Entry 402: A Holiday Without Pacifiers

Holiday!  Celebrate!  It's almost over, but not yet.  A few more hours -- don't short change me!  It's been good, but the thing about holidays is that they usually mean less time to relax for me.  During a normal workday, I can take fifteen minutes off here and there to listen to a podcast or do a crossword puzzle; during a holiday I can't because I have two little kids literally jumping all over me.  Usually during Lil' S1's nap we let Lil' S2 watch the iPad so that we can have some peace and quiet, but even those moments have been stress-filled the past few days because we are trying to get Lil' S2 off the pacifier.  It's been rough.  That thing was such an amazing crutch.  He would be bawling and screaming and refusing to go to sleep, and then we would pop a paci in his mouth, and he would instantly go down.  It was unbelievable.

But they gotta go at some point -- or so everybody says.  It's unclear to me what exactly the problem is with pacifiers.  If he loves them so much, and they work so well, why not keep using them?  He's only two -- it's not like he's 12.  What the big deal?  This is one of those things where you feel compelled to do something because everybody else is doing it.  There's a stigma associated with pacifiers once a kid gets past, like, a year old, and I don't really understand why.  Our daycare hates them.  I asked the director why once, and she said it's because they screws up kids' teeth.  Okay, but they're going to lose those teeth anyway, and the way we used a paci for Lil' S2 was to give it to him right bed or a nap, let him fall asleep and then take it out of his mouth.  It's hard for me to see how this could do much orthodontic damage.

[If there is one premise that will never get old, it's somebody who looks like Vin Diesel trying to be a nanny.  Look at how strong he is -- he must be clueless about taking care of kids!]

S is much more prone to the everybody-is-doing-it peer pressure than I am.  A lot of it I just go along with because I don't want to argue about it.  Another example: She became fixated on getting our kids to not drink out of sippy cups.  This one I did actually push back on.  The thing is, they only use sippy cups for milk, and it's entirely a matter or practicality -- if they drink out of a normal cup they inevitably spill little drops of their beverage all over the place.  With water this isn't such a big deal, with milk it is.  Lids just make sense.  Adults use lids all the time.  What's a coffee cup you get at Starbucks but a paper sippy cup?

I think I "won" this battle, as she has recently reverted back to using sippy cups and hasn't said anything about it.  It's tough, though, S takes differences of opinions on these types of things very personally.  Anything slightly critical is perceived as a harsh rebuke of her entire parenting philosophy.  Now, to be fair, the mother is always unfairly judged way more harshly than the father when it comes to such matters.  But also S is just sensitive -- it's part of her personality.  Several times she's come home upset over something somebody said at work, and when she tells me about it, it sounds like a pretty standard, impersonal bit of work criticism.  I'm probably the worst person to talk to about it, also, because I'm not great at "hand holding" and comfort, which is all she wants in venting to me.  It's one of those ongoing struggles that's a part of any relationship.

In other news...

We had some people over for Thanksgiving, and it turned out to be really nice.  We use to go to S's parents for the holiday, but recently we've done Xmas there instead.  Last year we were here, just the four of us, so I cooked a full-on Thanksgiving meal -- turkey, stuffing, potatoes, the whole nine yards -- and then S ate just a few pieces of the turkey and the kids just kinda picked at it, so I ended up cooking a feast for one.  This year, S's two good friends E and M hosted Thanksgiving at our place (they both live in small apartments), so I didn't have to cook at all, which was great.  The whole day was a ton of fun -- it was me, S, M, E, E's boyfriend (maybe?) A, M's friend L, our friend J, and then the two boys.  We even had a kids' table.

The only problem is that we way overdid it.  I know that that's kinda the point of the holiday, but we overdid it even by the standards of a typical gluttonous Thanksgiving.  For dessert we had two pumpkin pies, a sweet potato pie, a chocolate mousse cake, a cheesecake, flan, and ice cream.  This is for seven adults and two kids!  (And the kids would rather eat Starburst out of their Halloween stash, anyway.)  And nobody wanted to take the leftover desserts home (Damn, health-conscious friends!), so we got stuck with them all.  When the night was over, I took a look at everything, and said to S, "What the hell are we going to do with this?  We have enough dessert to fill a diner display case!"  We just chucked it.  We saved one untouched pumpkin pie and tossed the rest.  I felt super guilty about it -- I hate wasting food -- but it's not like you can donate half-eaten flan to a food bank.  It's a bit irrational too because nobody needs pie to live.  Those are empty calories, so it doesn't really matter if we dump them in the trash or I dump them down my gullet -- except in the latter case those wasted calories would be attaching themselves to my belly.  So, from an overall utility standpoint, throwing them away is probably the right move, but it still doesn't feel right to be so wasteful.

[Believe it or not, I think Thursday was the first time I've ever had sweet potato pie.  Actually, that's very believable considering I'm a white guy who grew up about as far from The South as you can possible get and still be in the contiguous United States]

The problem, of course, is that people feel compelled to bring something for everybody, and desserts are a relatively easy, popular choice.  S and I agreed that if we do this again next year, we are going to be more organized about what people bring and more adamant about what people don't bring.  If people want to bring extra, they can bring something that won't go bad -- wine is always a nice option.

Speaking of wine, maybe I will treat myself to a glass.  I think we have an open bottle of red that I wouldn't want to go to waste.  I had better get on that.

Until next time...

Entry 401: The Franken Conundrum

Al Franken is probably my favorite officeholder of all time.  I love his politics; I love his humor; and I loved his public persona.  He seemed like a genuinely good dude.  Well, maybe not -- or at least maybe it's more complicated.  In light of the recent allegations that he groped and sexual harassed member of the military model Leeann Tweeden while they were both on the same USO Tour, I posted on Twitter and Facebook yesterday that I thought he should go.  Now, after reading scores of articles on the matter, including many written by thoughtful women, I'm not so sure.  I'm still leaning that way, but if he doesn't, I'm honestly not going to be that outraged.


Here's what I think...

The reason my initial response was for him to step down was twofold:

(1) Several of my female friends whose opinions I respect were saying he should step down.

(2) If you're going to call out sexual misconduct, you have to do it even against people you like.  That's what it means to be against something.  You have a woman, who seems credible, saying she was assaulted by Franken, and then you have a picture of him either groping her or pretending to grope her (it's tough to tell if he's actually touching her and she's wearing a big flak jacket) while she's sleeping.  Put those two things together, and he probably did something untoward.  Was it the worst thing in the world?  Of course not.  It's not even close to what Roy Moore (allegedly) did or what Donald Trump (allegedly) did.  But it seems perfectly reasonable to me to say -- if you physically violate a person in sexual manner, you shouldn't serve in public office, period.

But then again, there's this logic, which I find at least somewhat persuasive.  The idea, essentially, is that the vast majority of powerful men have done something as bad Franken in the past, on both sides of the political aisle.  But if Democrats are the only party who calls on members to resign over something this, which, given how the Alabama GOP and voters are treating Roy Moore, seems to be the case, then it can be weaponized by the alt-right.  Start exposing Dems in red states, and then when their party forces them to step down, as is new the moral protocol, replace them with a Republican.  This, ironically, would only further hurt the very people you intended to protect (victims of harassment and women in general) because it would give more power to the more ruthless party, and they would enact all sorts of terrible legislation.

I follow the logic, and admit that is a concerning possibility, but I don't totally buy it.  For one thing, it's true that most Republicans don't hold their own accountable when it comes to sexual assault -- Trump never would have won if they did.  But that's one of the main reasons why I'm not a Republican.  Not being in a party of hypocrites and shady old fucks who live an alternate reality is important to me.  For another thing, the fear laid out by the author requires a very specific set of circumstances -- blue congressman in a red state with thinly veiled skeletons in his closet.  I'm not sure how many people there are who actually tick that box.

Also, saying somebody needs to go doesn't necessarily imply they need to go immediately without any thought of the consequences.  Somebody can be removed in a way and on a time-frame that minimizes the damage his vacancy will have on his constituents.  In Franken's case, I don't think it's hypocritical or a great compromise of liberal principles to argue that he should step down but not until the governor (a Democrat) chooses a suitable replacement.  And if it was the case that the governor was a Republican, then you could give him the boot after he finished his term.  And actually, this is more or less what the author of the article advocates for in Franken's case (along with him doing penance, which I agree he should do), but she's insistent that he not resign, lest he become a precedent.  But the precedent that should be set, as I said alluded to above, is transgressors will be removed in a way and on a time-frame that minimizes the damage their vacancies will have on the causes they support.  And, by the way, this cuts both ways: If Republicans can get rid of Roy Moore, in a legal and ethical manner, and hold onto their seat (like, say, via a write-in candidate), then they should do that.

Anyway, anytime stories like this break.  I immediately think of my own past.  (I've weirdly fantasized, in elaborate detail, about what I would do if I was ever falsely accused of a sexual misdeed.)  As to Roy Moore's behavior, I can immediately dismiss the notion, because I've certainly never done anything as fucked up as he did.  As to Al Franken's behavior, it requires more thought.  I feel fairly confident I've never forcibly kissed somebody who didn't want to kiss me back -- even as part of a misunderstanding.  That's just never been my way.  Honestly, I can't even remember a time I went for a kiss and got denied.  I think a combination of good judgement and a damn-near paralyzing fear of rejection kept me out of trouble.

As for the picture -- for groping a woman without permission -- I can't think of a time I've done something like that either.  But I've definitely seen friends do it -- often in the guise of a joke (as was the case with Franken), but it wasn't always received that way.  I have a good friend from college, sweetest guy in the world, who used to declare himself a member of the DGP -- Dick Grabbing Posse -- and then he would walk around parties and randomly grab guys' dicks, just to be silly.  Most the time he was among friends, so nobody cared, there was an implied consent.  But I definitely remember once he did it to one of my friends, who wasn't really friends with him, and my friend was like, "What the fuck?  Why is that guy grabbing my dick?"  And my response at the time was "Don't worry about it, man.  Mellow out.  Don't be such a homophobe."  But he wasn't being homophobic, at all.  He just didn't want somebody else touching his junk, which, obviously, is a very reasonable request.  I was wrong.  My dick-grabbing friend was wrong.

This is just one example, one person, but if I rack my brain, I could probably come up with many, many more.  In fact, another one just popped into my head.  I went to a New Year's Eve party once, and afterward several of my female friends came up to me and told me that another one of my friends kept trying to grope them on the sly.  I just said he was good guy, but maybe he got a little handsy when he was drunk.  In retrospect, I wish I would have confronted my friend and told him not to behave that way and tried to get him to apologize, but I didn't.

The thing is, though, the vast majority of my examples would come from a time when everybody was really young.  The DGP died out by the time we could legally drink; the New Year's Eve party was over 15 years ago.  Kids do stupid shit like that.  I'm not saying "boys will be boys"; I'm saying people under the age of 25 don't really know how to treat their peers, in general.  They're harsh to each other and do stupid shit.  They make bad decisions.  They have little impulse control.  But with a little luck they survive and grow up and act how adults should act.

That's one of the things that bothers me about Franken's photo -- he's like a 50-year-old man then.  He's not some dumbass 19-year-old.  He should have known better.  This is also one of the reason's Trump's "locker room talk" excuse was so weak.  Sure, it was locker room talk -- if you're an insecure high school student.

Anyway... fun stuff!  I gotta go.

Until next time...

Entry 400: That's Right, 400

Wow, 400 entries.  I've been regularly posting to this blog for over seven years now.  If you do the math, I've averaged a post every 6.5 to 7.0 days.  It's a little under a week because, although now I regularly post once a week (with the occasional skipped week), when I first started it (pre-kids), I posted twice a week and so that's reflected in the average.

It's been a positive exercise overall.  Sometimes it's a drag to write something, or I don't have any ideas or time.  But for the most part it's very nice to create something that I can look back on and smile about.  It's fun to go back and read old entries sometimes.  I remember things from the past that would literally be forgotten forever if they weren't written down.  It does feel a strange at times -- inefficient -- to put so much effort into something that so few people actually consume, but that's how it goes.  Not everybody can be David Sedaris, and I bet even David Sedaris has written thousands of words nobody has ever read or heard.  In my own publishing experience -- crossword puzzles, academic papers, guest articles at "real" blogs -- the ratio of time I spend working on things that will never see the light of day to things that will is embarrassingly high.  Or at least it would be if I let myself be embarrassed by it.  But I don't because it's a way to spend my leisure time -- and it's just as good as any other way.  If you derive satisfaction from the process, then it's never a waste of time.

Anyway, more news about sexual assault this week.  That's... good?  I dunno.  Certainly it's not good that men are sexual assaulting women (and other men), but it is good that it's coming out and (mostly) being condemned.  It appears to be one of those cultural waves that seemingly hits the public all at once with a tremendous force -- like how almost overnight gay marriage went from being a taboo, even among mainstream liberals, to being so widely accepted that you will be criticized (rightfully) as being a bigot if you don't accept it.  The public rose up and said "there's nothing wrong with gay people getting married" and now we seem to be saying "it's not okay to treat women the way we've been treating them."

Not everybody is on-board, of course.  Republicans, as you might expect, are loath to embrace this anti-harassment movement.  Oh, they are fine with it when it's a "liberal" doing the transgressing, but not when it's when of their own.  There are a shockingly (but not that shockingly, if you've been paying attention) high number of GOP members earnestly positing that a child molester is more fit for public office than a Democrat.  Sexual predation against a minor is not a deal-breaker.  Indeed you have people who think a 30-year-old man forcing a 14-year-old to feel his erect dick is not all that bad.  It's sick -- but that's today's GOP.  They are a sick party.  That's the harsh, sad reality.

And they've always been resistant to social changes.  In fact, it's really why they exist.  At the top, you have super rich people who want tax cuts and ideologues who want to dismantle the welfare state, but the base -- Trump's people -- are held together almost completely by social and racial grievance.  They see the country changing -- becoming less white, becoming more LGBT-friendly, becoming more multicultural, more wary of "family values", less accepting of traditional gender roles -- and they don't like it.  They could give a shit about public policy and foreign affairs.  They just want somebody in office who hates the same things and the same people they hate.  They want somebody who is on their side, fighting the wave of progressivism they feel is overcoming the country.  (And they are not necessarily wrong about this wave coming.  Where they err, in my opinion, is in thinking these changes are necessarily going to make their lives tangibly worse.)

I thought this was a good article about Trump supporters.  This has been my take on Trumpism from the beginning.  It's not really a con, as many people like to say.  I think a lot of Trumpies know he's full of shit.  They know he's making promises he can't keep.  They just don't care -- they might even like his lies, knowing full well they are in fact lies, because he's lying on their behalf and telling them what they want to hear.  His lies are part of the deal.  The deal being -- you support me and put me into power, and I will stick up for you.  I will insult the people you want me to insult.  I will normalize your bigotry and make you feel good about your racism.  That's the quid pro quo.

Now, to be clear, getting back to the problem of sexual assault, this is most definitely not something on which any part of the political spectrum has a monopoly.  You find it on the left, the right, the up and the down, the in and the out, and other dimensions we haven't even discovered yet.  The difference is how do people respond when it is revealed.  And right now the left is better at disowning its sexual abusers (see: Harvey Weinstein and Anthony Weiner).  Maybe if you go back to previous generations with Bill Clinton or the Kennedys, this wouldn't be the case, but we aren't in a previous generation at the moment.  Also, with respect to Clinton, other than the fact that he last ran for office before a decent chunk of the electorate was even born, he also was impeached and thoroughly investigated at the behest of his political enemies, and the worst that came out is that he lied about an infidelity with a consenting adult.  (With that said, I would have no problem with Democrats casting Slick Willy aside.)

Well, one thing that remains true after 400 entries: I always run out of time way before I think I will.

Until next time...

Entry 399: The True Meaning of Ague

Ague
1. A febrile condition in which there are alternating periods of chills, fever, and sweating. Used chiefly in reference to the fevers associated with malaria.
2. A chill or fit of shivering.

Ague is a word you know today if and only if you do crossword puzzles a lot.  But I got a taste of it firsthand earlier this week.  I came down with something awful Halloween night after taking the kids trick-or-treating.  I was so sick Wednesday I literally -- literally -- did not get out of bed all day but to use the bathroom a few times.  It was 6:00 pm before I even left my room to try to eat dinner at a table like a human being.  (I had some low-sodium, organic, fake-chicken noodle soup, which hit the spot perfectly because it was so bland.)  Thankfully S was around to help out and do double-duty with the kids, because I was in no condition to take care of them.  I don't know how single parents do it, or how I would have done it if S was away on one of her trips.  I guess you just suffer through it and do what you have to do, but it's hard to function with a fever of 103.


[This is one of the worst lyrical songs of all time.  "I'm hot blooded, check it and see, I got a fever of 103... I'm hot blooded... You don't have to read my mind, to know what I have in mind"  So, you're extremely ill, and that's supposed to be a turn on?]

That was the worst part -- the fever.  It was way up, and I struggled to bring it down.  I even thought about going to urgent care because I know it's really bad for your brain to be overheated for an extended period of time.  But I never got above 104 (peak was 102.7), which I read is the start of the "danger zone," and I was pretty sure it would break before too long.  It doesn't happen often, but I have been this sick before, and it follows the same pattern: I'm totally wiped out for one day, and then I'm "normal sick" for a few days, and then I'm more or less back to normal.  It seems as if the same thing is happening this time.  I'm currently in the normal sick stage -- I can get up and do things (like blog) but I'm definitely in no condition to, say, compete in a triple jump tournament.

[Kind of a weird event, don't you think?  Jumping is a very natural athletic competition, but why three in a row?]

Every time I get sick, I take for granted how good I have it when I just feel normal.  The saying "at least you have your health" is a cliché, but it's also true.  It's also nice to just zone out the world and not worry about anything but your own health for a day, even if it's because you are physically incapable of doing anything else.  And I missed quite a bit being out.  There was the attack in NYC, in which some deranged individual took out a bunch of people with his car, and more disturbing (to me, certainly not to most Americans) there was an incident in which somebody tried to do something similar in my neighborhood.  Around 3 am Halloween evening, some guy who lives down the street from me, apparently as part of a neighborly feud, tried to hit the woman who lives next to him with his career.  The details are fuzzy -- I'm getting all the information off our neighborhood Listserv -- but apparently she ended up being okay and the guy smashed into a bunch of parked cars.  (It also said there was a cyclist who was nearly hit, which seems very odd given the time of the incident.)

The guy got away, but the police know who he is and are looking for him, as I write this, so he will probably get caught soon.  Nonetheless, I wanted to find out exactly where this guy lives so that I could avoid his house in future, especially when I'm with my kids.  So, I walked down to the scene of the crime and there were two police officers hanging out there.  They asked me a few questions to see if I had any new information for them (I didn't).  Then they assured me they were going to get the guy.  It was nice to see a police presence still in the neighborhood, and according to the Listserv, they were there within minutes after being called, but the whole situation is still unnerving to say the least.

In other news...

The kids are doing pretty well.  Lil' S1 seems to be enjoying kindergarten at his new school, and Lil' S2 is starting to speak in (somewhat) coherent full sentences.  They do something different every day that makes me smile.  When we went out trick-or-treating, Lil' S2 was so adorable.  He would waddle up to the door in his little construction worker outfit and say his version of "trick of treat," which is more like "trit o' tree," but he said it so quietly nobody could actually hear him, and then he would just reach into the dish and grab a piece of candy.  If he grabbed more than one piece, he would put some of them back, without being told.  Somehow he knew he should only grab one.

As for Lil' S1, he did something that really made me proud.  It seems silly at first, but stay with me.  He watches this show Clifford's Puppy Days.  You know, the big red dog?  It's about him when he was small.  The theme song has a lyric, "I might be little, I might be stuck in the middle."  I was singing it because it was stuck in my head (of course), and Lil' S1 said, "it's not stuck in the middle, Daddy!"
"Yes, it is."
"No! It's not!  There's no middle to the whole world!"
"It's a saying."
"What's a saying?"
"It's just something people say.  It doesn't have to literally be something real."
"It's not stuck in the middle!"
"It is."
"No, it's not!"
At that point I let it go because as hard-headed as I am about acknowledging reality, I'm equally hard-headed about not causing a meltdown on the way to school.

I had forgotten about this when the next day, out of the blue, he comes up to me and says, "Daddy, I listened to the song, and you were right it is 'stuck in the middle.'  I'm sorry that I said it wasn't."  And that was my chest puffed!  He thought something was true that wasn't, sought out evidence to confirm it (he listened to the song more carefully), realized he was wrong, admitted it, revised his position, and apologized for it.  I've never been prouder.  Seriously.  If only our politicians had the integrity my five-year-old son.

Until next time...