The DTs are now the LDs*

I have a potentially tragic announcement. Are you ready? Have you braced yourselves?

I'll be camping in the wilds of Minnesota** all next week. Starting today, in fact. That's right, folks-- I'll be going without The Internet for a whole week for the first time in a very long time. Needless to say, in using this blog as my primary writing practice tool, I have amped up my time spent online to an unhealthy degree, so this crash will likely hit me hard.

But I'm sure it's for the best-- it must be for the best, because otherwise I will have been tortured for nothing. Then I'd have to rival Mr. Charlton Heston (R.I.P.) in my tantrum-ry by falling to the ground, cursing the cruel world, and telling whoever is kind enough to help to get their filthy hands off me. Then I'd likely sail right over the top by demanding they let my kbps go and screaming something unintelligible about Soylent Green.

Anyway, what you have to look forward to in my absence are a few short posts set to appear on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and possibly two post-free days after that, while I try to get my act back together. I'll probably have to skip replying to your comments for this coming week, unfortunately, but I did finally post replies to the past few posts yesterday-- check them out if you're so inclined (or bored waiting for a new post to appear).

I fear opening my blog feed reader after a week away. My deepest apologies if I seem to have forgotten any of you for awhile-- I'll be catching up as best I can whenever I can!


* In case this title makes no sense, because it's late right now, LD of course equals LiteralDan, and DT equals Oscar gold!

** Also known as "Minnestoa" to typing fingers everywhere.

From appetizers to entrees

Just in case anyone is ever so rude as to tell you to eat/suck/chew a wee-wee, or better yet, whenever you need to tell someone to do so, thanks to me and the Chicago Tribune, you'll know where you or they need to go to do so:

Kevin Pang Visits a Beijing Penis Restaurant

Am I the only one who thinks Penis Restaurant would be a great name for a band? Or a celebrity baby?

A conversation with D-: Rock the anti-'Bamas

Here's a conversation with my 4-year-old son D- from a couple weeks ago, when I had already posted several conversations. It seems he is rapidly increasing his loyalty and dedication to the Democratic candidate for president:

J-: Apparently, Wal-Mart is threatening its managers not to vote for Obama.

Me: That would be some dangerous ground, in most democracies...

D- (adopting his gravelly Action Hero voice): We can go fight those guys with swords and rocks!!

Me (taken aback): Whoa!

D- (now getting in my face, for effect): When we grow up*, we can fight all those guys who won't let Obama do... what... he wants to do!

Me: Oooookay, settle down there.

While I'm certainly angry about the questionable state of our democracy as giant corporations so boldly stride forth in their efforts to squash the rights, needs, and interests of the people (who are of course their customers as well as employees and executives), I don't think Obama is going to swing in there and fix it all himself. Plus, that kind of support is just a wee bit too militant for me.

But I can't wait to see to what level my 18-month-old daughter M- takes her support next-- these two are nothing if not competitive.


* Note that even at only four, he's picked up on the fact that I have yet to grow up.

In two places at once

That's right, I'm both here and there, guest posting today at Heavy on the Caffeine about toilet training and spousal communication. The author of that blog, Christy, has been a loyal reader for most of the time I've been blogging, so providing a guest post is certainly the least I could do to help her enjoy a well-earned vacation this week.

As a bit of a teaser, I promise you that the three people involved in the post come out seeming either stupid or undignified, so you know you'll have a good time laughing at us.

What are you doing still reading here? Go over there now!*


* Please make sure you do come back, at least occasionally, because you know my world would crumble without the praise and attention of at least one little group of people who aren't forced to put up with me, right? Okay, now you tell me, "Buck up, Sport," and reassure me you'll always be back... aaaaand Action!

In Search of Lost Limbs*

Excuse me while I cut with a knife the suspense in the air caused by Friday's post. Anyone care for a slice? No? More for me, then. I'll just move on to today's post:

---

By the time I got back to the party from my distant parking spot, the kids were already in the thick of a tangled mass of bouncing toddler bodies. Note that I didn't mind the walk at all, since I'm always compulsively looking for chances to get steps, but I was eager to see what wonders this party would hold. The first thing I saw upon walking in, even before confirming my children weren't being trampled to death in a Bouncy House**, was a giant, two-story inflatable slide.

I felt drawn to this magnificent mountain in a way that only those who allow destiny to take firm control of their rudder would recognize. I knew something special had been foretold to happen here, and I must not let something as simple as a ceremony commemorating three years since a child's birth interfere with Lady Fortune having her way with me.

I went through the usual pleasantries and dropped our present off with the others, but my eye, and my heart, was always on this monument of mirth. Once I was informed that adults were welcome to enter the bouncy castle, I mourned my self-imposed restriction from bouncing around in it like a carefree child, knowing I would end up breaking some kid's face, but at the same time my mind's eye*** turned happily back to The Slide. I called D- over and casually asked him if he had tried the slide yet. All I had to do next was reel that sucker in right out of his shallow pool and sail over slidewards.

Sometimes you just gotta sacrifice your own fun for the sake of your kids', you know?

I suppressed my smile down to "oh, aren't kids cute when they're excited about silly little trifles" level and giddily scaled the slide's bouncy built-in staircase. We got to the top, counted to three, and took off down The Widowmaker. To complete my dalliance in the realm of childhood traditions, I immediately donated half my elbow skin to the waxed vinyl Valhalla that is Pump It Up.

With my many years of practice, I was able to play it cool, but man, the gaping hole that used to be my elbow still stings a bit, over four days later. I'm thinking of contacting the Museum of Science and Industry to find out if they're interested in putting me on display**** to give small children the opportunity to see what the inside of a real, live human elbow looks like.

Despite the pain, I went down that slide with D- and a very happy M- many more times, but you'd better believe I was keeping a close watch on all exposed skin. D-, of course, paid little attention to my warnings and left with his flesh unmolested sheerly by the favor of the fickle gods of epidermal abuse. Less forgivable was my wife J- getting her own tiny burn on her only trip down about 40 minutes later-- I guess I was too stoic to make her believe that slide really was hungry in a way that only human-meat can satisfy.

I can't help but wonder if this place has a surreptitious profit center in harvesting small patches of skin and selling them to burn units all over the world, but that's unimportant compared to the discomfort I felt later that day in trying to use an armrest for its named purpose.

And so we arrive back at the promised reason I didn't post on Thursday-- I accept no substitutes in any area of life^, and if I couldn't sit here in my chair resting each and every one of my limbs completely while desperately continuing my as-yet-fruitless chase of something worthwhile to write about, then I wasn't going to come here and try to do it like some kind of pathetic three-legged table. You deserve better.

Fin

---

Epilogue: For additional and expanded excuses, I offer the following appendix:

· I am a creature of habit, and none of those habits has ever included nursing the stump of an elbow. Especially not with about 100 pounds of pressure against the business end of a fuzzy chair.

· By the time we drove home after a couple hours of bouncing and then pizza, cake, and presents, it was after noon, and we were all exhausted from our unnaturally early foray into civilization. We tried to nap (some of us more effectively than others, unfortunately) for a few hours after that, and by then, any hopes for recovering to my usual schedule were in vain.

· I am very lazy. This must be exceedingly apparent to even the most casual of readers. I consider it a disability, and thus it would be rude for anyone to point it out or even fault me for it.

---

* Or, Remembrance of Skin Peeled

** My brothers and I always called these things Moonwalks as kids, probably because that was the brand name of the one they used at our grade school's fun fair, but most people I've meant seem to call them Bouncy Castles or Bouncy Houses. I was there was a universal generic term to use, because somehow "inflatable structure" doesn't have the right ring to it. Precision with utility in language is just the kind of thing I wish for in life, ranking right there before World Peace.

*** Picture the unblinking, all-seeing eye floating above the Dark Tower in The Lord of the Rings.

**** In case anyone there is reading this-- it would be a limited display, no doubt, but likely the only one of its kind. I'd like someone to get something useful out of my suffering, since my family seemed to learn nothing from my example. You could pay me in amusing trinkets from the gift shop and delicious fried foods from the cafeteria.

^ With the only exceptions being whenever I want to.

The Unbearable Weightiness of Morning

In case the 80 of you are wondering why I didn't post yesterday, my Spongebob Band-Aid and I will tell you.

Wait, time out, let me kill the dramatic suspense and skip to the end-- I'm lazy and disorganized. But if you want to hear about the seed of a reason that I would give if pressed for an acceptable excuse instead of being fired from my own blog, continue reading.

Due to my wife's and my lack of practiced social skills and outgoing...ness, combined with our somewhat nomadic lifestyle during the past four years, our kids haven't gotten a chance to go to many* birthday parties. But yesterday, we had an honest-to-goodness party to attend, though given that we had to show up by 9:15am at the latest at a place on the Near North Side of Chicago where we'd never been, this event was most definitely playing against our strengths.

For those who don't live in a densely-populated metropolitan area like Chicago, or who don't have any children, or who are even remotely competent or organized, you may find the fact that this place being 12 miles away meant we had to set our alarms for 7 o'clock in the morning quite surprising. On the flip side of that coin, those of you who are morning people by choice or chance, such as having children who are in bed by 7 and up at 6 every day, may want to slap me. All I can say is our lifestyle and body clocks are what they are, and 7am is as early for me now that I get up at 8 as it was when I was getting up at noon in college. I am nothing if not hardcore, and this part of me will never die.

So we were staring down the barrel of 9am, though not for the first time, and I knew we had to be ready for this or it would never happen. To grind the story to a halt once again out of a compulsion to clarify something not suited for a footnote**, I had finally gotten into something of a rhythm of doing this parenting thing by this spring, just in time for J- to get out of work for the summer, and the combination of both of us being around to take turns on things and generally hang out a lot (to make up for all the lost time during the school year of 12-hour days) has almost totally killed my progress.*** Hence I had a not-so-well oiled machine to rely on for getting us out the door in the morning.

To combat this, I planned ahead the night before and picked out clothes for all four of us and laid them out in the hallway, I shaved... I even oiled the three-story firefighter pole I installed next to our back stairs.**** Even farther in advance, I had printed out the invitation we needed to show the people at the door of this place, along with a release voucher (there are few better indicators of good times to be had), and the directions to get there. The following is a schedule of how our morning actually played out. Keep in mind that this is considered a startling success for us:

7:00 - We are all sleeping soundly in our bedroom. (The heat has gotten too much in the past few days for even the kids' miracle window fan to overcome, so they are on the floor of our room to share our conditioned air.)
7:20 - J-'s alarm, somehow set for 7:20 instead of 7, goes off.
7:40 - J- actually wakes up, then wakes me up, and goes off to put waffles in the toaster and then shower.
7:41 - M- wakes up smiling and happy as usual.
7:41-7:50 - I lay there willing M- to spontaneously learn how to get out of her own bed, dress herself and her brother, and make breakfast.
7:50 - I finally lift her out of bed and set her on the floor, hoping she can finish waking up her brother in a way that will leave him not cranky.
7:50 - She immediately does as subconsciously ordered, by marching around the room pointing at D- shouting "D- sleepin'! D- sleepin'!!" before sitting on his pillow calling his name.
7:51 - I blink hard and then leap out of bed much like a pearl diver heading down for an especially deep patch of oysters.
7:52-8:10 - A blur of waffles, clothes, and whatever else makes time pass by faster than I think it does.
8:11-8:20 - ???
8:21-8:30 - Getting out the door-- normally a 45-second process, at the most, for a single person.
8:31-8:55 - Crawling steadily despite stop signs and other obstacles even in extremely light rush hour traffic, hoping some miracle would allow us to get there at 9 as suggested on the invitation.
8:56-9:00 - Hoping the GPS was horribly miscalculating its frighteningly accurate arrival estimate.
9:01-9:14 - Beating my head against the steering wheel and considering initiating a high-speed chase just to assure myself of a clear path and the ability to ignore all those sadistically timed traffic lights and (let the incredulity drip from your tongue as you read this) stop signs Chicago likes to put on major thoroughfares.
9:15 - Putting on a happy face to spite the Gods of City Driving, then dropping off J- and the kids to begin experiencing the super-awesome fun zone.
9:16-9:18 - Hoping my tired eyes would unswell-shut as I walked the couple of blocks from my parking space.

I know by now you must be dying to hear from me and Mr. Squarepants about the wild party itself, but you'll have to wait till Monday to hear more. Or, if you are reading this in The Future (dun, dun, dunnnnn!), you can just skip to the next post.


* "Many" being defined as more than one non-family party between them in their lives.

** Regular readers may be equally shocked to find that I have standards for footnotes, and that I would pass up an opportunity to include one. Well, all I can say is, check me out-- I managed after all, didn't I?

*** I've learned from this collapse, though, and I'll post about it next week.

**** See, J-, when I put it in there with all the true stuff, doesn't it sound not only plausible, but a good, safe idea???

Upsize yourself! Nobody likes a quitter

Did you ever find yourself fantasizing about throwing together a junta and overthrowing your bosses if they ever tried to fire you?

Well, prepare to meet your idols, living the dream:

Mauritania army stages coup

To boil down the story to its essential elements:

The coup in Africa's newest oil producer took place after the president and prime minister fired the country's top four military officials. ... A brief announcement read over state television Wednesday said the new "state council" will be led by ... one of the four generals [fired] earlier in the day. The statement also restored the jobs of the other three generals.

Take that, The Man!

10 ways work differs from home

After spending last week working outside my home for the first time in over a year (I most recently spent many months working from home before leaving that job last November), it's only natural that I was bombarded with observations on the differences from my now-typical work week.

Here's a quick list of 10 differences between being paid to work in an office and being unpaid to stay at home with small children:

1. Generally speaking, you must wear shoes the entire day.

2. Unless you happen to be The Boss, you are officially not considered the wisest and most experienced person on the premises.*

3. It's pretty quiet, to the point that you have to repeatedly disabuse yourself of the notion that everyone around you must be up to something truly naughty.

4. Unless you work at the Matchbox Car Testing Facility, you don't get to play with toy cars all afternoon.

5. When people start getting fussy, you can't make them lay down and take a nap.

6. Unless you work as some kind of nurse, you can go eight whole hours without having to help anyone vacate their bladder or bowels, and you don't even have to be ready to clean up if they have trouble trying to do it all by themselves.

7. You can swear, at least once in awhile.

8. You get to eat all of your own food. Not only that, but you can do so without feeling like just maybe you need to be planning a method to dispose of the corpse of what will appear to an outsider to be an emaciated street urchin.

9. The kids might actually be interested in seeing pictures of your co-workers.

10. Unless you really, really need to start checking out the classifieds in earnest, whenever anyone hits you in the balls, they will apologize without any prompting at all.


* Parents of teenagers may have resigned themselves to a conflict of opinions on this particular issue.

A conversation amongst all of us: St. Noodle

The following four-way conversation took place one day while J- was feeding M-, D- was milling about after lunch, and I was in the next room typing up some blog posts for the week I spent working.

J- (to M-, continuing some murmured back-and-forth they'd been having): Tell Daddy!

M- (barely intelligible through a mouthful): Ahluvoodoo!*

Me: I love you, too!

J- (in a teacher's gentle correcting voice): She said, "I love noodles."

Me: Oh.

D- (announcing reassuringly while approaching from the dining room): I love noodles, too, Dad.

Me: Okay... good to know.

It's touching moments like these that really make the whole parenting shebang feel worthwhile, you know?


* If you think she may actually be pulling the wool over both of our eyes (pun intended, in my case) and actually professing her love for voodoo, you're probably right. The other day she was hugging her teddy bear and I swear it was getting hard to breathe. This baby will be a Black Magic Woman if I ever met one.

A conversation with D-: Party every day

Here's a little conversation I had with my 4-year-old son D-, wherein he spontaneously recalled a summer picnic thrown two years ago by the company I used to work for:

D-: Remember at [old company's name] there was a party, and there was a stick, and a bag* of candy that you could hit with the stick, and all the candy would come out?

Me: Yeah.

D-: We should go back there and hit that bag of candy with the stick, so we can eat some more of that candy.

Me: I don't think it's still there, bud-- that was a long time ago. Plus, that's a long way away**, back in Maine. Remember how long it took us to drive out here to Illinois?

D-: Yeah. But we should go there.


* This word was apparently selected for lack of a better one-- though they certainly don't have many Mexicans in Northern Maine outside of broccoli harvesting season, it was indeed a genuine piñata.

** It's also a long way away in the sense that the company as we knew it no longer exists, thanks to the people put in charge by the corporation that bought it.