Entry 228: Mr. Mom and the Rest of the 1980s

There are certain aspects of society in the '80s -- when I did most my growing -- that seem so out of date by today's standards that it's as if they happened, not a mere three decades ago, but in a different century.*  I'm not talking about profound things like how we have a black president now (unimaginable back then) or gay rights or the explosion of computing power and the rise of the Internet and cell phones and all that.  I'm talking about small simple things.  Here are a few.

1.  Cars used to break down all the time.  It seems like throughout my childhood there was always some discussion among my parents over which car could actually be used and for what.  We once had a broken-down car sit in our driveway for, I dunno, five years?  Ten years?  It was a long time -- so long, the car literally grew vegetation.  I remember driving up to a Mariners game once and having my car (i.e., the car my parents let me drive) die in the Kingdome parking lot.  And my friends and I had to find a payphone in a not-so-great area of Seattle and call somebody to pick us up.  That sort of thing just doesn't really happen today.  Cars have somewhat quietly become super reliable.  There's almost no such thing as shitty car anymore.  It's kinda weird.

[My first car.  Not the actual car, but the same make and model.]

2.  Normal people could be shown smoking in movies and on TV.  I caught 30 seconds of Ghostbusters the other night and was reminded that they smoked cigarettes throughout the entire movie.  That would never happen today.  For some reason, smoking has ascended beyond the realm of bad habit and into something only Voldemort would do.*  The heroes of a Hollywood blockbuster would not smoke today.  TV is the same way.  You can have shows on prime-time network TV depicting murder and rape, but you won't see any protagonists with cigarettes in their mouths.

3.  Thai food wasn't a thing.  I don't think I had heard of Thai food until I was about 16.  Asking somebody if they wanted Thai food back then, would've been like asking somebody if they wanted Liechtensteinian food today.  If just wouldn't have made sense.  Among Asian cuisines, there was Chinese and sushi (if you were really fancy) that was it.

4.  The notion of men trying to care for children was hysterical.  This phenomenon was captured in at least two popular films: Mr. Mom and Three Men and a Lady.  The absurdity isn't so much that men are obviously bad at child-rearing (although that is absurd), it's that the mere act of being left alone with children turned men into complete retreads.  Tasks requiring nothing more than an IQ above the first percentile and basic motor skills were suddenly too much for otherwise capable men.  In actuality, diapers are pretty easy to put on, even if you've never done it before.  Likewise turning on a vacuum cleaning isn't something you need training in.  But for moviegoers in the '80s, it was enjoyable to watch everymen like Michael Keaton and Steve Guettenberg bungle these simple chores.  Or maybe it wasn't and people just didn't have anything better to do back then but watch bad movies.

The latter item is especially relevant to me right now because S is out of town for the second night in a row, so I've been on my own with the little guy.  I'm happy to report that I was able to give him a bath tonight without him escaping from the house and running around the yard naked.  He did me pretty wet though.  His baths used to consist of us dumping water on him from a bucket.  But now he's able to dump it on himself, and he's started wanting you to do whatever he's doing (like he'll try to feed me his food when he eats), so he dumped a cup of water on my knee.  Like a filled-to-the-brim cup of water.  But the joke's on him.  I wanted to put those pants in the wash anyway.

S is coming back tomorrow, thankfully.  (Just because I can take care of him all by myself, doesn't mean I want to do it.)  She had to make a quick trip to South Carolina to return her parents car; we borrowed it for the winter.  The DMV started getting up our ass about having it parked on the street for an extended period of time without DC plates, and they will tow it or put a boot on it, so we had to get it out of here ASAP.  We wanted to store it at a friend's place with a driveway, but we realized that we don't actually have any friend with a driveway in the area.  (It's times like this I miss the suburbs.)  So S had to make the drive down south.

Actually, it's good practice, as in a month S is going to be leaving for three weeks to Africa for work.  That's when my childcare skills are really going to get tested.  Although, S's mom is going to come up to help me out, so that will be nice.  She's excellent help.  She always wants to watch him; she's a terrific cook; and she doesn't talk too much.  It's perfect.

Anyway ...

In other news -- sporting news -- I won my office March Madness pool for the second year in a row.  It's kind of a big deal.  They've been doing it for like 15 years, and people get really into it.  Each year the winner gets a little trophy with his or her name on it, and it's put on display above the copy machine so everybody can see it.  I'm the first person to win two years in a row.  That's mad respect, bro.

[U. Conn. was the team that helped my bracket the most.]

I don't even follow college basketball until the tournament.  But I've developed a simple ranking algorithm using Nate Silver's win probabilities, and I just use that every year.  My goal is to break the game by always winning.  I like the money (about $150), but really it's about the pride.  The pride of being the best at a game based on a game played by 19-year olds I don't know and have no connection to whatsoever.  It's awesome.

And with that.  Until next time ...

*Yes, I'm aware the 1980s were in a different century.  Don't get smart with me.  You know what I'm saying.

**I hope this reference makes sense.  I quit reading Harry Potter after the first book.  My thoughts on it can be summed up thus, "Yep, it's a story about a kid wizard alright."

Entry 227: 227

From ages 8 to 12, I watched prime-time sitcoms every night of the week.  I was old enough to understand what was going on (save for all the sexual innuendo).  But not old enough to realized how fucking stupid the shows I was watching actually were.  Because of this, there is a sweet spot in TV history, circa 1986-1990, in which I know virtually all the popular sitcoms (and their theme songs).  A few of them are classics I could still enjoy today (The Cosby Show); a few of them are bad but could be watched ironically (Doogie Howser, M.D.); most of them are just randomly forgettable.


   
The show 227 falls into this latter category.  I bring it up solely because this happens to be the 227th entry on this blog.  227 wasn't a great show, but it did have a pretty interesting cast.  It was primarily "The Show that Marla Gibbs Did after The Jeffersons".  But it also starred Jackée (who was a big deal for about five minutes) and a young Regina King.  And let's not forget Kevin Peter Hall.  You might not recognize his name, but you will definitely recognize his face:

I thought that 227 also starred the legendary Sherman Hemsley (his acting was almost as good as his name).  But I was conflating 227 with his show Amen.  I believe they came on one right after the other.  I kinda dug 227, but I never liked Amen.  I guess even at a young age I had an aversion to religion.

227 was set in D.C., which meant nothing to me in 1987, but now I might like to watch it to see if I could catch glimpses of neighborhoods I know.  Like on Homeland when they go to Columbia Heights or some place like that.  Although, I don't recall them going out on the town much in 227.  I guess when you name a show after the number of an apartment building, you gotta stick mostly to the building.  Also, my friend RT determined that 227 couldn't have been set in real-life D.C. based on the position of the Washington Monument in the opening (seen in the YouTube clip above) and the D.C. street grid.  I'm serious.  He actually took the time to painstakingly deduced this (you have to scroll past all the New Year's stuff).  It's not that weird if you know him.

Anyway, enough about '80s sitcoms.  Let's get to what the people really want: Me kvetching about my minor health problems.

I'm sick right now.  It's just a cold, but it's done-whupping me good.  Back in the halcyon days of my youth (when I blissfully rotted my brain with shitty TV) I never got sick.  From kindergarten through undergraduate school, I think I missed about three days of school total from sickness.*  But things changed when I moved to the D.C. area, and I started catching colds much more frequently.

I think it was new germs, and then right when I started building up an immunity to these germs I had a kid.  Now it's game on -- and by "game" I mean sickness.  For one thing, I don't get much sleep making me (presumably) more susceptible to various maladies.  For another, kids are really just blobs of agar.  Part of their evolutionary role in human society is to be a medium for transporting sickness.  It's to help prevent overpopulation.  Seriously, I'm not making this up.**  It's science.***

Also, you might recall from a previous entry that I was having trouble with my right hand.  It's better now.  Kinda.  As it turns out, my self-diagnosis of a partially torn ligament was wrong.  There is no structural damage.  This is both good and bad.  It's good, because, well, it's obvious why not having a torn ligament in one's hand is a good thing.  It's bad, because now the doctor doesn't know what is wrong with it.  He gave me a shot of cortisone, and it helped, to the point I can barely feel the discomfort.  (But I can still feel it.)  The doctor said that sometimes people get inflammation in their hands for no good reason and then have to get cortisone shots a few times a year indefinitely.  That wouldn't be the worst thing in the world -- lots of people have to do these types of health maintenance things -- but it certainly isn't something I was hoping to start at age 36.

Anyway ...

That last thing I want to touch on is the "nerd war" between Paul Krugman and Nate Silver.  It's pretty interesting.  Basically Krugman criticized Silver's new ESPN-based 538 website (he's not the only one), and Silver shot back with a satirical "analysis" implying that Krugman is being overly harsh on him because he left the NY Times (Krugman's employer) under somewhat acrimonious circumstances.  Jonathan Chait (whom I now read regularly) does a pretty good job summing up the whole thing in this post.

I like Nate Silver; his election analysis was one of few in the mainstream media that relied on math instead of meaningless punditry, and I'm about to win my office March Madness pool for the second year in a row by relying heavily on his tournament probabilities.  With that said, I'm definitely with Krugman on this one.  For one thing, I think Krugman's general point has a lot of merit.  Silver made his name using statistical modeling to accurately predict outcomes many "experts" got wrong.  But he did his work mainly in two fields (sports and politics) where the experts aren't actually experts but "experts".**** Now he's trying to taking his game to other fields (like climate science), ones with true-blue experts, not just palavering talking-heads, and it's not working so well.  (To be fair, the site just launched, so it might get better.)

For another thing, I seriously doubt that Krugman, even if he was wrong, is doing all this out of some sort of hard feelings over Silver leaving the NY Times.  Why would he really care about that?  Krugman can be pretty acerbic towards people he disagrees with, but he's usually not petty about personal things.  Silver's comeback to Krugman is a stretch at best, an embarrassment at worst.

Speaking of stretches and embarrassments, I've started doing yoga.  And I love it.  It's true.  I'll tell you about it later.  For now, I gotta go.

Until next time ... 

*Although I do remember missing the "tolo dance" my senior year because I was in bed experiencing what Mark Renton experiences in Trainspotting when he sees the baby on the ceiling.  (I wasn't in withdrawal from heroin, by the way.)

**I'm making this up.

***It's not science. 

****At least in the mainstream media.  There were (and still are) plenty of smart, statistically savvy people in politics and sports who were doing good work long before Nate came onto the scene.  In fact, I sometimes wonder why he became so famous when others doing equally good work didn't.  I guess it's like anything else: a good product and better timing.  

Entry 226: "Get" Out of Here!

Every week I jot down a few topics to discuss on this blog.  Typically I'll have about five new things on my list by the time I actually sit down to crank out an entry.  Of those five, I actually discuss about one of them every two weeks.  This means, of things I set out to talk about, I don't get around to 90% of it.  (You can spare me the "If I'm reading your best 10%, I'd hate to see what the other stuff looks like" jokes.)  Inevitably, what happens is, right before I start an entry, I think of another random topic, and since that's the one freshest in my mind, that's the one I write about.

So it goes again today.  This morning I read this article, which is so absurd, I can't not discuss it.  Other topics be damned.  If you don't want to read the article, I'll give you an overview.  It's about the plight of an Orthodox Jewish woman who can't get divorced.  Well, she can.  In fact, she did, legally -- she got divorced in California over seven years ago -- but her "husband" refuses to grant her a "get", the document needed to officially end a marriage in Orthodox Jewish law.  So religiously they remain married.  But there's a catch.  Due to a loophole in their religious dogma, he was able remarry, but she is forbade from taking another husband until he officially releases her, which, by the way, he won't do because he's a colossal prick (or so I infer) and is holding out for a half million dollars.  Until he get's paid, forever a spinster she will be.

All I have to say to this is who ... wha ... I ... just ... you mean ... why ... not ... uh ... er ... WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE?!  This whole story just makes no sense to me.  I cannot possibly fathom why somebody in the USA in 2014 -- a time and place when we have more personal freedoms than any other society at any other point in recorded history -- would abide by these arcane "laws".  That goes for everybody involved -- her, her husband, her friends, her family, her temple.  Everybody.  What is wrong with you?  What are you doing? 

It's like they're all playing a big game of hot lava.  Somebody a thousand years ago declared the ground was on fire, so now they all walk around outside with fireproof stilts and jump from piece of furniture to piece of furniture when they get home.  And if, heaven forbid, somebody looks around, sees all the other people using the ground (without burning up) and decides "I'm gonna start using the ground too" they become a pariah and get ostracized by everybody else in their community.  It probably seems like I'm exaggerating for effect, but I'm really not.  I defy anybody to tell me how the scenario I just laid out is fundamentally different from the one in the article.

The difference, of course, is that we're conditioned to accept religious hooey as something other than, well, hooey.  If people behave irrationally in the name of faith, we as a society give their actions far more credence than they deserve.  And when we don't do this -- when we actually call bullshit bullshit -- there is a significant portion of the population who accuses us of waging a "war on religion" or some other such nonsense. (Remember the "religious freedom" brouhaha over that anti-gay Arizona bill a few weeks?)  If you think you're an aggrieved party of this anti-religious crusade, here's a test: Keep being religious, but stop acting like an idiot.  Then see how many people are still "warring" against you.

I've come to the conclusion that religion is a lot like masturbation: Done privately -- alone or with other consenting adults -- it can be a wonderful, life-changing thing.  Otherwise it's very intrusive to others.  And it can really weird people out.

Religion and jack-off jokes -- I'm getting dangerously close to plagiarizing Bill Maher.  I had better switch topics.

 
Lil's S is doing really well.  A few days ago, I took him to his 18-month checkup, which was tortuous -- two kids had to be triaged ahead of us because they were having asthma episodes,* so we waited two hours to see the doctor -- but ultimate we got some good news.  He's moved up from the 3rd percentile in weight at his last checkup to the 25th percentile.  Directly, this is only good news for S, as I was never worried about his weight.  But indirectly, it's good news for me too.  You know, happy wife, happy life, and whatnot.

We figured out the secret to getting him to gain weight: Meat.  He can devour some cold cuts (particularly salmon) like it's nobody business.  I'm obviously okay with him eating meat, since I meat.  And S has come around on it too.  Her kidatarianism trumps her vegetarianism many times over.  If meat is the only protein our kid will eat regularly, so be it.

He's learning a bunch of new words now, which is cool, and he's also becoming a little hellion, which I have mixed feelings about.  On the one hand, I want him to get into roughhousing and sports and stuff like that because I'm into these things, so we could have something in common.  But his energy level is relentless, and his body is developing faster than his brain, so he's constantly getting himself into precarious positions that he needs help getting out of.  (He doesn't yet understand "no", which adds to the challenge.)  I'm also slightly apprehensive about being the type of dad who pushes him into athletics too much; I want him to be make up his own mind about things.  I wasn't worried about this until I had the following conversation with S a few days ago.

S:  [As she's stopping him trying to climb onto our mantle by standing on the very top of a chair while he's holding a mini basketball]  Ugh ... He is turning into such a little dude.
Me:  Do you think we're socializing him to act this way to some degree?
S: Yes!  Well ... you are.  I'm not.
Me:  How am I doing it?
S: You bought him like ten balls, and now they're all he wants to play with.
Me:  Yeah, but I let him play with whatever he wants.  I don't make him.
S:  You encourage him.
Me:  I encourage him with whatever he chooses to play with.  He just always wants a ball.  It's not my fault. 
S: Babe, you bought him a full sized Wiffle Ball bat before he could even walk!
Me: ... ... You have a point.

And with that, I'm through.

Until next time ...

*"Sucks to your ass-mar".  Can you name the book this quote comes from?

Entry 225: Too Drunk to Blog

Well, not drunk, but hung over.  And even that is a mischaracterization.  I was a bit hung over this morning, but the effects have worn off, except for the tiredness.  I'm really tired.  So the title of this post should be "Too Tired to Blog", but that just sounds stupid.  Plus "Too Drunk to Blog" is a play on the Dead Kennedys song "Too Drunk to Fuck" off their album Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death, which 16-year old me used to rock on the reg.  Here's a jazzy, trippy cover of it by a band called Nouvelle Vague.



All of this is to say that that I'm not posting a longish entry this weekend.  Some old friends came to town Wednesday, just for a few nights, and we went out last night and tied one on like it was 2002.  Now I'm too tired to blog tonight, and I'm leaving town tomorrow morning and will be gone all weekend.  Don't worry.  I'll be back next week with my usual bullshit.

Happy Pi Day.

Until next time ...

Entry 224: Photographs and Memories

Don't worry.  This entry isn't as sentimental as the title might lead you to believe.  The photographs to which I refer will not evoke any feelings of nostalgia.  If you are me, they will evoke feelings of irritation, and if you are you, they will (hopefully) evoke feelings of amusement.  See, from time to time I take pictures of things that annoy me, so that I can share them on this blog (like the picture in this entry of some guy's stuff all over the locker room).  But I've been a bit remiss on this recently, so this is my chance to get all caught up on annoying photos; this is my Irritating Picture Catch-Up Entry (IPCUE, if you're in the biz).

Picture 1: A few months ago I went to park my car on the street nearest to my house.  Roughly 95% of the time I'm able to find a spot.  This time I wasn't and had to park on a neighboring street.  This did not irritate me.  It's the price of non-suburban living.  But then it did irritate me when I saw this jackass.

Perfectly placed between the two signs so that nobody can legally park in front of him* and nobody can legally park behind him.  This person either doesn't realize he's taking up two spots, or he does and just doesn't care.  Which is worse, a narcissist or a sociopath?  To be fair, maybe he's on a really tight budget.  After all, with gas at $3.50 a gallon, pulling forward those extra five feet would've cost nearly a tenth of a cent.

Picture 2:  Since we're on the topic of parking.  Around this same time, I got a parking ticket.  Again this in and of itself is not particularly irritating; it's the price of non-suburban living.  Sometimes you take a chance with a spot that's not 100% legal and sometimes you get popped.  But you shouldn't get popped when you park at a meter and pay the meter and return to your car before it expires.  And yet that is precisely what happened to me.

My car is the silver Prius.  You'll notice a car is parked in front of me.  You'll notice there are two meters.  I paid the back one.  And I had plenty of time remaining when I returned, so you can imagine my surprise when I noticed the meter maid (I'm sure they have a more PC term now, but I want to be as degrading as possible) placing a ticket on my car.  My recollection of our conservation is as follows:

Me: Why are you writing me a ticket?  There's still time on the meter.
Her: You're pulled too far forward.
Me: What?  Too far forward from what?
Her: The meter.
Me: What? I pulled up behind that car, there's plenty of room between us, and I paid the meter.  What did I do wrong?
Her: You should've parked a few feet back.
Me:  What? ... Why?
Her: Sir, you can protest the ticket if you want.
[She starts to walk away.]
Me: [Shouting] THANKS FOR RUINING MY DAY!
Possibly homeless man who just watched this all:  Now, now, I done told that woman not to write that ticket. 'That man paid the meter', I told her.  That ain't right.
Me: I guess I'll have to fight it.
Man: Hahahahaha ... You bes' call your lawyer 'bout this one.

I didn't call my lawyer (in part because I don't have a lawyer), but I did fight it.  And I won.  And by won I mean I wasted an hour of my time writing a letter and compiling evidence (pictures I took of the scene) to protest it.

One thing that isn't relevant to the story at all, but still feels like it bears mentioning for some reason is that the meter maid had a pierced eyebrow.

Picture 3:  Over Thanksgiving I was with the family in South Carolina visiting the in-laws.  One day I went for a run around the neighborhood.  The streets aren't laid out in a grid or anything like that (it's deep suburbia), so to avoid getting turned around, I remember the street names and then run back on the same route I took out.  I did this -- so I thought -- but I still got lost somehow.  It wasn't a big deal; I had my phone with me, so I could just use the map app.  But still, I couldn't figure out how I got lost, as I was pretty sure I had remembered the streets correctly.

Then I saw this, and it all made sense.

  
Or at least it made sense how I took the wrong street.  Why anybody would have Holiday Ct. cross Holiday Rd., however, makes no sense.  Although, to be fair, there are only, what, 100,000 suitable names for streets?

So those are my photographs.  Now I'll tell you about my memory.

Last Saturday I was hit with a really strong sense of -- I don't know what the right term is -- deja vu, let's say.  Just a vague sense of reminiscence with nothing specific.  But as the day went on it started to slowly congeal into an actual memory.  It was a song my dad used to play on his record player -- an obscure, silly novelty song from the '70s called "I am the Tiger".  The title came to me because I remembered telling an older kid about it, and he insisted that I was thinking of "The Eye of the Tiger", but I wasn't.

I tried Googling the song, but I couldn't come up with anything.  Then I remembered a few of the lyrics; it had the word "ding-dong" in it (which I thought was funny as a kid); and it had something to do with a flood.  So I tried Google again, and this time I found it.  It's actually called "I am the Lion", and it's not a novelty song.  It's Neil Diamond.  And it's on the same album as "Cracklin' Rose" (Tap Root Manuscript), so it probably doesn't qualify as obscure either.  It is kinda silly though.  I'll embed it below.



Thinking about this song -- about how in my memory it was something so exotic and mysterious, but in actuality it's a mainstream song by a huge recording artist -- made me wonder if the things I play for Lil' S now are going to seem that way to him someday.  Or has the Internet pretty much killed all the mystery of things now?    

Next I started thinking about Lil' S being my age.  And that set off a full-on existential freakout in my head, where I thought about how I would be dead someday.  And I don't mean I thought about it like how I'm thinking about it now, I mean I thought about it.  About once a year I have this type of existential crisis where I briefly understand the implications my demise will have on me, only to realize that there are no implications because I won't be here.  It's a real mind fuck, and I'm glad it only happens about once a year.

Well, as Roger Ebert once said, "I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state."  That's about as comforting as it gets for nonbelievers like myself.

Until next time ...    

*When I use "him" in a generally sense, I mean him or her and just don't want to write it out every time because it reads weird.

Entry 223: Slipper Woes

Astute readers of this blog might recall that about two months ago I ordered a pair of slippers from Amazon.  I still haven't gotten them.  Well, I have, but it was the wrong order (and three sizes too small), so I returned them.  Then when I went to order a new pair, they were out of my size.  And they were out of my size in the next pair I looked at and the next pair and the next pair.*  I couldn't find a nice pair I liked in my size -- but I wanted a pair of slippers and I wanted to use an Amazon gift card -- so I bought a pair on the cheap that I didn't really like.

They came, and they fit, and they sucked.  Or I should say "they suck", present tense; I still have them.  They actual make the soles of my feet hurt, like I'm walking on something harder than the ground.  I don't know how this is even possible; you'd think at worst they would provide no cushion, but somehow they provide anti-cushion.  I tried to wear thick socks and convince myself they aren't that bad, but it didn't work.  So I decided to get another, better pair.

[The Tamarac International Men's Cody Sheepskin Slipper.  Tell me you wouldn't want to put your dog in that.]

Now, if I was smart, I'd go to a brick and mortar store, actually try some pairs on, and get something I know I like.  But I'm not smart.  Actually, I am.  I just really, really hate shopping.  So I went back to Amazon, found something that looked good (the selection was better this time, probably from not being right after Xmas) and ordered them up.

They came and were too small.  I wanted an 11.5, but they didn't make half sizes, so I had to go 11 or 12.  I was thinking in my head -- Just get the bigger size! -- but then I decided to look through all my shoes (about six pairs) and see if any are 11s or 12s.  In fact, two pairs are 11s, and none are 12s, so I deduced I should get the 11.  It's weird how variable footwear of the same "size" can be.  The slippers I ordered didn't kinda not fit; I could barely put them on.  And they pinched my toes so unbearably, I couldn't even pretend like they fit. 

So I returned them as well.  The company I ordered them from (a quaint-sounding outfitter called Warm Things) asks that you include a letter stating why you're returning an item, so I cranked one out (under S's name, as they were purchased using her account)  that was by no means impolite, but was very, let's say, thorough.  I imagine it made the person on the receiving end think -- Wow, this woman takes her slippers seriously!

The upshot is that they're sending a size 12 soon.  They also wrote an email to S saying that it's the manufacture who doesn't do half sizes (something I complained about in the letter) because the "suede stretches with use".  It also says, "the product description actually does have a recommendation for half sizes to size up" (something else I complained about).  Fair enough.  I should have completely read the product description, although in my defense its kinda buried near the bottom of the page underneath a bunch of other crap.  Plus, the logic doesn't work.  They don't do half sizes because the suede stretches, but then they suggest that you go to the next size up?  How does that make sense? 

Anyway ...

Little guy update: He's doing well.  We finally had a few days of sun here (followed quickly by more snow), so I was able to take him to this new park in the neighborhood that's really cool.  We went once, and he spent most the time pointing at the kids playing basketball saying "ball, ball, ball" (or rather "ba', ba', ba'") the entire time, so the next time we went I brought a little rubber ball, and he couldn't have been more ecstatic.  He barely looked at the big toy and the swings.  He would drop his ball, let it roll away, and then run retrieve.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  All while merrily spewing out a string of half-intelligible syllables.  And occasionally stopping to point at a dog.

[I'm going to start stretching Lil' S in the crib to prepare him for his NFL career.]

The fact that S is so into his ball bodes very well for him being into sports as he gets older, which is good for me.  And I haven't even been pushing him towards it.  I try not to influence his toy selection at all.  He just goes for his ball first.  I do however watch a lot of football with him in the room.  (I DVR'd a bunch of Seahawks games, and now that the season is over, I've been reliving the dream.)  He seems to like it.  

Well, if Lil' S gets into sports, it's going to be game over for S.  It'll be two against one, and one of them will be her own child.  She better hope we someday have a little girl to even things out.  Wait ... that's sexist.  Girls can like sports too.  Let me try again: She better hope we someday have a little gay boy to even things out.  There we go.  Nothing offensive about that.

Until next time ...

*Apparently 11.5 is a popular size, although I could never figure out why there is less of a popular size.  I get more people want them, but then why don't companies make more?  Doesn't basic economics say supply should meet demand?  When I worked at The Sports Authority way back in summer 2000, I stocked shoes, and we'd constantly be running out the popular sizes like 10 and 11 while the we had pallet-fuls of 8s and 13s.  And I would think to myself -- why don't the shoe companies use the materials for the 8s and 13s and make more 10s and 11s?  

It's not just shoes either.  I've really gotten into this type of granola, Michele's Granola.  But the kind I like, Chocolate Cherry, is frequently out of stock while there are bags and bags of Pumpkin Spice and Cinnamon Raisin.  Can't they make more Chocolate Cherry and less of the other stuff that nobody's buying?  Come Michele, it's called optimal allocation of resources.

Entry 222: Valentine After All

So I got a Valentine's Day gift after all.  Apparently I was supposed to get one last week -- S had booked a babysitter (our old nanny) and was going to surprise me -- but the snow put the kibosh on it all.  So she moved it back a week, and we got to go out last night.  Nothing too exciting, just dinner at a conveniently located, mid-scale eatery, but everybody with kids knows how nice it is to do something simple like that (sans children) every once in a while.  We sat near a window, and I looked out and saw all the people bustling about and thought to myself, "Right.  This is why people live in the city."  Sometimes when I'm en route to one of the only three places I go regularly -- home, work, daycare -- I question why we didn't just go the cheaper / easier route and move to the suburbs.  So it's nice to actually go out and be reminded of what D.C. proper has to offer.

[The Columbia Heights neighborhood in Washington D.C., across the street from where we ate.]

One thing D.C. doesn't have is a nice aquarium, so for President's Day (thank you for your service, Franklin Pierce) we went up to Baltimore and took Lil' S to the National Aquarium.  It was awesome (though expensive: 35$ per adult plus 25$ for parking!).  It's a great place to take a 1.5-year old.  It's much better than the zoo right now (which is unfortunate as the zoo is free and ten minutes from our house), because it's more interactive and more colorful.  Lil' S could get right up to the tanks and point to all the "cockies".  Cockie, by the way, is his generic word for all nonhuman lifeforms; it stems from his mispronunciation of the word "doggie".

[The eponymous Franklin Pierce.  (I grew up in Pierce County, Washington.)]

Lil' S somehow lost a shoe on the way from the car to the aquarium, so he ran around in his socks.  It's pretty much carpeted everywhere, so it wasn't a big deal, but it did make me think about some of the admirable qualities little kids have.  There are few things more blowhard-y than saying things like "my child teaches me more than I could ever teach him" or "my child is my hero" or some other such tripe, so I'll try to avoid steering into that territory.  But there are some things really young kids do that I wish more adults (like myself) did.  One, they don't give a shit.  Lil' S just ran around in his socks at the aquarium, because he wanted to run around, and he didn't have any shoes; he didn't care that that's unusual.

Two, they'll keep trying something (and look foolish doing so) until they figure it out.  Watch any toddler go down the stairs, and you'll see what I mean.  They all have their own style -- Lil' S hugs the wall, sits down, slides down a single step on his butt, stands back up, and repeats -- that they crafted through trial and error, mostly the latter.  As adults, we're so hesitant to get into something new because we don't want to fail at first (either we lack patience or we're afraid of looking stupid), but that's the only way to learn.  The saying shouldn't be, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks"; it should be, "Old dogs are way too self-conscious to learn new tricks." 

Three, little kids aren't racist.  Charles Barkley once said -- and I'm paraphrasing -- "You can tell racism isn't a natural thing by watching kids.  You know what happens when you put a black kid and a white kid together?  They play."  Well said, Sir Charles.  Well said, indeed.  My favorite personal story on the matter is that once when S and I went to visit some friends about five years ago, their son, about five years old at the time, thought S and I we're brother and sister.  To anybody who knows S and I (and has seen our respective skin colors) this is absurdly funny.

[That's one fucked-up looking fish.]

Anyway, one thing that I saw a lot of at the aquarium is people taking tons of pictures of the aquatic life, not of people and creatures, just creatures.  A surprising number of people were even recording them.  I found this really weird and annoying.  Weird because -- When would you ever want to look at those pictures or watch the video?  I can understand one or two snapshots of an interesting looking critter, but a whole slide show or video of them?  They have these things called "The Discovery Channel" and "The Internet" that can easily satiate even the most rapacious marine-life-viewing appetite.  And the quality of the picture will be much better than anything you could do with your iPhone through thick glass.

The annoying part is that people taking pictures or recording take up prime, front-of-the-tank real estate and block others' views for much longer than the average non-picture-taking person.  There was one (very large) woman in particular who was standing dead-center in front of a smallish tank snapping pic after pic while a bunch of little kids (Lil' S included) were trying to squeeze around her.  It's like, come on lady, it's crowded in here today, take a gander, say to yourself "Wow!  That's one fucked-up looking fish," and move along, like all the courteous people in the building.  If you're really that interested in alligator gars, take a note of what they're called, and do a Google search when you're at home and not obstructing the views of a bunch of kids.

Anyway, apropos of nothing, this YouTube clip is pretty hilarious, if you are familiar with the comedic stylings of Louis CK.  Spot on.



Alright, I gotta wrap this up soon.  My wife and kid should be back any minute.  They just went to the fabric store.  S has taken up sewing, which is really cool.  For one thing, I've been trying to get her to pick up a hobby basically since we met.  If you (like me) have a bunch of hobbies then it's good if your spouse does as well; otherwise they bother you while you're trying to do your hobbies and then don't understand why you're not ready to hang out with them at the exact moment they want to hang out.

For another thing, sewing is a useful skill.  I joked with S that she was going to be on Project Runway in a few years, and her response was, "No.  I don't want to design a bunch of new styles or anything like that.  I just want to learn how to make everyday things I can wear and hem my own clothes so I don't have to pay for it."

"So you need a show called Project Seamstress," I said.

"Yeah."

Very practical.  I like it.

Until next time ...