Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Entry 183: Post-Memorial Day Weekend Quick-Hitters

We went to a Memorial Day cookout yesterday.  It was a real sausage-fest.  There were plenty of women there -- I just ate too much sausage.  Like way too much.  Not ribs-in-Australia too much, but enough for me to go to bed with a hurt belly and a overwhelming sense of shame.


Our friends / neighbors organized the cookout, and it was really fun.  Lots of little kids there, which is good since we have a little kid.  One thing that's nice about having kids, that I never thought about before we started taking Lil' S places, is how you can use them to "tap out" of the grown-up party for a while.  Like when you find yourself in boring a conversation, or you don't feel like making small talk -- whatever the reason -- when you're just not into socializing with adults at the moment, you can go play with the kids for a while and then joint the adults a little later.  This is an especially useful technique when you are at a function that's composed more of your spouse's friends than your friends.

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I watched Django Unchained on Saturday.  It was pretty good.  It was really good for the first four-fifths of the movie, and then it descended into a hyper-sensationalized, spaghetti western shoot-em-up.  It was like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly crossed with Amistad crossed with with Robocop.  I find Tarantino to be a maddening genius, not a mad genius (although he does seem a bit nutty), but a maddening one.  His good stuff is so good -- so much better and more original anything else out there in the mainstream -- but his bad stuff is nearly equally bad.  I just can't hang with his Dusk Til Dawn, Grindhouse stuff.  Even Kill Bill was lost on me.  The end of Django is vintage bad Tarantino, but it's just the end, so it didn't spoil the movie for me, overall.


I can't figure out why Tarantino does this.  Does he genuinely like the product -- is his vision successfully fulfilled -- or does he just strikeout sometimes?  Like, is the ending of Django what he wanted, or did he try and fail to write a better ending?  Or is it something in between?

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This picture was in one of Lil' S's books.



The thing is, everything else in there is as general as can be: ball, boat, socks, boy...  I'd expect it to just say "shirt", but it gets specific with "t-shirt", and then shows a picture of a polo shirt.  Well done, Bright Baby.

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I listen to a lot of Podcasts, so I always want to have my headphones handy, so that I don't have to hunt them down when I need them.  This is causing a minor rift in my marriage, as S also uses headphones often, so they get moved all the time and aren't where I last put them.  To fix this I've marked "my" headphones with blue tape, and then S has hers with no tape, and I've instituted a strict use-your-own-headphones-only policy.  It works other than the fact I'm now a headphone tyrant.  The other day I noticed S using my headphones, and we had the following exchange.     

D- "Are those my headphones?"
S- "Uh, yeah, I guess so."
D- "Nope.  Take them off."
S- "What?  C'mon."
D- "Use yours."
S- "God...  This is stupid.  You're so obsessive with these headphones.  You know that, right?"
D- "I'm not."
S- "Then why won't you let me use these?"
D- "Well, where are your headphones?"
S- "I don't know."
D- "Then there's your answer."

Just call me Napoleon Bose-parte.



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I read an article in The New Yorker recently about how a PBS member station pulled the plugged on a documentary, because it's unflattering to David Koch.  Koch, if you're unfamiliar, is a crazy conservative / libertarian billionaire who is best known for funding (along with his crazy conservative / libertarian brother Charles Koch) all sorts of crazy conservative / libertarian causes and candidates.  When people begroan the Citizens United decision and talk about how big money is destroying our political system, it's often with people like the Koch brothers in mind.

One thing that struck me in reading this article is just how much many super rich people overvalue their importance in society.  It's like they think earning money is a charitable contribution to the rest of us.  We saw it in the last election with Mitt Romney, where I think he found it legitimately perplexing that his wealth was used against him to some degree.  In his mind, the 1% are the job creators, the people generating wealth for everybody, so why are so many resentful of his fortune?  (It must be jealousy!)  What he doesn't get is that he's benefited from society much more than society has benefited from him.  Where would Mitt Romney or David Koch be if the U.S. economy never existed?  Where would the U.S. economy be if they never existed?  Exactly.  So, quit bitchin' about big government, quit acting like you're something special, and pay whatever we say to pay in taxes.

Back to the article, here's an excerpt that illustrates what I'm talking about.

They went on for twenty minutes, warning that such hateful attitudes could lead many wealthy New Yorkers to move to Florida, where the taxes are lower, and arguing that neighbors of theirs who spent millions of dollars on parties helped waiters and caterers.

The logic is a bit absurd if you follow it through to the end.  I mean, let's say a rich person does move to Florida.  How long does their old residence -- presumably a premium piece of Manhattan real estate -- stay empty?  Are those millions of dollars of expendable income lost forever (Shit, man!  The party people moved to Florida.  What are we gonna do?!)?  Or does somebody else just move right on in, have their own parties, and things just keep on tickin'?  To paraphrase Nelson Muntz, "If you didn't do it some other billionaire would have, so quit milking it."

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Lil' S was in bed with me this morning -- I was asleep, he was awake -- and he fish-hooked the inside of my nostril with his little claw-like fingers and yanked it, hard.  Waking up at 6 a.m. in a fit of discombobulation, spewing blood from my nose is not how I imagined starting the work week.

Until next time...

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Entry 182: Some Followups

I sat down nearly an hour ago to crank out this entry, and I'm just now starting it.  Stupid Facebook.  I had to send somebody a quick message, and next thing I know I've clicked a link posted by one of my friends, and I'm halfway through a story on a feminist website about why the author, a black woman, won't date white men.  It wasn't a very good article, yet I read the entire thing, and I read all the comments, to boot.  This is exactly why I deleted the Facebook app on my phone.  I'd open it to see some pics of my family and friends, and 15 minutes later I'd find myself knee-deep in a poorly written blog post by some guy named "Uncle Scam" on how Rand Paul was filibustering in favor of a bill to grow the economy by arming Americans to shoot down domestic drones or something like that. 
 
Anyway...

To follow up on the nanny conundrum, we've come to compromise... for now.  This "for now" is important, because the whole situation just isn't financially tenable for us in the long run.  We can do it for a few months, but that's about it.  Without another family to share the costs, we simply can't afford to pay our nanny what she wants, and we're struggling to find another family.

 [Our nanny]

So, we've moved on to Plan B: daycare.  We put our names on the waiting list at a daycare up the street, and it sounds like there will be some openings at the end of the summer, which is right when we'd want to start, so that's encouraging.  S actually found this place a long time ago, and we might have pursued it then, but there was a miscommunication.  It's on the same street as another much shadier-looking daycare, and when S told me about it I thought she was talking about this shady one, and I was like, "absolutely not."*

But the daycare S was actually taking about, is decidedly non-shady.  It looks decent, and it's conveniently located, which is all I really want out of a daycare.  Safe and easy.  During the tour the woman was really trying to sell me on their creative curriculum and theme days and diversity nurturing and all that jazz; which is all well and good, but I'm perfectly content if they just feed him, change his diaper, and give him a few blocks to bang together.  I'm not so sure his diversity needs to be nurtured at age 0.  Plus, is it just me or is there a much bigger push on parents now to constantly be providing their children with developmental stimulation and activities?  Like if your aren't playing Baby Einstein for your child by four months, he's going to end up with the special kids in kindergarten and never recover.  It reminds of the old Chris Rock line, "What ever happened to just being bored?"  It's a good question.  I think "just being bored" can be good for a kid, because it teaches them to entertain and think for themselves.  I mentioned this to S, and then I launched into a 15-minute jag about how as a kid I could entertain myself for hours with just a legal pad and a pencil, and her response was, "Yeah, but you're weird."  Touché.   



Oh, another thing to follow up on, the couple I mentioned in the previous entry who never emailed us back about the share finally emailed us back.  They apologized for the delay, and said they hope we find a family.  That was it.  They still didn't even explicitly tell us, yes or no.  Again, I have to ask, what the fuck is wrong with people?  I mean, it's obvious from the context (not to mention they're putting up new posts seeking a nanny on the same list serve we found them on), and we'd written them off long ago, but still, quit being so passive and inconsiderate.  You don't want to do the nanny share with us.  Fine.  Just say that, preferably when it might still be useful information.

Anyway, now that we've decided to go the daycare route S and I have to figure out how to manage the nanny situation in the interim.  I think next week we're just going to have to tell her that we're probably putting Lil' S in daycare at the end of the summer.  Our contract says we only need to give a month notice, but withholding this information until the last possible moment seems like a serious dick move.  Obviously, the worry in telling her now is that she'll find a different job the next day, and then we won't have any childcare lined up for a few months (although, she has to give us a month's notice also), but it still seems like the right thing to do.  I've found you can't really go wrong with being completely upfront from the get-go.  Karmically it feels the cleanest, and it often works out practically to your benefit as well because your forthrightness is appreciated and returned.  Hey, maybe honesty really is the best policy.**



Alright, that's about all for this entry.  I made a list throughout the week of about ten things I wanted to talk about in this entry, and I got to approximately zero of them.  I shouldn't have clicked that Facebook link.  Oh well.   

Until next time...


*I drive by the shady daycare almost everyday, it's on a somewhat busy street, and the thing that bothers me the most about it is that the parents don't cross at the crosswalk with their kids.  They'll wait for a red light so that traffic stops, and then they'll walk between the cars.  For God's sake, you're leading a two-year old child, take the extra fifty paces to the crosswalk!  Now, this is the parents, not the employees of the daycare, but still.  It doesn't reflect well on the institution in general. 

**I once came up with an idea for a crossword puzzle where it was going to be puns on tenets, so, for example, a clue would be -- Honesty is the best policy? -- and the answer would be -- TRUEMANDOCTRINE.  Get it?  Another is -- Nihilism? -- and the answer is -- NOTTHEORY.  It's a pretty good idea except those are the only two I could come up with, so maybe it's not such a great idea.


Saturday, May 18, 2013

Entry 181: Nanny Woes

So when S and I were first looking into childcare for Lil' S, we considered both a nanny and daycare.  Ultimately we went with a nanny, even though it's more expensive, because we found a nanny that we really liked, and we found a family to share her with to defray the cost.  All was fine and good for five months until said family announced they are moving to Kenya at the end of this month.  Suddenly, having a nanny has gone from "kinda expensive, but doable" to "really, really pushing our budget".  To make matters worse our nanny wants to raise her rates, so, if she has it her way, we will be paying not only the single-child fare she quoted us initially (significantly more than half the double-child rate), but that plus an additional $2 per hour.

But she's not going have it her way, not with us at least.  We simply can't afford it.  All told our childcare would go up $800 a month.  Not go up to $800 a month, just go up $800 a month -- this is in addition to the "kinda expensive, but doable" price we already pay.  We really like our nanny.  She's really good with Lil' S.  If we were Sam and Helen Walmart, we'd gladly give her what she's asking, but we aren't.  If she's going to insist on a raise, then we're going to have to start checking out daycares ASAP.  Anyway, I crafted an email (perhaps the most diplomatic email of my life) stating that we really value her, but can't give her a raise.  We will see what she comes back with.

 [Maybe a down-on-his-luck, posh Englishman will knock on our door seeking a position as a domestic servant, thus solving our childcare conundrum and teaching us that life is more than mere survival, to boot.]

The thing is, she's struggling financially which is why she asked for the raise.  Her husband is a Ph. D. student (sounds familiar), and his funding just got cut (it's not clear to me if it got cut for good, or if it just doesn't pay out during the summer like most Ph. D. stipends).  And now the other family is leaving which cuts her salary, so she's feeling the pinch.  I'm sympathetic, but what can we do?  We can't take out a loan to help our struggling nanny.

S is sympathetic too, but she's also annoyed.  She feels like our nanny is trying to take advantage of us a bit, because we don't play hardball with her (spawning resentment in somebody who's alone all day with your child just seems like a bad idea, in general).  I don't want to go into all the reasons why she thinks this, but suffice it to say, she has good reasons.  We've made some concessions and agreed to some things we wouldn't have if were treating this as a strictly business relationship. But anyway...

[Has an actor with a less athletic affect had more sports roles than Keanu Reeves?  It's weird.  It'd be like if Ving Rhames kept getting cast as Napoleon.]

At this point you might be saying to yourself, "Hey dumbass, just find another family to share with!"  My response to this is twofold: 1) How do dare you? 2) We're trying.  We've put a lot of worms in the water and got a few nibbles, but we haven't been able to bag that buck yet.  Finding another couple whose schedule works logistically with ours and with our nanny's is proving to be daunting.  We didn't realize it at the time, but maybe we were really lucky finding the family we share with now so quickly (or maybe we're unlucky now, I don't know).

We had one actual meeting with a couple; they came to our house to visit with us and the nanny -- feel things out a bit.  They didn't seem like the most exciting couple in the world, but whatever, we aren't looking for Brangelina -- some boring commoners who are responsible and reliable is all we need.  I thought the meeting went extremely well, truth be told.  They seemed genuinely interested, but either they had a change of heart, or they're the world's greatest actors (maybe they're an Andy Kaufman-esque comical genius couple, who pretends to be a boring nanny-seeking couple just to fuck with people), because they never called us after the meeting, even though they said they would.  Then they didn't respond to a follow-up email.

This opens up a whole new topic: What the fuck is wrong with people who can't give you a courtesy response?  I mean, if this couple doesn't want to do the share, fine, but how hard is it to pick up the phone and say, "Hey, thanks, but no thanks".  And then if that's too much for you -- if 15 seconds on the phone is too onerous a burden (you might even get lucky and get voice mail) -- how about that email?  If this couple responded to our email with the single word "no" -- just two clacks on the keyboard, N and O -- it would've been completely acceptable (weird, but acceptable).  All we want is an indication of their intent one way or the other, so we can start planning accordingly.  But, nope, can't do it.  They aren't going to do the share, so their response doesn't directly effect them, so why should they make it a priority?  They don't have to worry about the other couple who has a financial stake in their decision and is eagerly waiting to hear back from them.  Like I said, what the fuck is wrong with people?

[I heard Brad Pitt recently had his nipples surgically removed or something like that.]

The only solace I take in getting snubbed like this is that since I don't behave this way I have a competitive advantage over such people in society.  You never know when being courteous is going to help you, and when being rude is going to hurt you.  What if the husband of the non-responsive couple applied for a job with my company, and I remembered him?  Immediately he'd be set down a notch.  This scenario is obviously extremely unlikely, but it's only unlikely on an individual level.  If you look at all people with whom you interact, it's extremely likely that at some point you will need something from one of them.  The catch is, you don't always know in advance who or what, so you should just be respectful to everybody.  (Or you could do it just because it's the civil thing to do.  There's that too.)

Take my wife, for example.  I'm smarter than her, but she has the more successful career.  Why?  Networking.  She never burns a bridge; she goes out of her way to ensure her bridges stay open.  She's constantly meeting with random connections in her industry for coffee or lunch, or giving advice to somebody wanting to get into the field, or listening to advice from an old-timer, or shooting an ex-coworker an email just to see how they're doing.  She does the exact opposite of not calling people back.  And then when a good position opens up somewhere, guess who knows about it, and who knows somebody (or knows somebody who knows somebody) who can put in a good word for her.


[Not a burning bridge, but some pretty cool footage of the Tacoma Narrows collapsing in 1940.]

Oh, and lest you think S is some sort of amoral Machiavellian, she's not.  This is just her personality; she's a genuinely caring and decent person.  It just so happens that oftentimes decency is self-serving.  That's the beauty of it.

Until next time...

Friday, May 10, 2013

Entry 180: Some Disparate Topics

Health update on the little guy: he's doing much better -- plumbing's still a little off, and you can still see the rash, but he's acting normally and eating normally again.  S took him to the doctor today for a quick "everything is fine" checkup, and indeed everything is fine.  Hopefully a complete return to normalcy is nigh.

Having a sick kid is a three-pronged assault.  On one prong, you've got the actual kid to tend to which obviously is awful.  On the second prong, you have to worry about getting sick yourself (I had a fever of 103 Monday night, and contrary to what Foreigner might have you believe, it really sucked, although it was gone by the morning).  On the third prong, it's a great way to induce arguments between you and your spouse, at least, it is for S and I.  I've come to find S and I have different gauges when it comes to things like our kid getting sick.  Mine is calibrated to give as accurately a reading as possible; hers is permanently stuck on 11.  It makes for some "fun" discussions.



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I was in the supermarket the other day.  I was about to turn and enter a somewhat narrow aisle, and this woman with a cart came up at the same time from the other direction.  I misjudged / wasn't really paying attention to how much space was between us, so I kinda cut her off turning into the aisle, forcing her to stop for approximately 0.004 seconds.  I established eye contact to give her an apologetic gesture or a "my bad" or something, and my God, the look on her face.  It was as if I had just tipped her cart over, pushed her to the ground, stole her purse, called her mom a whore, and then did a Heil Hitler with my cock hanging out of my pants.  She looked so offended.

On the drive home I was thinking about why many people act this way.  It's like they're waiting, just desperately waiting, for an opportunity to be a victim, and they're going to jump at the first chance they get no matter how petty.  Do these people have emotional problems?  Or is it just a normal human reaction to immediately be offended, an unthinking response?  Maybe I do this too without realizing it.  Seemingly on cue, a car came up from behind driving way too fast (traffic is stop and go), and the driver had to slam on her brakes (like full-on skid marks and burned rubber) and swerve onto the shoulder a bit to avoid completely drilling me.  After stopping, she threw her arms up in an apologetic manner and literally mouthed "I'm sorry".  My immediately reaction: a nod and a "no worries" thumbs-up.  I concluded the woman in the supermarket has emotional problems.
 
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Why is every other boy named Max now?  I knew exactly one kid named Max growing up.  Now I know seven of them, and I don't even know that many kids.  I think Max is the new Aiden, a normal, but not super common name that now is super common, because a bunch of new parents wanted a normal, but not super common name, and they somehow all picked the same one.

It must suck if you're the first Max-namer of the group.  It'd be like if you named your kid Ryan in 1973.  Nobody was named Ryan back then (seriously, try to think of somebody over the age of 40 named Ryan).  You'd be thinking your kid has this cool, unusual name, until he started playing youth soccer and the coach had to call him by his last name to differentiate him from the three other Ryans on the team.

Hey, I just thought of something.  Maybe this is why black people just make up their kids' names.  I mean, what are the chances another set of parents is naming their son Jacquizz?


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The other night I had to be at a function on the UMD campus in College Park.  This is between my work and my home, so you might think it would work out perfectly, but it didn't because I had to pick up Lil' S from the nanny share, right by UMD, and take him home first, and then turn around and go back whence I just came.  UMD and my house aren't super close and traffic is never great, so it felt like a huge hassle.  However, if instead of UMD, I had to go somewhere the same distance and time from my house, but in the opposite direction like, say, Arlington, VA, it wouldn't have felt like a huge hassle, because I would've been going the same basic direction the entire trip.  Same time and distance, different mindset.  It's interesting how so much of what we perceive as convenience or inconvenience is just frame of mind.   

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I heard the song "Natural Woman" by Aretha Franklin today.  It reminded me that as a kid I thought the chorus went, "You make me feel like a man's sure of a woman."  What?  It makes sense... kinda.



Until next time...
 

Saturday, May 4, 2013

Entry 179: Saturday at Urgent Care

We had to take the little guy to urgent care this afternoon.  Well, we didn't have to, he wasn't in any immediate danger (and he should be fine, by the way); actually his fever -- the most worrisome part of his illness to me -- has been gone for the past few days, but his diarrhea, lack of appetite, and awful diaper rash have been incredibly stubborn.  Today he broke out in these weird red splotches, which I've heard is common (and relatively harmless) among babies fighting viruses, but which prompted us to contact an on-call nurse nonetheless.  She gave us some tips on dealing with the diaper rash, and told us to have him see our pediatrician again within the next three days.  Being that our usual clinic is closed on the weekend this would mean waiting until Monday, which neither of us really wanted to do -- it's tough to sit there and do nothing when your kid's face is so puffy and red it looks like he just went a few rounds with a tougher infant -- so we packed him up and headed to urgent care.

The urgent care clinic was awesome.  Actually, it was just empty which made it awesome.  It's relatively new and somewhat hidden, and apparently word hasn't spread yet.  We walked in and were seen almost immediately.  The staff doted on Lil' S big-time (even with a puffy mug he's still adorable), but he wasn't really having it.  He was not in a good mood.  Like all parents of infants, S and I have learned ways to distract him and (temporarily) calm him down when he starts bawling.  Perhaps the strangest way is for me to start singing Blue Swedes' "Hooked on a Feeling".  The "ooka-shakka"'s momentarily mesmerize him, and they usually buy us a half minute or so before he realizes it's all just a front and nothing is really going on that's worth stopping crying over.  It's just enough time to slip his jacket on or slide him in his car seat.  I was going to do it at the clinic so that the doctor could easily listen to his heartbeat, but I was too inhibited.  I have to sing pretty loudly for it to be effective.     


[Great song.  I first heard it on the "Reservoir Dogs" soundtrack.]


I did get to flash some math skills today.  The nurse weighed Lil' S, and the scale read 15.28 pounds (he's lost some weight this past week -- expected, but still unfortunate).  Apparently it was set to the wrong units -- she wanted pounds and ounces, not decimal pounds -- so she was confused, "Wait, what?  15 pounds, 28 ounces?"  I did the math and told her, no, it was 15 pounds, 4 ounces.  She wrote it down.  I saved us all a few precious moments, and likely a reweigh of a tempestuous baby.  Yes, I am a hero.  This is why everybody should pay attention in math class.

[The doctor we saw today looked like the lovechild of Raul Ibanez and Cuba Gooding Jr.  I told this to S and it was completely lost on her -- no clue who Raul Ibanez is.  I hate it when you come up with a funny look-a-like and nobody is around to get it.]

Speaking of math, I have to go on a quick math jag.  One of my Facebook friends and fellow math nerds linked to a story by a Harvard biologist entitled "Great Scientists Don't Need Math".  The author's reasoning is basically, I was never good at math and I'm a good scientist.  OK, but this is a little like Muggsy Bogues writing an article, "Great Basketball Players Don't Need to Be Tall".  The author further argues:

It is far easier for scientists to acquire needed collaboration from mathematicians and statisticians than it is for mathematicians and statisticians to find scientists able to make use of their equations.

My retort is, if a scientist isn't good at math, he* is likely going to struggle just to know when and on what to consult a mathematician.  And he's probably going to miss crucial and/or time-saving aspects of his work.  He's going to miss better ways to do and think about things.  As an example, at work the other day, we were trying to figure out how to solve a geometry problem.  I came up with an easy and effective solution using a freshman-year mathematical tool called the dot product.  Everybody I work with is very smart and very good at problem solving, but they don't have formal math backgrounds, so they would never have gone about the problem the way I did.  They wouldn't even have known something like the dot product was there to be used.  They would've figure something else out, surely, but it probably wouldn't have worked quite as well, and it probably would've required more effort and time.  The bottom line: you can either disparage the usefulness of math, or you can actually learn it.  If you do the latter, and you work in any sort of technical field, you will probably be better at what you do.

OK.  I am now dismounting my mathematical high horse.


[Manute Bol and Muggsy Bogues.]

One of the things the doctor told us to do is to "air out" Lil' S.  That is, expose the diaper rash to the open air and let Mother Nature do her thing -- no onesie, no diaper.  As a result, we had a little, splotchy, bottomless, cranky baby with diarrhea crawling around the house all day.  It might be good for the rash, but it's certainly not good for our floors.

Until next time...

*No, I'm not excluding the notion of a female scientist.  I just don't want to type "he or she" a bunch of times.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Entry 178: Just Me, My Son, a Thermometer, and Butt Cream

The little man is sick these days.  Sick enough that I took him to the doctor yesterday.  Doctor's appointments and things of this nature are usually more my wife's milieu; she's better at the whole "nurturing" aspect of parenting than I am (I'm more in it for the vicarious living -- I've already got Lil' S tabbed as the first World Series MVP to win the Fields Medal), but it was more convenient for me to take a day off work than for her, so I had to do it.

He's got a fever and a diaper rash that proved impervious to over-the-counter ointments.  The doctor thinks he might have hand, foot, and mouth disease, which sounds much worse than it actually it is (note to whoever names these things: don't call something that typically takes only a week to run its course a "disease" -- "sickness", "illness", or "bug" are far less death-evoking and patient-friendly).  He doesn't have any lesions, but he has some of the other symptoms: fever, fatigue, malaise, loss of appetite, and diarrhea.  Of course, these are pretty much the symptoms for every illness ever, so who knows?

[I wanted to talk about Jason Collins this entry, but I ran out of time.]

The doctor told me to give him some baby analgesic to keep the fever in check, and she prescribed some sort of concoction for the diaper rash that's a mixture of zinc oxide and butt cream.  This is in fact the medical term for it; "butt cream" is actually what it said on the scrip.  It ended up being a pain in my butt to get filled.  I had to drive all over town (in the heart of D.C. traffic) looking for a pharmacy that could do it before the end of the day.  And then after that I had to drive up to my office to get my work computer so that I could work from home today.  Somehow my kid getting sick segued into me spending all day in the car.  Thank God (and Chinese slave labor) for the iPhone; at least I could listen to my podcasts.  Normal radio just doesn't cut it anymore.  If it's got commercial breaks I can't fast forward through, I'm out.

This morning Lil S's fever was gone and the rash had abated significantly.  Things were looking up.  But by the afternoon the fever was back (the rash thankfully not).  It's been touch-and-go with him all day.  He was in good spirits before he went to bed, and he went down pretty smoothly, so hopefully he's better in the morning.  We shall see. We already had to cancel our nanny-share for tomorrow because he has to be fever-free for 24 hours before hanging out with other kids (doctor's orders).  And then S unfortunately has to leave town super early tomorrow for a work meeting in North Carolina, and she's not coming back until Friday morning, so I'm in for a full day of some hardcore parenting tomorrow.  Just me, my son, a thermometer, and butt cream.

Alright, that's all for this entry.  I had a few more things I wanted to talk about like Jason Collins coming out as the first active, openly gay athlete in one of the four major American sports, and some typical Krugman fanboy stuff.  But I'm out of time.  I'll get to those topics later, or not.

Until next time...