Classic quotes, Vol. 47

Here's a a slice of the backlog of quotes from my 6-year-old daughter M-, 2-year-old son E-, and wife J- during the past month or so:

M- (shouting louder than E-, who was quietly playing a game while J- and I were in bed): No, that's too loud!!

J- (while pregnant, doubling down on a self-deprecating remark I'd batted away): It's kind of like I'm fat... I'm fat with baby.

E- (really working hard to sell a biological impossibility): My 'gina hurts!

M- (using Important Proclamation voice): I don't think I told you, Mom... but I named my pillows. ...Cushy, and Cushion.

J- (looking at a beach picture online): You know, I know European people are all proud of their bodies and everything, but... some people need a little more shame in their lives.

E- (when asked 'what he'll want to eat for lunch later'): No!

Pony Express Posts: Belated Announcement

Well, I suppose there's no point continuing to wait for a substantial, creative manner of announcement to float down from the heavens on a golden harp-shaped hovercraft, now that it's been a couple months.

My procrastination has been holding up a backlog of what's been passing for content here the past couple years (since we bought the house), as a lot of what I've thought of saying the past 6 months or so was in some way tied to this news... news which I had been trying not to just throw out there unceremoniously, much in the way I'm about to do right now:

We had yet another baby last month.  

See? That's her right up there, as proof. The second coming of M-, hereby to be known as A-. So we've completed our set of two boys and two girls.*

Yes, that's right, according to most people's reactions, as well as a quick flip through a generation's worth of census data, we are now the modern equivalent of that 8-kid family** people used to marvel at during the Baby Boom and Generation X's heyday.

Do we feel more complete now, you wonder? Have we started getting a human amount of sleep yet? Have we worked out some kind of daily routine now that school has started for J- and the kids? Have we any hope of shaking off the influence of our hypnotizing alien captors soon? Take a glance at the posting history here and then pencil in your guesses before I stop by with the answer key as soon as I can.

In the meantime, with this official notice out here, I should be able to at least get back to posting more lists of tidbits and such a few times a month, with more promises of actual paragraphs and thoughts and time and craft someday, once again.

It's the thought that counts, right?

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* This means I'll have to update the banner again, so soon*** after the last time.

** All I can say is those people are lucky they were able to delude themselves into thinking that small children wedged tightly enough across the bench seat of a station wagon would provide their own restraint in case of a high-speed accident. Otherwise, the country would either be a fraction of its present size today, or it would have been swarmed throughout the '60s with extended vans, RVs, and "Parental Sanity trailers" featuring a half-dozen kids suspended along the walls with heavy-duty straps.

*** Obviously a relative term, given that some of the pictures were several years out of date when I replaced them a couple months ago...

Classic quotes, Vol. 28

It's been a surprisingly long time, but at long last, here are some quotes I've collected in the past few months from my 4-year-old daughter M-, 6-year-old son D-, 2-month-old son E-, and wife J-:

M- (calling down from upstairs while supposedly getting ready for bed, in an overly dramatic announcer's voice): I have a feeling! [...] I have a feeling... of monsters?

D- (matter-of-factly to M-, as she returned from informing me that she's "pretty sure [she] heard a mouse", because she "heard footsteps somewhere but they weren't Mom's"): So, what did he say about all this mouse business?

M- (sassily, when called out for playing in her room instead of cleaning): I was folding a shirt. ...Is that called 'playing'?

J- (reluctantly, referring to her then-overly-pregnant state): Alright... while I'm dressed and looking relatively decent, you should probably take my picture.

M- (in the tattletale voice): D- is pretending to haaaaaaarm meeee!

E- (while smiling): Ah gugrggggg!*

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* Trust me, this is much, much cuter in person.

The ultimate stocking stuffer

Look what I found in my stocking this year:
A two-day-old baby? It's another Festivus miracle!

Editor's Note: He's very tiny.

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Alright, fine, I can provide more information... we'll call him E-; he was born 6lbs, 5oz, and 19in long. Here we go again!

Things that amuse me, Vol. 6

Given the amount of time that passes between posts, and the relative shallowness of those posts over the past year or more, you'd think I'd have more items for this list, but let's pretend I've spent weeks culling these priceless gems from a much more expansive list of nearly-as-high-quality material:

1.While trying to work my legs through some soreness one day, I tried to remember what over-the-top physical activity I'd engaged in the previous day that would have caused such a hearty ache, and then I remembered the sudden, severe, prolonged, multi-muscle leg cramps that assaulted me while sitting too long at the computer armed only with salty snacks and an empty water glass.*

2. Halloween is the opening "fuck you" from the universe to people really seriously beginning to think again about maybe starting to build mildly more healthy habits during the last quarter of the year.

3. You'd think that time served in pregnancy would enlighten women as to the daily struggles of men with freakishly large pot bellies, who aren't blessed with the comforting knowledge that without any planning or effort on their part, that belly will quickly and easily evacuate itself in under a year. Who ties their shoes, gives up seats, or just smiles warmly as they reach for a second family-sized ice cream sundae "for the baby"?

4. Not unlike heroin on a street corner, bacon and cinnamon roll samples at Costco sell themselves.

5. For good reason, people who know what they're doing when remodeling houses make firm plans and schedules (and order all materials) in advance of beginning the project. Actually, this isn't so much an "Amusing Thing" as a "Deep, Deep Regret and Bit of Hard-Earned Understanding".

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* Technically, cramps exceeding 10 seconds count as physical activity.

Parenting 101: I am a wonderful parent

You know what the best part of being a parent is? Knowing that one day, you'll be able to take your lovely, perfect grandchildren to your house for a sleepover.

Okay... have my parents stopped reading yet? Is the coast clear?

Actually, the best part of being a parent is being able to have a day here and there when your parents take your children away and you don't have to deal with them and all their high maintenance for one whole day and night. They don't really tell you this when they discharge you from the hospital, but babies are a lot of work. For like 20 years.

The nurses and such at the hospital are all "Ohh, what a special little miracle! He/she/it is so darling... (choking up) so special!" ...yadda, yadda, yadda. What they're thinking is, "Good god, babies may be cute (given a few days to unsmash their faces and everything), but am I glad my kids are old enough to be yelled at to leave me alone while I go take a nap. I'm gonna sleep good tonight! These poor bastards obviously have no idea what they're in for, or they wouldn't be smiling like that. That woman is pretty lucky, though, cause the dad sure looks like an exceptionally intelligent, handsome, and unbelievably witty individual."*

I assure you, though, if you don't already know, there's absolutely no sarcasm or even realism employed out loud in the baby-having section of the hospital. It's all sunshine and rainbows and (shudder) straightforward positivity.

So anyway, here's a disclaimer: I love my kids, they crack me up, they're so special and smart and amazing and stuff, and like all parents, I can't wait to see them grow up to appreciate and worship me... That being said, man did I sleep good last night. Heck, I may even go back to sleep right now. This is the life.


* Your experience may or may not match this, which was undoubtedly my personal experience.

A somber realization

This is an announcement that is quite depressing to make, but I have decided that I may be barren.

That's right, you now know my secret that the womb that is my face may never know the pleasures and pain of carrying a bouncing, fluffy beard-baby to term.

Oh sure, I can grow plenty of facial hair-- too much, if anything, as I have for more than half my life now. However, even granted my reliably morbid curiosity, I don't ever want to see the child that would correspond to my sad attempts at beard growth in the metaphor I've begun here-- it would be horrifying. I've never seen anyone with an attempted beard close to mine, so I can't help you out here with a comparison.

What I can tell you is that my beard (it makes me sad inside to even call it that... let's just call it Barry, the aborted beard) is a map to the unfortunate yang to the yin that is the essence of my existence, and I choose not to wear such a thing on my face.

Barry is totally unreliable and not in touch with himself, specifically where the mustache is supposed to meet the cheek hair, which means Barry manages a feat that might be considered impressive in an alternate universe-- he is simultaneously a mustacheless beard and a beardless mustache. This lack of unity despite proximity is reminiscent of the Sunni-Shi'a split, the East-West Catholic Schism, and the Backstreet Boys-N'Sync rivalry, in which there were two groups so undeniably similar in origins and style that there's no logical reason they shouldn't have just worked through their differences and merged (or re-merged) into a single, more powerful entity long ago.

Furthermore, Barry always makes a bold, admirable, and encouraging start in his area of interest, then gets bored or otherwise procrastinates on seeing it through, and he ends up with nothing tangible to show for his efforts other than dated declarations of a promising future, and no alternate ideas on what to do with himself. Picture a bunch of anthropomorphic beard hairs laying on a cheek, bemoaning their inability to accomplish anything, just waiting for the fated arrival of The Razor.

Perhaps if those stuck-up mustache hairs would just grow out long enough to hang down over the gaps at their east and west borders, they could really pull the whole thing together. Selfish bastards.

For those who like hard data, I would summarize Barry's traditional trajectory in the following graph:


For those of you confused by the decrease in length after the initial burst, that marks the point where Barry gets frustrated with his lack of continued progress of any kind, and he miraculously manages to actually regress, against all medical explanation.

If you doubt this phenomenon, let me refer you back to the graph above, which, like all graphs, represents irrefutable scientific proof of whatever its maker says it does. Think of our political pollsters, compromised global warming scientists, or my more well-known Beard Scientologists, such as Stephen Jay Gould.

I believe I'm entitled to the highs and lows so many others around me have experienced, and to this end, I've often thought of adopting. Of course, the time and expense involved in staying above board and going through the proper channels to be legally matched with a happy, healthy beard of one's choosing is pretty intimidating, and we all know I'm easily intimidated by a long-term challenge. There's always the black market. I've spent my share of time cruising wig shops, street-corner beard salesmen, and even costume aisles in department stores around October, but it's just never felt right.

Perhaps this unfortunately expensive artist's rendering I commissioned of me and an adorable new beard shows why we may all be better off with my permanent five o'clock shadow:

Ahh... c'est la vie. Or should I say, c'est la barbe.

Shovel 16 sidewalks and whaddya get?

I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, so I've always been more than familiar with snow, and I even made a fair amount of money in those years shoveling driveways, but I wouldn't say I became obsessed until after I was married and living in Northern Maine. (Refer to the picture above for an idea of what Northern Maine looks like much of the year-- that's my good old Dodge Spirit [RIP] under there.)

Once, when she was very pregnant with D-, J- slipped on a chronically icy stair, injuring her tailbone and causing an odd muscle tightness in her abdomen (which is bad). After suggesting once again to our landlord that he should fix the leaky gutter over the stairs, I began religiously clearing every speck of snow and ice everywhere on the property, at all hours of the day and night. I just fell into a routine, which was aided by the fact that it snows 8 months of the year in Maine. It didn't hurt that this was pretty much my only regular exercise at the time, so I allowed my OCD demons to firmly take hold, and now I just about cannot stop myself whenever I have access to a shovel and uncleared snow.

Though there are worse obsessions, I still don't wish this one on D-, but I feel it may be inevitable, as he already can't even stop at shoveling the sidewalk and my parents' deck. He frequently takes to clearing as much of the yard as he can before being convinced to take a break, and even then you can catch him all but twitching to get ahold of the shovel once again.

Unfortunately, most of the shoveling at our house involves the three flights of stairs up to our back door, so I can't put him to work too much here. It really is a loss-- you'd be surprised by how effective he is at his age!

Frosty's premies

A pair of these noble warriors stood guard at my parents' house until recently, when they finally met their match in a bout of slightly mild weather. But until then, they amused me each time I saw them (in amounts far exceeding their stature), due to the fact that they were as unaware of the uniqueness of their size as was their creator.

Despite the fact that we used to live in Northern Maine, D- doesn't have much experience with making snowmen, because when he was much younger, he hated wind in all its forms, and when he got older, he was more interested in throwing snowballs and stomping snow. He could stomp snow for hours, likely driven by a budding obsessive-compulsive disorder that is not yet powerful enough to drive him to tear down a ridiculously-proportioned snowman like this shortly after starting it. God bless him for that.

I'll admit that I can't remember even starting to make more than maybe two snowmen in my life, which I know may seem to some a tragedy. I just found the idea of snowmen boring as a kid, versus forts and snowballs. However, a parent's boredom doesn't matter much for activities with children, because many, many of those activities are mind-numbingly boring and/or exceedingly annoying. Mostly it's the repetition, I suppose, but then that's the only way kids learn. Sigh...

Anyway, I'm sure this plays a big role in his inexperience, but I'd be more than willing to help him make one if he wanted. I wasn't there the day he made these particular snowmen with my sister, but she found them as funny as I did. She was able to stoically refrain from laughing too hard while overseeing D- due to her ongoing training as an early childhood education major in college.

I honestly think that if I suggested making a snowman any bigger than these, though, we might get as far as constructing the regulation-sized base before D- would request permission to get a snow shovel so he could get back to clearing all snow from every horizontal surface to which he is allowed access. He presumably developed his slavish devotion to snow removal from watching me head outside each time a flake hits the ground, driven by a force I only slightly understand, but it may just be a coincidence... I'll post my thoughts about this tomorrow.

To offer a little perspective on just how tiny these things are, here's a picture with D- for reference:
I think we'll be making these guys and their baby-carrot noses into a family tradition.