Archive | February, 2009

Well, I finally did it.

After a seemingly unending season of lethargy, I made myself go running yesterday.

You might remember that I begrudgingly took up jogging last summer after discovering that my previously scrawny body was accented by some extra poundage around the waistline.

I also began noticing that the suit pants I was wearing to work weren’t quite fitting right.

And I noticed that if I pricked my finger, sausage gravy would ooze out instead of blood.

All of which is to say that it dawned on me that I’m not 16 anymore, and that the proverbial chickens (or in my case, Egg McMuffins) were coming home to roost on my frame.

So sometime last summer, I joined the poor man’s gym and started jogging around the neighborhood at night. After doing it for a few weeks, I started to enjoy it. I even ran a 5K with my dad before the summer was over.

But just after the time changed last fall, I went out for a jog after dark. I followed my normal route only to discover that roughly 4% of it has any lighting at all. The rest of it was pitch black. 

For a normal runner, darkness might not be such a problem. But for me, I have to concentrate on what I’m doing so intensely that there’s not much brainpower left to try to navigate a dark course.

It does, after all, take a lot of focus to keep the inner monologue of “You’re NOT going to die. So what if you can’t feel your legs? So what if your lungs are on fire? You’re NOT going to die.” going in my head.

After my one run in the dark, I hung it up. Except for Thanksgiving Day, when I went for a run to dislodge a hunk of sweet potato casserole that was stuck in my heart, I haven’t been since.

So yesterday was a start. Hopefully I can keep this train rolling over the next few months as it starts to warm up. If I stick with it, I should start to get myself in shape just in time for the baby to come. And then I can quit all over again.

Maybe I was a little grouchy yesterday. I think today’s bound to be a better day.

Any day that starts off the way today did should be good.

Sitting at the breakfast table this morning, Son paused from eating to look at me and say, “Daddy, I SUPERLOVE you!”

Then he reached his arms out, gave me a big hug and said, “You’re the best.”

This week’s Friday Fives turned out being more of a rant than anything. I guess that’s where my head is right now.

Five People I Might Like to Strangle

1) The guy (or gal) who invented pink eye ointment. Clearly this person didn’t have children. If they did, they’d know that getting eye ointment into a child’s eye is about as easy as eating a sleeve of saltines with nothing to drink. Would it have killed ya to put the antibiotic into a fruit-flavored liquid?

2) Whoever invented technology. After my boastful post about how our house is now equipped with late-1990s technology, I couldn’t figure out how to get my Belkin wireless router to play nicely with the new DSL modem that Embarq sent. I’m over it.

3) Germs and the people who spread them. Going forward, February will be known in our house simply as “The Month of Funk and Pestilence.” I’m sure we’ve spread some germs beyond our four walls over the years, but I’m pinning this month’s batch of gunk on others. To that end, here are two quick parenting tips:

a) If the sound of your child pooping sounds like you’re pouring a bucket of water in the toilet – AND – if the smell of said product would knock Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs down, you need to keep that child home from school.

b) If your child’s eye is oozing seven different kinds of nastiness – AND – if you find yourself telling other parents, “Yeah, the kid has pink eye,” there’s a good chance your child has pink eye and should not go to school.

4) Our elected leaders, for removing the word “failure” from our nation’s vocabulary. Is there someone in your life who – for whatever reason – has never been allowed to fail? Is that person someone you admire? I doubt it.

5) Myself. For devoting this whole post to whining and complaining.

I’m fortunate enough to know a handful of you personally.

Many of you, though I know you through your comments and your own blogs, remain a mystery to me. For all that I do know about you, there are just as many things I don’t know.

I don’t know where you are. I don’t know what you do professionally. I don’t know your kids’ names or ages.

And for the purposes of today’s post, I don’t know how you access the “Inter-net”.

Given that this “Inter-net” is still an emerging and scarce technology (and frankly, a fad in my estimation), I can only imagine that your access to the “Inter-net” is primitive at best. I can picture you hunched over a green-screened terminal next to a cargo container-sized mainframe in the basement of some college science building.

I imagine the room you’re in smells like burning metal and formaldehyde. You hear lots of beeping, whirring and the sound of boiling liquid. It’s cold and lonely where you are. You feel like you’re being watched.

You probably paid a small fortune just to have a few uninterrupted moments on this “computer” you’ve found.

I have no reason to think this isn’t the way you access my “Inter-net” “web-log” every day.

That’s why I’m reluctant to share this next bit of news with you. You might be consumed with envy.

While you sit in a dark, smelly “computer” lab, staring at a series of 1s and 0s on a green screen, pecking out “electronic mail” get a load of this:

EFFECTIVE YESTERDAY, I HAVE A “COMPUTER” WITH UNLIMITED, UNRESTRICTED “INTER-NET” ACCESS AND “WORLD WIDE WEB” FEATURES – AT HOME.

Jealous? If so, then buckle your seatbelt, because I’m about to take you on a technology ride that will rock your digital clock.

I am able to send “electronic mail” at any time I want. In fact, I can both send and receive “e-mail” (my nickname for it). I also can view “web-logs” and “home pages” round-the-clock.

As opulent as it sounds, I can take a photo with my camera, have it developed, “scan” it into my “computer”, and then “electronic mail” it to any number of acquaintances.

I’ve also been told (though I haven’t fact-checked) that I’ve been invited to enjoy a free membership to something called “The Great Book of Faces” or something like that. I don’t know what that means, but I assume I’ve been invited because I have an extraordinary face. One so extraordinary that it belongs in a book. A face book.

Can’t believe it, can you?

If you think all of that stuff was a little too Arthur C. Clarke for you, then STOP READING NOW.

Okay, now that we got rid of the “earth is flat” crowd, let me pull back the curtain and drop this one on you:

Later on tonight, I’ll be installing a device that I call a “wireless” “router”. Once complete, I will be able to “roam” my “house” with my “computer” without having to plug it in to ANYTHING.

It’s dizzying. I know.

Now look, I know this sounds extravagant. And you’re right. It is. But I have trusted sources that tell me that this sort of “Inter-net” “technology” will be available to consumers all over America sometime in the next 70 years or so. Which, in the snail-paced world of technology, is an instant.

During my drive home last night, I was behind a minivan plastered with bumper stickers. Most of them were the usual “Pursue Your Bliss” and “Visualize World Peace” and similar nonsense.

The more I read the stickers, the more I realized: I don’t understand a single one of these bumper stickers.

Two in particular stood out:

1) Voldemort voted for John McCain

and

2) The GOP was RIGHT ON TARGET with Sarah Palin

I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what those were supposed to mean. I felt like there was a joke I was supposed to be getting, but wasn’t in-the-know.

The more I read them, the more I thought maybe the guy might be better off just putting this sticker on his van: I HAVE TROUBLE RELATING TO PEOPLE

Anyone want to take a crack at explaining those stickers to me?

Tomorrow’s the big day. And while our plans for a night of early dinner and TV passion and romance are still a bit sketchy, I thought I’d devote today’s Friday Fives to tell you a few things you probably shouldn’t do on Valentine’s Day.

Five Things Your Wife Doesn’t Want to Do For Valentine’s Day

1. She doesn’t want to eat at a buffet. MC and I spend a fair amount of time watching the Food Network. As they tour great restaurants and meet great chefs, the one thing noticeably absent from each venue is a sneeze guard. If the probability of someone else sneezing in your Valentine’s Day meal is so high that the restaurant has a sneeze guard, you picked the wrong place.

2. She doesn’t want to attend any sort of live auction. If you’re someplace where cars, land or animals are being sold to the highest bidder, you didn’t make the right Valentine’s Day plans. For that matter, if there’s a bullhorn present wherever you are, you failed.

3. She doesn’t want to go to any sort of Scottish games or Medieval restaurant. If there’s even an outside chance that you’re going to run into a big red-headed guy in a kilt, or if there’s live jousting during your meal, you screwed up, dude.

4. She doesn’t want to sit in the car with you outside your ex-girlfriend’s house. That one kinda speaks for itself.

5. She doesn’t want to go to H&R Block with you on the way to your date. You may need your refund to pay for dinner, but your 1040 can wait a few days. Nothing says “she’s sleeping in sweatpants tonight” like making her sign the tax return on Valentine’s Day.

So guys, what do you have planned? And ladies, what would you add to the list?

It’s Thursday, which means MC is another week into her gestational adventure. Today she’s 22 weeks.

Those 22 weeks seem to have passed pretty quickly. I can say that because I’m not the one who’s living with the symptoms of pregnancy. I don’t have to put up with the aches, pains and occasional nausea.

I think this pregnancy also feels like it has moved quickly because we spent so much time in the cautious denial that I imagine is typical of folks who have miscarried. Even though we found out MC was pregnant in October, we didn’t really fully embrace the idea until we had 13 weeks or so under our belts.

So with 22 weeks in the books already, that leaves us with 18 weeks at most to do stuff like, say, get ready for a baby. And when you consider that the next six consecutive weekends are already spoken for, that leaves us with – at most – 12 weeks.

Should be interesting.

This is what I get for posting yesterday about putting everything you’ve got into parenting. Check this out:

My daughter keeps a glass of water on her nightstand. Hold on to that tidbit for a minute. It makes this story even better.

MC sat up in bed last night at 11:40 and said, “She’s crying.”

I jumped out of bed and ran up to her room, where she was sitting on the edge of her bed. I walked over to her and leaned over to give her a hug.

“Daddy,” she said. “I…”

Before she finished her sentence, I simultaneously felt moisture on my hand and under my foot. She spilled her water, I thought. I started wiping the water off her sheets and quilt when she decided to finish her sentence.

“I threw up,” she said, and then burst into tears.

I wasn’t wiping water. (shudder)

“Oh!” I said. “You sure did.”

I scooped her up with my clean hand and we hopped on my clean foot into the bathroom so I could wipe myself down before I changed her sheets.

I carried her downstairs to lay in bed with MC while I changed sheets, but MC hopped up to go set things in order. Daughter and I rested in the bed together for a few minutes, then she asked me to take her back upstairs to brush teeth.

I’ll pause here to make this analogy:

There’s a scene in Talladega Nights where a wheelchair-bound Ricky Bobby plunges a knife into his thigh to show that his legs are useless. The paralysis is all in his head, so he quickly feels the pain. For the next few minutes, his two cohorts struggle in vain to pull out the knife. Eventually, they jam another knife into his leg to try to pry the first knife loose.

That’s the same kind of awesome logic that was at play when I let MC go in to try to clean up the upchuck in Daughter’s room. Bad Idea Jeans.

In less than 60 seconds, MC joined us in the bathroom to have her own face-to-face conversation with the toilet.

Since our first plan backfired, I went into finish things up in Daughter’s room while MC looked after Miss Sickly. We spread some towels out over the clean sheets and put a little bucket by the bed in case Daughter got sick again.

The little princess has been fighting a wet cough recently, so we figured she coughed too hard and gagged herself. We didn’t think it would happen again. I rested with her while she drifted off to sleep, then tiptoed back down to my bed.

At 3:30, the whole thing (minus me doing a “wax on! wax off!” in vomit and MC getting sick) repeated itself. And we discovered we’d make a rookie mistake – we didn’t put towels on the floor beside the bed.

That’s when we knew things just weren’t right and brought her downstairs to rest in the room beside ours. I stayed in there with her. She fought sleep on the couch for an hour while I watched her from a chair.

At 5 a.m., she crawled into the chair with me, buried her head in my chest, and nodded off to sleep.

For 10 mintues.

And, though it was fleeting, it was sweet. I wrote this in a post a long time ago, but it bears repeating: there are few things that compare to the feeling of your child’s limp, sleeping weight against you.

Those 10 minutes were worth all the rest.

At 6 a.m., MC got up and tagged in so that I could get ready for work. She’s had to do the real work today, because you can’t just sit and cuddle all day when you’re the mama.

Last I checked, the kids were sleeping and MC was resting in bed.

One of the traps I see in my own life is thinking of myself as half of the parenting duo at our house.

After all, there are two of us grown-ups in the house, so it stands to reason that we’re equal partners. We each are responsible for putting in 50% of the time and energy our kids require.

That’s why – even though I may not express it – I feel entitled to a refund when I’ve put in more than my 50%.

A few weeks ago, MC took off on a girls’ trip to Asheville. I had the kids from Friday night to Monday afternoon. For the entire weekend, I was the parent 100% of the time.

Under the 50/50 plan, I’d be entitled to a refund of part of that time. Since mama got a weekend to herself, I should get a weekend to myself.

But here’s what I’ve come to understand about parenting: It’s not 50/50.

It’s 100/100 all the time.

If that doesn’t resonate right away, let me use an analogy to show you what I mean.

Most likely, you have a joint checking account with your spouse at the bank. Since it’s a joint account, you’re both owners of that money.

Let’s say you keep $1,000 in the account. Since there’s two of you, it would make sense that each person’s share is $500. You own 50% and your spouse owns 50%, right?

In truth, each person’s share is $1,000. You can go get $1,000 out of that account at any time, and your spouse can go get $1,000 at any time. All of it belongs to each of you.

That’s how parenting works. Or at least it should.

My kids are 100% mine and 100% MC’s.

When I remind myself of that, I can navigate around the pitfalls of 50/50 thinking. I stop keeping track mentally of who has done what for the kids each day.

I quit trying to judge whether I need to step up my efforts as a dad, or if I can ease off and coast a little because I’ve put in some extra time. Because the reality is there’s no balance sheet onto which your efforts or your spouse’s efforts (or lack thereof) are recorded. 

Even if there was such a balance sheet, that ledger in our house would never work out. MC is indebted to me for what I’m able to provide as our family’s breadwinner. And I carry a debt that I can’t repay to her caring for our kids at home each day.

Those debts are in different currencies, so you can’t even compare them side by side. Though, on balance, I’d say I owe MC more than she owes me.

So you know what works best? You know the only way to settle those debts?

Forgive ‘em.

Acknowledge your inability to repay ‘em and move on.

When I drop my 50/50 thinking, I can see a much more organic flow to the give-and-take between us. I’m more apt to encourage MC to rest, see friends, or just get out of the house. And I think she responds (maybe even subconsciously) with extra helpings of kindness and love toward me.

What do you think? Does this make sense? Have you seen any evidence of this in your house?

Girl bloggers have all the fun.

The girls have giveaways and blog conferences and stuff like that. In fact, of the six people that still stop by here with any regularity, a couple of you are actually headed to the Blissdom Conference this weekend.

Not that I envy the fact that you’re spending the weekend participating in something with “bliss” in the title, but I do think it’s cool that you get to meet folks and trade ideas.

Yet for all the fun that Blissdom will be, let’s just acknowledge the elephant that’s standing in the room: There’s going to be a Leighton-sized void.

In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, before the end of the weekend, someone prints up shirts or comes up with a button that says: “I’ve got a fever – and the only prescription is more Leighton.”

So with that in mind, I will allow you to dream about what Blissdom would be like if I were there. Today’s Friday Fives is:

Five Breakout Sessions Leighton Could Lead at Blissdom:

1. The Counter Culture Blogger – In a season when blogs are growing and gaining audience, Leighton will give you an inside peek at how he killed whatever momentum his blog once had.

2. It’s Better to Receive Than to Give – The old phrase “you’ve gotta give to get” is yesterday’s news when it comes to your commenting. Leighton will describe how he shuts down interaction 100% by not responding to comments and seldom making comments on other blogs. Even though he means to.

3. It’s Too Late to Turn Back Now – Fresh off a botched move to WordPress, Leighton will show you how to move content from a unique but dated Blogger site to an impersonal, quirky WP template.

4. How to Scratch a Niche – Tired of all the creative energy that comes from writing great stuff in a clearly-defined niche? Burdened with people calling you a phenomenal (fill in the blank) blogger? Leighton will show you how he escaped traffic and readership by operating outside the bounds of mom blogging, stay-at-home dad blogging and humor blogging.

5. Under the Radar – Beaten up by PR folks wanting you to review products? Sick of opporunities to write for new audiences? In this session, Leighton describes how he’s blogged for two years without receiving a single email from a PR firm. And in a special bonus, he’ll show you step-by-step how his approaches to a few group blogs were stiff-armed.

I’m sure my sessions would be the talk of the conference.

Anyhow, I hope those of you headed to Nashville this weekend have safe travels and a great time. And if you get the chance, grab me one of those “I’ve got a fever” t-shirts.