great opportunity to talk about myself a lot. If it weren't for the lady on her cell phone explaining to her parents, loudly and in excruciating detail, how to make Chicken Cordon Bleu ("Daddy! Daddy! Just put Mom on the phone. She's going to keep interrupting if you don't. No, Mom, I'm not finished. Swiss cheese...yeah, the kind with holes...yes...now...just let me talk, Mom..."), the whole visit would have been completely relaxing. It was like a yoga class that didn't require any effort on my part.

I was only able to slip out for an acupuncture appointment midweek because my wife was home sick with a gnarly cough, and was therefore able to watch our two sick children while I did yard work and ran errands. I'm sure it was very therapeutic for her. She probably wished she had gone to work.

As I left the acupuncture session/nap in blissful disorientation, I called the local Supercuts, where I've been getting my hair did for the last eight years, to announce my impending arrival. This would be a day of self-maintenance. Never mind that I half-assedly resolved to start clipping or shaving my head in 2012, since paying for professional haircuts grows ever more galling as the follicular exodus increases exponentially. Today I would parlay my wife's illness into a low-rent spa day.

This particular Supercuts is in the heart of the gayborhood, and is the most fabulous of its ilk. How could it survive otherwise, in a part of town where half the residents are hairstylists? But yesterday, I didn't recognize any of the usual employees, and I was a little anxious when the least gay-looking male stylist in the place beckoned me to his chair. (Call me heterophobic, but I don't really like straight guys messing with my hair.)

The vexation began almost immediately.

"Hey, man. How's your day? How's your life? How's everything," the pudgy man-child asks, draping me with a maroon tarpaulin.

"All right. Not too bad."

Back in the day, I made it a policy to not engage with hairstylists. Just get in and out quickly. But since I've been coming to this place for so long, I've gotten into the habit of chatting and gossiping with the staff, most of whom have interesting lives, or, like my acupuncturist, seem to find whatever I say fascinating. It's another excuse to talk about my favorite subject: me. (And my kids, who are really just extensions of me.)

"Cool, cool. What are we doing today?"

I recite the specifications of my haircut.

"Cool." He starts clipping my hair as if he's scraping paint off the hull of an old boat. I say ouch, but he's oblivious.

"So, what have you been up to today?" He's got a weak mustache and a slovenliness that is clearly not calculated. He reminds me of a particularly irksome subset of the high school students I used to teach.

"Well, I just got acupuncture for the first time!" I enthuse.

"Oh, man. How was it? Did it hurt?"

"Nah. It was really good. Relaxing," I say.

"I don't know. It seems like it would hurt. Like, if you had a problem with needles, you would hate it."

"I guess," I allow. "They were such little needles, like wires almost. You just feel a tiny poke."

"It sounds terrible to me."

Okay. The kid is a Negative Nancy. Whatever. I'll just hope he stops talking.

"So what do you got going on tonight?"

It's Wednesday. I'm in my mid-forties. Does he think that I'm a cool gay guy who goes out clubbing on schoolnights? Would he ask his dad what he's up to tonight?

"Hmmm...well, I'm just going to get through the day, you know. Then collapse," I say.

"Oh, c'mon, man! You must be doing something."

"No, not really. My wife and kids are all at home sick, so I sort of have to take care of them."

"Oh, man. That sounds like the worst! How did you not get sick? You're probably like, 'You have to take care of the kids next time they're sick', right? That would be the fair way to do it."

"Well, we both take care of the kids when they're sick."

"That sounds terrible."

Thanks, buddy.

He asks about the kids. How many? How old? I provide the information.

"That sounds terrible!"

Really? Terrible?

"What did you guys do when you found out you were having twins? You must have been like, 'Whoa! Check it again, doc! This can't be right!' Har har har..."

"No, we were actually really excited. Really happy. It was great news."

"You were probably all, 'No way, man! One of these kids ain't mine!' Somethin' like that. Twins? That's terrible. Har har har..."

You know how sometimes you want to punch somebody, not because you're actually angry at them, but because you think it would do them some good?

I can't really extricate myself from the conversation now without seeming like a dick to the idiot who is, at the moment, the only person who could make my my head look less attractive than nature already has. So we go on to other topics. Diapers. He feels that it's wrong of his cousin to make her babydaddy change their kid's diapers all the time. It's not fair. But he can tell the babydaddy is gonna make a great husband one day, har har. What? However, the man-child himself could never change diapers. His gag reflex is really strong. Like, when he goes to the bathroom after someone has taken a big dump, he almost pukes. Or when he sees someone else puke, even if he's "sober as a bird," he'll puke too.

Lovely.

"How's it look?" He undoes the snaps on my neck.

"Actually, could you take a little more off the top?"

"Now you tell me," he says, snapping the drape back on. "Just kidding."

He takes off another eighth of an inch.

"For the record," he snips, "I thought it was a good blend."

My post-acupuncture placidity had been replaced by unaccountably high agitation, and disappointment at the reminder that aggressively stupid people will never be able to understand why they rub people the wrong way, if they even notice it at all.

I can just imagine what that little turd said after I left: that bald guy only gave me a 2-dollar tip. What a terrible customer. Oh well, his life sucks anyway. Har har.

I thought about the lady giving cooking instructions to her parents. After ten minutes of exasperation, she finally added, "You can go to the Food Network website and look for Emeril's recipe. It's the same thing." How had she not seen that exit strategy as soon as her dad asked her how to cook the chicken? And why had I not told the little douchebag who cut my hair that I was kind of sick and didn't feel like talking? It would have saved me a good deal of aggravation. I guess if we only talked to people who we knew for sure weren't going to get on our nerves, whether they're family or strangers, our vocal cords would atrophy and then we would only be able to piss each other off on Facebook.

How to Turn a 4-Mile Bike Ride into an X-Treme Full-Body Workout

2012-01-26T07:00:00.000-08:00

I've been pretty good about exercising lately. Really good, actually. I've worked out at the gym almost every day for the last six weeks. This is made possible in part by my finally allowing someone else (gym daycare--worthy of its own post) to take care of my kids for an hour or so at a stretch. I still can't run because of my herniated disc that refuses to heal, but I've been doing some cardio on the machines at the gym while listening to endless episodes of the WTF podcast. (I've never seen anyone else at the gym laughing out loud by themselves. I think a lot of people use headphones to listen to music or something?)

I don't do enough cardio at the gym though, because a) it's hella-boring; and, 2) it doesn't pump up your biceps and make your veins stand out so you can look in the mirror and go, "Exercise, fuck yeah!" Smart, right? Because what I need to do is lose 20 pounds, and I've lost all of 2 lbs on this regimen, and everybody knows you need to do cardio to lose weight but I'd rather have manly triceps to go with my beer gut and borderline high blood pressure and probably impending diabeetus. Also, I guess there's this thing called "portion control" that everyone's talking about now? I should probably look in to that too.

But yesterday, which was the day off from my 3-days-on-1-day-off lifting schedule (based on an article I read in the February 1994 issue of Muscle & Fitness), I got an unexpectedly all-encompassing workout.

I thought I might try to sneak out for a late night rendezvous with the elliptical trainer last night, but when my kids announced that yesterday was to be a zoo day, I figured I'd go the 2-birds-1-stone route instead: break out the Daddy Bike and use the wee hours for reading an actual book (another thing I've been doing more of, much to the detriment of my erstwhile voluminous blogging output). The zoo is only 2 miles away, so there's really no reason not to hook up our awesome stroller/bike trailer/jogger/xc ski sled and avoid burning gas and being lazy.

I hadn't hooked up the bike trailer for a while. I used to be good about using it whenever possible; but for a number of lame reasons, I started driving the kids everywhere. Yesterday I would get back into the habit. The short trips don't require a lot of exercise, but much more than driving does. Plus the kids love it, and bicycles are proven to be good for your soul.

When I was in the habit of hauling the kids around on the Daddy Bike, I had the process dialed in: open garage door, lean bike on telephone pole in alley, pull stroller into alley, hook trailer to bike, load kids in trailer, grab helmet and backpack, hit garage door button, dash under garage door, jump on bike and go. But yesterday, I had to pump up the tires on both the bike and the trailer since they had been sitting unused for a while.

Back when I was trying to be a runner, I bought some puncture-resistant tires for the stroller, since I had been getting flats every time I ran on trails. As I'm pumping up one of these fancy tires yesterday, in a mad hurry of course, I try to yank the pump nozzle off of the tire valve, and, of course, break the valve stem so the tire goes flat instantly. This makes me fly into a silent pantomime of rage, just out of sight of the children, exacerbated by the fact that I now have to pee like an equine Mr. Furious, but to go all the way back to the house while the kids sit in the alley is not an option.

So begins the first phase of my workout. Hurriedly changing an inner tube on a 20" rim (smaller tires are more difficult to get on and off) is excellent for forearm strength, pumping up the tire is a quick cardio warm up, and controlling ones bladder is one of the best ways to increase core strength (I just made that up, but it sound plausible).

Once I get rolling on the bike, my anger dissipates, and the numbness in my crotch makes me forget about having to pee. I feel as free as a little kid as soon as the wind hits my face.

The bike ride to the zoo provides a unique interval training session. For two minutes or so, we glide along the flat roads of my neighborhood. Then we descend into the canyon that lies between us and the zoo, feathering the brakes just enough to keep the rig from hurtling out of control. The kids hoot with delight. I run the 4-way stop sign at the bottom (no cars anywhere near the intersection), so I can have a running start at the climb on the other side. The climb out of the canyon is probably a 30% grade. That's just a guess. It's steep as hell, but it's short. When I shift into granny-gear, it's just a matter of spinning like crazy and creeping up to the top, at which point my heart is pounding as hard as it possibly can. I'm probably not in as bad of condition as I think I am, but when I make this climb after my 2-minute warmup, I often have visions of passing out and waking up in an ambulance. Once we're out of the canyon, it's a 2-minute, perfectly flat ride to the zoo.

At the zoo, I get 2 hours of light cardio, pushing the stroller (sometimes occupied, sometimes empty), interspersed with breaks for snacking, watching gorillas wrestling, and lunch.

The bike ride back from the zoo should be a mirror image of the ride there. But there's something about going up the hill on the side of the canyon closer to my house that my bike doesn't like. The last couple of times I've done it, the bike didn't want to shift into the lowest gears, and the chain slipped, causing me to either pull over or just finesse it into higher gears until the chain would catch on the cogs. And sure enough, as soon as I start to ascend, the chain slips. I shift gears, trying to put as little pressure on the pedals as I can without rolling backwards, but the chain gets jammed anyway, the derailleur gets caught in the spokes, and we come to a stop. Luckily, the traffic going by drowns out my cursing (which is almost as good as holding your pee for core strength), so at least my kids are spared that trauma.

I pry the derailleur out of the spokes, and realize that the chain is not just stuck, but broken. I actually have a chain tool and a couple extra links in the little kit bag under my saddle, because I used to break chains all the time when the Daddy Bike was my mountain racing steed, oh, long about 15 years ago. But it doesn't make sense to waste time fixing it. It's already past nap time, and it's quicker to push the damn thing, along with the trailer and kids, the rest of the way home.

As I slog up the hill, I can't help but feel a little humiliated. I've always taken some pride in being able to make it up this hill while pulling the trailer, especially since I see so many people unencumbered by extra passengers pushing their bikes up it. Now I'm sure passing motorists are laughing at what an idiot I was for thinking I could pull it off.

But I also think about how my former neighbor, a Navy SEAL who converted his garage into a powerlifting gym, used to drag a weighted truck wheel down our alley with a harness made of an old backpack. Pushing a bike, trailer, two kids, and all our gear up this cliff was way more badass than that. Exercise, fuck yeah!

So, despite the epic pain in the ass that using the Daddy Bike turned out to be, and despite the fact that I had to pee again in the midst of my struggle, by the time I got home I was feeling pretty good about myself. I can't wait to weigh in at the gym this morning. I probably lost a good 4 ounces.

Latest Dread: School Days

2012-01-11T07:00:00.000-08:00

As soon as we walk in, I get the familiar pang. It's the smell, I'm pretty sure. A mixture of linoleum, crayons, pencil shavings, industrial disinfectant, construction paper, musty books, and public restroom funk. It's the same spasm I get with the first chill of autumn, or when I feel the days getting shorter.

There are kids all over the place. Pushing scooters on the rooftop playground; cutting, pasting, coloring; marching from classroom to classroom under the supervision of their kindly-looking female teachers.

This school isn't much like the ones I attended. It's urban--surrounded by high-rises--and within spitting distance of the Pacific ocean. Its physical presence comprises additions and annexes built in the sixties and seventies onto an austere brick church that dates back to the late 1800's. In fact, there are religious messages and artwork posted through its labyrinthine stairwells and hallways. My schools never had that. But some of the toys, books, furniture, and certainly the architecture harken back to my own school days. And of course, there's that old school smell.

The visceral reaction I have when reminded of my school years, while not horrifying, is decidedly more bitter than sweet. When I was a kid, there was very little I looked forward to as the new school year loomed. Sure, there was the excitement of being back in the fray, with a much bigger pool of kids to run around with. Summer did tend to drag on, and I would get tired of seeing the same kids from the neighborhood every day. But school was just too much...work. Not just the drudgery of the classroom, but also negotiating the social landscape. We moved a lot, sometimes every year, so I was often the new kid. But that was almost easier than returning to a school and trying to figure out what had changed over the summer, who belonged to which group, who I could sit with in the cafeteria, and which of my summertime friends would still be friends once everyone shook out into their respective cliques. The effort it took to seem undaunted amid my writhing anxiety was exhausting.

The reason that we're at this churchy school is that our girls are two-and-a-half-years old, and apparently that's just about when they're supposed to start spending entire days away from home in the care of people we don't even know, running around with bigger kids (almost all kids are bigger than ours) who don't appreciate their delicate genius, and somehow getting through all the tasks and transitions of the day without their parents. Without me. Speaking of pangs.

We take the tour and learn about the curriculum, the schedule, the classroom sizes, and the enrollment procedure. We see the kids of two of my wife's colleagues, laughing on a play structure. They are the reason we're considering this school. It wouldn't have occurred to me to look into a "Christian school," but our friends, and the lady who gives us the tour, assure us that they're not in the business of proselytizing to pre-schoolers. They read some Bible stories every week and talk about Christian values, the ones that aren't controversial. Generally accepted morality. I can live with that.

In addition to this school, we're on waiting lists for two others, both of them more progressive, more expensive, and without as much old school smell.

The thing is, we're actually going to do this. Send them away for hours at a time, several days a week.

I can't quite get my head around the fact that I'll drop them off and then just leave. Shouldn't I sit in the office and wait, at least for the first couple of days? I can't imagine a first-day-of-school scenario in which neither of the girls has a panic attack.

But really, I know, as with every benchmark in their development, I'm just approaching this with my standard incredulity. They're gonna walk?! These little rolly-pollies? Yeah, right. And I suppose they'll be able to use language to communicate some day. I'm so sure. And then when it comes to pass, as blown away as I am, I quickly get used to it and focus on pretending the next thing isn't already happening.

Me at DadCentric: Trifling

2012-01-05T08:56:00.000-08:00

They look nice enough

I never thought it would happen to me; but my kids have arrived at that age.

They used to call it the "Terrible Twos," but I've read a lot of literature (okay, blogs) arguing that three is worse, and four is even...um, more worse. In any case, my formerly angelic 2.5-year-old twins have crossed the threshold. They've always had the capacity to be fussy, of course; but now, with their enhanced cognitive and language skills, they can do so with much greater focus and intention.

Some days are better than others; and even on their worst days, I forgive them by the time they've been asleep for a couple of hours. I even look forward to seeing them conscious the next day.

But some days are pretty bad, and I must say in all fairness, it's their fault, not mine.

The things they get hysterical about, the demands they make, and positions they refuse to back down from, are absolutely absurd. They want Mom to get them out of the crib, NOT DAD--or vise versa. They want the purple yogurt, NOT THE YELLOW. And they don't want it stirred. Or they do want it stirred. They both want to look at the same picture of lettuce on the grocery store circular. They both want to feed the dog. One wants to take medicine. One wants to be "nekkid guy" and streak through the house, leaving a trail of urine in her wake. One wants to drag a chair across the floor, climb on it, and wash her hands in the fish tank. They both want to see every step of the coffee-making process up close. They want the pink swirly straw, not the purple bendy straw; the big kid cup with birdies, not the sippy cup with Elmo.

Read more at Dad Centric

***

And if you feel like reading some more, you can find out why I might convert to Judaism over at Aiming Low. There's a pretty funny exchange happening in the comment section.

Deep, Deep Inside

2011-12-29T06:00:00.000-08:00

Christmas was swell. I'll probably post some cute pictures pretty soon, and maybe write some words. I kvetch about the accumulation of toys in an upcoming Aiming Low post, but other than my usual grumpiness about TOO MUCH STUFF, it was a very pleasant celebration of Jesus' and my wife's birthdays.

These kids of mine and their shenanigans, though. Sheesh. They're getting really hilarious and frustrating. They're already way smarter than my dog in most ways, which makes me disappointed in Stella, who is much older than them. She'll do something like get trapped between a toy stroller and a cardboard box and then freak out and skitter around on the hardwood floors and crash into walls and I'll be all, "What the HELL, Stella?! These kids are half your age and they've got more sense than you!" And then I feel bad for being disappointed in her, because she's, you know, a dog, and one with some very real developmental and emotional issues.

But the kids still do stuff sometimes that I think even Stella would realize is a bad idea.

The other day, for example, the girls were playing while I was puttering around in the kitchen, trying to get some dinner going before their mom got home. Since they don't have any actual toys, they like to play with household objects like rubber bands, ribbon, tupperware, and recently, coffee beans. They're fascinated by the coffee making process that happens several times a day in our house, and started demanding beans for themselves.

What harm could there possibly be in letting them play with a couple of them? I mean, I'm not an idiot. I only let them play with the decaf beans that we keep around for when weird guests who are into that kind of thing come over. I don't let them use the good stuff as little people to populate their garbage can "boats" and six-pack box "houses."

So I'm trying to get dinner on, when Butterbean comes up to me with her finger on the side of her nose.

"It's deep, deep inside, Daddy," she says.

The girls are such little bookworms, they're always quoting from their favorite stories. I'll hear them in the nursery (a.k.a. "walk-in closet"), talking to each other when they're supposed to be sleeping, and one of them will start a conversation with, "Can I ask you a question?" That's a line from The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog, one that's been in heavy rotation for the last few months. The "deep, deep inside" quote comes from Bark George, a story about a puppy who needs to have a lot of livestock extracted from deep, deep inside of him before he can bark properly.

So I'm all, "WHAT's deep, deep inside, Boo? Deep inside WHERE?" But I knew. I knew it was a goddamn coffee bean. In her nose.

In fact, I had almost written on Twitter, "I predict that 2012 will be the year when one of my kids will insert a coffee bean into her nose" just moments before. Yes, I give my kids coffee beans to play with even though I know it's a bad idea, and I leave my laptop open on the kitchen counter so I can sneak away and goof around on the internet while they're amusing themselves. Like you don't.

And of course, as I'm feeling around the outside of her nose, the dog goes bounding through the house to greet Dr. Mom, who is just then returning from work to not only the usual chaos, but also the prospect of performing a medical procedure on her own child.

I tell my wife about the situation, and start asking how we get the thing out. I've actually discussed this kind of thing with her before, because I love to hear about weird things she has extracted from patients' orifices at work. So I know that often these cases have to go to Ear, Nose, and Throat specialists.

But I can feel the bean, and even see the tip of it protruding from the nostril. We have to be able to grab it with tweezers or something.

And then, before my wife can even get a good look at it, I kind of squeeze the part of Butterbean's nose where the bean is at its deep, deep, deepest. And the bean shoots out onto the floor.

We have a very serious talk with the girls about not putting things in their noses, and then we sit down to eat.

Throughout dinner, Butterbean fusses with her nose, sticking her fingers in it, saying "I have boogers," and demanding that Mom "poke my nose" with a kleenex rolled into an excavating tool. We figure that her nose must be irritated and maybe there's some oil from the coffee bean in there. The tissues Mom sticks in her nose come out smudged with brown.

After dinner, it's "rain shower time," and the kids do their nightly screaming and splashing routine. We decide to give Butterbean a nose-douche, as she's still complaining about the irritation in her nose. You might know the nose-douche by it's other name, the "Neti pot." I'm a big fan of nasal irrigation, but I prefer the more aggressive squirt-bottle technique to to the gentle pouring-a-tiny-teapot-into-your-nose gig, especially when my nose is filled with sawdust and remodeling filth. I knew the kid wouldn't stand still, much less tilt her head to the side to receive the gentle version, so we would have to go with the squirt-bottle.

So I squirt the saline solution into her left nostril, and it goes streaming out of her right nostril, which is what it's supposed to do. She screams in protest, of course. Then I squirt into the right nostril, and it trickles slowly out of the left.

Then the floodgates burst. A small, dark missile launches out of her left nostril and clicks, bouncing off the tile floor of the shower. Butterbean is crying hard now, and my wife and I are incredulous. Cramming one coffee bean up her nose was not quite satisfying enough, so she had to send another after it.

I hold up the offending bean and ask, "What were you thinking, kiddo? I mean, Stella wouldn't even do that."

She just reaches for my hand, wailing, "I WANT MY COFFEE BEAN!"

***

Since you're probably just goofing off at work because there's nothing to do between Christmas and New Year's, you might as well read the thing I wrote on Aiming Low about the resolutions I'm forcing my kids to make for 2012.

Bouncy Bouncy

2011-12-16T01:51:00.000-08:00

The kids have been doing their fair share of driving me nuts lately, in the classic ways two-year-olds do: freaking out over inconsequential things, impeding progress of any activity with their dawdling, being fussy, being stubborn, refusing to sleep, refusing to eat, fighting with each other, whining, and so on.

But about half the time, they're doing stuff like this, so I can handle their cussedness.

Transcript of Video (I wanted to do subtitles, but that's hard.)

Both: [jumping on bed] Wild wild West, wild wild West [song from an Elmo video]

Butterbean: That's fun...that's fun...

Cobra: Where's the bouncy book? I can read it.

Butterbean: Can I read it? Can you read it? And I can bounce?

Cobra: Yes...on that book...yes...

Butterbean: No...I don't...that's not a bouncy book.

Cobra: This one...there's a walrus.

Butterbean: Where's the bouncy book? Daddy? Where's the [snatches book from Dad]...[to Cobra] can you read this?

Cobra: [points at picture of monkey] That's Daddy right here!

Dad: Here's the bouncy book. Sissy's got the bouncy book.

Butterbean: You wanna read this? You wanna read this? This is the bouncy book.

Cobra: Singing all together...la la la
              Running round and round
              Bouncy, bouncy
              All fall down!

***

Here's your weekly clearinghouse of links to stuff I wrote elsewhere.

Surfin' Burt

I wrote a lot for Man of the House as part of this "Battery Powered Kids" thing we're doing to try and encourage parents to build things for and with their kids this holiday season. Here they are in the order of coolest to lamest.

This one's about some miniature motorized surfboards I made, because what kid doesn't want a miniature motorized surfboard?

This one's about a battery powered horsie I made from a kit.
This one's about a mini-submarine motor you can stick on just about anything that floats.

On Aiming Low, I wrote about how researchers say you should deal with tantrums, and how I have been going about it all wrong.

This is what it's like when I whine

2011-12-09T02:06:00.001-08:00

I just got back from the gym, which I'm going to be saying a lot from now on, and hopefully it will be true most of the time. I've fallen into some bad health habits lately. And by lately, I mean since the kids were born. I've gained twenty pounds, in the usual way. Actually, I think I gained that in the first month of being a stay-at-home dad. But it hasn't shown any signs of leaving, for the usual reasons.

My kids are cute though, right?

My sleep habits are not the best. Since I'm now co-sleeping with Cobra at naptime (she won't sleep otherwise), I can't rely on that window of opportunity for writing or any other activity that requires any sustained concentration. So I stay up until 2:00 or 3:00 or 4:00 most nights. I average around six hours of sleep per day, I think, which has always been enough for me. But it would probably be better if I were able to get those sleep hours consecutively.

My back is still jacked up, as it has been for almost a year now. I've got a herniated disc that bangs into my sciatic nerve and shoots pain bullets down to my feet. Cause unknown. Ironically, my specialist says it's probably not from all the years of construction work, but is more likely from hunching over babies and laptops. I've had three cortisone shots into my spine over the past six months, which help for a while; but the effect diminishes over time. The condition is probably going to get better without surgery, according to my doc, but after giving it so much time already, it's kind of my call whether I want to get cut or not. I don't really want to get cut. The pain isn't so bad as long as I take 6-8 Tylenol per day, but there's a lot of stuff I can't do that I used to be able to do. Like running and touching my toes. It's improving. Just in imperceptible increments.

So I'm hoping to get into a virtuous cycle wherein I sleep more (somehow), eat better, exercise more and disgust myself less. If I lose some weight, it should help my back get better. If my back gets better, I can exercise more. If I exercise more, I can once again become the vain prick I was at 13% body fat. (That was a long, long time ago.)

I hesitate to write about this kind of stuff because my weight and pain (and self-image) issues are so minor compared to a lot of people's; but I'm hoping to shame myself into staying on task. Nothing else has worked so far, so maybe if I post updates on my progress (or lack thereof), it'll keep me honest. What I should really do is post pictures of myself in my underwear. But then I would have to whine about all my blog traffic drying up in addition to everything else.

These are my favorite accessories

***

I wrote quite a bit of stuff that's currently being displayed on the internets, though; and that makes me feel not disgusted. Perhaps you would enjoy reading some of them?

At Aiming Low, I wrote about being puked on. It's short, funny, and gross. Just what you were looking for.

At DadCentric (recently declared Best Dadblog by Parents magazine and Best Group Dadblog by Babble!), I wrote about why I hate Christmas trees. It involves fire.

At Man of the House, I rolled out the old wooden trikes and waxed philosophic about building things for your kids.

Also at Man of the House, I wrote about my run-in with a dangerous Guatemalan criminal network.

Finally, at Insert Eyeroll, I wrote about dirty K-9 cops.

The Moist Ache

2011-12-02T00:33:00.001-08:00

When all this Movember stuff was just getting started, I was on my iPhone, contributing to a DadCentric email thread about some aspect of growing mustaches. I wasn't sure of the preferred spelling of "mustache" because I had had so little occasion to use the word in the past. I never dreamed I would have said or typed "mustache" so many times in my life, much less actually sported one on my face.

Anyway, I used the British spelling "moustache," which my iPhone autocorrected to "moist ache." Wacky antics ensued, as you would expect.

And the antics continued through the month, even though the cause they served was a serious one: research to prevent and cure cancers that affect men. Our team of 65 mustache farmers, under the leadership of dad-to-the-dadblogosphere Doug French, grew approximately 67 'staches (Whit Honea grew at least three by my count), and raised over $19,000 dollars to fight prostate and testicular cancer! On behalf of my team, I thank everyone who donated. Those of you who didn't--I'm sure you had a good reason, and you'll do the right thing next year.

On top of the $19,000+ that we squeezed out of our friends, families, neighbors, and readers, Philips Norelco kicked in another $15,000 in our name! I'm no math whiz, but that's seems like it equals a shitload of cash.

And, as if that weren't enough, Philips Norelco donated a bunch of high-tech mustache-removal equipment to help some of us transition back into normal life once Movember was over. Full disclosure: those of us who took advantage of this offer agreed to videotape ourselves shaving off our 'staches and provide links to this hefty rebate offer.

When it came time to hack off the ol' soup strainer, the beard trimmer and SensoTouch 3D electric razor made the job easy and mostly painless. The trimmer bush-hogged the heavy brambles, vacuuming up the detritus in its wake so there was no mess to clean up. And the SensoTouch sanded it all down to a smooth finish.

I was skeptical about electric razors, not having used one since the days when they all had the ergonomic properties of a brick. But this thing was comfortable, lightweight, and it gave me a pretty close shave. And supposedly, as your skin gets accustomed to it, you will get even closer shaves and less skin irritation. When you're done shaving, you park the SensoTouch in a little dock that charges it, washes it with jets of cleaning solution, and then dries it. It's practically a robot.

I'm so lazy and generally unkempt that I usually only shave every three or four days. But my sleek new toy makes me want to shave every time I see it. I seriously think I'm gonna shave right now, at 2:00 a.m.. If you're thinking about getting an electric razor for yourself or as a gift, I think this is a solid choice. And don't forget about the holiday rebate they're running.

Here's the video of my depilation. I'll understand if you don't want to watch the whole gnarly process, but the beginning and end, where the girls express their opinions about the mustache and its absence, are pretty damn cute:

Click here to see the videos some of the other guys made. At the very least, do yourself a favor and watch Whit's disturbing contribution.

Getting rid of my mustache was bittersweet. Although I never really owned my mustachedness, I enjoyed the air of authority and/or criminality it gave me (or I imagined that it did), not to mention the foil it provided for the other aesthetic flaws I've accrued over the years.

But now, like it or not, where once my mustache adorned the vast flesh-desert of my face like a bristly oasis, all that remains is a slightly sweaty phantom pain--a moist ache, if you will.

Final Mustache Update!

2011-11-30T06:00:00.000-08:00

Well, Movember is coming to a close, and this is my final plea for you to donate a couple bucks for research to fight prostate and testicular cancer. I alienated my loved ones and made strangers uncomfortable all month long with my attempted mustache. Please make up for their sacrifices by contributing to this excellent (and tax-deductible) cause.

Here's a reminder of what Movember is all about. From the Movember website:

The Movember Effect: Awareness & Education, Survivorship, Research
The funds raised in the US support prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men. The funds raised are directed to programs run directly by Movember and our men’s health partners, the Prostate Cancer Foundation and LIVESTRONG, the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Together, the three channels work together to ensure that Movember funds are supporting a broad range of innovative, world-class programs in line with our strategic goals in the areas of awareness and education, survivorship and research.

For more information on the programs we are funding please visit the following:
Prostate Cancer Foundation
LIVESTRONG, The Lance Armstrong Foundation
Awareness & Education
Global Action Plan

The next time I do a mustache-related post will be when I shave this scraggly thing off my face, as part of a "Shave-Off" event, sponsored by Phillips Norelco. Some of the guys on Team Dad 2.0/Man of the House/NYC Dads Group/DadCentric/DadLabs are participating in this for laughs and to give Phillips Norelco some props and publicity, since they have agreed to match the funds we have raised, up to $15,000!

I have to say that I'm ambivalent about getting rid of my mustache. It's the first intentional facial hair I've had since an ill-advised goatee in 1991, and it's been refreshing to see a different face in the mirror. The other day my wife even said, "I don't hate it as much as I thought I would."

Sometimes, it doesn't look too bad:


Dashing


Harmless


Not psycho

But, as I said in the last update, it only looks good from a safe distance. What my wife and kids see is often something more like this:

Gross

Maybe with a little more time, and a visit to a groomer, it would settle down. But it'll be gone by tomorrow, so we may never know.

So there's the spiel. Please go to my Movember space and drop a couple shekels in the can. Thanks!

***

Some Other Places I've Written Lately

At Aiming Low, I wrote about what a terrible idea it is to let children get involved in gardening.

At Man of the House, I explored perhaps one of the most important questions you can ever ask yourself: what kind of material should I use to build my deck?

Also at Man of the House, I got all deep and powerful when discussing nail guns. If you want one for Christmas, you need to read this article.

The Banality of Adorableness

2011-11-21T10:19:00.001-08:00

Adorable

I realized that I've been reluctant to write about the normal things my kids are doing lately that I find amazing and super-cute. This is because I assume that most readers would find this material tiresome, not being the parents of my kids.

As a result of my omitting these episodes, my wife and I have forgotten a lot of the amazing and super-cute things the girls were doing just a few months ago, and have no record of them.

We've had a number of these conversations:

Wife: Did you hear Cobra say such-and-such tonight?

Me: Yes! So cute!

Wife: We should write that down somewhere.

Me: Yeah. One of us should start a blog or something. Lol.

Wife: You never write about this kind of stuff on your blog though.

Me: Yeah, I guess not. But it doesn't really matter. That was so cute, we'll never forget it.

And these:

Wife: What was that thing Butterbean used to say for "zipper"?

Me: Oh man! That's right! She was obsessed with zippers for a while. Was it "fschlawbie"?

Wife: No...that was what she said for "flowers." It was something like "zhu zhu."

Me: "Vroo hee"?

Wife: No...more like, something like..."vun vun" or "sha sha."

Me: "Roo too"?

Wife: "Fahr fahr"?

Me: "Wah hah"?

[etc.]

So from now on, I'll be documenting in excruciating detail just how brilliant (by which I mean "within the range of normal development") and adorable my kids are, so my wife and I can look back and remember these times once they have reached the age of unbearableness.

Please join me on this amazing journey through the exact same thing most parents have experienced since man started walking upright and using language.

Nouns-->Verbs, Adjectives-->Nouns

I took a linguistics class in grad school, and one of the most fascinating principles we read about and discussed was the difference between learning language and acquiring it. When you learn a language, you have to memorize the grammar rules and the exceptions to those rules and apply them to every sentence you construct. When acquiring a language as a little kid, however, you just pick up bits of it, make up theories about how it works, and then test those theories by blurting out whatever combination of words you think will get you that chocolate bunny cracker you've had a hankering for.

Our kids are almost two and a half now, and they talk a lot. Probably not much more than than the average kid, but, you know, there are two of them, so there's a lot of chatter at any given time.

Sadly, their Vietnamese has stagnated a little, since they hear so much more English. But my wife says they're still learning and understanding, even though they don't speak it very much.

In English, they're getting pretty good at distinguishing between present and past tense, but they make the typical errors that are way more logical than the English language, like saying "catched" instead of "caught."

They're just starting to figure out pronouns, which is a pretty tough concept. They used to always say "you" when referring to themselves, because that's what their mom and I always call them; but they're catching on to the "I" idea. Butterbean does this thing where she uses "my" to refer to herself, but only in certain constructions, like "my peeing," or "my eating." My theory is that she's trying to say "I'm", but it's coming out backwards. She's also experimenting with some more complicated constructions, such as "I like to [go, eat, play, etc.]."

Speaking of "I like," Butterbean--and to a lesser extent Cobra--have started declaring their love for various things: occasionally (and with some prompting) even their parents and one another.

One of the smartest and most unintentionally funny linguistic gambits they've been making is changing nouns into verbs. For instance, they know that when we ride bikes, it's called "biking," and when we go on the swings it's called "swinging." So of course, riding on their scooters is "scootering," and playing on the monkey bars is "monkey barsing." My favorite invented verb resulted when I asked Butterbean what she was doing digging around in her nose with her finger. "Boogering," she replied. Of course.

Another trick that Butterbean started working on is morphing adjectives into nouns by adding the suffix "ness." Since she's often troubled by (self-generated) schmutz or spillage, the most common examples of this are "dirtiness" and "messiness," as in "Daddy, Daddy, clean it, Daddy!" "Clean what, sweetie?" "The messiness, Daddy."

***

One more of those noun-to-verb words they've been using a lot lately is "mustaching," which is what Dad does when he scratches the kids and Mom with the disreputable looking wire brush on his upper lip. It's the cause for much hilarity.

Also adorable

But the mustache is not just for laughs. I'm growing it to help raise awareness and money for research on prostate and testicular cancer, through an international movement called Movember. My mustache team (never thought I would be on one of those), has raised more than $12,000 (!!!) so far, which is freaking amazing. Thanks to those of you have donated, and if you haven't yet, please drop a couple bucks on my page or on my team's page. No amount is too small. I think not anyway. It might have to be at least a dollar. I don't know.

Mustache Update

2011-11-17T09:24:00.001-08:00

Oddly, I am less humiliated by my mustache efforts than I thought I would be. I'm probably heavily deluding myself, but I think it doesn't look that bad. It's with a weird mix of horror and satisfaction that I accept that I might just have a mustache-friendly face. Also, like countless balding guys before me, I'm convinced that the 'stache draws attention away from my hairline (or more accurately "hairlines," which you would understand if I ever allowed a picture of the top of my head to be published).

Those are my bedroom eyes, by the way

One thing I like about the mustache is its versatility. I can look sleazy/dangerous:

Or creepy/dangerous:

Or batshit/dangerous:

The only time I get self-conscious about the 'stache is when people are within a couple feet of my face. From a distance, it looks like regular facial hair, but when you get up close, it's all gnarly and wiry, and the hairs are curling and pointing in different directions. That part is a little disgusting. But I'm hoping that with time and the right grooming products, it will fall into line.

Thus concludes the mustache update for Movember 17, 2012. Now please go to my Movember page (or anybody's really) and donate a couple bucks to help research and fight prostate cancer and other diseases that threaten men's health.

***

Other places I've been this week

On Aiming Low, I wrote a letter to my daughters about how I had to follow my dreams of rock stardom.

On DadCentric, I interviewed Greg Olear, author of Fathermucker, a new novel written from the POV of a SAHD.

I wrote this tasteless thing about the repeal of DADT on Insert Eyeroll

Finally, Cobra was featured as a guest napper on the amazing and hilarious blog, Naps Happen

How to Say "Thank You" in Father-In-Law-ese

2011-11-11T00:13:00.001-08:00

My across-the-street neighbor--a sixty-something single retiree--is the busybody on our block. But she has never directed any of her meddling toward us, despite our dirty cars and disreputable-looking lawn. Our next-door-neighbors on either side have referred to her as "Gladys Kravitz" in separate conversations I've had with them. She has a reputation.

But we've always gotten along just fine with her. Somehow, we've developed a symbiotic relationship. I occasionally fix things at her house or just pick up stuff that's too heavy for her; and she hangs bags of fruit from her backyard trees on our doorknob. When we're out of town, she picks up our mail and sometimes waters our plants.

One day, maybe two years ago, I went over to ask her a favor of some sort--taking care of something while we were on vacation. "Sure," she said, "but you have to promise to thank me."

I chuckled and said that of course I would thank her. I didn't really get it. She says weird stuff sometimes.

"No, really," she went on. "All those times that I got your mail, or watered your plants, or that time I gave you a ride when you lost your car keys...you've never thanked me once. Neither you or your wife." She was shaking.

I was stunned and embarrassed. And maybe a little indignant. Surely I had thanked her. My wife and I are both very conscious of basic manners. We frequently bitch about people who don't say "thanks" when we open doors for them. So I must have thanked her. Of course I did. I'm pretty sure. She's just a little batty. And demanding. Some people need you to grovel in exchange for every little favor.

Ever since that episode, I've been sure to thank Gladys at least five times when she leaves a couple lemons on my doorstep. And she, in turn, has upped the ante by giving me a bottle of wine whenever I help her out with some little household task. It's a game that I don't care to get involved in, this escalation of gratitude. Saying "thanks" is important; but, hey, we're neighbors--we watch out for each other. There's no need for theatrics.

***

My father-in-law used to get on my nerves. A lot of that was due to the fact that he didn't really want me to marry his daughter. That made his character flaws all the more glaring to me. He was a blowhard and a braggart, a so-called Christian obsessed with the trappings of social status and financial success. He was way too self-confident, and way too sure about his convictions. Granted, he had come to this country as a refugee with nothing but a wife, two babies, and his elderly father who all depended on him for survival, and had managed to not only keep them fed and clothed but to eventually send six kids to college. But did he really need to keep bringing it up? I got it already the first time.

Over the twenty years since I first met him, a lot has changed. We've both relaxed our standards regarding the faults we see in each other. He has, by all accounts, become less rigid in his judgment and expectations of others in general. I probably have too. We get along fine. We help each other out. I fix things around the house when we visit my wife's family. He helps me work on our house when he's visits us. I've helped him deliver heavy pieces for his furniture repair business. He gave us an almost-brand-new minivan.

I like hanging out with my father-in-law now. Most of our sustained talks happen when we're involved in a project, which has always been the most comfortable conversational situation for me, with anyone. If we're doing something that I'm good at, I explain every step of the process. If it's an area of his expertise, he instructs me. When we're both flailing, we bounce ideas off of each other. We never have to wonder what to talk about, and we never trip about who's in charge. We just get shit done.

After picking up our Sienna from the freight hauling company last year, I tried to thank my father-in-law for straight-up giving us the nicest vehicle I've ever owned.* He brushed it off. It wasn't like I tried to make a speech or anything, but he interrupted my fumbling gratitude with a question about whether the radio antenna had made the voyage intact.

As far as I can recall, Dad-in-law never said "thanks" (at least never made a production of it) to me. There's no question (if we're keeping track) as to who has done more solids for whom. My contributions of a half-day's labor here and there are a pittance compared to the hours and dollars that he and my mother-in-law have dedicated to our comfort and security. So I never felt slighted by a lack of verbal recognition for my attempts at recompense. I was happy just to be able to be able to chalk up a couple meager gestures.

During our visit to the in-laws (on the other side of the country) last week, I wasn't able to get involved in many of the projects my father-in-law had insanely undertaken in the run-up to my youngest brother-in-law's wedding. Our kids were more than a little jacked up by the change in environment and time, and they needed both Mom and Dad almost constantly. But I did manage to slip away for a total of maybe six hours to work on Dad-in-law's beat up Corolla--the one that took the place of the minivan he gave us.

Miraculously (it's been a long time since I worked on cars regularly), I was able, with the assistance of my father-in-law, to pop the dents out of the passenger's side so that the doors locked and unlocked and the windows went up and down. Then I replaced a side-view mirror and all guts of the driver's side window mechanism so that it would function for the first time in over a year. Thanks to the internet--which didn't exist when I used to fix my own cars--I found videos that showed how to do the repairs, and websites that sold the parts at a fraction of what the dealer wanted, and a fraction of the time a junkyard visit required. The interwebs and I probably saved the old man a thousand bucks.

I was pretty stoked at having fixed stuff on a car without the expense and frustration I remembered from the old days; and of course, I was glad to have reminded my in-laws of my usefulness. But I was not prepared for the acknowledgment I was to receive from Dad-in-law.

After going over how much money we had saved, and how cleverly we had tackled the repairs, Dad-in-law said, "I could not have done all that by myself."

Other Stuff

I wrote about a cool woodworking project I did at Man of the House.

I wrote about how to maintain alpha-son-in-law status at Aiming Low.

I wrote about using Elmo as an anesthetic for pediatric surgery at Insert Eyeroll.

But most importantly, I continued to grow a mustache to SAVE MEN'S LIVES!!


Weird. I never really had a craving for Skoal before.

So, before you waste any time reading the nonsense I wrote elsewhere, go to my page at Movember, and donate a teeny little bit of money toward research and prevention of cancers that affect men's nethers.

***

*Screw you, haters. Minivans are the pinnacle of automotive achievement.

Don't Let My Mustache Be in Vain

2011-11-08T00:51:00.000-08:00

We just got back from a trip to Virginia for my wife's youngest brother's wedding, so there's all kinds of stuff to report. Later. After all my talented relatives send me beautiful pictures I can post, and I get a little sleep.

This post is all about the current swath of humiliation just barely covering my upper lip.

That's right, I'm attempting a mustache again. I have essentially the same misgivings that I did last year, but I'm determined to stick it out this time. It should be easier this go 'round, because I'm part of a big team/support network (I think we even have a hotline to call in case we find ourselves in the bathroom with a razor at 3:00 a.m.). There are about 60 of us at last count, mostly dadbloggers, and we have the catchy team name "Dad 2.0 / Man of the House / NYC Dads Group / DadCentric / DadLabs."

It's only Day 8 of "Movember" and we've already raised over $5,000 to help fight prostate and testicular cancer. I say "we," but as of this writing, I have not raised a nickel. I've been a terrible fundraiser.

Okay, so what the hell am I talking about anyway?

Movember is this month-long event during which thousands of men grow mustaches to become "walking billboards" for prevention of prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men. Read more at the Movember "about" page.

It's a brilliant idea. Because, unless you're a cop, if you grow a mustache, people you associate with regularly are going to ask you about it. And I've even found myself explaining its presence to people I just met, although--or perhaps because--they might think I'm the kind of guy who would normally wear a mustache. Which I might become, depending on the feedback I get. But the point is, it's hard not to talk about it, so it kind of forces you to spread the word. Ingenious.

I suspect that I'll be writing about my mustache experience quite a bit in the next three weeks, because it's the most interesting new weirdness in my life right now. For instance, during my twelve hours of being in planes and airports today, I realized that I was noticing all the other mustachioed dudes around and kind of giving them knowing looks, like we were in the same club. Thinking about that sent my mind spiraling in quadruple helices regarding the implications therein.

But for now, just the important info.

Please donate whatever you can to my Movember page (it's under my other name, "Andy Hinds"--you'll recognize the picture). All the proceeds go to either programs directed by Movember, or their partners, the Prostate Cancer Foundation and LIVESTRONG.

***

I was really relieved that my kids weren't freaked out by the 'stache. In fact, they find it funny.

Leaving Home

2011-11-02T00:02:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, we did the usual nighttime routine with the feeding of the kids and the cleaning up of what they had left in their wake during the day; and then we stayed up until 3:00 a.m., doing laundry, more cleaning, getting rid of perishable food, and generally battening down the hatches.

Two and a half hours later, we got up, dragged our asses and the asses of our children out of bed, rousted my teenage nephew who has been staying with us for a while and who rarely gets out of bed before noon (but is nonetheless really a great kid and not actually lazy), and made him drive us to the airport so we could go to DC for my wife's little brother's wedding.

As San Diegans do, I had forgotten that other parts of the country sometimes have weather at this time of year; so I checked a forecast while packing. Snow and rain in DC at the time we were to arrive. Nice. I envisioned delayed flights, twin meltdowns, parental meltdowns, and a white-knuckle slither down the Beltway in one of my father-in-law's sketchy vehicles with mismatched second-hand tires once we finally arrived.

Those misadventures would have made for great blog fodder. Nonetheless I was really pleased that the trip went off as well as could have been expected, even with a four-hour layover in Chicago (which has a really boring airport, except for the many "moving sidewalks" that we traversed innumerable times). For that, I have to give credit to dumb luck for making the weather less bad than was predicted, and to my wife for being a genius at preparing for traveling with kids. She had been stocking up for weeks on new toys, iPad apps, children's headphones, snacks, and other indulgences that I had groused about as they arrived in the daily tower of Amazon boxes.

But those indulgences made our kids look like the best-behaved angels that ever staggered onto a Southwest flight. We had to buy them their own seats since they're too old to be "lap children" (ouch, financially), so there was plenty of room to spread out coloring books, Play-Doh, puzzles, and finally, after the wholesome activities could no longer subdue their squirminess, to bust out the iPad and tranquilize them with Elmo.

The routine once we arrived at the in-laws' aging McMansion in the DC 'burbs was quite familiar, with the twist of having to deal with very active, unpredictable, and sensitive toddlers.

Eating is the main activity. Mom-in-law is in some process of food preparation or cleanup nonstop, literally, which means we are in the process of stuffing our faces at all times. And because there's a wedding, the other activity is shopping for clothes and odds and ends for the festivities. The children are much more amused by malls than is their father. I need to go for a hike soon.

Also, the children will not nap--at all--and won't go to sleep at night without both Mom and Dad in the mildly creepy basement room (three of the six sibs claim that they've had paranormal experiences while sleeping there) where we're staying. So we have to perform the "everybody night-night" charade at about 8: 30 (which does, I confess, sometimes turn into a substantial parental nap), or the kids will clamber out of their Pack N Plays and start banging on the door like Attica inmates.

Whenever there is a wedding in my wife's family, everyone has to perform. For the last three weddings, we've put together a family band--a sort of Eurasian Partridge Family--to perform a couple songs at the reception. With each wedding we've gotten more ambitious; and this time, we're working on five to seven songs, featuring--oh--about ten band members. The four lead vocalists won't arrive until the day before the wedding, but I'm sure it will all work out.

I play bass in this band, which is something I did from the eighth grade until my junior year of high school, but have not done since (with the exceptions of the family wedding gigs). But, as anyone who's staying in this house would attest, I am a little obsessed with nailing my bass part, my facial expressions, and my heroic poses. I'm afraid that, at 44 years old, I still want to be a rock star.

And apparently, so do my children:

This was our first (of two) practices, but we've improved a lot since then. And when we get our singers, we're going to KILL. IT. I will be sure to post videos of the actual performance here. Unless we suck.

***

I'm pretty sure I've written some stuff on the interwebs since I last posted here. Let me look around. Hmmm...

Oh, here's something on Aiming Low about toddler nap avoidance.

And...let's see...a little jokey jokey thing on Insert Eyeroll. I wrote about fat cats and bankers staging "Occupy Your Mom" demonstrations. Somebody from Charles Schwab thought it was real and left a comment. No shit.

Man of the House published an article I wrote about old-time craftsmen: Was Your Grandfather More Handy than You?

Thanks loads for reading!

Lobster Hunt

2011-10-21T04:35:00.000-07:00

Rinsing out a pair of underpants yesterday evening, I was reminded of what happened last Saturday night that caused the boxer briefs to turn the water in the sink into such a murky and foul-smelling brew.

No, I did not actually soil myself last weekend, although I came close several times.

The putrid undies (don't worry, we'll leave them behind soon) had been lurking in a plastic bin full of watersports gear since 3:00 a.m. last Sunday, at which point I was stripping off my wetsuit on the deck of a friend's fishing boat. When I took my towel, snorkel, fins and wetsuit out of the bin after I got home at 4:00 a.m., somehow the underwear I had worn under the wetsuit escaped my notice, and remained in a wad there for the next three days. When I returned the rinsed and dried equipment to the bin on Wednesday, I was greeted with a stench that surpassed that of the hamper where we throw the twins' used cloth diapers.

I had tried to bail on this nautical excursion when I first got the text message at 9:00 p.m. on Saturday; but my wife, hoping for a windfall of fresh seafood, had not cooperated with my project of enumerating the reasons that it was a bad idea to leave the couch. She had little sympathy for my lack of motivation, which was caused largely by my having gone to my nephew's hockey game on Friday and drunk way too much beer, both during and afterward.

And I had been wanting to join my friends on one of these trips for quite some time; so I ultimately talked myself into it. I decided to embrace this opportunity to try lobster diving for the first time.

We left the marina at about 11:30 p.m. on a moonless night, creeping through a maze of multi-million dollar yachts, and then motoring past dry-docked submarines, dilapidated fishing boats, harbor seals, pelicans, and seagulls, our wake glowing neon blue as the boat's motor churned up the bioluminescent "red tide" that has bloomed here recently.

We didn't have to travel far before we got to our destination: a long jetty half a mile offshore that creates one side of a channel at the mouth of the bay. A pile of rocks somehow blacker than the sky and the water, with a few beacons to keep boats from crashing into it.

Two of us suited up for diving while the owner of the boat set out some nets to try and catch lobsters the more passive and sensible way. I had pretty high hopes that this would finally be the way I would reap my rightful harvest from the sea.

People don't believe me when I tell them this, but I am not only a terrible fisherman, but also a jinx to whomever I'm fishing with. I warn them when we head out to their super-secret, can't-miss fishing hole; and they always pooh-pooh my prophecy. When we return, the parting comments are the same: I can't believe we didn't even get a nibble...I've NEVER gone home empty handed from that spot.

I've caught some fish before. Worthless crappies that we threw back in the reservoir, fucked-up looking bass with bulging eyes downstream from the textile mill, gristly sucker fish that proved impossible to scale, much less eat.

But I've never caught a good, solid fish that was worth eating, except for catfish, which we caught by casting our bait out into the muddy lake and leaving it there while we drank beers by the campfire. My theory is that I emit an electrical impulse or vibration that makes robust fish either skittish or just not hungry.* (The catfish exception can be explained by the fact that I was far away from the rod when they took the bait.)

I wish I could say that I didn't care that I can't seem to catch a decent fish. But I regularly have dreams of landing a glistening trout or stately salmon. I've been fishing hundreds of times, and despite the evidence to the contrary, can fully envision this happening.

I had mentioned my jinx problem to my buddies that I went out with last weekend, and, as usual, they said I was ridiculous. For my part, I was hoping that crustaceans would not be able to pick up my weird vibration through their thick shells. In fact, I had caught some crabs in traps in the Chesapeake Bay decades ago, so I was quite optimistic.

As we suited up, my friend the expert lobster diver explained the strategy. Snorkel on the surface for a while. Dive down and shine your flashlight into the nooks and crannies in the rocks. When you see a "bug," pin it against the rock with one hand, drop your light, grab it in both hands, and come back to the surface.

We would work together, "leapfrogging." One of us would dive down and cover a few yards and then come back to the surface to let the other dive down and cover the next few yards as we crept alongside the jetty. Soon, we would reach our limit of seven lobsters apiece, and kick back to the boat, triumphant. Awesome.

I rubbed some spit in my mask, dunked it into the water and swished it around, put it on, and rolled backwards into the black water.

Have you ever been on one of those snorkeling excursions, maybe in the Bahamas or Hawaii or Cancun? You go out on a catamaran, sip some fruity mixed drinks, and then bob around looking at beautiful little fish and corals that look like Finding Nemo?

This outing was not like that at all.

***

The water is 60 degrees. A comfortable swimming pool is about 85 degrees. The wetsuit and hood I wear keep me insulated from the cold, but also constrict my movement, making me feel more than a little claustrophobic. It doesn't help that my wetsuit used to fit me pretty well about fifteen pounds ago, but now seems to prevent me from taking a deep breath. The weightbelt that I wear counteracts the buoyancy of the wetsuit, which will be important when I want to be underwater, but as I swim toward the jetty, just seems to be hellbent on drowning me whenever I pop my head up to dump the water out of my leaky mask.

And then there's the problem of visibility. The ocean at midnight is darker than the earth at midnight. I see nothing beyond the one-foot diameter of the flashlight's beam, and as we kick toward the jetty, there's nothing much to see in the murky water anyway, since the beam doesn't penetrate anywhere near the bottom. Just swirling sand and the occasional silvery fish.

When we get closer to the jetty, things begin to lurch into the spotlight. Undulating arms of kelp. Then black rocks covered in barnacles and plants.

Hey, look! Fish! A Garibaldi, just like at the aquarium. Huge red and orange sea stars! It's ridiculous, but even though I've scuba dived and snorkeled in Hawaii, Fiji, Mexico, Vietnam, and the Caribbean, I've never looked around underwater in California, where I've lived for a decade.

When I focus on the interesting flora and fauna, and feel like I'm in control of where I'm going, I don't think about the fact that I'm breathing through a straw sticking out of the ocean. But then a current pushes me away from the rocks and I'm staring into an empty circle of dull light, and all of the sudden I. CAN'T. GET. ENOUGH. AIR. THROUGH. THIS. LITTLE. FREAKING. TUBE!

Or I find myself suddenly too close to a craggy boulder, or tangled in a stand of kelp. My feet can't kick fast enough to get me away, and my lungs can't get enough air to keep me moving.

But worse than the freaky underwater landscape is my own imagination. Images from all the underwater thrillers I watched and read as a kid impose themselves on my thoughts. I try to quiet my mind by asking "What's the worst that could happen?", which turns out to be the worst question I could ask myself. Damn you, Peter Benchley!

I don't even worry much about Great Whites, which have been spotted recently, not far from here, because I assume that if I see one, I will die almost immediately. Instead, I think about getting dragged out to sea in a riptide, bashing my head against a rock, losing track of the boat, or otherwise getting myself in a position of slowly succumbing to the depths.

It seems unlikely that I will catch any lobsters while in the throes of a panic attack.

But eventually I get myself under control. I try to dive down to look for bugs, but there's not enough weight on my belt and I can barely kick myself completely underwater before I have to come up for air, after which I need five minutes of gasping time before I can continue. I sit on the rocks of the jetty a few times to get my shit together, and my buddy kindly suggests that I cover the shallows while he dives down farther from the jetty.

My buddy grabs what looks like a huge lobster, shows it to me, and then lets it go because it's too small. It drifts down like a falling leaf for a second or two, then jets into the blackness at a speed you wouldn't associate with a dopey crustacean.

Later, he points out a large moray eel peeking from a little cave about three feet below us, and we bob around and watch it for a minute. I think about the scene from The Deep (not that scene, pervert) that scared the bejeezus out of me as a kid, and assume that it was a terrible misrepresentation of a creature that was probably shy and retiring. Back on the boat, he tells me that, no, a moray eel will bite the hell out of you and wrap itself around your arm while anchoring itself to the rocks if you stick your hand in its cave. Good to know.

After forty minutes or so, I am relaxed enough to actually, actively look for lobsters. I dive a few feet down, I lurk around in nooks and crannies, I scan the faces of boulders.

By the time we are almost back to the boat, I see my first bug. It's about a foot from my mask, nestled on a rock among some waving orange kelp.

LOBSTER!

IT'S A LOBSTER!

I...I SHOULD DO SOMETHING! I'M SUPPOSED TO DO...SOMETHING!

OKAY...KEEP BREATHING...GOOD. NOW, UH...LET'S SEE. What am I supposed to do? I just reach out like this, and...

And the bug scampers away. Like a cockroach. That's why they call them "bugs."

Five minutes later, I see another one. I don't hesitate this time. I reach out and put my hand on it. My hand that is only covered in a fingerless glove that the boat owner had in his tackle box. You really should have full gloves, because these critters aren't called "spiny lobsters" based on their personalities. I gingerly squeeze the bug, hoping to get a grasp on it without receiving any puncture wounds; but by that time, it's too late. The big red insect has slipped away from me and launched itself from the rock. It bounces off my mask and back toward the rock. Then I feel it skittering between my torso and the face of the boulder as it descends and escapes. I'm simultaneously exhilarated and creeped out.

And I want really badly to catch a damn lobster.

Back on the boat, we discuss all the reasons that neither of us caught any lobsters worth keeping.

There's something about overcast nights like this, the expert muses. They seem extra skittish.

We pull up the nets that our pilot has set. There's one crab and a stingray, which we spend a long time disentangling and setting free.

It's weird, the expert says, I always catch something here.


*This same impulse makes watch batteries die after just a few months on my wrist. I've thought about this a lot.

Photo Credit

***

You are undoubtedly sick to death of me by now, but maybe you'll feel like reading this other stuff I wrote on the internet sometime later. Bookmark it or whatever.

On Aiming Low, I wrote about purging. Everything Must Go

On Man of the House, I wrote about power saws. Power Tools You Need: Saws

On Insert Eyeroll, I wrote about entertainment. "The Humiliation Channel" to Launch in Spring, Make a Spectacle of Human Suffering.

Wordless (ish) Wednesday: Swap Meets and Chariots and Places Where I Wrote Words

2011-10-12T02:38:00.000-07:00

(click "read more")

Here's where I wrote words:

Man of the House: Why You Don't Need a Contractor

Aiming Low: Realizing the ROI on Your Kids

Insert Eyeroll: Colgate Announces Plans to Make "Arab Spring" Bath Soaps, Deodorants in Support of Democracy in the Middle East

Why Can't I Just Get a Camaro for My Mid-life Crisis?

2011-10-05T02:35:00.000-07:00

I wrote a post on Aiming Low about how I got sucked into making an extravagant and impulsive purchase at the temple of consumerism, Costco. Here's how it starts:

I don't know what the hell is going on with me. Maybe it's just a one time deal. Let's hope so.

For whatever reason, I was in a manic state when we went to Costco on Sunday. Normally, I just push the cart and mind my own business, trying to entertain our 2-year-old twins while my wife collects the bushels and crates of provisions that will get us through the next couple weeks, or Armageddon, whichever comes first.

But somehow, on Sunday, Costco had developed an otherworldy sheen. I swooned at the foot of the majestic towers of detergent, was rendered breathless by the acres of discount designer outerwear laid out on bed-high display tables, and was dazzled by shiny boxes of over-the-counter cold remedies. It was like I was at a consumerist rave, up to the gills with ecstasy.

Read some more...

***

In addition to my usual self-promotion, I wanted to offer readers a couple tips about some cool things a couple of my friends are doing.

One of my best buddies from grad school, who is now a mom and adjunct professor way down there in South Cackalacky, has a cool Etsy store where she sells handmade baby stuff. Her specialties are swaddling sacks, slings, and burp cloths.

Her site is called The Little Donkey, and she's offering 15% off for Beta Dad readers. Just enter the code BETADAD at checkout.

She asked me if I had ever used a sling to tote our young'uns around, because she's thinking of making some slings for dudes, in more manly colors and patterns, like crossed swords and skulls and stuff. I used a sling every once in a while, mostly around the house, but it wasn't that practical because we have twins. I would usually put them both in the stroller whenever we went out. So what do you dads think? Would you, or did you, or do you, use a sling to "wear" your baby?

Another really old friend, a guy I know from when I was in the 7th grade and living in Moscow, USSR, has a cool blog that you should check out. He's been a big slacker about posting lately, but he's got a couple new posts up, and everything in the archives is worth checking out. The blog is called A Little Light Writing, and Yash, the author, writes about language, posts amazing photos he has taken, and writes about photography as well. This isn't dry, academic linguistics, but rather lots of fun wordplay, information, and speculation about word origins from a guy who has lived and worked all over the world. You should go over there and encourage him, and learn something while you're at it!

Go on, now. Clicky clicky.

They Came to the Right Place When They Asked Me to Write about Drunk Driving

2011-09-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

This is a sponsored post. That means somebody's paying me to mention their product and embed a video. It doesn't mean I have to promote the product. In fact, I'm ambivalent about it.

***

Here are a couple reasons that grownups think teenagers are idiots.

They know some teenagers
They were once teenagers themselves

I taught high school students for a few years, and still teach college underclassmen from time to time, and I would have to say that a lot of them don't have a lick of sense. But my real understanding of the depths of teenage idiocy comes from my own experience.

My friends and I did a lot of stupid stuff when I was a teenager, even though there was nothing wrong with most of our brains. I was one of the worst out of my group of stupid friends.

During much of my high school career, the couple years I "took off" afterward, and even into my college years, I made an art form of being irresponsible, unreliable, untrustworthy, and a danger to myself and others. Some of my behavior might have been cute, harmless, and merely frustrating. But driving drunk is in a different category. It's simply indefensible. And I did it. Frequently.

I don't have to tell you how horrible driving drunk is. That's not what this post is about. This is about how incorrigible, unreasonable, and unreachable some teenagers are. Like I was.

There are dozens of stories I could share of close calls and terrible decisions I made behind the wheel, but here's perhaps the best illustration of what an idiot I was. A week before the start of our senior year of high school, one of my best friends--a much more responsible and promising kid than me--crashed his car into a tree and was killed. I was sitting in the back seat at the time. I suffered a cracked vertebra in my neck that didn't end up being a big deal, but could have put me in a wheelchair. We hadn't been drinking, but we were being stupid teenagers.

You'd think I would have gotten the message that driving a car is serious business.

You'd be wrong.

I became even more cavalier about drinking and driving. Maybe I thought that the loss of my friend gave me a free pass. I'm sure there was a lot of rationalizing, anesthetizing, and magical thinking going on; but the point is that even that trauma was not enough to get me to stop being an asshole.

My parents did the best that they could to protect me from myself. They didn't know the extent of my recklessness, but they knew something was up. They briefly got me into counseling (at the Army hospital, where I was too honest and the shrink was too rigid and the process did not have the desired effect), and at home we talked endlessly about my irresponsibility. I didn't really resent these talks, and in fact was usually in agreement with them about what a jerk I was. I suspect that my self-awareness made them think that I was trying to change.

Despite my recalcitrance, I had a good relationship with my parents. But when it came down to it, there wasn't much they could do to control my behavior when I wasn't within arm's reach. I was a slippery little fuck, and managed to avoid serious trouble.

If they would have had the technology to monitor me when I was out of the house, I don't know if they would have used it. I know that I would have resented it if they had, and would have done whatever I could to circumvent it.

These days, of course, all kids have cell phones and no excuses to be out of contact with their parents. And new products are coming out all the time that allow parents to track their kids with GPS, snoop on their facebook accounts, monitor their web browsing, and so forth.

The biggest issue with these products, as far as I'm concerned, is that in using them, you have to let your kids know that you don't really trust them. Luckily, I don't have to think about that much right now, since my kids are 2 and I don't mind telling them that I don't trust them to do so much as eat a bowl of cereal by themselves, and if I could cheaply have chips embedded in their flesh that would allow me to track them with my iPhone, I would do it in a heartbeat. Likewise, I don't have a problem with telling a teenager, "No...in fact, I don't trust you. I've been your age before." At least I don't have a problem with it in theory. But we'll see how I really deal with that when the teenager is my kid.

***

One of the new technologies that allows parents to keep tabs on their kids, even from great distances, is called Soberlink. The idea is that kids carry this little breathalyzer that's linked to their smart phone. It takes photo as the kid blows into it, and transmits all the data to their parents.

Here's a video explaining how it works:

When I first looked at this, I started thinking about how you might trick the device, or otherwise get over on your watchful parents. That was my wife's instinct too, and my teenaged nephew's when I asked them what they thought of the product. My nephew (a responsible, non-stupid kid) figured that the guys he knows who are like I was as a kid would just ignore it. I can only imagine how quickly that thing would have gotten "lost", "broken", "stolen", or just "not worked" if my parents had gotten one for me.

On the other hand, for kids who may just need a little more motivation to be responsible, or even an excuse to avoid peer pressure ("My stupid mom makes me breathe into this stupid thing! Gah!"), it could possibly help prevent tragedy.

What do you guys think? Could this thing work? Would you use it on your kid? Would it be a violation of trust and privacy? Does that even matter when lives are at stake?

Wordless Wednesday: Melonhenge

2011-09-21T16:29:00.000-07:00

Don't Call My Kids Pretty

2011-09-14T08:09:00.000-07:00

Awkward Conversation with My Neighbors, We'll Call Them Mark and Leslie

EXT. Day. I'm approaching my garage, with my dog pulling the girls in their wagon. Mark and Leslie are getting out of their car in their garage, on the opposite side of the alley.

Mark: Hey, look! It's a parade!

Me: I know, right? The circus in town.

All: (Neighborly laughter)

Leslie: They're getting so big! And, Oh My God--so cute!

Mark: They really are beautiful! Man!

Me: Yeah? You think so? I always think that, but I don't trust my own judgement.

Mark: No, seriously, bro. They are gorgeous. You must have some good genes. I mean, I think I'm pretty good-looking, but, I don't believe I could ever have kids that pretty.

Me: Well, thanks...

Mark: Seriously. Wow. Maybe when it's time for us to start trying, you can hook up with Leslie.

Leslie: (Nervous smile, darting eyes, tugs Mark's shirtsleeve)

Me: I've been thinking about that a lot lately.

Leslie: (Stares at feet)

Me: I mean...not hooking up with Leslie. The other part. The part about where the attractiveness comes from. Not that...you know...there would be anything wrong with hooking up with...but, you know...just, like, weird 'cause we're neighbors and I would be your kid's dad? Also, our marriages would probably suffer, and...well we never even consulted with Leslie, so...

All: (Audibly try to muster saliva in arid mouths)

Me: Yeah, so, that's weird, right? I didn't used to be so hideous, and the old lady ain't so hard on the eyes, but the kids are twice as attractive as both of us combined. It's like gestalt genetics, you know? The whole is more than the sum of its parts or whatever?

Mark: Exactly. Well, they're beautiful kids.

Leslie: Just adorable.

Me: Thanks. I agree. But I never tell them they're pretty, because that makes 'em get bulimia and shit. We just talk about books... (Voice trails off).

( Mark and Leslie's garage door closes)

End Scene

***

The reason I was thinking about how I shouldn't remind my girls that they're cute is because of an article I read, that my mom linked to on her facebook page. I wrote a little piece about my reaction to it on Parentables.

I also made a slideshow on Parentables about books that my kids and I love reading these days. It was funny: I had a little back-and-forth with a troll when they first published it. Some guy really hated me for what a huge fail the post was. I wrote a passive-aggressive response I was quite proud of, but the webmaster expunged the whole ugly incident. Should have gotten a screenshot.

Oh, yeah. I wrote on Aiming Low about my plans to make life harder for my kids so that they grow up with some character.

Um, let's see...I also wrote some more, probably offensive, stuff on Insert Eyeroll.

And finally there's this great news: Man of the House asked me to come on board as a featured contributer! I'm sure that you guys clicking on my links to the first "audition posts" I did there helped me get the gig. So, thank you, thank you, thank you! I'm really excited about this. However, I just realized that you, the wonderful people who check in here even though I have all but abandoned this space, might not be as excited as I am. A large part of my job at Man of the House is to write for their "Around the House" section, where I'll talk about tools, building stuff, fixing stuff, projects with kids, etc. (I get geek-stoked just thinking about it!) But a lot of you probably don't come here for home improvement advice. So, um, sorry. Anyway, my latest joint over there is about how to repair drywall. It will BLOW. YOUR. MIND.

And here's a cute video without very much squealing in it. Just some singing. These kids of mine are geniuses in addition to being hella-cute. But I will never tell them that.

Messy Punks

2011-09-02T16:31:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest. Gotta write fast. Cobra has been on a nap strike for 14 days now, and she finally fell asleep.

After trying to let her cry it out for the first week--which resulted in hour-long screamfests every afternoon--I decided to go into the room where she sleeps (we separate the twins at nap time) and lie on the floor for a while. This worked out pretty well. I would get a little nap while she practiced gymnastics in the crib. She just doesn't seem to be tired. And I've been working these kids like mules all week: three trips to Sea World, two trips to the zoo, a 1.4 mile hike (I carried them for .4 miles, but still), and playground every afternoon. Anyway, today she finally fell asleep. Hoping that breaks the curse.

Here is some cuteness that happened this week that I have to write down. There's been a lot of cuteness, in fact; but I will only impose these few nuggets right now.

Messy

Int. Day. Both kids sit in booster seats. Butterbean has rice caked on her shirt and face, Cobra is daintily spooning her food into her mouth.

Dad: (to Butterbean) Why are you so messy?

Butterbean: (beaming with pride) I'm messy!

Cobra: Like walrus!

(They are obsessed with the walruses at Sea World, who are, in fact, disgusting eaters.)

Punk

Ext. Day. Dad opens door of van to get kids out of car seats. Butterbean has upended her water bottle and soaked herself and the seat.

Dad: Aaaaargh! Punk!

Butterbean: (with pride) I'm punk!

Cobra: (touching the tip of her nose with her index finger) I'm sweetie pie!

Thối

Int. Day. Dad changing Cobra's diaper.

Dad: (farts)

Cobra: Daddy dit thối! ["Daddy butt stinky" in Vietnamese]

Dad: Yup.

Cobra: Daddy dit vvvvvvvvvvrrrrrrrtttttt!

Here's some visual cuteness:

Butterbean kissing an orangutan

Butterbean cracking her sister up at lunch time (turn the volume down!):

Cobra ready to go to the zoo:

***

And of course, the obligatory links to other stuff I wrote this week. I've been writing a lot, but some of the stuff I wrote this week will be published later this month.

In the order in which they suck least:

A Letter to Jay-Z I was put up to this by my editor at Parentables, but I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

4 Sex Moves that Will Keep Your Man on The Couch Smut I wrote for Insert Eyeroll.

Are Breastfed Kids Smarter? Commentary on a news item at Parentables.

Why I Don't Make My Kids Obey Playground Rules A little rant at Parentables.

Dude. It's like a long weekend or something. For you people who have jobs and stuff. Have fun!

Also, I forgot to draw your attention to the pretty buttons below here that let you share stuff that you like on the interwebz. My friend put them there because I don't know what I'm doing. Please click them a lot. It gives me extra lives.

Babbio's Coming!

2011-08-26T08:27:00.000-07:00

That's what I've been hearing all week.

Butterbean: Babbio's coming!

Cobra: Babbio!

Both: Bab-bi-o! Bab-bi-o!

Me: Wait. Who's coming?

Both: Babbio!

Me: And when is he coming?

Butterbean: Satooday!

Cobra: Fai-day!

Me: So, like, sometime late Friday, or maybe early Saturday? Is that what you're telling me?

Butterbean: I talk about--BABBIO!

Cobra: Bab-bi-o!

If anyone can tell me who the eff Babbio is and what I can expect of him as a houseguest, I'll give you a dollar.

My best guess is that these kids are budding absurdists, and Babbio is their Godot. He also may be Fabio's second cousin.

***

I made some other things on the interwebs this week. I will list them in their order of interestingness, "1" being "mind-blowing," and "5" being "meh."

National Undead Defense Association to Sue Hollywood, Internet, Publishers and You. Some silliness on Insert Eyeroll, a website devoted to silliness.
Wordless Wednesday: Should I Invest in a Rental Property? A photo essay without the essay part on DadCentric. The answer, by the way, is no. Unless you want to buy mine, which has a lot of potential.
3 Reasons to Love iMovie for iPhone. I guest-blogged on Cool Mom Tech (companion site to Cool Mom Picks) about an app I love.
Something Something Coconut Water. On TLC Parentables. Features a cute picture of the twins.
Blah Blah Stay-at-Home Moms Depressed Blah Blah Stay-at-Home Dads. On TLC Parentables.
ADHD Yadda Yadda Mexicans. On TLC Parentables

Even Though I Hate Amusement Parks

2011-08-20T01:29:00.000-07:00

It's been a really busy week, so that's why I haven't been able to post until now, Friday night, when nobody will read this. Oh, well.

Some of our best friends from the East Coast came to visit for a few days, so we did all kinds of fun family stuff with them; and in between and during our excursions I wrote posts for other sites, and tried to take care of some nagging "real world" issues as well. It was great to see our friends, and our girls loved hanging out with the "big kids," their grade-school age girls.

During most of the time our friends were here, we were able to relax, catch up, and let the kids entertain themselves. But every once in a while, worlds collided, and things got a little hectic. Our trip to Legoland, for instance, was a bit touch-and-go at times. (Of course, almost nothing could have spoiled the trip, since the admission was FREE, thanks to my friend Beth at San Diego MOMfia!)

The night before we were to go to Legoland, which is about a 40-minute drive from our house, our friends' older daughter had an orthodontic emergency that would require professional attention before we could set out. We were afraid this might seriously cut into our amusement park time; but miraculously, they were able to make an early appointment at an office a couple blocks from our house, and the doc took care of the equipment malfunction in a matter of seconds.

But even before the orthodontist appointment, my friend, the father of the kid with the broken gear in her mouth, had called from somewhere in town--he wasn't quite sure where--with some gear problems of his own. See, back in Virginia, we had been big biking buddies; and whenever we get together, we try to go for a bike ride for old times' sake. Well, this time, it didn't quite work out that way. But he did manage to take my road bike out for a couple spins in the mornings while I was dealing with kids or sleeping off my late night blogging.

So he calls from somewhere along the route we had figured out for him, and a bolt on the seat of the bike has broken, so he's riding around with no saddle--just hovering over the seatpost. I'm all, "What's the big deal? Just sack up and ride home out of the saddle!" But he wants somebody to pick him up. So I'm trying to get out of the house amidst the early morning chaos to pick his lame ass up, but by the time I'm ready to leave, he calls and says he has found a way to strap the saddle back onto the bike. His solution is elegant, and eerily reminiscent of the way I finished a mountain bike race with a broken saddle about 15 years ago.

At this point, it looks like this outing is charmed. We've already dodged two bullets before 10:30 a.m., so the rest should be cake.

We sail smoothly to our destination, our drive seemingly shortened by my friend's indulging me as I explain to him all the latest drama in the blogosphere. At least it goes quickly for me. My friend checks his watch a lot.

As we pull into the lot at Legoland, I hear a chorus of horrified "Ohhhhhh"s from the back seat of the van. Then my wife announces that our eldest (by a minute) has vomited all over herself and her car seat. And then another synchronized "Ohhhhh," followed by a tiny, plaintive, "Tissue?"

We park, clean up the barfer as best we can, and continue on our fun-quest.

Legoland is pretty awesome for little kids. Really, it's probably great for any kid that teen angst has not yet enveloped. Our kids play in the massive playgrounds, go on a couple little rides, splash around in the little water park (they have a full-on water park too, but we don't go there), and do everything they can to thwart our attempts to keep them out of the intricate displays of Lego engineering marvels. Everyone has a blast, and there are no real meltdowns, even though our kids miss their naps. The food is even pretty decent, and not outrageously priced.

This was one of the best parts:

After lunch, I get a call from our friend who was supposed to take Stella for a walk, and he has locked himself and our dog out of our house. I prepare to panic, but realize that he just lost the key to our house, not to his car, so he can take Stella home with him and I can pick her up later.

Still feeling pretty charmed, we stroll through the new Star Wars exhibit, and then check out the amazing miniature cities, which include, ironically, miniature versions of the miniature versions of New York and Paris within the miniature version of Las Vegas.

But I'm feeling a little anxious, because I've got stupid slumlord issues nagging at me.

One of the reasons I couldn't get it together to borrow another bike so I could ride with my friend, and indeed one of the reasons I didn't really have the energy to go for a ride, was because of a leaky pipe in one of the units at our ~~money pit~~ investment property. If you've been reading for a while, you might be familiar with this apartment's checkered, sometimes gruesome history. If it could talk, you would definitely want to cover your children's ears.

The pipe had been leaking for a week or so, but only enough to get the carpet in the closet below a little damp. And the paint was peeling because of the moisture in the wall. I know, I KNOW. I was dragging my feet. The tenants didn't act like it was a big deal, so I just pretended it would fix itself. I knew in my heart of hearts I would eventually be opening up the wall and ceiling to get at the leak, and I wasn't in a big hurry to do so.

But then the tenants called during the weekend, while our guests were here, to say that the carpet was now soaked and the wall was mushy. I went over and started tearing out wet sheetrock.

Good times

It wasn't too hard to figure out that the leak was coming from a tub drain in one of the upstairs units, but it took me about four hours to clear out all the wet, moldy sheetrock and insulation and haul it out in garbage bags.

The job of replacing the drain (looks simple, but it's actually two tubs draining into one larger pipe in a really constricted space) looked like just the kind of thing that would make me lose my mind and probably drive all of the tenants out of the building with my profanity-laden rage. So I called a plumber (friend of a friend) and made arrangements for him to check it out while we were at Legoland.

I just didn't want anything to do with this

The plumber calls me around 5:00, while we're strolling by Lego New Orleans, to tell me that he needs access to the one upstairs apartment where the tenant is still at work. I call the tenant, leave a message explaining the situation, call the plumber back, and try to figure out a way for him to get a hold of my keys to the apartment so he can get in while the tenant is still at work. Again with the keys!

Before I get very far on that, though, the tenant from upstairs calls back and says she doesn't want anybody snooping around her apartment while she's not there. WHAT THE FUCK?! THIS IS A PLUMBING EMERGENCY!!! Fair enough, I say. I'll just pay the plumber to sit in his truck and wait for you to get home.

Did I mention the diarrhea? During the time the plumber drama is unfolding, the kids have been depleting their diaper supply at the rate of two per hour per kid. We suspect it has something to do with guzzling the recirculated water from the toddler water park. Eventually we have to go to the first aid station and bum some extra diapers.

Having fun between diaper changes

Pushing through the discomfort

Finally we call it quits and head home, stopping at a brew-pub/restaurant for dinner. Our kids, tired and hungry, are freaking out. Of course that's when the plumber calls back with his report.

Turns out the tenant came home and let him in, and he fixed the leak. I sneak away from the screaming kids and over to the van so I can have some privacy to give him my credit card info and settle up the bill.

Dinner is pretty good and the kids get their second wind and run all over the restaurant, squealing and performing stunts that I'm sure everyone finds adorable and not annoying at all.

When we come back to the parking lot, I see that the interior lights of the van are on. I had futzed around with the lights when I was negotiating with the plumber, and had left the switch in the wrong position. I had also, a couple months ago, pooh-poohed the service manager at the shop where I got the rig serviced, who warned me that the battery was about to die. They wanted $200.00 for a $50.00 battery, so I was all phht--I can pick one up at Pep Boys and install it in ten minutes. And maybe I will some day.

Despite my totally deserving to have a dead battery, the van starts up and we hit the road.

We get home and the girls are not just asleep in their car seats, but limp as ragdolls. We pour them into their cribs and don't hear from them again until 8:30 the next morning.

The remarkable thing about this trip is not just that we narrowly averted all these disasters, but the fact that I would do it again this weekend if someone asked me to. And I actively dislike amusement parks. I'm quite shocked that the amount of fun our kids had made up for the hassles inherent in an excursion like this. Our friends, who have much more parenting under their belts than we do (their eldest is a tween), set a great example for us. They didn't seem fazed by any of the stumbling blocks we encountered, they rolled with the punches, and they had fun all day long. Whenever I went to amusement parks before I had kids, all I saw were miserable parents being tortured by their horrible little tyrants as they pissed away their life's savings on cotton candy and stuffed tigers. While I might look like one of those miserable parents to the average high school kid, I now understand why amusement parks exist, even in a world where, theoretically anyway, parents still control the purse strings, the car keys, and the family's stance on matters of culture and taste.

***

You know what else is funny? I set out writing this as a little diversion to get you to click on links to posts I wrote elsewhere. And now I've undermined myself by ensuring that you can't stand to hear another word out of me. Maybe you'll miss me tomorrow and come back to check out the other stuff. If so, the links are below.

This is the post that kept me up all night, so please don't be shy about "liking" and sharing and stuff. There was a lot research involved. 10 Real-Life High Schools Made Famous on Film

This one I wrote in my sleep: 7 Dad-Tested Techniques to Prevent Toddler Meltdowns.

This one I don't even remember writing: Why Dogs Are Better than Adults at Helping Kids Read

Cakegate: Sweetest Mommyblogging Drama of the Week [Note to self: work "unicorns are racist" into text for SEO]

2011-08-11T09:08:00.000-07:00

This post is for the entertainment of readers who aren't deeply involved in the blogosphere. If you follow a lot of parenting-ish blogs, and especially if you went to the humongous BlogHer 11 conference, then you're probably sick to death of this story and you should go read something else. If not, I hope you will find it hilarious. I do.

BlogHer 11, which I attended for a number of reasons, not the least of which being it was staged five miles from my house, seems to have been a big success. About 3,000 people attended, probably 2960 of whom were women, and I haven't heard many complaints about the content of the actual conference.

It was a little weird being there as a dude; but in that respect, it was much like the first parent-blogging conference I went to, Mom 2.0, in New Orleans, which I wrote about here. I also wrote about some funny stuff that happened to me at BlogHer 11 here.

Let me just continue to preface this (I'll stop prefacing soon, I swear) by saying that the bloggers who are the main characters in this drama ("teh dramaz" in bloglish) are people I know(ish) and who have always been helpful and kind to me in any interaction I've had with them. So I'm not trying to bash on any of them.

For the last three years, the BlogHer conference has featured a big ol' throwdown called Sparklecorn, a dance party hosted by MamaPop, that pop culture site I briefly wrote for. Past Sparklecorns are the stuff of legend, and every year, they get more outrageous and extravagant.

This year, they hired a super-famous DJ, called DJ Skribble, to keep the mommyblogger rumps shaking.

But the centerpiece of the whole party was undeniably the EPIC cake, made by Charm City Cakes, which is on some TV show or something. Naturally, I failed to take a decent picture of this cake, and in fact it was kind of hard to see the damn thing in the low light of the party, so all I can do is share (without permission) this pretty crappy picture my friend took.


Unicorn Deathmatch

Pretty cool, right? MamaPop, and the mommyblogosphere in general, have an institutional obsession with unicorns, and this is an homage to the mommyblogers' favorite mythical beasts. Those suckers were about four feet tall (or "13 hands" in elven unicorn rancher parlance), and the whole cake was a good six feet long.

And it was pretty cheap, too, according to the scuttlebutt. Only $11,000. Or, put another way, eleven large. $11k. ELEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS! FOR CAKE!

It was a cool-ass looking cake. I didn't get to taste it, because when I asked for a piece, a security guy closed up the velvet rope surrounding it and told me I couldn't have any. I think other people ate some. I don't know. There were some big hunks out of it when the party was over. Anyway, I don't think that eating it was really the point, and it didn't really bother me that I didn't get to try it.

So the party goes down, everyone's dancin' and sweatin' and huggin' and carrying on. I miss some of it because I have to go do some stuff, but it seems like people were having fun. Here's a slide show to prove it.

And then, a couple days later, when everyone who went to the conference is posting their BlogHer wrap-up...

CAKE DRAMA!

Another mommyblogger, whose whole shtick is criticism, provocation, iconoclasm, and sacred cow-tipping, writes a flippant, critical recap of the conference, in which she pokes fun at some of the parties, including Sparklecorn. One of the remarks she makes, ostensibly in jest (?), is that the unicorn cake is "not wholly devoid of problematic racial imagery." You know, because it's a black unicorn fighting a white one.

The comment section in the critical post fills up with others who bash on aspects of Sparklecorn and the parties, and complain that the cost of the DJ and the cake left nothing in the budget for things like food and something other than cheap beer and wine to drink.* Some suggest that the money should have gone to some social cause. Others defend the cake and the party and tell everyone to lighten up and have fun. Twitter blows up with comments about the "racist cake," most of which defend the cake, Sparklecorn, and their creators, and denounce the critical mommyblogger. Meanwhile, comments on her post continue to accumulate, including plenty of critical analysis. Of cake.

When the dust settles (if it has indeed settled) there are around 200 Tweets with the phrase "racist cake" in them, and probably dozens of blog posts. Oh. Including this one.

So, if you are one of those people who thinks mommyblogging is all about parenting tips and poignant stories of adorable tykes, I hope this will clear things up for you. We are not afraid to tackle the serious issues of our day. This drama is about more than cake. It's about more than racism. It's even about more than unicorns. It's about fighting for your right to party.

*There was even a rumor that some daddybloggers made a liquor run and smuggled booze back into the party

***

Some Other Stuff I Wrote this Week

My other recap of BlogHer, on DadCentric. The phrase "titties hanging out" is used quite injudiciously.

On Parentables, I wrote about a study regarding families' fast-food eating habits. It was conducted at the fast food restaurant at the hospital that was doing the study.

Also on Parentables, I wrote about some research that suggests we should tailor our parenting styles to mesh with our kids' personalities.

Beta Dad's Guide to San Diego

2011-08-03T04:21:00.000-07:00

There was a time in my blogging life when I used to be coy about what city I lived in. Because, you know, I didn't want to end up like all those other parentbloggers who get stalked and harassed by rabid fans and psychotic haters.

I always just said I lived in Southern California, but not L.A. And my particular strain of snobbery made it clear that I would not have anything to do with Orange County. If anyone who knew the region ever thought about it for like 20 seconds or more, they would have realized that I live in San Diego. So now the cat's out of the bag. Please don't kidnap me.

I'm not from here, but I've lived here long enough to know what's up. So I would be remiss if I didn't set straight all my bloggy friends who will be descending on San Diego for the BlogHer 2011 "Mother of All Mommyblogging Conferences" on what to do and what to avoid while visiting "America's Finest City" (yep--that's our motto...or at least what it says on the sides of the cop cars).

History

Everything you need to know about the history of San Diaaahhgo can be found in the movie Anchorman.

Demographics

San Diego is actually a pretty big city (just over 3 million residents), but it's sprawling, so you don't feel like you're in a metropolis. People often call it "a city of neighborhoods." At least I think I've heard people say that. Anyway, they should say it, because it's true. There are dozens of different neighborhoods, and they each have a specific character. People can be pretty loyal, defensive, or even snobby about their neighborhoods, which is really stupid unless you happen to live within a 2-mile radius of my house, in which case you are perfectly entitled to feel superior to the poor chumps who live in the other, God-forsaken parts of town.

The city is pretty diverse ethnically, but the distinct neighborhoods also tend to keep people somewhat culturally segregated. This is kind of a shame on one hand; but it's also cool that there are certain blocks where most of the signs on the stores and restaurants are in Vietnamese, or Somali, or Korean.

Anyway, what do you care about the cultural landscape of San Diego? You're just coming here for a couple days.

I only bring this stuff up because what you will experience while hanging out in downtown San Diego (especially the Gaslamp Quarter) will not necessarily provide you with a good idea of what the city is like. You could very well leave town thinking that we are a city of douchebags and hussies, which would only be partially true.

In what follows, I'll give you some general advice for how to negotiate the myriad options this very fun city offers, a few specific suggestions, and some warnings that might save you both money and heartbreak. I'm assuming that you are only here for 4 days, tops, and that you don't have a car; so I'll leave out a lot of the popular and/or cool things that require a lot of time or travel.

What to Pack

Shorts, t-shirt, flip-flops, hat, sunglasses, sunscreen, hoodie.

You could honestly get by on that. I only wear real shoes in the most extreme "winter" weather. A hoodie is key because it does get cool and misty at night, and as long as you keep your head warm, it doesn't matter if you have pants or shoes on. Bring a wide-brimmed hat, or at least a ball cap, because the sun will be beating down on you relentlessly. The air temperature will be delightful, but if you don't take proper precautions, you'll fry within an hour, no shit. And dudes, because hats are actually practical here, and not just an affectation, it's perfectly acceptable to wear a Panama or a cowboy hat or a fedora. It's awesome. I think you could even pull off a boater or a pith helmet.

This is also a very casual city. People tend to dress up a bit downtown, in a douchey, Jersey Shore way, and if you go up to La Jolla you'll see some expensive threads; but you can pretty much get away with anything. If you come to my neighborhood (which you should), you will notice that people dress either like me (shorts, flip-flops), or in the wacky hipster garb du jour.

What to Eat

There are a lot of really good restaurants here, but not that many amazing ones. It's not San Francisco or New York. So my wife and I usually go to the good, reliable places instead of the trendy joints with celebrity chefs or the classic, stuffy restaurants where you pay too much for boring food. The really expensive ones have almost always been a bit disappointing.

Wherever you are in town, you should use Yelp to help you make dining decisions. San Diegans are big Yelpers. If you haven't done so already, get the app for your phone. Then you can type in "Italian food" or whatever, and hold that sucker in the sky. You will probably not be misled.

We live uptown, and don't usually go downtown to eat because it's a little overpriced, it's a bitch to park, and, yes, the scene tends to be douchey. But some of the places we like downtown are Cafe Chloe (especially for brunch and lunch), Blue Point (great oysters, nouvelle seafood, kickass martinis), and Oceanaire (pretty much the best seafood we've had in San Diego). There's also the aptly named Extraordinary Desserts, which has two locations, in Little Italy (downtown) and Banker's Hill (uptown), where you can get decadent treats and good coffee, and--a lot of people don't realize this--fantastic breakfasts. Another place we love that's not in the heart of downtown, but just a quick cab ride away, is Island Prime. It offers great seafood (and landfood), beautiful views of the bay, yummy cocktails, and cool interior design. There's also a bistro (C-Level) attached to it, which offers cheaper, more casual fare, and outdoor seating.

If you get daring and go the five miles uptown (Hillcrest, North Park, South Park, University Heights, Banker's Hill, City Heights, Normal Heights), you'll find many more interesting options including all kinds of fusion, farm-to-table, artisan, ethnic, vegan, gastropubs, and neighborhood eateries; and you won't have to pay as much as you would downtown. I could go on all day about which uptown restaurants you should try, but most people won't make it out of the Gaslamp. Hit me up on Twitter or something if you want recommendations. Oh--and if you somehow got roped into hauling your kids to BlogHer with you, there's one uptown spot you should take them to eat--Station Tavern. It's a solid burger joint with a full bar and great local brews on tap, and--get this--a playground where the youngsters can run loose while you kick back and swill adult beverages.

Mexican Food Strategy--This merits its own heading

Of course, when you're in San Diego, you have to eat Mexican food. Most importantly, you need to eat some fish tacos. Go ahead and get the grilled mahi-mahi if it makes you feel better about yourself; but at least taste the deep-fried cod (or whatever whitefish fell off the truck) with cabbage and mayonnaise-y dressing. Oh man. Sooooo goooood.

We have our favorite neighborhood taqueria, as well as a couple specialty spots we go to, but you don't need to drive all over town looking for them. All you need is a good strategy.

First off, do not go into any Mexican restaurants that seat more than thirty people.

But wait, you're saying, that means I can't eat in any of the restaurants in Old Town.

Exactly.

People will tell you to go to Old Town and eat in this or that place where some ladies are hand-making tortillas in the window. DON'T DO IT. You'll wait half an hour to be seated, and then pay twice what you would at any little hole-in-the-wall, and the food will be mass-produced, bland slop. There are some upscale restaurants in Old Town that are pretty decent, but they're no better than upscale Mexican places anywhere else in town, and you'll have to pay the hapless tourist premium if you eat there. Old Town is fine if you're interested in California Mission history, but there's really no reason to eat there.

Use either your nose or Yelp to find the popular taquerias near you. Once you have spotted the place, look for the signs of a good Mexican restaurant: a brisk business, Spartan decor, efficient service, and Latino customers. If there are families eating there, that's a great sign. If there are construction workers taking their lunch breaks, that's even better. Immediately walk out if you see any tablecloths.

Beaches

You might as well go to the beach as long as you're here. But which one? Here's the quick-and-dirty run down of the beaches closest to downtown, from south to north:

Ocean Beach (OB)--Dirty hippies. Lots of dogs. Medicinal marijuana clinics. It's actually a fun place to hang out. Go to "Dog Beach" to get the full experience: dogs running loose, people who live on the beach, surfers, beautiful people.
Mission Beach--The "family-friendly" beach. Less crazy than other beaches, but still pretty lively. Features a bustling boardwalk, an amusement park, surfers, dolphins, kids in lifeguard and surf camps. Plenty of decent restaurants and bars.
Pacific Beach (PB)--Oy. Frat party on the beach. Fun if you're in the mood for it. If you want to learn how to surf, there's a park here called Tourmaline where I often take visitors who want to try the sport of kings. The waves are mellow and there are enough of them for everyone. You can rent a board from a number of different surf shops and go mess around in the foam without being in danger of getting shanked by locals or crushed by massive waves.
Coronado--There are beautiful beaches in this little city on a spit of land just off the coast of San Diego. It's very laid back and less of a party scene than a lot of the San Diego beaches. Very easy to reach from downtown via ferry.

Easy Excursions

You'll probably have some downtime during the conference, and, if you have any sense, you probably added in an extra day or so to your trip just for goofing around. Here are a few suggestions for getting away from the convention center and hotel.

Balboa Park: This is San Diego's answer to Central park. It's just a couple miles from downtown and features a bunch of museums, a humongous outdoor organ, beautiful gardens, and, of course, the zoo. The zoo is awesome, and not even depressing. The animals all seem pretty happy. It's the best zoo in the world, I'm pretty sure. And if you have made it to the zoo, you might as well eat lunch, dinner, or go out for drinks in neighboring North Park or Hillcrest.

Coronado: This is probably the easiest way for you to go to the beach. It's quite different than a lot of the beaches in and around San Diego. The town is quiet, conservative, and very affluent. The wide, flat beaches look more like Florida than the dramatic cliffs of the California coast. But it's a beautiful place, and you can get there easily by a scenic ferry ride, and rent bikes to cruise around the "island" (everyone calls it an island even though it's really a spit.) It's the home of the famous Hotel Del Coronado, which was the filming location of the movie Some Like it Hot. You can walk around the very cool old hotel, but I wouldn't recommend eating there: it's overpriced and mediocre at best. There are a couple good restaurants in Coronado, which Yelp will help you find.

Shopping?: I guess people like to do this when they come to San Diego? I would only shop if I had to, but I gather that people are actually interested in buying stuff while they're here. Here's the scoop. Fashion Valley is the high-end mall that's closest to downtown. I only go there when I need to go to the Apple store. It's pretty funny, really. The first time I went, I thought it was a joke. There were women there who looked like caricatures of Southern Californians: heels, fake boobs, rhinestones, little dogs in purses, the works. But it's no joke. They are there every day of the week. If I were in the market for designer stuff though, I would head to the outlet mall in San Ysidro, right on the border. It's got all kinds of premium brands like Coach, Calvin Klein, Kenneth Cole, etc., all deeply discounted. Also, you can see Tijuana from there, if that interests you. There's often stuff on fire.

Nightlife

Wander around the Gaslamp Quarter. There are plenty of bars and clubs. It's pretty cheesy, like Party Central in any party town, but it's fun if you're visiting. I don't hang out there much, so I don't have a favorite place to recommend. There is one very popular spot though, called The Shout House, that's fun and wildly popular, especially with groups of women, for some reason. It's a piano bar where two musicians play and sing all kinds of tunes, liberally adding off-color lyrics, and often dragging people on stage to perform with them. There's a small cover charge, the drinks are reasonably priced, and the service is like a well-oiled machine whose only purpose is to get you hammered.

Naturally, I would recommend jumping in a cab and heading uptown for some slightly less cheesy nightlife options. Hillcrest is known as the gay neighborhood in San Diego, and has a vibrant club scene that goes on into the wee hours. North Park, South Park, University Heights, and Normal Heights have everything from wine bars to brew pubs, lots of live music, DJs, and plenty of filthy hipsters to mock and secretly envy.

There's a lot to do in this town. I didn't mean to write a freakin' dissertation about it, but I did, and I've barely scratched the surface. If you're from here, or have been here, and have some ideas about what to do in San Diego when you're staying downtown and have some hours to kill, please share them in the comments. And if you have questions, I'll try to answer them. I'll be around during the conference, and if you want to get in touch, you can email me at betadad@gmail.com, or find me on facebook or twitter @betadad.

Please click those "share" and "tweet" buttons if you think this might be helpful to anyone attending the conference!

Compromises, Sketchy Kitchen Practices, and Men who Work Almost as Much as Women

2011-07-28T09:30:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid I don't have time for a real post here this week, although I really wanted to tell you about the time we ate veal out of a nice lady's suitcase on a train in Hungary and washed it down with moonshine from the soda bottles she had in her purse. I'm trying to sleep more, which means writing a little less. It's kind of working, except when the kids conspire against me.

So if you want to read some new stuff I wrote, here's what you do:

Click here to read about how I compromised my principles in order to keep the kids quiet in the car.

Click here to read about how you can save time and energy in the kitchen by cooking like a broke-ass college kid.

Click here to read about some new research that says men work almost as many combined hours (at work+at home) as women.

******

These aren't brand new posts, but I want to make sure everyone who might be interested checks them out. It would be great if you could take a second to "like," tweet, stumble, Google+ (whatever that means), etc., because if they get a lot of traffic, it might mean a sweet gig for me as a featured contributor on Man of the House.

Read about how to make yourself presentable with the one accessory that makes even the most slovenly dad look like a Greek god.

Learn from a mostly pretty okay contractor how to avoid scumbags when hiring people to work on your house.

******

Oops! I totally forgot to mention that I started writing for a new humor website that's a spinoff of Aiming Low. (You probably didn't notice that I had forgotten if you're reading this for the first time, which, let's face it, why would you read this a second time?). It's called Insert Eyeroll, and here's my first piece on it.

Thanks for reading!

Where I've Been. Also, Free Movie Tickets!

2011-07-22T10:13:00.000-07:00

I've been all over the place this week! Here's some stuff you should check out:

I talked about whether severely obese kids should be placed in foster care for their own benefit on TLC Parentables.

Also on Parentables, I gave some practical advice to parents. Namely, let yourself go. You and your kids will all be happier. Giving Up: 5 Ways to Lower Your Standards and Become a Better Parent.

On DadCentric, I reviewed the movie The Change-Up. It's pretty funny, especially if you can score free tickets. Which you CAN, through a link on my review. Go! Now!

On Aiming Low, I wrote about some dude (ahem) who thinks he's Steve McQueen in a minivan.

And of course, right here, I wrote deeply and powerfully about how the notion of manliness is kind of stupid. You probably don't even have to click on the link. Just look down.

I guess I should go see what my kids are up to. Sounds like they managed to get that old lawnmower started.

Have a great weekend. I hear there's some weather outside of the SoCal Perfect Climate Bubble. Better stay submerged in something and drink a lot of beer!

The Last Word on Manliness

2011-07-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

A couple months ago, I found myself milling around outside a used bookstore (pushing a double stroller full of young'uns, naturally), and I picked up a book by Wallace Stegner. I had never read any of his stuff, but had always meant to. I forgot why I was supposed to read Stegner: maybe it was a recommendation from my parents or some professor years ago. I knew that he often wrote stories against the backdrop of the hardscrabble, sometimes bleak American West, which is where my people are from--at least the last few generations of them. I'm a sucker for these kinds of stories because it's easy for me to empathize with the characters, since a lot of them remind me of my relatives, and some of the episodes are eerily similar to ones from my own family's mythology.

Anyway, I read the book I picked up that day, called Recapitulation, and immediately wanted more. Turns out that book was a sequel of sorts, to a bigger book called Big Rock Candy Mountain. Big Rock Candy Mountain is, in fact, an epic. It's right up my alley. It follows the interior lives of a handful of complicated characters--a mom, dad, and two sons--as they try to scratch out a living from the shrinking opportunities in the woods and prairies of the West, from North Dakota, to Washington, Saskatchewan, Montana, and finally Salt Lake City. It's geographically sprawling, but psychologically a bit claustrophobic. Imagine if Virginia Woolf and Larry McMurtry (who was actually a student of Stegner's, along with Ken Kesey, another great chronicler of manliness) collaborated on an action-packed meditation on family dynamics and the end of America's adolescence.

These books are part of a segment of the cosmic lattice of coincidence which I find myself pondering a lot lately. I call it the manliness segment.

The nature of my pondering isn't tortured or anything. In fact, I have the whole manliness business figured out. The interesting part is how the notion of manliness keeps popping up in what I'm reading (and to some extent, writing) lately. Here are some examples.

I got my dad to write that Father's Day post, in which he talks about growing up, mostly in northern Montana, as the son of a legendary tough guy. I'm still thinking about that post, and comparing myself to my male ancestors.
I've been absorbed by these Stegner books, about a family whose patriarch is a legendary tough guy (also angry, proud, maybe cruel) in the same part of the country where my mom and dad grew up.
Somehow I got lured into reading--and writing a 700-word comment on--a clumsy "satirical" post on a mostly forward-thinking blog called Good Men Project, in which the author connected manliness directly to testicles and physical prowess.
Through another bunch of coincidences, I ended up clicking around on a website called "The Art of Manliness," which I had never heard of despite its apparently being wildly popular.

There are more coincidences, but those are the main ones.

So the Stegner books and the stories of my grandpa had me thinking about how traditional notions of manliness (mostly fearlessness, physical strength, and endurance) were actually useful, even vital, in the old days, albeit not unproblematic.

Then I read the first blog post I mentioned above, which ("satirically") lamented the disintegration of manliness in modern civilization, using the loss of testicles as its central metaphor. In my comments on that post, among other gripes, I complained that the author assumed that his readers all agreed on the meaning of "manliness." If there is such a thing as "manliness," I niggled, it must be defined in opposition to some other, less desirable state or constellation of characteristics. So, what is the opposite of manliness? Womanliness? Sissiness? Queerness? I suggested that he provide us with an explanation (however tentative) of what it means to be "manly."

A couple days later, I'm checking out my newly discovered The Art of Manliness, and in the FAQs, there's a link to an essay in which Brett McKay, the husband in the husband-and-wife team who runs the website, explains what manliness means for the intents and purposes of their publication.

His essay is well-written, well-argued, and propped up with rich textual support from a broad range of sources. I enjoyed reading it. And he answered some of the questions I had for the author of the post on Good Men Project, the jokey one about how balls+strength=manliness.

McKay provides a list of the essential manly virtues:

Courage
Loyalty
Industry
Resiliency
Resolution
Personal Responsibility
Self-Reliance
Integrity
Sacrifice

And he preemptively answers my next question by explaining that--yes--these are virtues that women should be striving for as well. But women and men approach these virtues in different ways, he says: for women, these virtues define "womanliness" (a term that no one ever uses, by the way, except as an insult directed toward men--but that's another story), and for men they define manliness.

McKay argues that the opposite of manhood is not womanhood; but rather, childhood.*

I thought that was pretty good. He recognizes the problem with placing a high value on manliness to the detriment of womanliness by setting both of those concepts on an equal footing in opposition to childhood. Fine.

But isn't the more logical choice for the opposite of childhood adulthood?

"Both genders are capable of and should strive for virtuous, human excellence," he says. When a woman lives the virtues, that is womanliness; when a man lives the virtues, that is manliness."

As long as we're being careful to point out that we don't value manliness over womanliness, why don't we just go ahead and talk about those perfectly worthy traits he listed as the qualities of adultness (or "adulthood"--see footnote) instead? Are the ways that people "live the virtues" easily categorized as "the male way" and "the female way"? Doesn't everyone who approaches these goals do so in their own way, regardless of their gender? And is there any point in distinguishing between male and female "adultness"?

It might seem like my beef here is a matter of semantics. After all, who cares whether we call it "manliness" or "adultness"? We're just talking about trying to be good people, right? And maybe trying to encourage man-children, adrift without the clear gender role definitions of yesteryear, to not be assholes.

As long as we're telling ourselves that we aren't giving "manliness" more value than "womanliness," let's do a little thought experiment:

Think about the phrase "good man" for a minute.

Done? Okay. Now think about the phrase "good woman."

Chances are, you thought about some brave, able, possibly heroic figure for "good man." When you thought of "good woman," though, did you think of a good helper, a sidekick, someone who was useful? Like, somebody's good woman? I may be way off track with this, but that's the sense in which I have usually heard that term used. "She's a good woman--makes a good bloody Mary and keeps her mouth shut most of the time."

The other thing that bugs me about The Art of Manliness, and other publications that try to promote gender pride in males, is the explicit and implicit nostalgia for the old days, when men knew what manliness meant, and used its tenets to guide their every move. The days when men made snap decisions with the utmost confidence, unlike today's dithering wimp. The days when men steamrolled their way through barriers, taking big risks and shaking it off when they didn't pay off. The days when men would never consider associating the words in McKay's list of virtues with women. The days when men thought of themselves as a privileged class, fully entitled to the power they wielded.

So what's the point of connecting those virtues to one gender or the other? Is it not enough to celebrate toughness, or strength, or conviction, or the way those qualities manifest in a particular person, regardless of their gender? To celebrate the peculiarities of the way men approach the goal of goodness is to say, "we do it better than those stupid girls" (or other non-manly types), it seems to me. So the question I posed in my comment on the Good Men Project post is still unanswered: what's the difference between a good man and a good person?

One of the things I love in Big Rock Candy Mountain is that none of the main characters is purely good or evil, but they're all sympathetic. Even though Bo, the dad, is a right bastard, I'm really rooting for him. He embraces all McKay's values within the framework of his own personal morality, but also has a serious mean streak. And guess who represents those virtues even more than Bo? His wife, who has her own flaws as well.

Just as I love hearing the stories about my grandpa constantly having to prove himself the toughest guy in the territory for most of his life, I get completely swept up in Bo's episodes of reckless adventure and bashing his way through every problem he encounters. But I think their toughness was a product of trying to achieve success in an unforgiving environment by using every advantage at their disposal. I don't think their defining qualities were quintessentially "male" except in the sense that they both had extraordinary physical strength, which was much more important for success in those days than it is today. It's a lot of fun to read about the old days, and think about how you would fare in the situations that characters like Bo and my grandpa faced; but realistically, I'm not nostalgic for the days when you would need to do the things they did to survive. If civilization and comfort are causing the slow death of manliness, then I say we go ahead and pull the plug on the whole notion and put it out of its misery.

Be courageous, convicted, loyal, and all that stuff. Be brash and self-confident if you think that makes you a better person. But why would you give credit to your gender for the qualities that define you?

* I think his argument gets off track a bit here because he conflates "manhood" with "manliness," "womanhood" with "womanliness," etc.; but I'm not going to go into the crucial differences between "-hood" and "-ness" in this post that already seems like it will never come to a merciful end; I will instead also pretend that those terms are close enough in meaning that it's not worth quibbling about.

Me on Aiming Low: Buried Alive!

2011-07-12T14:15:00.000-07:00

I have a new post on Aiming Low, about how I'm not to crazy about the idea of being confined in tiny places, but really it's no big deal.

I'm Not Claustrophobic and I'M NOT FREAKING OUT

Me in the Cu-Chi Tunnels, totally not freaking out

I have a friend who is a caver. That doesn’t mean that he gives in easily; it means that he crawls around in caves for fun. He has explained to me numerous times the difference between caving and spelunking, but I always forget what it is. Actually, I just looked up an article that explains the difference, and the act of reading about it alone made my chest tighten up a little bit.

My friend will tell you that sometimes he’ll go through passages in caves that are so narrow they require him to take his boots off to get through. Passages like this are also too small to back out of. There has to be an exit on the other side or he’s stuck fifty feet underground, unable to move. Again, writing this is making it a little hard for me to breathe.

I recently attended a lecture about avalanche safety (I’m a skier who likes to go off-piste a lot) by a guy who had been buried in one and was miraculously rescued. Hearing his story almost gave me a panic attack.

Read some more...

***

I also wrote a couple things in TLC Parentables:

Can Video Games Improve Kids' Fitness?

How Much Exercise do Kids under Age 5 Need?

Mashup: The Brothers Grimm vs. Ho Chi Minh

2011-07-08T07:00:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned before that we're trying to raise our kids to be bilingual, with pretty satisfactory results so far. As they acquire English, they are also becoming quite fluent in Vietnamenglish. My wife speaks to them mostly in her mother tongue, and I use my 35 or so Vietnamese words whenever I can. As a result, English speakers who try to engage the twins in conversation think there are great gaps in their language acquisition. Oh, you poor things--you don't even know the word "milk," they surely think.

In order to encourage their Vietnamese speaking and literacy, we bought a bunch of kids' books at a shop in the Little Saigon area of Orange County, CA. They have proven to be pretty popular; but for some reason, the kids usually demand that "Daddy read it!" instead of letting their mom read them in their original language.

The books are all so wonderfully bizarre (as are the nursery rhymes my mother-in-law taught them) that I had a hard time deciding which one to share here. I picked one of the stories that seems to be based on a Brothers Grim tale...or maybe it's a composite of several of them, or maybe just a riff on the whole Grimm genre.

I have not yet been successful in getting my wife to translate it for me, so I just make up the story as I go along whenever I "read" it to the twins.

Please enjoy my interpretation of the story I call...

The Revenge of the Baby Goats

The Revenge of the Baby Goats

One day, Mama Goat went into town to collect some garbage for her kids' dinner. "Be good!" she said to the baby goats. "And make sure you sweep up all of those miniature billiard balls!"


Little did Mama Goat realize, there was a mean old blue wolf lurking in the mushroom patch. Once Mama Goat was out of sight, Wolf leered in through the door, causing the baby goats to express a range of emotions, from consternation, to confusion, to sheepishness, to anger.


The wolf stopped at the insect store, and considered buying a jar full of bees. "They're very fresh," said his friend Mr. Bear. But Wolf really wanted to eat baby goats, so he went back to look through their window. "They look so tasty," thought Wolf. "But how can I possibly get at them when they're secured in this fortress?"

"I know!" thought Wolf. "I'll cover my hand in bread dough so that it won't hurt when I punch the door in!" So he went back to town and visited his friend the baker. "Thanks, Mr. Human!" he said as he left the bakery, his breaded fist raised in excitement. Then he returned once more to the goats' house. "Aaaargh!!! I am Bread-Fist," he shouted, bursting through the door. "Prepare to meet your doom!"

Wolf was sleepy after gobbling up all those goats. He stretched out under a tree to take a nap. Meanwhile Mama Goat was returning home. "Oh!" she gasped. "What a horrible mess. And there's an alien that was shot twice in the head while reading one of my books. Oh, wait. That's not an alien; it's just a pillow and a blanket. Still...It's a really big mess."

Mama Goat took the only remaining baby and went to look for Wolf. "There he is," she said, "with all my children in his belly." Then she took the last baby home and put him inside of the grandfather clock.

Then she went back to where Wolf was sleeping. Very quietly, so as to not wake the sleeping wolf, Mama Goat snipped his belly open with some sewing scissors. "Hooray," said the babies as they crawled out of the wolf. Luckily, they were only partially digested.

Next, the baby goats filled Wolf's abdominal cavity with duck eggs. Mama Goat chuckled as she threaded her sewing needle. "I feel so bloated," said Wolf when he woke up. "And why do I have these stitches?"

Just then, the baby goats bum-rushed the wolf and pushed him into the river! "Hey!" said Wolf, "This water is really cold! And now my fur is going to be all frizzy when I get out" "Hahahahaha," cackled the goats, "That's what you get for eating us alive!"

Me on DadCentric: You Swing that Hammer like a Girl

2011-07-06T07:00:00.000-07:00

I'll bet you didn't see that coming! I haven't posted anything on DC for a long time. Anyway, here's how it starts...

I'm Trying Not to Judge You for Swinging that Hammer like a Girl

Lately, as I try to get to sleep at night, apparitions of craggy old men in coveralls hover over me, pointing their greasy fingernails accusingly and chanting, "shaaaaame!" and "traaaaitor!" and "paaaantywaist!"

I hide under my covers and tell them to leave me alone--that I don't know what they're talking about.

But really, I know exactly why they're haunting me.

It's because I've brought disgrace upon countless generations of my male ancestors by allowing another man to fondle the most intimate bits of my inner sanctum. Yes, a ham-fisted journeyman has laid his filthy meat-hooks on the very hearth of my family's fortress and temple.

Well, it wasn't the hearth, really. It was the kitchen sink.

That's right. I paid a plumber to replace the corroded drainpipe that broke off and allowed water to flow directly from the sink onto the floor. (Naturally, this occurred when my parents, mother-in-law, 3 sisters-in-law, 2-brothers-in-law, and 2 nephews were visiting, and we were cooking and baking for the 40 guests we had invited to the twins' 2nd birthday party.)

read more...

***

Also, I wrote a couple short posts on TLC Parentables

Environment More Important than Genetics in Understanding, Curing Autism, Study Says

Parents Who Spank Are Likely to Do so for Minor Infractions, Study Suggests

***

And, lest we forget, yesterday I was shilling for HP on Aiming Low. I did a very simple, pretty fun project, and included a cute video of the twins destroying my work.

Profile of Beta Dad on Cool Design Website!

2011-07-01T07:43:00.000-07:00

Check it out! I was featured on the "home/design/children" website called Odeedoh as part of their "Big Blog Family" feature. They're highlighting dads this week, and asked me to answer a few questions.

Please click here to read the piece.

Have a great weekend, and remember to wear sunscreen while celebrating freedom. It's very easy to pass out in the sun from excessive patriotism.

Wordless Wednesday: Twoth Birthday

2011-06-29T14:46:00.000-07:00

Me at Aiming Low: Don't Call Me Lucky!

2011-06-28T14:17:00.000-07:00

I've got a post up at Aiming Low about how I used to hate it whenever anyone called me "lucky." I doesn't really happen anymore, though. I'm not sure why.

Luck Be a Lady

I don't really smoke (anymore). But I do sometimes win some money from the machines.

Something just occurred to me. Like just this minute. Okay, maybe about half an hour ago. It's this: for the past several years, very few people have called me "lucky."

You would think people would be saying it all the time, right? I get to hang out with the cutest kids in the world all day every day, I don't have to have a stupid job, nobody makes me wear socks or long pants or shirts with buttons on them, and my wife doesn't yell at me for spending all my "down time" goofing around on the Internet. Let's face it--my life is a beautiful dream.

And no, it's not just that I haven't been listening carefully. I would have noticed if people had been calling me lucky. Because I used to get that shit all. The. Time. And I did not like it.

From as early as I can remember, people have been telling me how lucky I am.

read more at Aiming Low...

***

I also have a couple short pieces up on TLC Parentables:

Higher Percentage of Same-Sex Couples Have Kids in Suburbs, Conservative States, Census Says

Do Deadbeat Dads Deserve to Be Demonized?

Me at Aiming Low: Father's Day Recap

2011-06-24T09:03:00.000-07:00

Got a little something up at Aiming Low today. Maybe you'll like it. Who knows? Anyway, it starts like this:

Father's Day Recap

Last Sunday was, as you have probably completely forgotten by now, Father's Day. I really wanted to write something here at Aiming Low to give a shout out to dads and people who have, or had, or maybe have a thing for them. After all, nearly half the parents in this country are fathers, and fully 78 percent of them are aware that they have children!

Having been a father myself for almost two years now, I've taken a great interest in the holiday, studied its historical roots and socio-political implications, and had hoped to share some of my insights as to its significance with the esteemed Aiming Low readers. Unfortunately I had been under the impression that it was in August; so by the time I realized that was not the case, it was too late to put a post together in time.

Father's Day, it turns out, is tomorrow. Okay. Not tomorrow tomorrow. Tomorrow for me, right this minute, which is approximately a week ago to you, reading this now. Provided you are reading it on the day it was published. Still don't get it? Really?

Read more at Aiming Low...

Me on Parentables: Bilingual Kids Will Make You Feel Stupid

2011-06-23T08:12:00.000-07:00

Check out my new thing on TLC Parentables. It's about how my kids are making me feel like an idiot.

Starts like this here...

There is no shortage of evidence that raising kids to be bilingual is beneficial in terms of their future language and problem-solving abilities. And if, like my kids, the children have extended family members who speak a language other than that of the country in which they are being raised, being bilingual is almost a necessity.

My wife emigrated from Vietnam with her family as a toddler. And although her English is not bad (okay, it’s flawless, but I like to pretend I can’t understand what she’s saying sometimes, just to mess with her), she has never spoken anything but Vietnamese to her parents, grandfather, and scores of aunts, uncles, cousins, and other relatives of ambiguous kinship that seem to endlessly drift through her parents' kitchen. So when we visit her family on the East Coast, or when they visit us here in California, very little English is spoken.

When I first started spending a lot of time with her family, shortly before we were to be married (10 years ago today!), this used to frustrate me a bit. I always wanted to know what was being said, and would pester my wife or her siblings for simultaneous translations. After getting the same response to my requests a couple dozen times, I finally got the message: banal family chatter was not worth the trouble of translating. If I needed to know something, someone would speak English, or recruit a translator from among the younger family members. I learned that during big family get-togethers, although it would be considered rude for me to go read a book, it was perfectly acceptable for me to gaze into the middle-distance with a beatific smile, daydreaming about snow-capped mountains or pie.

Read some more. I mean, you've gotten this far already...

***

I also wrote a couple shorter pieces on Parentables that you might enjoy, as long as you're trying to kill time at work

Does Anybody Propose Marriage in Private Anymore?

NYT "Motherlode" Blog Announces Addition of "Fathers Forum"

And once more thing. I just want to make sure that everyone reads the guest post that MY VERY OWN DAD wrote for Father's Day, wherein he shares stories of my grandpa, who could have kicked Chuck Norris's ass while roping a steer. It's pretty much the coolest thing anyone has ever written on this blog, and I'll probably keep pimping it until I'm sure everyone in the world has read it.

Product Review: Promax Energy Bars, they taste pretty freaking good.

2011-06-21T14:17:00.000-07:00

I'm not gonna lie to you. I'm writing this post for the money. I was contacted by a PR firm who offered to back a dump truck full of cash up to my house if I reviewed this...what is it...Promax stuff. What was I supposed to do? Say no?

Maybe the "truckload of cash" thing is an exaggeration. It was more like a fistful of ones. Just about enough for dinner at a nice restaurant to celebrate my wedding anniversary. At least my half of of the bill. Before tax and tip. Not including drinks. Because we always go Dutch as part of my insistence on maintaining some sense of independence despite my my status as housebitch.*

Is that cool, FCC? Have I disclosed enough? Can I get on with the product review?

The product, Promax, is an energy/nutrition/calorie-replenishing type of bar of the sort you might stick in your backpack or bike jersey pocket if you were all active and outdoorsy like that.

Now, I used to be a connoisseur of these things back when I was active and outdoorsy, before I got saddled with these young'uns who can't go for hikes that last more than a couple hours. I would buy Cliff bars by the box, and live on them for days at a time when I was riding my bike a couple hundred miles a week and working in places that didn't have refrigerators. Alas, it's been a long time since I went on an epic bike ride, or even one that was long enough to merit bringing along a snack.

When I got my delivery of Promax bars, I immediately wanted to try one, because honestly, they look like chocolate bars. But they're "healthy," right? Anyway, it tasted pretty good, but not quite like a real chocolate bar. Then I looked at the nutritional information and was all, "Crap. 220 calories. That's like a bottle of Stone IPA. Oh well--one less beer I can enjoy tonight." And sure enough, I really didn't enjoy my third beer at all that night. Not as much as I should have anyway.

As I said, I haven't been as active as I once was since the kids came along. It's tough to schedule serious bike rides around family time. Also, I have been afflicted with the damn sciatica, which has kept me from getting much exercise of any kind for months due to almost constant pain in both my legs. I know, right? Where's the damn sciatica ribbon sticker and fund-raising walk?

But on Father's Day, I felt a lot better, having gotten a big shot of cortisone in my spine the week before. So I decided that I was going to give myself the gift of a nice bike ride. I drove down to a place I like to call "Armageddon Island," a little man-made pile of sand in the bay where families with Gothic lettering tattooed across their backs go to burn their furniture and blast Eminem from their jacked-up pickup trucks. It's also a very popular place for road biking, as there's a big loop around the island that's nice and flat. Hardcore cyclists meet there for group rides, taking lap after lap at average speeds of about 25-30 mph. I logged 22 miles on Father's Day, with an average speed of about 16 mph.

After my ride, I felt pretty good, save for a bit of taint tenderness, and I sat down in the car. There, on the seat next to me was a Promax Peanut Butter Chocolate Energy Bar. I thought about eating it. "Nah...dinner time is in an hour," I said to myself. "You probably didn't even burn as many calories as are in that bar, fat-ass." Then I talked myself into eating just half--you know, so I could do a fair review of the product. Within seconds, the bar was gone and I was licking the my fingers and picking little bits out of the upholstery. I had forgotten how good food tastes when you have worked up a righteous hunger.

So Promax bars taste good. But what about their nutritional value?

I don't know. It's got a bunch of calories, which is really all you need when you're burning a lot of energy, and 18g of protein, which is quite a bit. And it doesn't have much sugar, if you care about stuff like that. Maybe you should just go to their website and peruse the technical data.

They also wanted me to mention that there is a Promax contest going on right now, where the winner gets an adventure for two to Kauai. Not too shabby, unless the prospect of doing awesomely extreme adventurous stuff in of the most beautiful places in the world bores you to tears.

I gotta get going. The dump truck is here.

*We don't really go Dutch. If we did, I would have to eat off the kids' menu.

Tex: A Special Father's Day Guest Post, by...My Dad!

2011-06-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

(A note from Beta Dad, because I can't keep my yap shut and just let someone take over my blog, especially not my dad)

My grandpa died when I was in college. I wouldn't say that I knew him well, but like a lot of people, I was always in awe of him.

When I was growing up, we lived overseas a lot, and then on the East Coast, so we didn't see enough of our people in Montana. Grandpa was a little scary to me when I was a kid, in the ways many grandpas can be--he was big and rough and didn't talk all that much. But it was always fun to visit him and my other relatives in Havre because there would be plenty of riding around in pickups and on horseback and messing around with livestock and picking vegetables for Grandma to cook; and, when I got older, going from house to house to sit on lawn chairs and drink cheap beer (by the time I was old enough to drink, all the old guys had had to swear off whiskey for medical reasons) and tell stories. When Grandpa loosened up, he was funny and charming and would offhandedly tell these stories--like he was talking about a trip to the post office--that would just make your jaw drop.

During one of the last conversations I remember having with him, he told me about a two-car bootlegging run he had been involved in (moonshine, I guess, since this would have been when he lived in Tennessee or Arkansas), in which the driver of the other car wanted to fight him, just for bragging rights. Finally, on a pit stop, Grandpa obliged him by beating him to a pulp. When the guy recovered enough to drive, they went on with their business. But later on during the trip, the other driver still wanted to challenge Grandpa, so he tried to race him on a narrow country road. This went even worse for him than the fistfight had: he ran off the road, rolled the car, and died.

"We buried him right there at Bear Mountain," Grandpa said. "Still had two black eyes from boxing."

I was all, "Great story, Grandpa! It's just like this time when I left a frat party on my bicycle with a beer in my backpack and this chick's boyfriend wanted to fight me but I was too fast for him..." Except I didn't really say that. I usually didn't know what to say to Grandpa. I just liked listening.

Anyway, I cajoled my dad into writing down some of the stories he remembers about Grandpa for this super-special exclusive Father's Day post.

A note about my dad: he calls himself a band and choir geek who couldn't measure up to his dad in terms of badassness. And yet my dad was a decorated Army infantry officer who fought two tours in Vietnam, sported a Ranger tab and Jump Wings on his uniform, went on to be a ~~Defense Department spook~~ diplomat during the Cold War, and a treaty negotiator after the fall of the Soviet Union. (Read more about Dad here)

And then there's me. After I read this collection of anecdotes my dad sent me, I was thinking about them all day long. I find it amazing that I'm related to these guys. I'm proud to share their DNA, and to think that, even if it's never necessary, I might have the courage and grit encoded somewhere in my personality to face a fraction of the challenges they kicked the asses of.

Then, as I was scraping the shit out of a cloth diaper and thinking about atavism, I slipped and almost broke one of the fingernails on my right hand, which I keep long and meticulously filed for playing classical guitar. "Dammit!" I whined.

Happy Father's Day, Dad! Thanks for sharing these memories of your paw.

***

TEX

by Beta Dad's Dad, aka DadDad

Guest blogging doesn’t sound like me, but I can tell, or as far as you would understand, repeat stories about your grandpa. I don’t think Hallmark had invented fathers’ day when I was growing up. Anyway we didn’t note it. For me and for much of the small town we lived in for most of my school days, your grandpa’s principal distinction was outlandish strength at work and in the stunts he enjoyed. There was plenty more to him, but that is the fathers’ day memory.

Something I have heard many times, usually from my children or grand-children in response to my stories about how we did it, is “that was then, and this is now.” When talking about my paw, we are talking the real “then.” He was born in 1905 and died in 1990. He went to school off and on until fourth grade. Paw's father died when Paw was 11 years old. I don’t know how he died, but Paw helped build the coffin. His job was to hitch up a team of horses to a hay wagon and drive his father’s body to the burying ground. He said that it was hot, and stuff was oozing out of the box by the time he got there. Paw married your grandma when he was 15 years old. He delivered his first three children at home, probably much as he assisted in the birth of calves. Only my sister, Susie, born eight years after I was and 21 years after my brother Mosey, had the help of a hospital and doctor. Maw, I’m sure did her part with all four.

I heard one of my maw’s brothers say that, before Paw and Maw were married, Paw was the only man that he had ever been afraid of (at fourteen?). Most of the old men I talked to about Paw would not have been afraid of him because they thought he was easy-going and mild-mannered. I think my sisters Moochie and Susie would agree. I, and especially my brother, might have had a bit more notion of the fear he could inspire. My brother Mosey, who was 13 years older than I, was probably not afraid because he appeared never to fear anything and was hot-tempered, but he did lose a number of fist-fights to our paw. Yet he had great respect and fondness for him as far as I could tell. He and all the old men did agree that Paw was the strongest man they knew. No matter how easy-going he may have been, I know that Paw had deep conviction that force involving tearing, jerking, pounding, bending, kicking and yelling obscenities was the most effective approach to auto mechanics and other repair jobs. I assumed that it might apply to parenting as well and, therefore, rarely tested him.

You knew your grandpa when he was already old enough and often enough injured to be bent with a bad back (and shoulders and ribs). But I knew him when he was straight and big. He was six feet tall and heavy for those days at 235 lbs. Like most people of that time he had no fat. His nickname when I was a little boy was Heavy. Many people told me he had the biggest hands of any man they had ever met.

When I was four (or maybe five according to my big sister), Paw had been on a custom cutter crew out of Arkansas, working his way through the wheat fields of the mid-west into the Dakotas and finally Montana. One of his jobs had been harvesting wheat on what was also one of the biggest cattle ranches in North-central Montana and part of Saskatchewan. The owner noticed Paw because he was handsome, intelligent, hard-working and the toughest guy in the area. He offered Paw a job as foreman of the cattle operation. Paw always said that he couldn’t turn down the offer because the job title was “ramrod.” Moreover, he liked the cowboy ways of Montana. He told me many times that these cowboys would get into a fight and say something like, “Alright ye sumbitch, whad’ye want to do, box or wrestle?” If someone got knocked down, the other guy would dance around as in a ring and say, “Come on ye sumbitch, get up and fight.” Where we were from in Arkansas, Paw said, when someone went down it was the boots, resulting in a head that wouldn’t fit in a bucket, or the knife and usually a one-way trip to the bayou. My brother and sister used to tell me that before I was born, Paw put the Des Arc, Arkansas bully, the area blacksmith, in the bayou himself at a community dance in front of everyone in town, including kids. They said the bully made the mistake of throwing a knife at Paw during a fight. Paw once told me the same story when I was grown, but it was some other guy, not him, in his version. He said, “I guess that’s what they mean by ignorant.” Anyway, that’s how we became Montanans. Paw preferred the style.

When we moved to Montana, Paw’s nickname became Tex. He was Tex for the rest of his life. I suppose it was his Arkansas/Tennessee accent. He had never been in Texas as far as I know. During Paw’s job on the ranch, we moved from house to house or shack to shack on different parts of the range. At times, especially during roundup (of cattle or wild horses) we had thirty cowboys in the bunkhouse. Maw cooked for all of them, baked bread and made desserts every day. It seemed to me that every other hand was called Swede, whether he was Swedish or Norwegian. They all had funny accents. Many of the others were called Frenchie and looked Indian. My favorite Frenchies were also known as Big Louis (pronounced Louie) and Little Louis. Paw said that big Louis was his favorite wrestling opponent. Louis was so good that Paw said he never beat him. Once he hid in a load of hay and jumped Louis when he drove off. He said Louis never even got off his seat, but threw Paw over his head right onto the team of horses pulling the hay. I ran into Big Louis years later when I was working in the same area. Big Louis, who never called paw Tex, said that Harold was the toughest man he ever met. “Dat ‘arold like to beat de ‘ell outta me every day.”

I heard about the fights that Paw had, but never saw them. What I did see impressed me enough as a five and six year old. Once I saw him leading a team of the biggest Belgian horses I had ever seen. One of the horses reached out and bit Paw and ripped off his jacket (Paw called any jacket a jumper). Paw turned around and hit the horse between the eyes with his fist. The horse fell to the ground, and took a long time to get up.

Another time, when he and some cowboys brought in a herd of wild horses, Paw was sitting on a horse and bet the others that he could hang himself without being hurt. He took his lariat and threw it over the corral gate (I forget what you call that high horizontal bar, but it was way up there). He put the noose around his neck and spurred the horse out from under himself. After dangling there awhile, he pulled himself all the way up by going hand-over-hand up the trailing end of the rope. He then let himself down, still hanging by the neck, and went on about his business.

My relationship with Paw, or at least to him, was probably most influenced after we had moved to town when he went to work on the Great Northern Railway as a dock rat. When I was in high school I got a summer job between my junior and senior years, also as a dock rat. Paw had moved on to the yard office. I was Paw’s height by then, but 100 lbs lighter. I became Little Tex then and through the next summer when I was again employed by the railroad as a gandy dancer. (I was on the kid gang; there was also an Indian gang, but that is another story.)

The old guys never failed to compare me to Paw. Paw had already established that I was lacking something: “God damn, ye got arms like a girl.”

The old railroad hands would say: “God damn, the best part of you must have run down your maw’s leg.”

For the two summers I worked for the Great Northern, I heard endless Tex stories:

“Old Tex is the strongest man I ever saw. I saw him throw a 100-pound sack of flour from one end of a box car to the other.”

“I saw Tex pick up the rear end of a car once.” (I actually saw him do that when our ’38 Ford was stuck in the snow.)

“Old Tex could drink more whiskey than any man I ever saw. Once I saw him drop a case on purpose and then drink it right through the box to strain the broken glass.”

“Old Tex could eat more than any two men alive.”

“Old Tex could fart louder than anyone you ever heard.”

“Once old Tex got liquored up and tore the roof right off the docks. Nobody could work. The Seattle was a day late getting out.”

One could think that a kid growing up with those kinds of comparisons might be damaged a bit. All stories about Tex were about manly deeds. A boy who was a band and choir geek couldn’t match up to any of those traits. But I think that I and everyone knew that your grandpa was unique in that regard. No one else could match him, and no one expected me to. I never felt deficient for more than a passing moment.

In his later years, Paw became softer, but he enjoyed contests of strength in other ways. I remember that when he was fifty and I was off working somewhere, he wrestled the high school kid who won the golden gloves regional championship in Chicago in the heavyweight division. I knew the kid. We called him Freight Train because he was so strong. The fight took place in a box car down at the docks. Paw won by bear hugging him until his ribs caved in. But I know that Paw was in bed with a stove up back for days. I never heard of a contest like that again, though I did hear of a real fight when Paw was 70.

Most of his later contests were like those at the county fairs when he would show off by ringing the bell on those setups where you hit the pad with a big mallet and send a weight up to hit the bell. He never failed to hit the bell on all three shots. Then he would bet on being able to do it with one hand. He always did it with either hand. Paw said it was not strength, but in knowing how to do it. He would also beat the guy who guessed your weight, usually by thirty pounds. The carny would never believe his own scale. But Paw was unique.

Link-bait: Fake Father's Day Guide, Facebook Fawning

2011-06-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

I wrote an alternative Father's Day gift guide over at TLC Parentables. I don't know if I really even know what it means. You might find it interesting, though. Who knows.

A Stay-at-Home Dad's Guide to Father's Day Gifts

I guess I should come clean. If you're looking for something to buy for that special dad in your life, you should probably check out a real gift guide, like this one. I can almost guarantee that this post will not contain any useful shopping tips. Except maybe this: Don't bother going shopping.

I have a little problem with most holidays that involve gift-giving. I'm getting more tolerant of them since I've become a dad, and especially since I saw how excited my now-2-year-old twins were on the first Christmas that they were actually sentient enough to have some tiny clue about what was going on. But there's still a part of me that sees these days as little more than occasions for obligatory monetary transactions whose meaning is sullied by commercial pressures.

Did that sound cynical? Maybe it is, but it's also practical. See, my wife and I haven't had separate bank accounts for close to 15 years. And since I've become a stay-at-home dad, I don't really contribute anything to the accounts we do have. So we don't usually bother with the charade of the gift exchange anymore. If one of us needs, or just wants, something special for ourselves, we talk to the other and then buy it or don't buy it.

read more at TLC Parentables...

***

And on Aiming Low, I wrote a defense of social media against all the haters who say it's stupid. I maintain that, while it is stupid, it's no stupider than "real life."

In Defense of the Robots

I was having a conversation with a friend today, when she told me she was planning to close her Facebook account because of some drama that had gone down that reminded her of the ugliness of high school. She felt social media had undermined the established etiquette of face-to-face communication and given people license to spew vitriol in ways they never would in the flesh. Naturally, my friend and I were having this conversation on--you guessed it--Facebook. And, in fact, she is one of the many people I consider a friend, without having met them in person.

Although I'm often deeply suspicious of/annoyed by/resentful of Facebook, I felt compelled to defend it as a legitimate forum for communication, having advantages and drawbacks comparable to any other.

This time, I used one of my pet linguistic theories to defend the medium as well as the the guy she felt had slighted her. After all, I am sometimes an English teacher, and I have a master's degree in Rhetoric. Who better to smooth the choppy waters of the information superhighway through concise linguistic analysis, which, as we know, is the best salve for the slings and arrows of the human barnyard we call communication?

read more on Aiming Low...

***

Once again, I have to apologize for not having anything new on this site this week. But tomorrow, if everything goes as planned, I should have a really cool Father's Day post featuring a very special guest blogger. Stay tuned!

Me on Aiming Low: Children and Loss

2011-06-10T09:42:00.001-07:00

Hey! Got a little something up on Aiming Low this morning. It's all deep and powerful, so approach with caution and some hankies. It starts like this:

Helping Children Cope with Loss

It’s something none of us, as parents, can ever be fully prepared for: the loss of a child’s loved one. It’s gut-wrenching at any age, but for toddlers who are just making sense of the world around them and the relationships in which they’re involved–and just learning how to use language to process that information–there is a unique set of problems parents must confront when grappling with how to comfort bereaving children and how to usher them through a journey of grief.

Last week was a difficult one for our two children, especially Twin A, aka Cobra. Both kids suffered the loss of two special friends. Both girls were shaken, but little Cobra took it particularly hard. Even though Green Balloon technically belonged to Cobra’s sister, Butterbean, it was Cobra who invoked its name constantly for days after the accidental popping.
So, when Cobra lost Mimi, her silky/fuzzy blanket with the little tabs around the perimeter later that week, it should have been no surprise to us that her grief was profound and she was not going to be easily distracted from it.

read more at Aiming Low...

Here's a bonus video featuring the kids shrieking at each other.

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!

Me on TLC Parentables: Multiple Personalities

2011-06-09T07:14:00.000-07:00

I've got a new post up on Parentables this morning. It's about the compulsion people have to define kids' personalities as soon as they start emerging, and how that seems to be especially true with multiples. Here's how it starts:

Multiple Personalities

I only have two kids, and they happen to be twin girls who will be two years old in a couple weeks. So I'm a bit hesitant to make generalizations about multiples, since I've never had any other family configuration with which to compare the experience.

Despite not being an expert on the differences between multiples and singletons, I have figured out a few things that people want to know about twins from participating in the following conversation approximately one million times:

Nice Stranger: Oh my gosh! They're so cute!

Me: Thank you! I agree! I thought I was the only one who felt that way.

Nice Stranger: How old are they?

Me: Almost two.

Nice Stranger: Oh wow. They're really close in age then.

Me: Yeah. They're, um, twins.

Nice Stranger: But they're not...

Me: Identical? Nope. Fraternal.

Nice Stranger: But they're both...

Me: Girls. Yup.

I give the friendly stranger a minute to process the information--to search the archives for the rudimentary knowledge of genetics that they gleaned from their 10^th grade biology class.

No, twins do not have to be identical. Yes, they are called "fraternal" even if they are girls. Yes, human gestation takes about 40 weeks, so singleton siblings are usually quite distinct from one another, especially in the earlier years.

I used to be shocked when people didn't realize that our kids were twins right away. Although they don't look very similar, they are exactly the same size, and, you know, at the same developmental stage. Because they're twins. Sometimes I'm tempted to say they're three months apart and just let the stranger stew on that for a while.

read more on TLC Parentables...

***

I also wrote a couple shorter pieces on Parentables that might interest you:

More Toys Encourage More Exercise, Study Suggests

Sleep Problems in School Kids Linked to Disruptive Behavior and Bullying

Thanks for reading!

Hockey and Brain Tumors

2011-06-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

Over at DadCentric today, I wrote about my reaction to witnessing ritual violence at a hockey game. It starts a little something like this:

Sports is Weird: Hockey Edition

Let me just get something out of the way, right off the bat (to use one of the millions of sports metaphors that are so ubiquitous we don't even recognize them as metaphors): I'm not much of a sports fan. Actually, not a sports fan at all. There are exactly zero professional teams that I give a rat's ass about, and three college athletic programs that I feel some sort of kinship with, since I (or my parents on my behalf) paid tuition at those schools, and that gives me a tiny, mostly imaginary stake in their fortunes.

There are a bunch of reasons for my lack of interest, most of which have to do with my never having felt a great connection to a city or geographic region growing up, and even more so with my skepticism that a professional team really represents me as a resident of wherever I live. It's really difficult for me to maintain interest in a sports contest in which I don't care who wins and who loses.

There are a lot of sports I like to participate in though; and I do enjoy displays of athleticism and on-field drama as they are depicted in highlight reels and movies about sports.

But that's not even what I want to talk about. It's just some background so you might understand that my bemusement with the world of sports comes from a willful ignorance of it.

Read more...

***

And in case you missed it, at Aiming Low yesterday, I wrote about how I thought I had a brain tumor, but it turned out I was just using the wrong deodorant.

I Thought I Had a Brain Tumor, but It Was Just the Wrong Deodorant

I read a book a long time ago. I can’t remember the name of it, but I’m pretty sure it was by E.L. Doctorow. In it, the main character is losing his mental faculties because of a brain tumor. Or some kind of degenerative brain disease. Or something like that.

You know, I might as well give up reading books altogether for how much of the content I retain.

Anyway, as I usually do after investing twenty hours or so in reading a novel, I remembered one tidbit. The character with the brain tumor, or lesion, or parasite, or whatever it was, kept smelling things that weren’t there, or perceiving the wrong odor when he smelled stuff that was there.

Ever since reading that book, I’ve been very distracted whenever I detect a distinctive odor that seems out of place. Mostly the mystery smell would just make me think about that book, whatever it was called and whatever it was about, and how interesting that one tidbit I retained was.

But recently, I started having this recurring olfactory hallucination, and it got me a bit panicked. At random times, I would smell something that reminded me of a Greyhound station in Southwest Virginia where I spent way too much time when I was in a long-distance relationship in college and had a suspended driver’s license. Pretty glamorous, I know. It was a sweet floral scent with earthy undertones. In other words, it smelled like purple disinfectant and dirt.

Read more...

***

You thought that was it, right? Well guess again. I also posted a couple short commentaries on newsy-ish stuff over on TLC Parentables. Please enjoy some more links.

Why You Should Raise Your Child to be Bilingual

How Miserable is Commuting Making Us?

So, that's why I haven't posted anything in this space for a while. Busy. But I will soon. Swears.

Thanks for reading, sharing, commenting, checking in.

Oh yeah. It was my birthday on Monday. So thanks if you said happy birthday! Or even if you thought it, or are thinking it right now.

I need to just stop typing.

New stuff on Aiming Low and TLC Parentables: Playgrounds and In-laws

2011-05-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

Over at Aiming Low, I wrote about the playgrounds I take my kids to. Really it's about the freaks I encounter at the playgrounds, but I pretended that it's a rhetorical analysis of a public space. So I sound like less of a dick.

Playground Profiles

Of course we all know that stereotyping is wrong, hurtful, and horribly inaccurate. All it does is isolate us from each other, foment tension and distrust, and prevent people from reaching their potential.

That's why I would never, EVER, use broad strokes to describe a "type" of person. There are no types. Just people. That's what I always say.

But geographical locations are different. Places don't have feelings, hopes, dreams, aspirations. They're just bits of dirt, rock, and architecture. They're fair game.

With that in mind, I have prepared a description of the different types of playgrounds we have within a 3-mile radius of our house. These are the facilities that my kids and I visit almost daily, so I feel that I'm eminently qualified as a critic of these public spaces.

Some kid on a slide

Read more...

***

Also, on TLC Parentables, I wrote about my nine-year secret courtship with my wife, and how I came to appreciate the meddlesome ways of her parents.

Go Ahead and Meddle in Your Children's Relationships...They'll Thank You for It Later

Whenever I write about how I met my wife, I have to include some winky/nudgey passages like this: We met in college and for the next 9 years were good pals who didn't date and would never have considered cohabitating because that would have been wrong and immoral and her parents would have been completely justified in disowning her, which is exactly what they would have done. That little disclaimer is in case of the very, very unlikely event that her parents would read something I published on the interwebs.

The snarky synopsis above encapsulates the official story as it appears in the annals of my wife's family history. We met in college, and I was the friend who sometimes fixed her car. I started a little construction business while she applied to medical school, and continued to drive nails while she worked toward her degree. Years later, after she had graduated from medical school, I approached her parents in the usual manner--you know, came to their door with my parents and six close male friends bearing gifts including a roast pig, betel nut, wine, and fruit--and then negotiated with the family elders for permission to begin our courtship. After permission was granted, my betrothed and I moved to California where she did her residency. We lived in separate houses *coughcough* while I did construction work and went through adult catechism so that our eventual marriage would be recognized by the One True Church.

Of course, the extended version of the story is much more complicated. I would love to tell it to you one day over some beers, well out of earshot of my in-laws.

Read More...

Happy Memorial Day weekend! Don't forget to think about all the dead folks who made it possible for you to enjoy your distilled beverages in a free country!

Wordless Wednesday: Biker Chicks and Dog Wagon Rides

2011-05-25T06:00:00.000-07:00

Photos by one of my many talented sisters-in-law

Cobra on her homemade trike

Butterbean gazing into the horizon

The twins and their cousin

Loaded up in the dogwagon

Stella pulling her wagon

Rascal

I have taken a new mistress, and her name is Parilla

2011-05-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

It was only a few short weeks ago that I was singing the praises of the cast iron skillet, and scoffing, as I do, at those chumps who cook over open flames.

Now, it seems, I am eating my flame-broiled words, and leaving my trusty skillet to languish in the cupboard.

It all started when my wife went to Target to pick up some paper towels and throat lozenges. When she returned, she was straining under the load of this:

I was not thrilled to see her lugging this cumbersome new toy into the house, because the kids' play area, at the time, looked like this:

In our defense, about fifty percent of that stuff was given to us, and another thirty percent we bought second-hand. So we're incredibly indulgent, but at least we're thrifty. That's got to count for something.

In fact, the only reason my wife bought the kitchen play set was because it was fifty percent off.

It looked like a nice unit from the picture on the box. Much sturdier and more tasteful than a lot of the garish plastic crap we tend to collect. So why on earth was it half off?

Perhaps this had something to do with it:

I could see how someone, a lesser man, who didn't care as much about his children as I do, may have cowered in the face of such a complicated yet emasculating project.

I grumbled about the extravagance of the purchase, the precious floor space it would take up, and the amount of time it would take to assemble it.

My wife, knowing full well that I would not be able to help myself, and that all my kvetching was just a front, said, "You don't have to put it together right now."

"Well, when am I gonna do it then?"

I sighed deeply and she shrugged.

As soon as my wife left the room, I scurried off to get a screwdriver, my reading glasses, and a bottle of wine. It was midnight.

Two hours later, we had this:

Pound-for-pound, it's the most complicated piece of furniture I've ever assembled. And, despite the little boy featured on the picture on the box, it's definitely the most gender-specific toy our girls have so far. What's more, in order to accommodate it, I had to straighten up the mess in the play room, stash a bunch of the bulky plastic toys in our crowded storage area, and put the teak veneer nightstand that had accompanied me everywhere I've lived since I was a sophomore in high school out on the sidewalk to be picked up by scavengers.

I should feel nothing but resentment toward the infernal play set.

But look what happened when the kids came downstairs four hours later:

And yes, they are eating peas right out of the freezer for breakfast while still wearing their jammies. That's what they requested.

***

The girls got the cooking play set of their dreams. So it was only fair that I should get mine.

And sure enough, the very next day, it arrived:

Assembling the grill was almost exactly as involved as assembling the girls' kitchen play set. Once again, I toiled in the dead of night, with my trusty halogen work light set up out on the deck.

And in the morning, this is what I beheld:

But then there was the matter of fuel. I didn't want to mess around with cans of liquid propane, and always be anxious that we were going to run out; so we had ordered a grill that ran on natural gas. That required running a gas line from the house out to the corner of the deck. Like so:

And:

It must have taken several hours to run the gas line, but they seemed like minutes to me. Love does funny things to the time-space continuum.

I know, I know. I've said a million times that grilling is overrated, and that real foodies use pans. And yet here I am slavering all over this great blast furnace like a caricature of a suburban dad accessing his inner caveman.

I can't defend my feelings here. The heart wants what it wants.

And my heart wants perfectly grilled meat.


Meat shaped like the United States of America

Meat that still has some skeleton on it

Meat that has escaped the claws of grizzly bears

I never expected life to be so good. Sure, I've had my share of grills in the past. But they couldn't hold an electronic ignitor to my sweet Parilla. It's as if she knows exactly what I want--exactly what I'm thinking. Other grills have burned my burgers to a crisp on the outside while leaving the insides raw. They have engulfed my chops in angry flames, and left my chicken somehow simultaneously raw and dried out. But Parilla asks only that I gently set her dials, close her lid, and trust her to cook everything perfectly. I haven't been disappointed. She is an expensive mistress, to be sure, but I have no regrets. Except, perhaps, that we didn't find each other sooner.

***

As the overlaying lattice of coincidence would have it, I wrote a couple of short articles for TLC Parentables that have to do with food, sex, and gender roles. Please read, enjoy, share, and comment upon. 'hanks.

Spice Up Your Cooking Life...with Sex

Would You Let Your Children Choose Their Own Gender?

SCAR (Stupid Careless Accident Report), Volume 1, Issue 2: Nail Gun

2011-05-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

This is the second in an occasional series of stories about manly derring-do, and the injuries that

result therefrom. Click here to read the first one, in which I wipe out on a mountain bike.

***

It was getting close to lunchtime. Or farther away from lunchtime, I guess, depending on when you eat lunch. I always wanted to get to a stopping point before taking lunch, to finish some kind of task so I could feel good about my morning's work. So sometimes we would work until 2:00, or until my partner said screw this--I'm taking lunch, whichever came first.

We were working on a tract house on the outskirts of Charlottesville. It was one of five or six models that were repeated ad infinitum in this development, so we had the routine down pat. Hang the siding, do all the exterior trim, build the deck. My buddy and I were one of a bunch of subcontracting crews that performed various phases in fleshing out the suburban sprawl there in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

I was up on the scaffolding, working on the cornice--eaves in layman's term--you know, that part where the roof hangs over the wall. Back East, on those Colonial style houses, the cornice was pretty elaborate, consisting of a frieze board, a vented soffit, a fascia board, and crown molding.

Before we even got to the trim though, we had to do some 2"x4" blocking to form the framework for the pretty stuff.

So I was twenty feet up on the pump jacks, a rickety scaffolding system that consists of two or more (three, in this case) 4"x4" posts set upright and attached to the roof on top, with brackets that hold a walkboard spanning the distance between the posts.

My partner, Bill, was down on the ground, cutting the the 2x4s. Because we were paid by the job, not by the hour, it behooved us to work as quickly as possible. We would get into a rhythm where Bill would throw a block up before I was even done measuring the next one, so when I turned around, it would be right in front of my face and I could grab it out of the air, turn, and--BAM--shoot it in place with the nail gun, while yelling out the measurement I had just taken for the next block.

We had almost finished a long section of this blocking, and I was walking as quickly as I could on the swaying scaffold. Bill tossed the last block up to me, and I grabbed it, turned, and put it roughly in place. The scaffolding was wobbling so much, though, that I lost my balance and had to reach out with my right hand and grab at a rafter tail to steady myself.

But in my right hand was my good old Bostich N80SB framing nailer, which we called "Nagelmaschine," because we gave names to a lot of the tools we used, and thought the German word for nail gun was equal parts funny and sinister.

As far as power tools go, it was a blunt instrument. It did one thing only, which was to shoot 2" to 3.5" long framing nails at a very high velocity. There was one adjustment on it, which allowed you to choose "trigger" mode or "bump" mode. In "trigger" mode, you had to press the business end of the gun against the lumber, compressing the spring-loaded tip, which released the safety so you could pull the trigger and shoot the nail. In "bump" mode, you could just keep the trigger squeezed, and then bump the tip against whatever it was you wanted to shoot. The latter was much faster, less accurate, and more dangerous, and of course the setting that we always used.

I reached for the rafter tail, but instead, the tip of Nagelmaschine bumped hard into the block I was holding, and I heard the distinctive hiss of a burst of compressed air. But I didn't hear the rest of the nail gun noise--the crack of the nail penetrating the wood.

That was because the 3.5", 8-gauge framing nail didn't find purchase in any kind of lumber, but rather went neatly through the middle of my thumb.

I felt a prick in my thumb, then a numbness, and when I looked at it, I saw that the nail had pierced perfectly, symmetrically through it, like one of those gag arrow-through-the-head hats, with exactly the same amount of nail on one side as the other. It didn't go through the thumbnail, but on the opposite axis.

I braced myself for the searing pain that was sure to follow, and the difficulty of getting down the ladder near the scaffold with one good hand and one enflamed with agony.

But the pain didn't come.

I clambered down the ladder, and Bill rushed over to take a look at my thumb.

"Oh, shit!" he said. "Do you want me to take you to the hospital?"

"I don't know," I said. "It doesn't actually hurt that much."

"Well, what are...what are you gonna do, then?"

"I guess I'll pull it out."

"Yeah?"

"I guess."

"Do you want some pliers, some Vice Grips or something?"

"Ahhhm...I don't know. Lemme just try pulling..."

I pulled on the nailhead, and despite some resistance, I was able to ease it out cleanly.

I expected blood to gush out of the hole, but instead it just trickled.

"Holy Fuck, man. That was pretty cool." Bill said.

"Wow," I said. "It really doesn't hurt much. It's just kind of...tender. I guess it just went through the fleshy...pad thing--didn't hit any bone or anything.

"Oh shit!" Bill said.

"What?"

"I should have grabbed my camera out of the truck before you pulled it out."

Bill had been taking a photography class at the community college, and was always snapping pictures at the jobsite.

"You're a sick bastard." I said.

"But that would have been such a cool picture."

"You're right," I said. "Damn it."

We didn't have a first-aid kit or even any band-aids, so I cut a piece of my t-shirt off with my utility knife, wrapped it around my thumb, and Bill wound some electrical tape around it. Then we loaded the dogs in the truck and went to lunch. Actually, Bill went to lunch, and I went to the gym, where I did a quick workout and drank a blueberry smoothie, as was my habit at the time.

A couple days later, I was telling the story to some medical school friends of my wife (girlfriend at the time). They asked me which hospital I went to, and were scandalized that I had gone to none. Are you at least up to date on your tetanus shots, they asked. I said that I was, because they had given me one at the ER a couple weeks earlier, when I went in with a facial laceration from a piece of lumber Bill had thrown to me before I was ready.

***

In case you're not sick of reading stuff about construction site misadventures, I wrote a thing over at TLC's Parentables website about how not to get screwed over by your contractor. Click here and read all about it.