Big Daddy Paul

I have a new blog!

2009-10-11T15:44:00.000-07:00

Check it out, its quite nice. Bigdaddypaul.com I won't be updating this blog anymore, so switch over your bookmarks, subscriptions, readers etc. See you there!

What Did Caveboys Do?

2009-10-08T17:44:00.001-07:00

Malcolm is playing with his friend Jack. They are playing some sort of good guy/bad guy, with me alternating between bad guy and badder guy. They each have a arsenal of weapons, ranging from double light sabers to machine guns to the ubiquitous, "I have all the powers." I have it on good authority that Malcolm has never seen a machine gun, yet he knows how to hold it and what it sounds like. He has never seen Star Wars, yet his light saber of fast and strong, and he makes the wam wam sound that appears in the movie.

Certainly, Jack has helped Malcolm along in his weapon education, but Malcolm has been all to receptive. I fully believe that love of guns is hardwired into a boy's brain. This is based on my empirical study that A) all boys pick up inanimate objects and use them as weapons, and B) girls do not. Don't get me wrong, some boys move past this and start reading books (I never did) and some girls learn to kick a little ass. At this point in their development though, boys love weapons. Give a boy a stick, and he will show you the myriad of ways he can use it to remove your brain from your skull.

I wonder what little cave boys did to entertain themselves. Sure they had sticks, but what did they pretend the sticks were when they were bludgeoning their friends? Is it possible that kids have been using light sabers for the entire history of humanity, and George Lucas just ripped off the idea from all us mean boys? Or, did kids pretend that little sticks were actually really big sticks? Did cave boys not need imaginations because they were actually killing animals with sticks? I have the feeling that if Malcolm actually killed an animal with one of his weapons, he would go crying to his room and never come out. Luckily we will never find out.

Malcolm's Bath

2009-10-07T15:21:00.001-07:00

I am not one for bathing. When I shower (once a week, whether I need it or not!) I quickly identify all areas that have been soiled and quickly give them a how do you do. It usually takes 5 minutes, and I am ready to go. I rarely, if ever, have time to use my imagination in the tub, and when I do, it usually revolves around having my twig and berries cleaned by supermodels.

Malcolm, on the other hand, exhausts his imaginative capabilities while in the tub. His baths are usually an hour long and are totally devoid of any scrubbing at all. He has a whole repertoire, and will absolutely not get out of the tub until he is completely done going through his various tasks.

The first thing that he likes to do is play with his sea animals. Somewhere along the way, he got a whole bunch of ocean dwelling foam animals that stick to the side of the tub. They have no discernible names, Malcolm has opted to refer each of them by their scientific classification. By far, his favorite is shark, who ruthlessly attacks the other animals and, when not actually consuming them, requires that they perform menial tasks. Once, shark made octopus drive him all around town and then cook him dinner. Little did octopus know that once dinner was finished, shark ate four of octopus's legs. Shark is kind of a prick, he chases around jellyfish, screams at whale, and has eaten lobster more times than I can count. Shark is a lot like Gordon Ramsey. Or Hillary Clinton.

After Shark is done, Malcolm starts with the Pirates. He has a Backyardigans pirate ship and the ship sails around the tub obeying all traffic laws. They don't actually do much pirating, as they spend a lot of their time running away from shark. Whenever they get too scared, they go below deck to hide. Occasionally, the pirates leave the ship to do some exploring, but these escapades usually end up with someone crying. Personally, I think the pirates are a bunch of candy asses.

At some point, Malcolm must concur with my assessment, because he opens up his lemonade stand. He has a variety of small bottles lying around the tub, and he dutifully fills them up from the tap and then tries to sell me lemonade. Most of the time, the lemonade is sweet and good, and we enjoy bottle after bottle of lemony goodness. Once in a while, though, Malcolm slips me a mickey in the form of a glass of sour lemonade. I contort my face to reveal my displeasure and he howls in delight at having pulled one over on me.

Once he wraps up the lemonade stand he lies face down in the water and begins to swim. I am not sure if he actually thinks he is swimming, or if he just likes the way his junk feels when it is trapped against the bottom of the tub. This is a potentially devastating effect, because he splashes around so much that he will soak the entire room. Invariably, he uses this opportunity to start eating the bubbles that are left in the tub. For a while eating bubbles is fun because I tell him not to do it. Then, the bubbles make their way down his throat, and he begins to hack and gag. It is at this point, and only this point, that he will agree to get it out of the tub. His fingers are pruney, his sea friends are dismembered, and his pirates' egos are shot. It is finally time to get out. Sometimes, it is a struggle to get him into the bathtub. Even when we have physically drag him in there, he won't get out until all the different angles are explored. I guess it beats daydreaming about supermodels.

Props to the Pig

2009-10-06T17:40:00.001-07:00

There is a lot going around about swine flu right now. In fact, I thought Malcolm had it last night. He had a high temperature, oinked when he sneezed and was wee wee weeing all around the house. Classic symptoms. When he woke up, they were gone. Close call!

I took the opportunity to think about pigs and realized they they are easily my favorite animal, to eat! While most people are out there trying to protect themselves from swine flu, I got me a bad case of swine lust. What an animal! You can eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner. You can eat it for fine dining or at a taco truck. It comes in many different flavors, colors and textures. Try as you might, you will not be able to come up with one organism that provides so many different amazing things to eat. Take that you stupid old cow!

One of the crazy awesomest things that the pig has given us is pulled pork. It is pretty easy to make, so I thought I'd share the recipe. This is a simple version. I have a more complicated version which involves brining the meat and sleeping with your neighbor, but I'll leave that for another time.

1. Buy a 5-7 pound pork shoulder from the store. Ironically, this means you will be looking for what they call pork butt, even though it is from the shoulder, not the butt. Why is it called the butt? American's love butts! Can you imagine Sir Mix Alot singing, "I like big shoulders?" I can't. If you can, buy pork raised humanely. Being a pig sucks at the end, when the pig is slaughtered to become out food. The least we can do is let the pigs have a little fun before becoming our breakfast. I trust Niman Ranch, although I can't always find it.

2. Take the meat out of the refrigerator an hour before beginning to cook it. Put a rub on it. I use a couple of tablespoons of paprika, chili powder and onion powder, with a hefty dose of salt thrown in there for good measure. Rub it all around the outside of the pork until it has a nice coating over it. Then wash your hands, you have the residue from rubbing spices into a butt on your hands!

3. Cook in an oven at 175 degrees for around 5-6 hours. It is done if you stick a fork in it, pull it away, and a chunk of pork comes with it. It is not done if if you stick a fork in it, and it squeals loudly. Take the pork out of the oven and let it rest for an hour. You can pull it apart without waiting, but the juice that squirts out of the roast will burn you and set fire to the kitchen. While the pork is resting, play some nice mellow music for it, maybe Jack Johnson and try your hardest not to pick at it. You entire house will smell like pork deliciousness, so leaving it alone will be tough.

4. Put the pork on a cutting board and pull it apart with 2 large forks. Small forks will cause your hands to cramp, so the larger the fork the better. I rip off a big chunk from the main carcass and then pull it apart until the meat is in long, thin chunks. Toss with liberal amounts of barbecue sauce. This expression is why I am a liberal. Being conservative with anything, especially barbecue sauce, is just plain wrong. Put it in a sandwich and you are set. It will change your life. When done, it should look like this:

If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them

2009-10-05T17:22:00.001-07:00

I love fantasy football. I love fantasy football more than I love my cat. If fantasy football asked me to the prom, I would say yes, even if I were a senior and it were a freshman. Sometimes, when I am with fantasy football late at night, I make eyes at its naughty parts. I have a problem.

Our marriage used to be strained by fantasy football (not because of the naughty parts though!). I spend Sundays at a sports pub watching all the games. I obsess about trade proposals. I lose sleep. Amy, at first thought all this was funny. When she realized that it happens every week of the football season, she got concerned. She never got hostile, but occasionally she would make her true feelings known, feelings that I didn't necessarily find flattering. (I do not, under any circumstances, like being called a loser!) After some time, she started to root against me, hoping that an early elimination would return me to my normal self. Sadly, I am usually not eliminated until quite late in the season, meaning I am a sick little man from September to December.

When I sensed her uneasiness, I tried to incorporate her on my team to A) make her feel like my team was our team, and B) stop rooting against me. I would consult her on trades and ask for her suggestions on which players to use. She gave me feedback and we became somewhat of a team. The problem was that the advice she gave me was absurd, and I would never follow it. Even so, she didn't really vest as a true partner and she kept calling it "my losing team," not "our losing team." She still rooted against me too.

This year was different though. She has her own fantasy football team! She manages it every week, talks trash to the other gals in the league, and has to make the same tough decisions that I have had for the past few years. The kicker is that she actually enjoys it. She doesn't really put in the same amount of time (or tears) that I do, but I don't care. I don't know if either of us will win our respective championships, but at least this way we can enjoy an obsession together. The significance really hit me last night, when we settled down after dinner and watched the Sunday night game. We were both rooting against the Pittsburgh defense, and I fell in love with my wife all over again. I may have even checked out her naughty parts, but she didn't notice because she was enjoying a Ben Roethlisberger sack. Yay!

How Do You Take Care of Someone Else's Kid?

2009-10-01T17:44:00.001-07:00

Our neighbor kid has no one else to play with, so he has been coming over to our house this week in the afternoons. I like the arrangement, because the boys occupy themselves and it frees me up to get stuff done. However, since his daddy (also a stay at home dad) remains home with the other child, I supervise the boys by myself. (When I say supervise, I mean that in the sense that I situate myself somewhere in the house so that I can hear the cries when one of them brutalizes the other.) It does bring up an issue though, and that is what the heck do you do with someone else's kid?

I know every bullet in Malcolm's arsenal. I know the look in his eye when he is about to do something drastic. I know how he is going to react to various things when he is a) cranky, b) hungry and c) both. Our neighbor kid? I know nothing. He is like a little llama, I haven't the faintest idea of what makes him tick. He chastises Malcolm for mistakes that Malkie made hours before. He alternates between being irritated by and obsessed with what Malcolm is doing. He says that our apple juice tastes like it has tomatoes in it. I have no idea how to arbitrate disputes between the two, as I don't really understand what their arguments are about. I feel kinda useless.

For now, I treat Jack like he is a Japanese tourist who understands little english. I speak V-E-R-Y L-O-U-D-L-Y and V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W-L-Y to him and mutter things under my breath when he turns away. I make up arbitrary rules and roll my eyes constantly. I say things like, "well that may be the custom in your country, but we do things differently here." I figure that at some point I will learn how to tame the llama, but for now, I struggle with my Japanese.

P.S. I believe that this was the first time in the history of the English language that the last sentence has been uttered before. Talk about originality!

Book Review: I Like Me! by Nancy Carlson

2009-09-30T11:25:00.001-07:00

I hate this book. It is about a pig that has no friends, save the grey cat that follows her everywhere. While all the other kids are out playing, the pig paints pictures of cats, eats cookies in bed, and has sad tea parties with her cat and some stuffed animals. Then, the pig dances around in her underwear and makes a couple of cakes. Picture after picture, the book shows the pig enjoying things alone, and, in one sad depiction, the pig falls down while roller skating and all the other animals laugh at it.

Are you freaking kidding me? This book teaches kids to grow up and be crazy old cat ladies! I wholeheartedly support a book that teaches kids to be comfortable with who they are. It should not, however, teach kids to be sugar addicted hermits. What's wrong with having a few friends in there? If you ask me, if you have a grand total of zero friends (cats never, ever count) you should take a long hard look at yourself, not pat yourself on the back. I don't know the correct way to get kids to be comfortable with who they are, but neither does this author.

I am also a little uncomfortable with the pig eating so many sweets. Isn't it a little stereotypical? What do you call it when someone goes to town on cookies in bed or scarfs down an entire cake? Pigging out! Jeez, why not have the loser be a dog, or better yet, a miserable fucking cat. (I am still a bit irritated at the neighbor cats for shitting all over our yard, can you tell?) Hey, sweets have a fine place in this world, but you shouldn't tell kids that they are for making yourself feel good that nobody else likes you. Go make a friend and enjoy a ice cream sundae with them. If you read this book to your kid, you are asking for trouble. I am hiding it from Malcolm.

Grade: D- (no guns, no sex, no drugs, so it had something going for it.)

Book Review: The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and The Big Hungry Bear by Don and Audrey Wood

2009-09-30T11:21:00.001-07:00

You're never going to guess what this book is about. Oh, wait, the title has a million words in it. You just might figure out ahead of time what is going to happen here. It doesn't really matter because this book is awesome. The illustrations in this book capture the emotions of the depicted subjects better than any other illustrations that I have ever seen, (and I read a lot of porn!) Actually that is a joke. I never, ever read porn. Please tell Amy I wrote that. Back to the book. When the mouse is concerned, the mouse really looks concerned. When the mouse is scared, he/she really looks scared. This is great, because it shows kids the way that various feelings look. This is important, as the only emotion that Malcolm gets to see on my face is anger. This book broadens his horizons.

The book is a bit on the short side, but it is quite clever. You can definitely stall by talking about what is going on in the pictures. Or, if you really want to get back to your TV, you can read it quick and be done in a few minutes. It is sweet, funny, and best of all it teaches kids that strawberries are yummy. Best of all, it shows the world what a strawberry would look like if had a mustache and glasses. Can't get enough of that! If you are worried about the big hungry bear in title, (Spoiler Alert!) in never shows up, so don't sweat any cartoon violence. There is none. Go buy it.

Grade: A+

I Am Going to Be a Book Reviewer!

2009-09-30T11:14:00.001-07:00

Don't get too excited, it's only on my blog, and it will only be read by you: Amy's family and some of Amy's friends at work. There are a handful of people that I know who read the blog, but for some reason the majority of my friends don't read this. They tell me that it is because they cannot read, and you know what? I believe them! My friends are not very intelligent. Last week we spent an hour trying to figure out how to play poker without our poker chips instead of walking 5 minutes to the drug store to buy some more (at one point, we were going to use match sticks until someone realized that we could just keep going to the bar and getting new match sticks without telling anyone).

Anyways, I am going to start reviewing the books that we read to Malcolm. I know what you are thinking, "Paul, tell us your thoughts about Dan Brown or Michael Pollen!" The reality is that I read my books late at night after drinking wine and watching silly TV. I couldn't review a real book without it sounding like this: "Maybe it's the pinot talking but this book was really sleepy!" Plus, I read about three books a year. I read books to Malcolm before hitting the booze (usually), so I should have a little more to say. If you think the reviews are lame, let me know, and I will write twice as many! It's not as if you're MY friends.

I Used To Think TV Was A Bad Thing

2009-09-29T15:11:00.001-07:00

We weren't going to be "those parents." We heard too many horror stories of parents letting televisions raise their kids. We were going to be different. No way, couldn't happen to us. We were sure that TV was an evil to be avoided, sort of like shellfish at a buffet. Studies show that for young children, every hour that they watch TV is one fewer word that they learn. TV teaches your kid to love fast food, fear the outdoors, and that violence is the best way to solve any problem. We were sure that if Malcolm watched enough TV he would turn into an overweight, lethargic mess who would learn how to bash someone's brain in before learning his multiplication tables.

And then, some cracks began to form in the dam. Malcolm was waking up from his nap in a very cranky mood, and it was becoming difficult to cheer him up. So, we let him watch a show when he woke up. He would have a little snack and enjoy a little TV while his brain was adjusting to consciousness. That wasn't so bad, was it?

Then I learned that I could get stuff done by letting Malcolm watch shows. This came in handy when we hade people coming over for dinner, or doing taxes, or, in rare circumstances, when I needed to research fantasy football. I tried to avoid putting him in front of the screen for too long, but his shows were educational. Aint nothing wrong with that.

Slowly, but surely, more cracks formed in the dam, eventually causing it to burst. Now we let Malcolm watch TV in the car on long journeys, when we have guests over and we want to enjoy them and not entertain the kids, or the end of the week white flag that signals our inability to do any more parenting: "Movie Night." What's worse, we used to closely monitor everything that he watched to ensure that he was being exposed to anything untoward. Now, he watches anything that people will show him, including, (gasp!), PG movies. I remember feeling bad that Malcolm once saw Shrek while we were waiting at the doctor's office, now I don't blink an eye when I see him watching Porky's. Ah well, it is one of the many shortcomings that we have as parents. We try, but it is impossible for us to be the perfect parents that we thought Malcolm deserved. I just hope the words he is missing out on while watching are all dirty words. Then again, Porky's is probably teaching him how to swear.

The Pickle in the Jar of Pearl Onions

2009-09-24T20:22:00.001-07:00

I am going to Reno this weekend. My friend, Derek, is an avid University of Missouri fan, and I, along with some of his other friends, are going up to watch the Tigers play the University of Nevada, Reno at football. This sounds like a perfect opportunity to blow off steam with a weekend with the boys, but I am a bit worried.

The guys I am going with are quite successful in the business world. They are all upper level executives at successful companies, with nice houses and cars that probably don't smell like old sandwiches. They wear clean clothes, shower every day, and are polite to one another. That is what has me worried. When I go to Reno with my normal crew, I tend to get just a tad out of control. When there, you will normally find me with a beer in my dirty little hands, a cigarette dangling out of my mouth, and I am constantly making up reasons to take the next shot. And that is all before breakfast. I like to yell at the dealers, do squats around the tables, and if you see me order food that doesn't start with "chicken fried" then something is wrong. One time, I got an entire blackjack table to rub their nipples every time the dealer busted. I am concerned that I will not be able to control the beast within, and the others will have to ask Derek, "Why is your friend doing shots at the bar with that old Chinese woman?" It's gonna be tough.

The other potential pratfall will be the blackjack tables. The tables, along with AC Transit buses, are one of the last few places where you can see democracy in action. When sitting at the tables for hours with random strangers, you tend to talk about who you are and what you do. I can foresee going around the table with everyone else talking about their impressive responsibilities and the movers and shakers they have in their contact list. And then all eyes will fall on me. Being a stay at home dad is great, but it is not the kind of awe inspiring profession that lends itself to impressing the general public. In anticipation of the blank stares that I normally get, I will tell people, "I'm in derivatives." If forced to, I will eventually disclose that this means that I wipe Malcolm's constantly running nose and that I sponge off of my wife, but I am hoping that I won't have to.

I am going to approach the weekend like this: I am going to ignore my initial inclination. I will not be going to the strip club with a bag of cocaine and $1,000. I will think about it more closely and go to dinner with the boys. My pants and shirt will stay on at all times in the casino. I will channel my proclivity for taking off my clothes by simply leaving my fly unzipped. If someone makes fun of me for being a stay at home parent, I will buy them a drink instead of spilling one on them. It's gonna be hard, because when I start drinking, it takes me approximately 1 second between when I think of something and when I start doing it. Wich me luck!

Malcolm, The Random Answer Generator

2009-09-22T11:48:00.001-07:00

Malcolm is not a complicated person. The are certain things in his life, like chocolate and talking about whether his poop will successfully flush down the toilet, that always make him happy. He constantly craves mac 'n cheese, regularly wants to watch Giants baseball games, and every I ask him to brush his teeth, he hides behind the bathroom door first. He is, in almost every way, a creature of habit.

It is, then, quite surprising when we are out in the world and someone asks Malcolm a question about what he would like. The truth is, I have no idea how he will answer. Like a TV contestant who folds under the pressure, Malcolm responds to such queries by blurting out the first thing that comes to his mind. When asked by the lady handing out balloons what color balloon and string he wanted, he said, "pink, and green." I almost snorted in disbelief, as he has told me about 500,000 times that his favorite colors and blue and brown. Pink and green don't even go together, but he seemed to like the balloon nonetheless.

This trend is especially noticeable at the ice cream counter. Malcolm spends most of his day figuring out how to get me to give him some chocolate, but when ordering ice cream he somehow forgets his obsession with the cocoa bean and orders flavors like lemon, strawberry, or, as he likes to call it, baneewa. I try to point out to him all of the different flavors that have chocolate, but he adamantly insists that the simple flavors are what he wants. I feel a little sorry for him, but Malkie gets what Malkie wants, so I let him order by himself.

Sometimes, he does this when just introducing himself out in public. When asked what his name is, he says, "I'm Malcolm and I am three and three quarters," or, "I'm Malcolm, I have a blue dog." He recently told the librarian his age and added, for good measure that, "Pablo Sandoballs has a big belly." Unsure if the librarian would understand just what this meant, he stuck out his belly, looked down at it, and then looked at the librarian as if to say, "See what a big belly looks like?"

Invariably, the inquisitor shoots me a look as if to confirm that what he just said is what he actually meant. Occasionally, the look is more to wonder what the hell is wrong with the kid. Most of the time I shrug my shoulders in an effort to convey my confusion as well, but sometimes I have his back. I sneered right back at the balloon lady thinking, "Damn straight pink and green. My boy is a regular Salvador Dali !"

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

2009-09-21T17:06:00.001-07:00

Malcolm is a spirited little boy, and, if left to his own devices, he would spend his entire day eating chocolate, hitting people with bats, and calling me a "stupid noodle head." To combat his tendencies, we have a variety of rules. If he violates the rules, he gets in trouble, ranging from going to his room to not getting to watch his favorite TV show, Little Bear. He is a habitual rule violator, and suffers the consequences every time he does.

I think I know where he gets it from, because today, at my stay at home dad's group, I broke a lot of rules. The first rule we broke was the rule, announced by a large number of large signs around, that no alcohol was allowed at the park. We get this now and again at parks that do not want large groups of men sitting around drinking beer all day. Somehow, we have it in our heads that the people that made these rules would see things differently if the large groups of men sitting around drinking beer all day had kids with them. So, we ignore the rule, and are prepared to argue that many sections of Oakland's Municipal Code do not apply to stay-at-home dads. Besides, the alternative to us sitting around drinking beer is for us to sit around and talk about our feelings, and goodness knows that is NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN.

The second rule I broke was eating polish sausages that were past their expiration date. I question any expiration date for hot dogs, as, in my humble opinion, lips and assholes will never go bad. Also, the package said that they were "best by" September 5, and we cautiously accepted the fact that we were eating sausages that were not at their best. When I say "we," I mean me and one other guy, as the rest of the group was sensible enough to stick to food that was not considered rotten by the rest of the world. (The other guy, Darren, and I decided to call each other tonight to check up on each other to make sure that we had not been done in by the spoiled weenies.)

The last rule I broke was self-imposed. I ate some chips. I am getting kind of chubby, so I have laid a rule down (for myself) to not eat any chips. In the past few months, every picture that I am in looks like I am carrying Malcolm's unborn sibling, so I am trying to stick to fruit at dad's group. This is quite difficult, for, if you haven't noticed, potato chips look quite tasty. Today, after a couple handfuls of cantaloupe and watermelon, I began cramming potato chips down my piehole like they were going out of style. I stopped the chip parade only when the spoiled polish sausages came off the grill. (I don't think that I am any better off for it, but at least I didn't put the chips in the bun with the weenie.) I am anticipating that pictures for the next few weeks will look like we are having twins.

The question is, what punishment do I deserve? I decided to give myself the punishment that Malcolm always gets. I am not going to watch Little Bear today. I don't really mind, though; Monday Night Football is on tonight. Now, the question is what to do with all those leftover polish sausages…

Malcolm, In Trouble At School Already?

2009-09-18T15:00:00.001-07:00

We had high hopes for the boy this year. He was entering his second year at the same preschool and we figured that he would blossom in his role as a bigger kid. We hoped that he would be nice to the new kids and help the younger ones figure out how the school works. This was his year to shine.

I don't know why I was so surprised to have his teacher pull me aside yesterday. You never want to get pulled aside by the teacher, as it is never anything like, "your child is amazing and we couldn't be more pleased about his progress." It is always bad news, like your parents calling you on the phone and asking, "do you have a few minutes?" So his teacher, Maria, pulled me aside and in 30 seconds ruined the outlook for my son. She fist said that he wasn't focusing during "work" time. He is in a Montessori school, which means the "play" is called "work" (I guess in an effort to indoctrinate kids into the idea that they will be working for the rest of their lives). He had always been relatively focused at school, so this was a particularly troubling development.

She also said that he was manhandling the other kids during the outside play time. This wasn't so surprising as he has always been pretty good at hurting other kids. I have definitely noticed any time he gets together with other kids now, he plays superhero and tries to rip their limbs off. I just need to find the right super hero to channel for Malcolm, something like a cross between "Captain Niceguy" and "The Green Mellow Reader."

After the conversation, I was stunned. I really this thought this was going to be a good time for Malcolm to step up. Sadly, I think he is acting more like the new little kids than becoming a bigger little boy. I don't know how we, as parents, are going to handle it. We'll try to make him see the benefits of focusing on the task at hand, and being respectful to the other kids. If he is anything like me, he will tune out his parents and do bad things. Maybe we'll come up with something. Part of me wants to let the trained professionals (his teachers) take care of it, but the aggravating thing about Montessori school is that the teachers won't kick the shit out of the kids. Is it too late for Catholic school?

Do We Really Need That Many Cats On The Internet?

2009-09-17T11:10:00.001-07:00

I am constantly looking for photos to include in my blog, so I do a lot of searches for images on Google. I have noticed that, despite whatever search terms I use, pictures of cats invariably come up. We have a cat, so it's not like I am a dog loving, anti-catter. I just wonder why is it that so much of the internet is dedicated to the enjoyment of silly cat pictures.

Don't think it's a problem? While looking for pictures of "funny roast chicken", I got this.

My search for "Jazz Hands" came up with a ton of cats, most of which looked like this:

Sadly, even my search for "absolutely nothing" returned this pearl:

I am not sure if Google is a dumb, cat obsessed computer, or if it is rather savvy and knows that people will click on cat pictures no matter what else they are doing. I do know that we are obsessed with the kitty pics, as there are even support groups on the internet for people who really enjoy looking at pictures of cats. Things have gotten so bad that a counter movement has started and 9/9/09 was designated as "Day Without Cats" day. And these are just the pictures. If you enjoy watching videos of cats, you can spend the next three years of your life watching the 965,000 cat videos on you tube. Luckily, I don't have to deal with that, as my blog is not multi-media, yet.

Funny Roast Chicken

2009-09-15T14:50:00.001-07:00

I love roast chicken. It is simple and, when done right, very tasty. Especially the chicken skin, as proper crispy chicken skin is is up there with nachos and bacon in my world. Roast chicken is also great because when you are done, and the carved bird looks like the leftovers of a zombie attack, you get to make chicken stock. I then get to use the chicken stock to add great flavor to things like risotto and soup. Roast chicken, good to eat now, good to eat later.

Since it's a slow news week, I thought I would share the recipe. The first thing you want to do is season the bird. I guess I should say at this point that you want to make sure that A) the bird is, in fact, dead, and B) it has no feathers on it. You can try roasting a live chicken, but you need to make sure that your oven locks from the outside if you do. As soon as you get the chicken home, take all the weird shit out of the body cavity and rub some salt pepper on the chicken. I suppose you could use the weird shit to cook something else, but I am not French and do not understand what good it is for. Seasoning the bird ahead of time will make the chicken quite flavorful. When doing this, rub the salt and pepper on with firmness somewhere between caressing your lover and caressing your lover while drunk. Stick the dead bird back in the fridge, and take it back out an hour before you are ready to cook it.

Before you put the chicken in the oven, you have to stuff it. I use herbs (sage, rosemary,thyme, and oregano), a lemon cut into two halves, and a couple huge chunks of onion. Really fill up that chicken's ass with ingredients, for it turns bland, tasteless chicken into a flavor explosion in your mouth. (While eating, try to forget that the flavor explosion in your mouth is due to the ingredients you just stuck into the chicken's ass.) Cook the bird, boobies side up, in a roasting pan in a preheated 400 degree oven for 20 minutes. Turn the chicken over and cook for another 20 minutes. Flip the chicken one last time and cook for another 10-20 minutes. You know if the chicken is not quite done if one of your guests falls over dead from salmonella poisoning.

Take the chicken out of the oven and let it rest for 10 minutes. While your now twice dead chicken is "resting," skim most the fat out of the roasting and stir in a tablespoon of flour. Slowly stir in a cup of water and bring to a boil. Add enough salt to choke a mule and some pepper. I don't know how much salt it takes to choke a mule, but it probably takes a lot. Trust me on this though, because there is nothing worse than unsalted gravy. Well there is, eating an undercooked, feathery chicken that has been flopping around in an oven for an hour is probably not very good. Carve up the bird, serve with some greens, mashed potatoes and gravy and bang, yummy dinner!

Paully Want a Touchdown

2009-09-14T15:21:00.001-07:00

We went to a party on Saturday Night for a friend of Amy's from work. (In my efforts to demonstrate that not all the parties we go to anymore involve a child and their birthday, I have been calling it an "Adult Party" but somehow that description has seemed a little too kinky. I think that I should just call it a 40th birthday party and let people think what they will about it.) The party had a "Dress Up As Your Favorite Celebrity" theme and Amy went as Angelina Jolie, while I was costumed as a fat Brad Pitt. We didn't do quite as much leg work on the costumes as we should have, as Amy's tattoos paled in comparison to the other Angelina Jolie in attendance. Needless to say, I was the fattest Brad Pitt there though, so that was nice.

At the party, Vivian, the newly crowned 40 year old who looked like she was in her twenties, was resplendently dressed as Audrey Hepburn. Her dog, either Marco or Polo, I cannot remember which, saw the great opportunity use the occasion to eat lots of people food. He sidled up next to everyone eating the amazing food that Tam, Vivian's husband and ridiculously talented chef, prepared for the event. The dog never lunged, but would just sit next to the eater and keep both eyes on the food, hoping that one or two bites would accidentally fall to the ground. The persistent and desperate look in the dog's eye seemed to indicate that the dog's soul desire in life was to get some of that food, as if the dog was always thinking, "Can I have some food? Can I have some food? Can I have some food?" I felt kind of sorry for the dog, as it was never able to enjoy the party. It just kept finding people who were wolfing down the vittles and wondering, "Can I have some food? Can I have some food? Can I have some food?"

So, it came as a great surprise to me when I was perched at a bar the next morning watching my fantasy football team get clobbered, when I realized that I was no better than the Marco/Polo. I would glance at each of the games that I had a player in and I would think to myself, "Score a touchdown! Score a touchdown! Score a touchdown!" I had totally lost the ability to enjoy the game, I would just focus on my individuals and beg for them to make a big play. It's going to be a long year, and I will find myself in the same spot making the same desperate request, "Score a damn touchdown already!" Maybe I am a dog after all, or maybe I am way too into fantasy football. Either way, I figure at the very least that I am not attending kinky adult parties or, worse yet, children's birthdays, so that is nice.

Malkie's Funny Day At The Game

2009-09-10T12:00:00.001-07:00

I took Malcolm to his first Giants game as a fully functioning person yesterday. He is really into the Giants and he can recite the roster by position (with the exception of part-time left fielder and second baseman Eugenio Velez, pronounced "Ay-Yu-Hen-eeo.") I decided I hadn't been to a Giants game in far too long, so when Amy suggested I took Malcolm to a day game, I leaped at the opportunity.

We had to stop at the nearby Safeway before the game, and we passed a big black dude in the aisle. Malcolm took a look at him and asked, "Daddy, is that fat brown guy Pablo Dandoballs?" I have grown accustomed to Malcolm making derogatory comments about strangers, so I handled this the usual way. I sprinted away from him and muttered something like, "I think all the players are already in the dugout. Let's go find some sun screen!"

At the game, Malcolm was a gem! We watched around six innings of the game, and Malcolm made a good showing at the tot baseball diamond by slamming a whiffle ball off of a ball park employee's knee. During the game, I taught Malcolm to say, "Grab some pine, meat!" when the opposing player struck out. The first time he was able to bust it out, he yelled, "Put some meat in my hand!" After some coaching, he responded to a strikeout by yelling, "Grab some pie, matey!" Not quite there yet, but we are making progress.

We thoroughly enjoyed the game, he sat in my lap most of the time so I could point out where the ball was heading. Of course, this meant that he kicked the old woman sitting in front of us in the head a couple times. I should have been more concerned, but at least he didn't call her a dried up bag o' bones.

The Lake Was Mighty Angry That Day My Friend

2009-09-08T16:10:00.001-07:00

My friend Leo has a sweet vacation pad in Jamestown, and he graciously invited some of the softball guys and their families up for the weekend. We went and decided on Saturday to go boating on Lake Tulloch, thinking that we would spend a lazy day swimming and touring around the lake. The weather was perfect, the water inviting and so we set out in our rented pontoon to find a slice of the lake that we could call our own. Then, we saw the wave.

A power boat pulling two adrenaline loving kids in inner tubes barreled in front of us leaving a wake that looked like it was the size of the empire state building. We were heading full steam right at it, and Leo, who was driving, cut the engine in a seemingly wise effort to slow the speed at which we hit the rapidly growing wall of water. Instead, the nose of the boat dipped into the water, and the now tidal wave sized wake hit us like paddle hits a fraternity pledge's bare ass. I was sitting in the front of the boat, holding my friend's seven month old, and held on for dear life as a wall of water smashed through the boat, destroying everything in its path. People in the back of the boat watched in disbelief as the wave crashed off the ceiling of the boat (!) and swept through, drenching everyone and everything on the boat. Some say that a second wave hit us equally hard, but I was so focused on not shitting my pants that I really didn't notice.

The aftermath resembled the chaos of D-Day, with all of us wandering around looking shell shocked and wondering what to do. Daniel, the father of the infant I was clinging to, jumped up, and, with the vacant look of an infantryman looking for a missing limb on the ground, muttered that the boat was going down and we needed to get to the back of the boat. The parents of the six kids on board scrambled to make sure that their loved ones were indeed still on on board. Of course the seven year old with us jumped up and down and immediately asked if we could do it again.

Daniel and Suzi's camera got doused, and every towel, diaper, and extra piece of clothing we had on board was sopping wet. A couple of articles of clothing had washed out of the boat, and, after retrieving them, we cautiously made our way over to the side of the lake to swim. In an unsuccessful effort to dry out our stuff, we transformed the boat into a shanty town by hanging all of the wet stuff from the top and sides of the pontoon. The people who drove by didn't see the disaster strike, and stared at the ridiculous collection of towels and clothing that hung all around us. We had a relaxing time the rest of the day, although talk of the rogue wave was never far from our lips.

At the end of the day, we ran into a flotilla of young people in boats basking in the sun, playing loud music, and generally acting hip. We didn't really have the heart to join them, as we knew down deep inside that we had almost been done in by a motorboat towing some kids. We cautiously made our back to the dock and kissed the ground upon our return to dry land. Back at the sweet pad, we smoked cigars, drank whiskey, and reenacted the whole event as often as we could. I hope we can do it again next time!

Parking Ticket

2009-09-04T13:48:00.001-07:00

Oakland is a strange and wonderful place. The city has found itself in the embarrassing position of not having any more money and, to try and make some, they are going crazy with the parking tickets. We have received three in the past month, and I had to go to city hall today to demonstrate that my front license plate had been replaced. Yes, I got a $80 parking ticket for not having my front license plate. Seriously. Those of you who wonder where the license plate went should ask Amy how closely she pays attention to the car in front of her when she is getting on the freeway.

So, with a shiny new license plate and a signature from a cop who swears that the license plate was there, I headed into downtown Oakland to prove that I had fixed my ticket and, in the process, saved $70 off the tab. I noticed that I take a couple of shortcuts in life when I was walking to city hall. The first thing I noticed was the carrying vessel I used for my coffee. Unable to locate my state-of-the-art thermal coffee mug (in the last month) I have resorted to using Malkie's sippy cup to schlep my coffee around. I also noticed that I took the shortcuts of not combing my hair and not zipping my fly. So, today, the residents of downtown Oakland were treated to the sight of a messy haired man with an unzipped fly taking hits off of a bright orange sippy cup. I was, for all intents and purposed, a very large child walking around without parent. Of course, I didn't notice any of the above until I walked past some people whereby I realized how much I have let myself go. I need to make some major life changes.

My sense of innocent ignorance stayed with me when I reached the parking office. When I arrived, there was a group of people sitting in the chairs waiting for their turn. I walked in and wanted to say, "Hi there everybody! It's real nice to meet ya!", but the angry look in their eyes told me that their response would have been for me to "Shut the fuck up!" One woman seemed greatly displeased at having received a ticket, and was yelling at the poor counter worker. At one point she slammed her fist against the counter to show her rage against the injustice, and when that failed to elicit the dismissal she desired, she stormed out of the room. I secretly believed that she was going to lose, as anyone dumb enough to yell at the counter person at a city office is probably parking in the wrong spot.

I sat their listening to everyone's sad stories about emergency trips to the store, out of control employees and children who had stolen the car. Over and over I heard the pleas for mercy, and when none came, outrage and defiance. I wanted to get worked up, but I was beating my phone at scrabble, so I was in a pretty good mood. When my number got called, I fixed my ticket and walked out of there with a clean parking bill of health. Now, I just need to work on my appearance.

Why Our House Smells Like Cat Shit, Again

2009-09-02T14:50:00.001-07:00

Well, its happened again. Previously, I told you about the cats and other animals breaking into our house to use it as their own personal boudoir. The good news is that the cats aren't breaking into our house anymore. So why does our house still smell like shit?

It's wafting in from outside. We keep our windows open, and there are a lot of them. We do this to circulate Malcolm and I's various odors. Thank god Amy smells like a Cinnabon, or our house would be condemned. However, the very thing that we rely on to give our house the level of freshness that it so richly deserves is now its biggest stumbling block. With the neighbor cats seemingly relegated to peeing and crapping outside our house, they are getting us back by blanketing our immediate surroundings with evidence of their unhappiness. They go underneath the windows behind our family room. They go everywhere they can in our back yard (which allows the odor to find its way to our bedroom which overlooks the yard.) I tried to outsmart the dirty little rascals by putting two large garbage cans/recycling bins underneath our kitchen window, but somehow every neighborhood cat has found a way to take a dump in the 6 inch gap between the two. Now, when I cook, I either have keep reminding myself that dinner won't smell like turds, or close the windows and sweat up a storm. They even somehow go in the 2 inch strip of dirt next to the driveway fence, which gives a pleasant reminder of who's in charge every time we get in and out of the car.

Walking anywhere near our house now is reminiscent of touring a waste treatment plant. Of course, I shoo the little scoundrels away from our house every chance I get, but shooing a cat has all the long term effectiveness of warding off syphilis with a jelly donut. Like the syphilis, the cats will be back . I really want to buy a BB gun. I won't, but I want to. In the end, I am going to have to go out and clean up after them. I can't help but think that there is nothing else in the world that is as unfulfilling as cleaning up after someone else's cat, even if it is done outside and with a rake. Our previous idea was to build a giant cat box in a side yard that has no windows near it, but the cats seem to think it too easy, like it's a trap. Plus, I think they like to make things hard on us. Little assholes.

P.S. I like everything about that cartoon except for the expression on the guys face. Or maybe his arms. There's definitely something weird going on with him though.

Carnage

2009-09-01T17:03:00.001-07:00

Every year, parents engage in the time honored tradition of dropping their kid off at the first day of school. We are no different, and I dropped off Malcolm today and I ran out of there as fast as an elementary school kid runs home on the last day of school. I was a little excited about getting a break for part of the day, and I thought about all the wild and crazy things I was going to do with my time. Sadly, my hopes of dining on Hooters wings and playing endless rounds of golf gave way to the reality of dealing with bills and getting some modest exercise. (Hooters, mark my words, you will see me soon, very soon.)

The first day of school is also enjoyable because of the carnage lying around at Malcolm's school. For some of these kids, being dropped off at preschool is the first time that they have left their parents, and they show it. The place was teeming with kids crying and parents trying to soothe them into all the wonderful things there are to do at school. There were young kids in their parent's arms wailing at the top of the lungs and bigger kids shrieking and clinging to their parent's legs. My favorite is the kids who are old enough to use dirty tricks, "Why are you leaving me here, don't you love me anymore?" It didn't look much better when I picked up Malcolm, as many of the kids were still wailing. One little girl looked especially troubled and, judging by the look of the school's principal who was holding her and had the distant look in her eye of a heroine addict, the little girl had been crying the whole day.

I don't really enjoy seeing others suffer, but I do use such circumstances to make me feel good about Malcolm. Doesn't every parent do this? Malcolm went off to school last year and ran into the room and didn't even say goodbye. This year was no different. I rack it up to our concerted efforts to make Malcolm feel comfortable in any environment. I am sure the parents I laughed at today would say it is because their kids actually like them, and Malcolm probably doesn't care very much for his parent. With a father whose chief dream in life is to eat a bunch of chicken wings at Hooters, I couldn't really blame him if he didn't.

That Special Time of Year Again

2009-08-31T17:40:00.001-07:00

You can feel it in the air. You can sense it in the streets. Quiet whispers give way to silence. The sound of crinkling papers can be heard, but upon entry into the room, everything is gone. You talk to someone, but there is obviously no one home. Their eyes glaze over, staring off into the distance, and quietly, just below their breath, they give themselves away by saying, "When am I going to pick a quarterback?"

It is fantasy football time again, in case you aren't aware, fantasy football is the single greatest thing ever. Sliced bread, don't need it. Caffeine, can do without. If the entry fee for my league were a small, blonde haired boy, Amy and I would be alone again. (If you think this is sad and pathetic, don't worry. I am planning on winning this year, and the likelihood that we would get Malcolm back at the end of the season is pretty good.) If fantasy football were a large hairball, I would cradle it in my arms and tell it that I love it. If, god forbid, fantasy football fell into a pit full of urine and shit, I would jump in after it. Smiling. Fantasy football has a hold over me, and I am not alone.

Some people are just not that into fantasy football (or reality football, or any football for that matter). We have a special word for these people, "wives." For a while, I tried to sell the experience to Amy, as if it were some kind of good thing. I would tell her that I was attempting to become a subject matter expert on something and that she should applaud me regardless of what that subject matter is. I told her that is was a good, structured way for me to spend some bonding time with my friends. I even told her once that I met a little boy in the hospital and his dying wish was for me to draft his favorite tight end in the eighth round. She didn't believe any of those, and now I draft a team (or two) and watch the games with my friends, but spend a lot of capital to do it. (It is so totally worth it. And to think, George W used his capital on a couple of wars and a crappy ass Medicare prescription drug plan!)

My draft is Sunday. We are coming home early from a three day weekend to attend it. I will shortly start losing sleep running scenarios through my head. Once the season starts, I will leave my wife and son each Sunday to watch games and make fun of the other competitors. I will lose more sleep thinking about who to trade and chastise myself for drafting certain players and not drafting others. This will continue for the whole season until the sad, sad day, when my team is eliminated from title contention. That day, when I come home, Amy will tell Malcolm that "daddy's back!" Of course it will be a lot harder for him to take if I have to explain why I had to use him as entry fees into the league, but I am hoping he will be excited nonetheless.

My New Fix

2009-08-28T09:16:00.001-07:00

I have a new drug. I have been looking for a new one since I spent an evening on someone's couch rocking myself out of a bad LSD trip by clinging to a special safety blanket. Alcohol is nice, but, at my age, the day after is getting harder and harder to deal with, especially when you have a three year-old. Marijuana puts me to sleep, I hate needles and I can't stand anything in my nose. No, all those things have something wrong with them. My new drug is perfect and I love it, heart and soul.

My new drug is Ibuprofen. Oh, soo nice, it makes all the pain in life go away. Malcolm can rampage all day, and 800 milligrams of concentrated magic will make it seem like he is the world's most well behaved child. Remember what a lot of beer does to you the next day? Ibuprofen goes a long way to erase yesterday's sins. Every ache, pain, twitch, strain and knot feels better after a few orange pills.

Recently, I have begun playing softball again, and this means that I have been tearing my knee to shreds. I know lose a substantial portion of skin on me knee every game we play, and even though I wear protective cover, the skin gets shaved every time. Things are so bad that I once got a nasty raspberry on me knee when someone waved a piece of tuna in front of it. These scabs are quite thick and painful, and when the wound is in full bloom, I have a hard time bending my knee. The giant scab throbs, and relief only comes when the I-train arrives.

I wonder if my devotion is a little too strong, whether I place to much importance on what is a very one sided relationship. I look for answers to my problems in one place, and that is usually a sign that you have a problem. I try to keep things in perspective though. So what if I live hard, and take anti-inflammatories to deal with the consequences? It's not like I smoke crack. Maybe one day they will invent a new drug, one that will stop me from doing stupid stuff that gets me hurt. I will tell you this though, there will never, ever be a drug that stops people from waving tuna in front of your legs.

Road Trip!

2009-08-27T22:52:00.001-07:00

Amy is San Diego hanging out with her college gal pals this weekend. If you don't already know this, Amy had a 10 bedroom apartment her senior year, and most of them get together once a year to celebrate the fact that they still talk to each other. That meant I was fully responsible for Malcolm for the extended weekend, and since he had no school this week, I punted. I decided to bring him to Bakersfield to visit my parents. They have wanted to show Malcolm around to their friends, and I decided that I would be the bad son no more and offered to bring the child to their doorstep.

We had to get there though. Malcolm is in the annoying phase of childhood where he is either asking, "why?" or is asking when we are going to get there. I could not handle this for the 4+ hour trip down there, so I did some strategizing. I decided to use the airplane trick and brought his portable DVD player. Having him watch a movie would not only give him something to do besides get on my nerves, it would also allow me to listen to a book on tape. So, just prior to hitting the road, we headed over to the library to pick him out a movie, and grab a book on tape for me. He immediately chose "Castle in the Sky" which was done by Hayao Miyazaki, the man behind Ponyo and the Curious George movie. I felt a little strange showing him a movie that I had never seen before, but I figure there was no way in hell the guy who made Ponyo would make a slasher movie with lots of naked chicks in it. For me, I got a John Grisham novel, which is a little on the fluffy side, but not too bad considering my only other option was from a russian novelist who had more syllables in his name than the book had words.

I loaded up the movie, put in the CD, and we hit the road. Everything was going swimmingly until I started to notice that something wasn't quite right. Malcolm kept saying, "This isn't my movie!" I thought the comment strange, but he kept watching it, so I figured it was no big deal. We stopped for lunch and he seemed to be enjoying the movie. By the way, if you are ever on I-5 and need to stop for a meal, never, ever eat a place called the Apricot Tree. The food there sucked, more reminiscent of "weird things you find on the side of the road" than "restaurant food."

When we got back into the car, I put Malcolm's movie back on, and noticed that I couldn't really understand what the characters were talking about. Upon closer examination I realized that it was because the movie was in Japanese. Although the movie did have english subtitles, apparently Malcolm couldn't read them and he did not understand a single word that had been said in the 1.5 hours that he had watched it. I suddenly realized why he said that it wasn't "his" movie. I changed the options and when the characters started speaking in English, Malcolm excitedly asked to watch the whole thing again. I had recently done the same thing for Amy for a few episodes of "The Wire" so I let him begin anew.

We finished the trip with him happily watching the Japanese subtitles which, for some reason, began to appear on the screen. I happily learned about the intrigue of a billionaire screwing his entire family out of their inheritance and giving his whole estate to a unknown missionary in the rain forest. Things got a little dicey when I started to get a little tired and began chewing sunflower seeds to stay awake. I didn't have anything to spit them in, so I took off my hat and began spitting the seeds straight into it. Every now and again, Malcolm would ask if we were there yet, but he didn't listen to my answer and his heart really wasn't into it. We arrived in Bakersfield in pretty good shape, and since we were both involved in story telling of some sort, the trip went pretty quickly. In case you were wondering, I was even able to remember to dump out my hat before putting back on my head!

What Would You Do?

2009-08-27T00:50:00.001-07:00

I met up with my friend Betsy at a park today. Betsy and I get along well, our kids really got along really well and the playdate was really fun. Sadly,though, at the end of our playdate, I was thrown from play date dad into a moral conundrum. After I put Malcolm into his car seat, a man walked up to our car and asked if he could use my cell phone to call his wife. I had a million outs as to why I couldn't let him: it was late and Malcolm needed to get going, it was hot and I didn't want to leave Malcolm in a hot car, I love my cell phone and I get nervous when Amy uses it, to name a few. For whatever reason, I got out of the hot car and handed him my phone.

I am inherently distrustful of strangers, and I fully expected him to run off with my beloved Iphone as soon as I handed it to him. I stood close to him, just to let him know that he was not going to run off with my precious without a race. (I later realized that my thought that I would have run after him would have been hilarious, as what the hell would sad old Paul done with a phone robber after he caught him and tackled him in the parking lot of a local park!) Even with me standing inappropriately close, he called his wife and spoke to her. The conversation was in Spanish, so I couldn't fully understand what they talked about. I could definitely tell that he was getting his ass handed to him for doing something wrong, and those were the best words that I did not understand that I had ever heard. (Either that or my broken Spanish blinded me to the fact that he ordered some lumber from Home Depot and the wood had not arrived yet.) The guy handed me the phone back, and, when I finally started breathing again, I was glad to retrieve my phone.

Sure it was a risky; I risked not getting my phone stolen , and also risked seeming like a complete asshole who won't help a guy tell his wife that he has spent the afternoon at a local sports bar. In the end, I took the risk, hoping to help out a random stranger. Good or bad, I wanted to live in a world where we help each other out, even when you have no invested reason to. My question to you is, would you all have done the same, or do I have some serious attachment issues with my cell phone? Lemme know.

Malcolm's Marginal Utility

2009-08-25T16:56:00.001-07:00

Malcolm may well take after Grandpa Scott and become an economics professor. His latest econ. revelation? Marginal utility. In case you need the refresher, marginal utility is the amount of usefulness that each additional unit of consumption brings. The easiest example is food. Well, I like beer better,so I am going to use beer. The first beer I drink on wednesdays is beautiful and brings me much pleasure. It takes me out of my role as caregiver and turns me into a pleasure seeker. The second one I have is even better, because it starts to get me drunk. I like the third one, but less than the others (because I have already had some). This continues until, let say, the tenth one. The tenth one make me throw up and leaves me hung over the next day (this is the concept of diminishing marginal utility that ends in negative utility. You could also proves the rule that I am a tool.) It took many years of college to figure all this out, although I am not sure if I learned it in economics classes (I was an Econ. major too!) or at house parties.

Malcolm is demonstrating mastery of it right now. Today, we went to the ferry building in SF for lunch. I got him a grilled cheese sandwich and it was pretty tasty. I got a salad, and decided to round out the meal by getting some fries. (Upon reflection, I really should not have congratulated myself for getting a salad because bacon, boiled egg, avocado, blue cheese, grilled chicken and ranch dressing are not exactly healthy ingredients.) So, Malcolm was confronted with what to eat for his lunch. The fries were tasty at Taylor's Refresher, and he wolfed down as many as I was willing to share, which was seven, total. As he progressed through his grilled cheese, he got to the point where he had to ask his belly if he was getting full. The funny thing is that he lifts his shirt and actually asks his belly if it is getting full, and has a different voice for the belly when it answers. So, when his belly was telling him he was getting full, he had to decide what part of the sandwich to eat. I guess he figured that he wasn't going to finish the whole sandwich, as he is a total string bean, and he started licking the cheese of the bread. As you might guess, American cheese is quite sticky, so he started clawing the cheese off the bread like a sugar starved Oreo addict. When he was done, he left a sad mess of mangled bread behind. I asked him if his marginal utility for eating the sandwich had had reached zero yet, and he looked at me blankly. In his own, unrefined economics jargon, he told me that the marginal utility of the sandwich was less than the utility of riding on the trolley. Luckily he didn't lick the trolley.

Ponyo

2009-08-24T16:25:00.001-07:00

We took Malcolm to see the movie, Ponyo, last night. We had a bit of a long weekend, with a few late nights and some short naps. Instead of working extra hard at parenting, we took him to the theater. He has only been to a handful of movies, and the experience of going to a theater is pretty exciting for him. I am pretty sure that if he got to sit in his mommy's lap and eat popcorn, he would watch Sophie's Choice in the theater.

I don't really know what to say about Ponyo. It is extremely bizarre. I think I really liked it, but when it ended, I had a feeling similar to watching six smiling old men in leotards throwing cotton candy at each other. What did I just see? It is fantasy, in all its splendid glory, and while you never really know where the movie is going, it is a treat to watch.

Let's start with the visuals. It is a visually stunning movie. The movie is definitely a step away from modern cartooning, seeming to revel in how good a greeting card illustrator can make the world look. The colors are brilliant, reminding the viewers all along the way that the movie has been well thought out and masterfully designed. The movie looks and feels like a child's mind, a perfect way to tell the story. (By the way, the story is about a 5 year old kid who falls in love with a fish and how they love ham. Talk about a feel good movie!)

Tina Fey plays a mom, Liam Neeson plays a weird dad who looks like a cross between Howard Stern and Willie Wonka, Cate Blanchett plays a hot wet blanket, and Matt Damon is in the movie, but totally unnoticeable. You can hear Betty White in the movie and you want her to be your grandma.

I like this movie because it creates a challenge for kids to watch, without stupid violence. There are a few cheap laughs, but, for the most part, it is a long story about love and courage. It creates a journey,and the journey involves being true to yourself, loving your family, and eating lots of ham. Combine that, a large bucket of popcorn, and a kid our your lap, and you have one great movie night. Go see it!

Malcolm, the Musical!

2009-08-21T15:25:00.001-07:00

Malcolm has been acting strange at the park. On Wednesdays, after dismal soccer practices, Malcolm and his friend, Samara, have been taking me and Samara's dad, Luke, over to a small amphitheater, where they have begun singing musicals. At first, they just sort of sang gibberish and marched around. Luke and I seemed uninterested, staring off into space and, gasp, even talking to each other during the performance. They realized that they needed production values and a theme for each musical. So, they upped their game.

Their first real musical was about clams. They had been digging around in an old creek and found some clam shells. I do not know much about anything, so I said clams used to have feet and wandered around on land. Luke shook his head and told them that this whole area used to be underwater and the clams lived in the bottom of the ocean then. I concurred, although I secretly believe that my explanation is almost as plausible. With props in hand, Malcolm and Samara marched around on stage clapping and singing the word "clam" and then any other word that rhymed with clam. A typical verse went, "Clam, Clam, Clam. Clam got no hand. Clam in the Gam. Clam, Clam, Clam. Clam eat land. Clam in the pan, Clam stand." We laughed pretty hard at this, causing the kids to start laughing and foaming at the mouth. I took this as a sign that Malcolm was bitten by a dog when I wasn't looking, but fortunately Luke told me that they were simply making the same frothy mouth that a clam makes when it is scared. (Once again, I secretly believed my explanation until I got home and found no evidence of Malcolm being bitten by a bat.)

The next week, Malcolm and Samara invented a new musical. It was all about stealing people's hats. They pranced about on stage like ponies singing "gonna steal your hat! Gonna steal your hat!" until they ran up into the seats and tried to steal my hat. I picked up on some clues that this was about to happen, and so, luckily, they did not in fact steal my hat. They kept trying, but I never let them actually get my hat. After about ten minutes, I decided that this was the worst musical that I had ever seen. I never thought I would say this, but I missed the clam song.

He Hate Me

2009-08-20T16:03:00.001-07:00

Back when I had a job, I saw one of my favorite partners crying one morning. The mere fact that one of us was crying was not strange, it was a crazy year and the mountain of stressful work caused at least one person to break down and lose it each day. I asked Margot what was wrong, and, surprisingly, her tears were not work related. She said that she had a tough morning with her kids and the last thing her son said to her was, "I hate you." I was shocked to hear that a kid could hate someone as sweet as Margot, and chalked it up to a tumultuous home life. Certainly, if we ever had a kid, our child would never, ever say anything like that to us.

Until now. Malcolm drops, "I hate you's" like a democrat drops balls. (That is in no way meant to be gross, what I mean by that is that democrats are constantly dropping the ball. Take health care, for one. Actually, name one good thing that the Democrats have done, and I will tell you that they should have done it better. But, I digress.) Malcolm came home from summer school today and wanted hot chocolate. I told him that it was too warm for hot chocolate, then he said that he wanted chocolate milk. I told him too many sweet will give him yuckmouth. He erupted into tears and wailed the whole way home. When we got home, he screamed at the top of his lungs and said that as long as I didn't give him chocolate milk, he would hate me.

Before that, he told me he hated me when I took the toothbrush out of his hand as he was attempting to dislodge my eyeball with it. On several occasions, he has told me that he hates me because I don't let him watch enough shows on TV. I have been hated for requiring that we play baseball in the shade on a hot day and for not buying him a toy at the drug store. Once, he hated on me first thing in the morning when I asked him if he loved both his mommy and his daddy. It appears that I am hated quite often.

I am hoping that this is a stage that he is going through. By being independent enough to hate the hand that feeds him, he is showing me that he is growing up. I am all for that, I just wish he could display his newfound independence in another way, like smoking or doing drugs . When your entire job revolves around caring for someone and that someone doesn't care for you, it hurts. It hurts a lot, like getting your eyeball gouged out with a toothbrush. I would say that next time I will allow him to gouge the eye, but he would only find another reason to hate. They always do.

Cleanliness is Far Away From Pauliness

2009-08-19T16:27:00.001-07:00

Malcolm is getting a babysitter tonight. Amy has work functions, and rather than be a responsible parent and take care of my child by myself, I am outsourcing the job to a babysitter so that I can go out with my friends, drink beer and play poker. I guess I'll play softball at some point too.

I was thinking earlier this week that I would have to skip the game, as I couldn't think of anyone who would be willing to stay with Malcolm while I went out and ruined myself. I posted an email to our neighborhood listserv and one of my neighbors gave me a referral for a nanny who is looking for nighttime work as well. Some parents may have checked on references, cross checked against the sex offender list, and interviewed the prospective sitter. I on the other hand, did this: 1) retrieve phone number from email, 2) called "Gabriella", and 3) asked her if she could do it. She had me at, "I'm available!" I am not sure whether my computer or Malcolm, for that matter, will still be here when I return, but my team needs its third baseman and I have a better than average shot at winning the poker game. It's a good thing, too, because I need to win just to break even for the night. $15 an hour for babysitting?! He'll be asleep most of the time!!! At that cost, I am expecting our refrigerator to be cleaned up when I get back. I guess I just hope the fridge is still here when I get home.

In order to ready the house for the arrival of a stranger, I have been working all day to make it look like Malcolm and I don't live in a fraternity. Amy has been gone early in the morning all week, and has been returning late in the evening, so she hasn't really been able to notice that our house has been taken over by clutter. So, I have spent the day furiously eliminating all traces of my domestic ineptitude. I started in the office, the room that connects Malcolm's room to the family room. The room is scary, and I don't like to go in there if at all possible. It is the place where everything else in the house goes before other guests arrive. By now, it looks like the underside of a bridge, so I had to find a new place for all the junk that has no other place in the house. After a mere four hours of stashing stuff either under the desk or in the closet, I downgraded the room to messy, which is good enough for the babysitter.

I next moved to the kitchen, where removing a few days worth of gunk and stains proved a little more difficult than imagined. I felt a little conflicted, as Rosie, our house cleaner is coming tomorrow and I didn't want to spend too much time doing something she is going to end up doing (better) tomorrow. I ended up throwing out a fair number of screws that had accumulated on the kitchen counter, and I couldn't help but wonder how they all got there. Something is definitely going to be falling apart soon. Cleverly, I put all the empty wine bottles into the recycling, masking how Amy and I spend our evenings at home.

Finally, I made me way to the family room/Malcolm play room. Good thing too, for, in my infinite wisdom a few days ago, I allowed Malcolm to play with a canister of toothpicks. (He called them his "friends" and played baseball with them. He is definitely settling into his role as single child!) I imagined what a child care professional would say after Malcolm dragged her over to his table and proudly pointed to his favorite "toys" to play with, only to find that they were 200 or so small pointy sticks. I piled the toothpicks into his drawer and gave a little prayer that she wouldn't go prying around and come upon them unsuspectingly. Then again, for $15 an hour, she probably is a pretty good private eye too.

I Eat Garbage!

2009-08-18T15:04:00.001-07:00

Today, I bought some baby carrots to include in a buffalo chicken salad I made for my lunch. I have recently started buying fresh, local veggies for us to eat, so, I was a little nervous buying produce at Safeway. I put my fears to rest and thought, "who could fuck up baby carrots though?" Well, Safeway can.

I opened the package of carrots, and a gooey, slimy substance resembling the eminations of a 18 month old's nose spilled out. I was disgusted and spent a few moments trying the scrub my hands clean. Like that same 18 month trying to get off a wad of gum off his hands, I succeeded in only moving the sticky gooey substance from one finger to the other. ]The fact that this sticky mess had taken over the bag of carrots should have been a pretty clear indication that the carrots had gone bad, but I, being cheap and not liking to throw anything away, did the unthinkable. I tried some!!! I washed as much of the gunk as I could off beforehand, mind you, but in then end, eating a carrot that came out of a bag of goo was not one of the smarter uses of my time today. Obviously, it tasted horribly, like I imagine a dead moth would taste. No amount of buffalo chicken salad could replace the stale taste in my mouth, and it remains with me, even as I sit here now.

After some contemplation, I realized that I have some issues with ignoring obvious warnings in life. Sometimes I drink chunky milk in my coffee rather than drink it black. I constantly chop off the moldy parts of bread and eat the rest. And, I don't really care what you say about this one, I always smell my fingers after pumping gas. This last one is noteworthy, because I always make the same contorted face afterwards, while I think to myself, "Yep, that smells terrible. Again."

Of course, my thoughts turned to Malcolm, and what I would have said to him if he were to do that same thing. In the end, I don't think I would have said anything, for it's probably better to let him find out for himself what happens when you eat rancid food or sniff gasoline. No sense in ruining it all for him! I just wish I was a little farther ahead in the game than him in some respects. Trust me on this though, that kid will grow up knowing that the only thing that you should buy from Safeway is the wine that always seems to be on sale. Steer clear of the produce aisle!!!

It's the End of the Summer, And I Know It. (I Feel Fine)

2009-08-17T15:59:00.001-07:00

I took Malcolm to his last soccer practice last week. The coach never really came to understand how a three year old child's mind works and had the enthusiasm of a hungover cop. During the final practice, he had the kids try and scrimmage again, and when it didn't work and he got tired of yelling at the kids, he gave up. That's right, after a grand total of ten minutes of "practice" time, he told the kids it was over, and then took them to the rec center and gave them ice cream bars. They played foosball in the rec center after wolfing down the ice cream, and it was the most excitement the kids showed toward soccer for the entire summer.

With his summer now winding down, I can reflect on what we have done and what the future holds. This will forever be the summer that Malcolm got into baseball. We go to the park almost every day and he really enjoys playing the game. He has even started to hit from both sides of the plate! While I am a little sad that he won't be the left handed middle reliever that every baseball minded dad wants out of his kid, at least I have the prospect of a switch hitting middle infielder. Go Malkie! I don't care if he is ever good at baseball, but the fact that he is excited by playing ball with me is enough (for now!).

Malcolm returns to preschool this week, and I couldn't be more excited. I now will get a break for four and a half hours a day. I could lie and say that it will probably mean that I can blog, exercise or bathe more regularly, but the reality of it all is that I will probably just use the time to research my fantasy football draft. Sue me.

P.S. I am quite aware that the dad (or child abductor) pictured to the left has two kids, and we have but the one. This picture is supposed to be a metaphor for the winding down of our summer lives together. Consider the second child to be a metaphor for just how much I like to each nachos. Not the best metaphor you will ever see, but really, metaphors are a pretty lame rhetorical device, don't ya think?

Memento Child

2009-08-12T08:02:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was a rough day. Malcolm did not nap the day before and had a short night of sleep. So, yesterday he was a giant piece of shit. When he wanted something or wanted to go do something and did not get his way, he he fell to the floor crying. Then he got up and yelled at me. Then he tried to hit me with whatever blunt object was close by. Then, he would wander off into some other activity, and this would repeat itself. All day. I can't tell you how many times I gave a long slow sigh and shook my head. Malcolm is now mimicking my response when he gets upset, "You are killing me dude!"

A day like this is frustrating because after a point, not only do you not like your kid, you don't like what you have become. Normally, I don't shout at Malcolm and try to remain dispassionate, but yesterday I yelled at Malcolm like he was in boot camp. I realized that I was being a terrible parent, but after so many tantrums and assaults, I could not effectively regulate my own behavior. So, I became a piece of shit too.

I finally made it through the day, and drank my reward beer. I know that when kids are evil, which no one tells you about before you have a child, that you have to beat the evil with creativeness and energy. Yesterday I lacked both, and I wondered what I was going to do differently the following morning. Then I realized that I didn't necessarily need to. Kids have this crazy cool ability to forget about almost everything that has happened the day before and do not hold a grudge. In the movie, Memento, the main character wakes up every day without any memories, so he tattoos things on his body and writes himself notes. Unless you have promised your kids candy in the morning, kids, at least at this age, generally do not ever remembering anything from the previous day. Each day is a blank slate. Luckily for me, Malcolm doesn't know how to write yet, so he cannot, tattoo "DO NOT TRUST THE FAT ONE, ALWAYS GO TO THE PRETTY FEMALE!" to his chest.

When Malcolm came stomping out of his room this morning, he gave me a big squeeze and said, "good morning" to me. I was ecstatic. Then I had to tell Malcolm that is was too early for him to come out of his room, and that he had to go back into the room until 7 am. He fell onto the floor crying, and I realized that I did, indeed need to figure out a new strategy. Maybe I am the one who needs to leave notes to himself.

Why Is This Man Rubbing My Butt?

2009-08-10T17:35:00.001-07:00

Lying face down at the acupuncturist's office the other day, I lamented the sad status of my massage life. Henry, the massage therapist, was aggressively rubbing my butt up and down, and, although it felt nice, the fact that he was a man was not unnoticed. (Sadly, this is not the first time I have mentioned rubbing my butt aggressively in this blog.) You see, I really like getting massaged, but when the massage is performed by a man, I like it less. I am not against men rubbing each other, and I wish I could be OK being massaged by another man, but I just get a little tense when another man is digging around my twig and berries. Call me unenlightened, but I am just more comfortable with a female masseuse, much in the same way many women prefer female gynecologists or the way Malcolm prefers to have his dinner covered in chocolate. But, I digress.

I began my long journey of loving massages in Thailand. There, you can get an hour long massage for around eight dollars. (For an extra eight dollars, you can effectively end your marriage!) We got massaged, almost every day, by tiny Thai women with incredibly strong hands. It was paradise, and I thought getting massages would always be like that. Sadly, it was not the case.

Trouble first arose on a trip Amy and I took to Greece. We signed up for a multi-day spa package that had us running off for treatment several times each day. I knew things were going downhill when I found myself naked, standing spread eagle against a wall. They called it an exfoliating, toning rinse, but really they just pointed a high powered hose at me as if I was an inmate suspected of bringing lice into County. Then, it happened. My massage therapist walked in and he was a hairy German man, who breathed his smelly, smoky breath on me for the entire rub. I spent the entire time trying to think of Amy giving me the massage, only to become terrified that I would achieve an erection and really get myself into a bind. Needless to say, it was not relaxing.

Last year, in Turkey, it almost happened twice. I got a Thai massage from a hairy Turkish man, and dealt with it by promptly falling asleep the whole time. I guess it was relaxing, but I could have stayed in the room and took a nap for a fraction of the cost. Later in the trip, Amy and I signed up for a Turkish Hamam, which I thought could be something like this:

Unfortunately for me, it turned out to be more like this:

Do you see how nervous this guy looks? I definitely didn't want to be him. When we arrived at the treatment room, the hairy Turkish guy (who spoke no English) seemed to indicate that he would do us both at the same time. I wanted no part of this, so I ran away very quickly, opting instead to take a cooking class. I was definitely more relaxed:

When I found out that our acupuncturist has a masseuse on staff I was extremely excited, until I saw Henry walk in. The first time he worked on my shoulder, he gave out a long, slow burp that had the force of air escaping from a popped blister. He then kinda blew it in my face. Since then, I have come to respect Henry because he fixed my shoulder problem so that I can now play softball without pain again, although it would be much better if he were a Henrietta. At least he is not hairy.

So there I was, face down on the table, with Henry aggressively rubbing my butt and wondering how I should feel about it. I decided not to feel anything about it just lie there. That only lasted for a few moments, when I fell into a deep relaxing sleep. Denial has its benefits.

The Sugary Closet

2009-08-09T09:08:00.001-07:00

We stopped buying crappy snack food a few years ago. I read some books about how bad partially hydrogenated oil was for you, and boom, our shelves were freed of sugary snacks that clog your arteries. I am not saying that I am a healthy person, but I figured that if I could draw this one line in the sand, we would be margarinally better off. (That may be the most clever thing I have ever used in a blog, marginally better off without margarine!) Everyone wasn't pleased with the results.

We have grandparents visit us often, and they, like most other people enjoy snacking. For a while, the grandparents brought snacks and put them in our cupboards. This, however, lead to incessant lecturing by me about the evils of trans fats and the ensuing end of the world. This only lasted for so a short time before I became unbearable to listen to. I drove them into the closet!

Now, when grandparents visit, they bring their snacks and leave them in the guest bedroom, away from the prying eyes of the food nazi. Oh, I can smell chocolate on their breaths when they come out, and occasionally they have nougat dangling from their chins, but for the most part, the secret snacks remain secret. Malcolm, however, has noticed.

The other day, I went to put sugar in my coffee. I couldn't find it anywhere. I looked all over the kitchen, and then increased the parameters of the search area as a check to see if my parents were beginning to suffer from Alzheimer's. Nothing. I gave up and figured it would turn up somewhere simple in the next few days. Amy changed Malcolm's clothes yesterday and found the sugar in Malcolm's shirt drawer. She asked him how it got there, and he said "I ate it, because I wanted to." We don't give the boy much sugar, and he, like everyone else who comes through here, is tired of me lecturing. So he has joined his grandparents in the sugary closet.

Our Cleaning Lady Thinks I Am Addicted to Strippers

2009-08-07T20:17:00.001-07:00

I have a problem. It's not the problem you might think, considering the title of this post, but it is a problem nonetheless. I can't put anything away. Long time readers already know about the various things lying around the house that have never been put away, but my problem extends into other aspects of my world.

My wallet is a disaster. In it, is every receipt that I have been given in the last two years. In addition, I have loyalty cards for cheesesteak restaurants, membership cards from video stores (in Reno and Davis), and betting slips from the horsetrack and sportsbooks. The sad thing looks like a worn out old sofa, with stuff sticking out in every direction trying to make an escape.

This is particularly dangerous development when I hang out with my sofball team, for we spend a lot of time betting on things, and the size of the bet is always a dollar. Wondering who will get more hits that game? Bet someone a dollar. Think you know the name of the obscure band who's song is singing on the jukebox? Put a dollar on it. One time I bet a guy as to how many times one of the boys would look at his cards during our weekly poker game before he either bet or folded. (The answer was 7, and I won).

The end result of these dollars flying all around is that I come home with many, many dollar bills in pocket. At the end of a long night of drinking and gambling, I usually am quite put out after the laborious task of taking my wallet out of my pocket. So, the dollar bills get left behind, and only see the light of day when I prepare my monthly task of washing my pants. Since I am a complete train wreck, I typically leave the dollars wherever I am when I check the pockets. That is why we have dollar bills on the top of my dresser, the floor of the closet, the top of Amy's dresser, the foot of the washing machine, the desk in the kitchen, all over the office, and on top of the entertainment center. (I wanted to call it a credenza, but only old people have credenzas and I don't want to be an old person yet.)

So, every Thursday morning, our cleaning lady, Rosie, scurries about the house, making us look like we are not complete slobs. In the process, she gathers up all the little wads of cash, and places them nicely in a pile on top of the "not-a-credenza." I can only assume what she thinks I use them for, but honestly it is not that. Amy if you are reading this, it is not that. I swear. This whole convoluted story is the real reason.

Why Is This So Hard?

2009-08-05T09:37:00.001-07:00

I used to be a full-time stay at home dad. Before he went to pre-school, he and I spent almost every minute of the day together. I knew what time he pooped, exactly when he fell asleep for his naps, and when he had each and every tantrum. Then, he went off to pre-school. For those of you with jobs, pre-school for stay at home parents is like Christmas morning, every day. Your child gets to learn, have fun with other kids, and is completely safe, and all of it happens with you not there. The time that your child is at pre-school is the time when you get to look at your email, wander around the grocery store, and, gasp, exercise. It really is quite nice.

And then the summer comes. For some reason, school stops during the summer. Actually, I am told that school stops in the summer so that the kids could help harvest crops on the family farm. I don't really believe this, as it based in rationality and our educational system is so backwards and stupid that it has no rational basis to it. Anyways, when school stopped in June, I became a full time stay at home dad. Again. That means I am around all day when Malcolm wants to build legos and have them march in a parade. I am around all day when Malcolm wants to play "days and nights," his words for playing pretend school, pretend library or pretend anything else that he can conjure up. I am around all day when Malcolm goes poop and then charges me $5 for the privilege of wiping his butt. I used to do this every day, but now I can't seem to keep up. I have definitely started to notice that I am losing it.

I have begun to stress the importance of "alone time" when I work on a project (like this blog posting) and he plays by himself. I have taken to playing scrabble on my phone while locked in our bathroom, hiding from the boy's energy. (He has figured out a pretty nice little solution to this one; he goes to the bathroom himself, and then yells that he is finished and needs me to wipe his butt, cutting short my bathroom private time and making my pretend wallet $5 lighter. A double whammy!) I tried feeding him a relatively healthy meal last night, cheese quesadillas with broccoli on the side, and after he finished seconds and wanted more, I told him he needed to have something else to round out the meal. Then I fed him a hotdog! I now consider he and I watching the Giants' game on TV "Quality Father Son Time."

School starts in a few weeks, and I am ready. I am ready to have him learn in a structured environment again. I am ready to start exercising again. I am ready to go grocery shopping and make some outrageously good weekday meals. I am ready to use the time off to figure out how to best spend the time we are actually together. Either that, or I am ready for Malcolm's teachers at school to pay the butt wiping fee.

They Said It Was 9 Courses, But It Was Really More Like 13

2009-08-04T09:27:00.001-07:00

We celebrate our anniversary, and when I say celebrate, I mean we go the whole hog. Some of you may only celebrate half a hog (or even less) and to you I say boo. We usually go out of town and stay at a nice hotel, get massaged, enjoy a an exquisite meal, and talk about what we like about each other. This year we didn't really want to go anywhere, so we decided to spend our time and a huge brick of our hard earned money (the state of california says that I get half!) at the Ritz Carlton. We went a hog and a half. The room was immaculate, containing over 30 pillows, and the massage therapist had the softest hands I have ever felt. They give you a glass of sparkling wine at reception, so even that is a joy. But all of these things were easily outshined by the best meal that we have ever had, or likely to ever have again.

I am a little hazy on the details, because we drank two bottles of wine that we brought back from France a few years ago, and also because we spent three and a half hours at dinner and everything kind of runs together. We started with an amuse bouche of a puff containing cheese and basil, followed by a dish that was best remembered as having basil seeds in it. Basil seeds are like little baby bunnies in that they scatter when you try to pin them down and eat them with a fork. The dish was supposed to highlight a Japanese fresh water fish that Amy liked, but since I got no fish, I hunted seeds.

The third thing they brought was a poached quail egg served with caviar on, get this a glass jar of cedar smoke. The spoon that was brought with the dish covered a tiny whole on the top of the glass, so that when you lifted the spoon off, the air was filled with cedar smoke. It was similar to a proper shooter, but instead of licking some salt, squeezing a lime and downing a shot, you breathed in some cedar smoke, lifted some caviar, and downed it with some quail egg. Amy never really understood a thing the waiters said the whole night long (they were low talkers) so her smoke escaped within seconds of the dish arriving. By the way, quail eggs are ridiculously tasty, although they are only the size of a loogie, they taste like butter. If you ever see quail running around where you live, follow them home and steal their unborn children. You'll thank me, even if you don't have any cedar to burn with it.

I was a little concerned after the third course that the meal was going to be a little sparse because, while I probably had already consumed 1,000 calories, I only had three of four real bites of food. Things weren't looking up when the next course arrived, three tiny mushrooms and two carrots in a large bowl. Amy got abalone, but I got a mostly empty bowl. Luckily it was soon filled tableside with a corn and sweet pepper soup. The taste of the mushrooms and soup blended perfectly with each other, and I soon realized that I shouldn't worry about how much food I was getting, but rather enjoying the varying tastes and textures that were arriving with each new course.

The next course blew my mind, as I I would never had order it. They brought me zucchini flowers stuffed with ricotta. Sounds like something people on survivor would eat, but it was awesome! The flavors worked perfectly together with a creamy texture, so already the tasting menu was a delight. I would have laughed at anyone ordering that (probably making the comment that, "why don't you just order a dandelion and peanut butter sandwich?" I am not sure what Amy got, but it probably swam in the ocean at one point.

At the arrival of the sixth course, I knew the meal was going to be special. I received a braised ox tail ravioli in its braising liquid. At this point, I was fine with how much the dinner cost, as this one dish involved cutting off an ox's tail, braising it, peeling it off the bone, putting into a fresh made ravioli, and then reducing the braising liquid into a yummy sauce. All that work went into just one of our many courses. (By the way, ox tail raviolis are, indeed, delicious. If you live near any oxen, chop off their tails and then follow the above recipe for a wonderful culinary delight.) Amy had something which translated to "stupid clam" tongue. We were kinda drunk, they talked kinda low, so some of the items are not very clear to us. Whatever Amy had it was large, triangular and licked her back.

The seventh spot in the line up was the foie gras. I had never tried foie gras until a few months ago at a french restaurant. Now, I am a stone cold addict. Except for stone cold foie gras. Each time I have had it, it has been served both warm and cold. The warm foie gras is seared and served with sauce (usually a reduction of yummy beef or veal stock). The warm stuff is light and delicate, the cold presentation is a bit more mealy and leaves a bit of an aftertaste that I don't really care for. Since I am a stay at home dad, I will compare the cold stuff to eating 9 month old poo, while the warm stuff is more like newborn. If you had to eat baby poo, I am sure that you would agree that the newborn excrement is the better way to go.

The eighth course sounded great, baby suckling pig, and it was executed perfectly. What made it perfect was it was served on top of a poached peach. I normally eschew sweet elements (especially fruit) in dishes, but the pig and the peach (sounds like a pub eh?) were a perfect compliment to the other in both flavor and texture. Now, I can't wait until I get the chance to combine parts of the pig with fruit. Amy had lobster knuckles, which I thought was funny because I didn't even know lobsters had fingers. At this point, we had finished our first bottle and wondered if we had enough time to drink he second. Luckily we were still 2 hours away from finishing dinner.

The waiter arrived with another dish, which I thought sounded really boring, crispy chicken. I soon realized that they did not just mean fried chicken, or even, chicken that you have ever tasted, as the thing that arrived did not resemble the stuff that we eat all the time. The chicken was sous vide, or vacuum packed and cooked at a very low temperature for a very long time, and then seared so that it's skin had the same consistency as bacon. Yes, imagine if bacon were attached to a buttery, salty piece of meat, that's how good it was. Amy had some nice duck with fresh peas. I raved to the waiter about the dish, and he said that the chicken was milk fed. Ever since, I have been unable to get the imagery of a chicken drinking from a cow's udders out of my head. The duck was very tender and seemed like the bridge between poultry and red meat.

It was about 10:30, we had already had 9 courses (the whole meal was supposed to be 9 courses) and I remember thinking, I could really go for some red meat right now. Luckily, the last savory dish arrived and I got a rib eye and Amy had the best looking lamb chop I had ever seen. The meat was perfectly rare, seared off well, came with another zucchini flower with ricotta, and I ate every bite. Luckily for me, Amy went and used the restroom, so I got to eat most of her lamb as well. Meat cooked that well is so crispy on the outside and soft and tender in the middle, and you never want to go back to the crap that you make at home. I think it also bathed in butter during the cooking process, but I decided I wasn't going to think about the number of years this one meal was going to take off the end of my life.

To cleanse the palate, they brought us some sorbets, Amy getting watermelon and I getting peach. As it was now past 11, we were drunk, tired and speaking way too loud for the size of the restaurant. I wish I could tell you what one talks about towards the end of a three and a half hour dinner, but frankly I have no recall.

Then, for the 12th course, they brought dessert. Amy had a chocolate cake with some weird foams, an I had panna cotta with more sorbet. We ate every drop of the dessert, although I am not exactly sure why. There was no room left in our stomachs. I had to lay on my left side for a few minutes, which definitely raised eyebrows, but it was worth the scorn. They put a nice touch on the plates, inscribing them with, "Happy Anniversary" written in chocolate. We liked it so much, we licked it off!

Finally, they brought out the confectionary cart. I do remember thinking, "you gotta be fucking kidding me, who needs chocolate and a bunch of candy right now?" Evidently, we did, because the waiter proceeded to put down 15 or so different candies (marshmallow, caramels, meringues etc.) and we sampled each and every one of them. The highlight was easily the dark chocolate and peanut butter lollipop, we finished in exactly three bites.

So, we finally finished. We drank two bottles of aged French wine, had 13 or so different things to eat, and reveled in all of it. We waddled back to the room and collapsed, celebrating the fact that another celebration was as wonderful as our lives together. Actually, that is schmaltzy and not true. Amy took out her phone and checked out facebook for an hour (being so drunk though, she couldn't actually read anything) and I passed out on the bed on a pile of about 12 pillows. Easily the best meal we will ever eat, and I am glad that we were able to enjoy it.

Wanted: Role Model for Malcolm

2009-07-31T09:08:00.001-07:00

Stay at home dad seeks role model for 3.5 year old. Must be a boy. I don't have anything against girls, but if I tell Malcolm to act like a girl, there is no telling where it will end. Princess parties? My Little Pony? Watching Gossip Girl? Little boys have it tough at this age. It seems like their metabolism requires that they freak out every 10 minutes or so, and have the constant urge to destroy everything in their paths. Is there a perfect little boy out there? I'd like to find out.

Must not be violent. Malcolm has recently learned what the term, "kill" means. This and his desire to make a gun, sword or bow and arrow out of anything he can get his hands on, are a bad combination. Role model must never pretend to be a dinosaur and eat everything he doesn't care for. Role model need not dry hump everyone he comes across, but general friendliness would be appreciated.

Must be calm. Role model must have triggering word that creates calmness. I don't mind a little rambunctiousness, but if I say the word, "mellow," the role model should immediately stop screaming and running around. Where does a child get all the energy of a meth addict after a score? I don't care, just give me a word to make it all go away. There cannot be a limit on the number of times the safety word is used, as my child is a total spaz most of the day.

Must not crave sweets. We feed our kid as little sugar as possible, as sugar only intensifies a little boy's negative behavior. However, the urge to consume chocolate is second only to the urge to kill. Role model must only ask for sweets once a week, and prepares for it by eating vegetables all week long.

Must not whine. Role model will never, ever, fall apart when it doesn't get what it wants. If the above conditions are met however, there may be nothing to whine about. "Waaaaaaaaah, I want ice cream. Waaaaaaah I want to run around in circles. Waaaaaah, I want to remove the cat's brain with this sword."

So that's it. Any role models out there?

Amy & I at 11

2009-07-30T16:06:00.001-07:00

We are coming up on our 11th wedding anniversary, and of course I have been thinking about our relationship. At first I focused on the negatives. I thought about how we have a mortgage, and with the decline of the real estate world, we'll be living in this house until we are about 60. I thought that we have a child, and that he too will probably be living in the house until we are 60. I thought about how we argue about whose sweatpants are more ridiculous whether the term, "frack" in Battlestar Galactica is cool or lame. Sadly, we still argue over whether I am simply good looking or whether I am good looking AND have a great personality. I thought about how we spend time thinking about what plants should go in the front yard, and whether to tell our neighbors that their compost heap is ruining our lives. I dare say I thought things a bit stale.

Then I realized that I was becoming one of those people who lament all the "problems" they have, and how they aren't the hipsters that they used to be. I literally talked myself out of the pity party I was trying to have. I have a wife who, despite the fact that I haven't worked in over four years and weigh twice as much as I used to, actually likes to talk to me and wants to see me happy. I have a child who keeps me on my toes, but enjoys living and makes me belly laugh a couple of times a day. I have a group of friends who rib me mercilessly and make the week fly by. Ya, the days of drinking kamikazis on a tuesday night are long gone. But if you ask me, there is nothing better than a glass of wine, some bizarre sweatpants and a fracking good episode of Battlestar Galactica. Of course, it only works when the love of my life is next to me. Happy anniversary baby.

Tot Soccer Rebellion

2009-07-29T16:12:00.001-07:00

It finally happened. The three and four year olds at Malcolm's tot soccer class staged a coup today and let their coach know, in no uncertain terms, that they would no longer be taking any instruction. I am no fan of Malcolm's soccer coach, as many of you know, so I have never been more proud of a group of kids.

The day started with the coach setting up a field about the length of a regulation soccer field. A regulation soccer field to a 3 year old seems like about 2 miles long. The coach had them doing some silly drills, and by the time the kids got halfway down the field, they forgot, Memento style, what they were doing and started to wander off. This made the coach mad, and he started to yell. "Sahm, come back here, what are you doing. Maggie, where are you going? Malcolm take the cones out of your shorts!" Coach decided he needed a helper, and recruited an 80 year old grandmother to keep the kids in line. This pissed me off even more. I had previously offered to help the coach out, and when he actually needs help motivating the kids and keeping them in line he chooses a mumbling, unathletic grandma? At least I don't mumble.

Coach eventually tired of the drill and decided the kids were ready to start playing a game. He separated them into teams and seemed irked that they didn't grasp the team game, opting instead to chase the ball around regardless of who was on which team. He started to yell at the kids, "Don't you guys know that you are teams and need to score goals?" The kids stopped and looked at him like his head was made of peanut butter. When they resumed their game of chase, the coach got even madder, threatening to cut the session off early. This made all the parents laugh, because the kids then gathered together, on the opposite side of the field as the coach, and seemed to be plotting a coup. When the meeting didn't break, coach lost it. He continued to yell at the kids, "I need you guys to swear that you are going to start playing soccer for real or not just run around and kick the ball. If you can't I am gonna make you sit down and do nothing." At this point, the kids started the mutiny and half of them sat down. He told the kids to stand up, and when they didn't, he told the rest of the kids to sit down too. The rest of the parents laughed as the coach fell apart and the kids started to wander off, not sure of whether they should be sitting or standing, playing soccer or running around kicking the ball.

Afterwards, I offered the coach some insights into the mind of a three year old. Coach didn't seem too interested in my ideas for improving the practices, instead complaining that the "kids just don't listen to me!" Dude, welcome to my world.

The Dilemmas of a Stay at Home Dad

2009-07-28T17:07:00.001-07:00

Today, Malcolm and I had a marathon session of baseball at the park (yay!). During our two and a half hours of batting practice and catch, we discovered that we each needed to pee. I thought about this and realized that we stay at home dads have some altogether different choices that we need to make when we are out in the world. Here are a couple of them:

Where Do We Pee?

As a veteran stay at home parent, I should always ask my child before we leave whether he needs to go to the bathroom. However, we are usually late to wherever we are going and I am usually yelling at him, so I am not as composed as perhaps I should be. I often find that he has to go to the bathroom, and after a bit of checking, I realize that I do too. Today, when it became apparent that we needed to pee, i realized that the bathrooms are located about a half mile away. So, it was either gather up all our stuff, walk across the park, and interrupt what was a stellar hitting session, or drop trou and hide behind the tree. Malcolm once peed on the grass at Pier 39, so this wasn't the most public place that Malcolm has gone.

Should I Have a Second Beer?

I go to a playgroup every monday. It is chock full of stay at home dads, and after we make small talk for around half an hour, we wander over to the picnic area, start up the grill and open the cooler. Our coolers are quite extraordinary, filled with half juice boxes and half beer, and that is on a good day. Usually, we forget the juiceboxes and make the kids drink out of the fountain. Lately it has been pretty hot during the day, and the cooler beckons often. I try to resist its siren-like calls, but when it is 97 degrees (like it was on Monday) sometimes I give in. I feel guilty, not because drinking 2 beers in 4 hours while at the park is dangerous, but because when I reach into the cooler to grab a cold one, the kids are all disappointed that there is nothing in there for them.

Do I Talk to Random Guys at the Playground?

There are a lot of stay at home dads out there. There are also many dads who have alternate schedules which allow them to chaperone their kids to the park during the day. I never know what to do when I come into contact with these other guys at the park when I see them. My conscience tells me to strike up a conversation with them and spread the word that there are many of us out there. My brain tells me to shut up, because, I don't know if you know this, stay at home dads are weird. It takes a certain something to buck societal roles, and that something is not something that I ever want to come into contact with. I worry that I would get stuck talking to some bizarre personality who would distract me from my real duty, playing with my IPhone. So, most of the time, I ignore every other fella I meet. Unless he is playing with his IPhone, then I know he's cool.

Why Last Thursday Was Different

2009-07-27T08:20:00.001-07:00

Malcolm and I visited Amy at her office last Thursday. It was our first office visit, as her office is far away and Amy usually goes there when Malcolm is in preschool. Drive to eat lunch with my wife?, Not likely, as I don't think i could get on her calendar without Malcolm. Since Malcolm has the summer off from school, we decided to visit the place that pays all our bills. It was, in many ways, different than a normal day.

I showered. Normally, my cleaning involves a quick how do you do with a baby wipe, usually while running out the door. I am afraid that if I actually took a shower during the day, Malcolm would find a way to throw the broom, javelin style, into the TV. Thursday, however, Rosie was cleaning the house, and I had Malcolm follow her around while I frantically scrubbed away a few years of grime. Amy gave Malcolm a morning bath, so we both were as clean as a Chihuahua in a dishwasher.

I combed my hair. It has been too long since I have paid my hairdresser a visit and my head is a little unmanageable. My hair looks like cat throw up right now, and I just hide it under a Beer Nuts hut most of the time. I don't think the fine people at Oracle are as big of fans of Beer Nuts as I, so I did what I never, ever want to do. I took a brush, raised in to my head, and actually made my hair look amazing. It was hard, but one of the things you should do for your spouse is look presentable every couple of months.

I put on pants. Sigh. I had a nice little steak going on too. I had gone maybe 2 months without covering my knees, and I hated to see the streak go down. (Last year I made it for over 4 months, but I kinda cheated by freezing my ass off in a spring snowstorm and then wearing cargo shorts to Chez Panisse.) I have really nice legs and I like to show them off, so covering them up seems like a sin. Mostly though, I just don't like to sweat. Putting on pants quadruples the likelihood that my face will end up as some sort of glossy sponge, but I counteracted the threat by putting on additional coats of anti-perspirant.

I did many of the same things for Malcolm, and we set off to impress to nice folks at Oracle with how clean and dressed we were. When we got there, sadly, it appeared that we were way too classy for what was going on. People were walking around with bottles of champagne and others were hiding in their offices reading books (supposedly the "server was out", but Amy uses that excuse all the time in response to my advances. I know it is a lie!) The kicker is that they were screening WKRP in Cincinnati on the big screen. Some job Amy has. Next time I visit, I am going in shorts and bringing Beer Nuts for the show.

Why Malcolm Likes Baseball Games

2009-07-23T08:33:00.001-07:00

I took Malcolm to a Baseball Game yesterday. This wasn't his first game, as I dutifully took him to games when he was an infant. This was, however, his first game as a little person, able to both talk in complete sentences and use the men's room. (I am definitely not counting our first trip to the Oakland Coliseum as a "trip to the men's room.") I considered the game a test run, as the tickets only cost $2 and I wanted to make sure Malcolm would be OK at a game before I shelled out serious money to take him to see a real team, the Giants. We had a pretty good time and lasted until the 7th inning. I think we'll go to another game this year, as long as he is able to enjoy the things that he did yesterday.

Malcolm loves hot dogs. This week, he has loved them off the grill at dad's group, out of the microwave at IKEA, and from out of whatever-the-hell-they-use-at-the-ballpark. That's three straight days of lips and assholes, (it's almost like he's at Burning Man!) I would have suggested something else today (like nachos, sweet nachos) but the hot dogs only cost 1 dollar, and there was no way that the dads from my dad's group and I were going to pay more than a few bucks on food. Perhaps it was this general interest in a cheap date that made me boycott beer for the first time in my life, and I refused to spend $8 on a tea cup full of bud light. A half hour later, and 8 Oakland A's runs later, I had 10 hot dogs and I returned to the group to find that Malcolm had run off and the kids were generally uninterested in baseball. Malcolm loved his dog and a half, and after I had eaten my two and half dollars' worth, I wish I had eaten nachos.

Malcolm loves running around with his friends. We were there with my friends from dad's group, so Malcolm had his full compliment of cohorts to get into trouble with. We couldn't really see anything since the $2 seats give you a view similar to that from the Hubble Space Telescope, so Malcolm decided the best way to enjoy the game was to run races around the handicap seating area. This lasted until the very large, very mean security guard came and told us that the kids really shouldn't be running around like that. My initial thought, "Well, you really shouldn't be wearing a mustache like that," never made it out of my mouth, and we reluctantly corralled the kids back to our area.

Malcolm loves ice cream. Amy's mom was in town and had promised to make brownies with Malcolm after his nap. He had been offered cookies at the park, which I said he could have in lieu of brownies, which he politely declined. (Delayed gratification in a 3 year old, I love this kid!) When his friend Priya announced that she wanted cotton candy, Malcolm joined in the chorus saying, "I want cotton candy too! What is cotton candy?" When offered the choice between this strange cotton candy phenomenon, he stuck to the know qualities of brownies. That lasted only until the ice cream guy showed up. More specifically, the guy pedaled ice cream sandwiches, two chocolate cookies with vanilla ice cream in the middle. Malcolm told me that he really wanted one and that he no longer wanted to make brownies with grammy. It was getting warmer and I thought he actually made a good decision, and isn't that what parenting is all about? So he had a fantastic ice cream sandwich and enjoyed himself greatly.

We'll probably be checking out the Giants later this summer, as long as the following conditions are met. First, the tickets can cost no more than $4. Total food expenditures cannot exceed $10. He must have at least 5 friends to play with, and everyone needs to sit together. Now that I think about it, maybe we won't be going to anymore games…

Our Recent Amazon Arrival

2009-07-22T08:55:00.001-07:00

Today, we received two boxes from Amazon. One box contained the book, The Daddy Shift:How Stay at Home Dads, Breadwinning Moms and Shared Parenting Are Transforming the American Family and the Sound of Music DVD. The other box contained 3 business books. I don't know if there are any humans that work at Amazon, but if there are, they must be scratching their heads. The business books were addressed to Amy, and the parenting book and shmaltzy DVD were sent to me!

The Fine Line Between Being a Stay at Home Dad and Being a Pervert

2009-07-21T15:30:00.001-07:00

So we we were at the park yesterday, as we always are on Mondays, having a good time and enjoying the afternoon. We were in Castro Valley (a suburb) and the park was full of regular looking moms, dads, and nannies. (Of course, there was one really hot dad there but he carries himself so well that you would never know it.)

We were preparing to leave, when a nanny with enormous breasts walked by us. Of course, I alerted the dad’s still there to her presence by saying the following, "Man I had an enormous breakfast this morning. And when I say enormous, I mean enormous (Nodding her way.)" The other fellas took my cue and one by one we were able to gaze with wonder at the nanny’s exceptional "parenting skills." And then an extremely hot mom walked right by, followed closely by another. We looked around and the place had become overrun by hot moms and nannies. What great luck! Sadly, nap time was quickly approaching, and we were charged with either staying at the park or honoring nap time.

Ultimately, we respected the schedule, and walked the kids to the car, saddened to leave the party just when it was getting good. We walked past the swings where one of the hot moms was standing, and our conversation stopped as we both had to suck in our gut so far that neither of us could breathe, much less talk. When we got to the cars, I turned back for one final glimpse of the park, and wouldn’t you know it, the moms were checking us out! Well, according to me they were checking us out, in reality they were probably just shaking their heads and making sure the perverts were actually leaving the park.

There were a couple of new guys there, so I thought I would give a few pointers to help new stay at home dads ogle hot women without getting busted:

1. Wear sunglasses (the mirrored lenses). No one can see what you are looking at and if you point yourself in the right direction, you are, for all intents and purposes, looking at a tree.

2. Never point, it's rude. Nod discreetly, use the hours of the clock to indicate direction, use children as reference points. Women know when they are getting pointed at, and generally don’t like it. Now if you say, "I find that 12:00 is the best time of day to enjoy a chicken leg, you will generally be fine."

3. Never, ever use the terms rack, hooters, or fun bags. Also, never, ever say, "check out." It's just too obvious. A couple of dad's almost got kicked out of a park in Berkeley for pointing at a sunbather and saying, "check out the rack on that one." "That one" was, of course aware of what was going on, and trouble ensued.

4. Do not approach women. It is icky and weird and no one likes getting hit on at a park (even me!). Now if your kid goes over there you are free to follow. As the kids get older, you can train them to go over and say, "Mommy's in heaven" There is no better wing man on a planet than a kid.

The Dream Dies

2009-07-20T08:29:00.000-07:00

I once dreamed of being on TV. When I was young, I dreamed that I was on Charles in Charge, and played the boyfriend of Nicole Eggert. Needless to say, we kissed, all the time. . However, I was not selected to be on the show (I guess you need to be an actor and actually try out for roles for things like that to happen), and I spent the rest of my adolescence pouting about it.

Then, something happened. My stay at home dad’s group was approached by a cable network about a show they were developing about overweight, jobless men who hang out with children at parks drinking beer. “Holy Crap!”, we thought, “That’s exactly what we do!!!!” So, we sent in an audition tape and a few months later, the network told us that they were interested in us. They sent a film crew to our houses, our playgroup, and even took us to a bar for dad’s night out. We had a great time, and we thought the resulting video turned out great.

It turns out that the network thought that it was too much cute footage of dad’s with their kids. They wanted drama. They wanted chaos. They wanted stressed out parents. Yikes! I didn’t like the sound of any of that, so I told them that. I told them that I would let them film anything that I actually did, but we wouldn’t be doing anything really crazy so they could make a spectacle of us. I wanted them to make a documentary, they want to make entertaining TV. Minutes after I made my line in the sand, I got a phone call from the production company that they were booting us from the show, and thanks for our time. “What have I done?” I thought. “I don’t even have any integrity.” I thought about immediately calling them back and saying that I would walk naked down the Vegas strip, just for the shot at appearing on basic cable, but somehow, I never picked up the phone. Fame has its price, and it is a price I guess I am not willing to pay. So, I guess some other guy will become the voice of stay at home dads on TV, one that is willing be more “TV friendly.” I guess I am fine with our life, just the way it is. Besides, Amy is way hotter than Nicole Eggert.

Holy Cannoli, My Kid Won't Shut the Fuck Up

2009-07-17T15:30:00.000-07:00

My son is a talker. We used to think that he was kinda verbal. Now, we know that he is way past that. He has developed a nasty case of diarrhea of the mouth. (Sadly it is accompanied by, as my junior high science teacher used to say, constipation of the brain.)

Malcolm talks about poop. He talks about school. He talks about his “aminals.” And when he is done talking you about everything that he has to talk about, he talks to his aminals. Then he finds someone else to talk to. If he can’t find anyone else, he comes back to you and will try to talk to you about all the same stuff he has already talked to you about. The cycle then repeats, ad nauseum.

I used to think that I talked to Malcolm to pass the time away during the day. Now, I know that quite the opposite is true. He talks to me. I am not sure exactly where it comes from, but he loves hearing the sound of his own voice. Malcolm has lots of questions for the firefighters at birthday parties. He spends time at baseball practice telling his coach that his shoes are fast. He recently talked to my parents for 25 minutes on the phone telling them which of his aminals are mean and which are nice. Luckily, grandparents are insane enough and have enough free time to stay on the line that long.

So it all came down to this. We just spend a few days with our friends at the Russian River. We kayaked down the river one of the days, and after the long and tiring day we tried to unwind back at the house in the hot tub. Everyone had their head back, eyes closed, and nobody spoke. Then Malcolm got there. “Daddy, why are the dogs going poop?” he asked. He continued, “Daddy why do the dogs have so many legs? Why does the brown one’s tail not move? I think the brown one looks like cinnamon. Are there monsters in the trees? The night before this one, was there any monsters, then?” I told Malcolm that we were tired and wanted to relax, and asked him to be quiet. He paid no attention to that, and said that he wanted to play the train game. He was going to be blue again, because he likes blue, which is the color of his dog. I had to ask him again to be quiet and told him that if he wasn’t able to be quiet, he was going to have to get out of the hot tub. For a while, he whispered his string of unrelated nonsensical comments, but then when he didn’t get the response he was looking for, he continued ahead, full steam. “The day after next, I want to go to the river, and throw rocks for the dogs. I want to go in the boat, and look at the weeds. When is mommy coming? Is she at work? Why does she have the green car and we have the blue car. My dog is blue.” At this point we couldn’t stop laughing because it became apparent that Malcolm just couldn’t shut the fuck up. When we finally could take no more, I took Malcolm out of the hot tub. Not the worst problem you could draw up for a kid, but exhausting nonetheless.

I Love Getting Fresh

2009-07-15T07:56:00.000-07:00

I have, recently, begun to concentrate on where our food comes from. Now, I know what you are going to say, “When one carrot and another carrot love each other very much…” No, not that part. I am talking about where in the world our food is grown. Why do you ask? Let me tell ya.

Food travels, on average, 1500 miles from the farm it is grown on to your plate. That means every time I eat an “average” meal, it is like I traveled to Denver to eat it. Yikes! I don’t even like Denver, why would I want to eat all my meals there? Needless to say, a lot of fossil fuels are burned by the planes, trains and automobiles to get broccoli and raspberries to my house. In order to accommodate this rigorous travel schedule, growers select plants that can withstand brutal harvesting techniques and survive for longer on the shelf. (If you ask me, they should select plants that are tasty. I picked Amy as a spouse because she is fun and hot, not because she can hike and doesn’t bruise easily!) All this is done so that large, multinational corporations take your money at the grocery store and spend it on corporate retreats in the Caribbean. It all sounds pretty fishy to me.

There is a better way, though. Eat locally! For those of you lucky enough to live in California, there are tons of easy ways to ensure that you eat food that is produced close by. For those of you in Montana, you are stuck with Moose Jerky and Huckleberries (Hey, I didn’t tell you to live there!) We have selected a company that gathers local, organic fruits and veggies and drops them off in a box at our house every week. The veggies are in season, perfectly ripe, and delicious. Since we get a large box, I broaden my culinary horizons and fit the meal around what is in season, rather than fitting the season around what I want to eat. I also have started paying attention to where food I buy in the grocery store comes from. So now, I buy the organic, California grown tomatillos instead of the ones grown in mexico. What’s a tomatillo? Here you go!

Buying locally does many things. It cuts down on fossil fuel use. It keep your food money in the community, so that we can tax the hell out of it. Farmers are a bit odd, so it is likely that they will use this money for strange things like tractor cozies or pig lipstick. Buying locally will also prevent the countryside from turning into one giant housing development and strip mall. In short, buying local produce will solve all the world's problems and make your sex life better.

I saw that someone who ordered a local, organic produce box compared the price of the box to that of produce bought at a major supermarket, and found that the local organic produce was cheaper (on average $.20 of your food dollar goes to growers, the rest is spent on packaging, distribution and marketing, not to mention CEO salaries). I can’t vouch for that, but I do know that I have really enjoyed the locally produced meals I have been making a lot more. Isn’t that all that really matters? At the very least, it beats eating in Denver.

Malcolm the Racist Liar

2009-07-14T16:39:00.000-07:00

Up until now, Malcolm has been brutally and unbendingly honest with us. When we ask him if he hits somebody, he says, “yes.” When we ask him if he broke something, he admits it, if he did. Yesterday, I asked him if we was being mean to the cat, he replied, “just a wittle bit.” Today, however was a different story.

We went to baseball practice again. (For those who follow this blog closely, I was excited because the regular coach was absent and the replacement had lots of energy and engaged the kids really well. I was so bummed to learn that the regular coach will be back next week!) After practice ended, we rounded up the gear and set off for the car. I couldn’t find his bat, and we looked all over for it. After a while, Malcolm told me that he saw the little boy take it. I asked which boy, and he said the boy with the brown skin. This kinda made sense to me, as I had seen one of the boys playing in the outfield with a bat during the practice. I didn’t remember taking Malcolm’s bat out of our sports bag, so I asked whether Malcolm had seen the boy take the bat out of our bag, and he said, “yes.” I asked a second time to confirm that he had, in fact, seen the boy take our bat out of the bag, and he confirmed that he did. Boy, was I mad.

I got my speech ready for the boy’s mom as we walked around the park looking for them. I was going to say something along the lines of, “Are you teaching your kids to steal, or are you just not parenting at all?” I realized that I, the white guy, was walking on slippery ice by accusing the black kid of taking our stuff, but I had an eye witness, and my eye witness had never been wrong before. When we didn’t find them in the park, I went to the office and told the coach everything that I knew, hoping that justice would come next week at the latest. And then, we got home.

Sitting on the floor of our kitchen, underneath a large pile of shopping bags, was Malcolm’s bat. I was really bummed. Not only did Malcolm stop telling the truth, but this was the first time I had noticed Malcolm noticing a difference in skin color. Sadly, his first act of racial identification was to accuse (wrongly) a black kid of stealing. Thus, Malcolm joined the huge population of white people who, when asked about their assailant’s identity said, “I don’t know, but was a black guy!” I can only guess at how bad I would have felt if the family had still been at the park and I would have laid into them. We’re not out of the woods, yet, as we still have to explain what happened to the coach next week. This week, though, we have to start talking to Malcolm about telling the truth. It is a sad time, indeed.

A Fair to Remember

2009-07-13T16:56:00.000-07:00

Malcolm and I went to the Alameda County Fair. We had a great time, we saw a sweet model train set, petted everything from a peacock to a Llama, rode rides, saw funny shows and ate garbage. We had so much fun that we skipped Malcolm’s nap and left after dinner, Malcolm falling asleep on the way home. All in all there the day was a smashing success, the kind of day you dream about before you have kids and wonder what it will be like to be a parent.

The only downside is the knack that I have for hating people. Sometimes they can tell that I hate them, sometimes they can’t, but put me around a group of people for long enough and I am gonna hate some of them. Since I was at the fair for 8 hours today, I developed quite a list:

1. Model Train Engineer Guy. Since Malcolm is so excited by model trains, I can forgive the socially awkward 50 year old men who still play with choo choo trains. What I cannot forgive is the engineer today who dropped his can of soda, and thought that the very next thing that he needed to do was open it. Seriously! He opened a can of soda right after dropping it. Of course, the soda exploded, like you would expect a can of soda to, and the reach of the blast extended to a good deal of train track, and sadly, my hat. I gave him the stink eye, but his friend standing next to me said everything that needed to be said, “Why did you do that?”

2. Lady with scaredy cat kid. Malcolm is no angel, I know this. So when the carnie opened the gates to the jeep ride and all the kids made a mad dash to pick out their favorite jeep, I could have chastised Malcolm for running in front of an older kid who, for some reason was frozen in his tracks. I didn’t though and the kid Malcolm cut in front of burst into tears, pointing to Malcolm’s jeep and saying, “that was myyyyyy jeep.” This was especially ridiculous because there were still 4 seats available in the jeep, including the driver seat. The kid’s mom sneered at me, picked up her kid, and said, “I know, that little boy cut in front of you and took your jeep, didn’t he. We’ll wait for the next ride.” What are you talking about lady? There are four open seats in there! This is a fair, sometimes your kid will share a ride. Quit raising a drama queen.

3. Carnies. I realize that everyone needs work, and that some jobs are better than others, but why do carnies have to be so sketchy? Everywhere I went I was shouted at by hawkers. At first I tried to be polite, “no thank you, not today, gotta get to a show!” But they continue to sell even after you politely tell them no. So, after 6 hours of this, I started to lose it, “No! We don’t want an enormous inflatable Spongebob! Because we have no use for a fucking goldfish!” etc. etc. The way they sell you is creepy, too. Instead of, “Hey there, hey there, step right up, every one’s a winner here,” its “Does your son want something big and furry?” Ewwwwwww. If Malcolm ever wants to work at a carnival I am going cry.

4. Swearing parents. I love swearing. My favorite word of all time is Mother Fucker. I like to call people who don’t swear, “asshole.” Things change, though, when you have a kid. Things you used to do (get falling down drunk and sleep all the next day, hunting homeless people with a compound bow etc) are no longer acceptable, and you have to carve out special time to do them. I think swearing definitely falls into this category. Try not to swear until your kids know the difference between swearing (which will get them into trouble at school) and nice language. At the fair, a couple (drinking Coors Light at 11 am) ran around with their kids saying things like, “I don’t give a shit, git away from that tractor!” And, “Put that stupid fucking shovel down!” I couldn’t believe it, as usually when parents swear its because they have just hurt their knee on something. These people definitely didn’t play by the rules, and I felt sad for their mother fucking kids, who are gonna have a hard time when the grow up knowing what, exactly, normal is.

5. Magicians. I took Malcolm to a magician’s show, and it hurt. This guy was very good at doing tricks (errr “Illusions”) but his whole shtick was creepy. I guess magicians are the carnies of the entertainment world, and this guy was no different. He spoke out of the side of his mouth like the Penguin on Batman, or Dick Cheney, and kept looking around like he was expecting the cops to come and bust him at any moment. His voice was hushed, as if hungover and embarrassed about what he did the night before. Also, I couldn’t be sure, but is seemed like his shoes were on the wrong foot. If I had my choice between Malcolm becoming a Carnie or becoming a magician, I honestly don’t know how I would instruct him. I would hope that he would be a stay at home dad, and learn the joy of taking his son to the county fair.

Bouncy House of Doom

2009-07-13T09:57:00.000-07:00

America has a villain. It has a power so great, so unstoppable as to make all those in its path yield. Many have tried to tame it, and failed, for to know the scourge is to know the source of pure evil. Its name? Bouncy house.

Malcolm went to a birthday party on Saturday and there were 10-15 kids there. Outside the bouncy house, the kids played nicely with one another, running around and having a good time. Once these polite, smiling children set foot in the bouncy house, however, all bets were off. The kids started randomly attacking each other like they were in a zombie movie. If they had a weapon, they’d use it, particularly to bring blunt force trauma to the head. If they didn’t have a weapon, they would simply use their tiny little fingers to try and pry open their combatant’s skulls. Soon, most of the (good) parents had to stand by the bouncy house to try and limit the amount of carnage done either to or by their kid.

So, one by one the kids would jump into the house, intent on having a good time. Once the critical mass hit, and the party turned into a drunken brawl, one by one, the kids would come out crying, complaining of a near death experience brought on by a rabid bouncer. The last one standing would smile, knowing that they had successfully vanquished all foes, and leave the bouncy house to collect their handsome reward of a juice box and a peanut butter celery stick. Then, one by one, the kids would pile back into the bouncy house and madness would ensue.

I don’t know why the bouncy houses do what they do. Maybe the stale air under the vinyl turns toxic. Maybe jumping up and down rapidly has a degenerative effect on the brain. Whatever it is, I when I find out the cause, I am going to bottle it and start my own roller derby team.

I Hate Thursdays

2009-07-11T08:37:00.001-07:00

Thursday should be the happiest day of the week. It is the day that our five foot tall, Portuguese speaking, spitfire of a housecleaner, Rosie, comes. Rosie has been cleaning our house for many years now, the result of the Great Compromise of 2006. If you hadn’t followed this treaty in the international journals, it came about because our house was a pig sty and Amy was not appreciating my role as stay at home napper. When Malcolm turned one, we put him in day care to socialize him, and teach him how to say “mine” while hitting and biting other kids. This time at day care was supposed to free me up to do things like clean the house. I hate cleaning the house though, so Amy would come home from work, cringe at the shocking level of filth our house deteriorated into, and we would fight. Eventually we compromised to ditch the day care and hire a housecleaner (the thinking being, “wouldn’t it be better to pay someone to do the things you don’t like to do (cleaning) than pay someone to do the things you like to do (hang with the boy?) So, we hired Rosie and we have had pure marital bliss ever since.

So every Thursday, Rosie comes in and cleans everything from our refrigerator shelves to Malcolm’s hurricane riddled closet. For intents and purposes, I should be ecstatic that our house is spotless. So what happens to bring down the party? We happen. Immediately after Rosie leaves, I make lunch and mess up the otherwise pristine kitchen. Malcolm marches back into his closet and takes all 438 books off the shelf. We sit on the couch and mess up the perfectly fluffed pillows. We destroy a perfectly cleaned house, and it takes us less than 30 minutes to do so. So, at the end of the day on Thursday, I don’t see the mostly still clean house anymore, I see all the messes we have made. And it bums me out.

P.S. If any of you need a great housecleaner, let me know. This recession is killing Rosie's base.

We got attacked!

2009-07-08T16:36:00.001-07:00

At my stay at home dads group Monday, on old woman stumbled over and set down at one of our tables. Now, I generally fear old people, so I was not happy about this development. Then she opened her mouth, “Why are all the men taking care of the babies?” Since I was closest to her, I took the lead, “Because we are stay at home dads. We all take care of the kids while our wives work.” Her reply was less than encouraging, “Everything’s gone to hell.” She went on to offer an excuse for why none of use had paying careers, “There are no good jobs anymore, they’ve all gone away.” I thought this was kind of funny, and put aside my distaste for old person smell to engage her for a bit.

Boy was I wrong. She lashed out at everything that happened after the 1940’s, lambasted Obama for spending too much money, and then chastised us for not taking care of our wives and families. When we explained that we literally were taking care of our wives and families, she told us that we should be humiliated. Then she said the whole world had gone to hell (again) nothing good had happened in 40 years. I left when she started to get racist, and heard some of the other members of the group trying to get a word in edgewise.

Usually the comments we get from random people are quite positive, “That’s so awesome! I tried to get my husband to do that. I’ve heard about you guys.” Once, a woman came up to us at a park and said that her mom’s group was jealous that we were drinking beer, because the only good stuff they had were brownies. I offered to trade them our beer for their brownies, but she declined, and later just brought over their leftover brownies for us to eat. So this was really the first time that someone had challenged our roles to our face, but no one minded, considering she was loony as all get up.

But, it did make me think. Being a stay at home is a challenge, but usually by the time you make it out of your house, you are comfortable in your role. There are days when you question what the hell you have done with your life, but that is true when you are a lawyer, insurance salesman, or postal employee, too. I have thought about returning to the workforce, but every time I do, I come to the same conclusion, “work is for suckers.” So old lady, go on and hate us, just as you hate all evidence of progress. Where we sit, progress is just fine.

Free Market Economics and the Piedmont Fourth of July Parade

2009-07-07T15:40:00.000-07:00

Some of you may be surprised to know this, but I was a economics major. As such, I believe in capitalism and free markets. There are occasions, where the market can fuck things up (health care, education, defense) so it is not to be trusted. In those instances, government intervention is warranted to correct market failures. Recently, I witnessed a market intervention far more insidious than anything the Republicans have accused Obama of doing.

While at the Fourth of July parade in Piedmont, I saw a parent grab candy and give it to their kid. I know, outrageous! The chief draw to this parade is that the people in the parade throw candy to the kids watching the parade from the sidewalks. (Think of it as Mardi Gras without the alcohol, beads or nipples.) If you are a kid, you have to be fast, because the longer the candy rests on the ground, the higher likelihood that some other, faster kid will beat you to the punch. Those are the rules of engagement, and we fully embraced them: if you wanted a sugary treat, you needed to outfox the pack. That is why Malcolm, with terrible hand/eye coordination and a natural inclination for public shyness, only got 3 pieces of candy at last year’s parade. Here's what he looked like last year. The other side of the sign said, "Please Throw Me Candy, I'm Slow!" So in case you need help with the analogy, there is a market for candy at the Fourth of July parade, with each child free to operate to accumulate as much candy as possible. The parents are obviously not market participants (even if there is occasionally good candy in the mix) so they function as the role of the government, requiring action only when there is a market failure (like the biggest kid beating up the others and taking all their stuff.)

So, imagine my surprise when this year, Malcolm went down to pick up a lollipop, and WHAM! it was snatched up by some grandparent, who promptly handed the candy to an undeserving kid. Where was the market failure I ask you? Each child has the same chance to grab the sweets! Hey, if your kid can’t pick up the candy by themselves, they have no business eating it. I will overlook inherent contradictions in the right wing views on abortion or the death penalty, but I can’t stand idly by when some rich adult in Piedmont (probably minutes after lambasting welfare) takes candy out of Malcolm’s hand and gives it their useless piece of shit of a kid. My first reaction was to notify the World Trade Organization, but on further reflection, i figured that they might have bigger fish to fry. My only other alternative was to grab the candy out of the other kid's hand, and explain that they would only get candy to eat if they figured out how to actually collect teh candy themselves. That seemed a little crazy, like when other parents ask malcolm to stop biting their kid, so I just grunted.

Warrantless interventions like this only perpetuate the problem because the undeserving are not incentivized properly. That kid will never learn how to get after it at the parade, and will probably legacy their way into good schools and great jobs, without ever having to learn the skills necessary for them to get what they want in life. In fact, giving candy to lazy kids will worsen the problem, because that candy will make the kid fatter and even more unlikely to be quick enough to seize upon the freebies next year. Maybe I am making a mountain out of a molehill, but, well I am. I don’t care. Raise your kids right people!!!! Now, I wonder how all this works at Mardi Gras?

The Straight Poop

2009-07-06T16:32:00.000-07:00

We have a bunch of new babies in our lives. Seeing what life is like with a newborn makes me think of when we were new parents, and what life was like back then. I remember we had our friends Austin and KC over for dinner as our first night of socializing, and after dinner, I suddenly burst out, “Oh my gosh, can we just talk about Malcolm’s poop for a little bit? I really got to get some stuff off my chest!” I have no idea what it is about being a parent makes you so obsessed about your kids poop, but I had it bad. Now, Malcolm is obsessed with poop (his poop, your poop, the dog’s poop, the cat’s poop, the zoo animals poop, horse poop, fly poop, bird poop, and the list goes on and on) and I know where he gets it from: us! With so much poop on the brain, I give you my favorite Malcolm poop stories. Enjoy!

First poop on the potty

Malcolm was rocketing up the potty training charts, when one day he decided to take a poop on the potty. Amy said that he seemed genuinely proud of his accomplishment until he looked down and recoiled in terror. He completely freaked out at the size of the object that had just came out of his body, much in the same way that I freaked out when Malcolm popped out of Amy’s lady business. He erupted into tears and wouldn’t go near the toilet for months. Eventually, he accepted jelly bean bribes to start using the toilet again, and now diapers are happily a thing of the past.

I have had it with these motherfucking poops on this motherfucking plane

On a plane ride to Florida, Malcolm once pooped seven times. Seven times!!! We had packed six diapers thinking that should be plenty for the four and a half hour flight. The first couple of poops we thought, “Strange, he usually only poops once a day at home.” Then we started rooting for more, thinking we might back door our way into the Guiness Book of Records (Get it? Back door!). When we had finally put on the last diaper, we turned towards each other with concerned looks on our face, not having to say, “what do we do if he does it again?” Then, he did it again.

I got some pretty strange looks on the way up the aisle to the bathroom for the seventh time that day, and people seemed question what the hell we were up to. Once inside the bathroom, I had to do one of the grosser things I have done as a parent: I scooped poop out of malcolm’s diaper, scoured the diaper with a wipe, and then put the diaper (still stained with the remnants of yesterday’s lunch) back on Malcolm. I returned to the seat with him, and Amy wrinkled her nose at me and then wouldn’t make eye contact again until we had landed and were able to access our auxiliary diaper supply. I called Guiness, they hung up on me.

I’m Proud, he’s a comedian

The first time that Malcolm pooped in a public place was a proud moment for me. We were at a pizza place for lunch with my dad’s group when Malcolm said that he had to go poop. I brought him into the bathroom, and without incident, he pooped in the potty. I was exhilarated as I had heard it can be quite traumatic for kids to go in public. We wiped, I flushed and then took a turn going pee in the crowded bathroom. When I started to pee Malcolm shouted, “My neenee is bigger than yours. Daddy has a small neenee!!!” Needless to say, I waited for the room to clear before heading back out, no sense in showing your face to the world when such things have been said.

The grossest 5 minutes ever

I went to an Oakland A’s game with some friends of mine once. Malcolm was about eight months old, and made a very large, very stinky deposit into his diaper. None of my friends offered to change Malcolm, so I went to the men’s room to do it. At first, I was outraged at the fact that they had no changing tables to work with. Then I realized that the members of the Raider nation would probably have used a changing table to pass out on, so I got over it. There being nowhere else to clean him up, I had to make the change on the floor. I threw up in my mouth a little when I got down on the floor and the floor smelled worse than Malcolm’s diaper did! I threw up a little more when I visualized the things that had to be done to the floor to get it to smell that way. I then took Malcolm out in the hallway and changed him there, amongst the hustle and bustle of the ballpark crowd. Next time you are at a sporting event, compare the smell of the bathroom to the smell of the hallway. You’ll see why I did what I did.

Peanut Poop

This one is my favorite. We were in France several years ago. While there, we went to a steakhouse with our friends and Amy’s parents. Malcolm was a bit fussy and needed quite a bit of attention. This was similar to the night before, in which we solved the dilemma by feeding Malcolm a constant stream of peanuts, a few at a time. That allowed us to enjoy ourselves at dinner, and gave Malcolm a wholly unbalanced meal. Well, those peanuts eventually worked their way through malcolm’s body and needed to be freed. Malcolm started to grunt. His eyes turned red and watered. He moaned. This continued for close to ten minutes, with Malcolm eventually grunting loud enough for others in the restaurant to hear. We, of course, let this go on and actually enjoyed ourselves a little, because he wasn’t crying when he was grunting. Malcolm finally won the battle and passed 50 or so peanuts, in different stages of digestion, into his diaper. Yes, that’s right, some of them were whole. His diaper looked like a Planters Candy Bar. We toyed with the idea of washing some of the more presentable peanuts and giving them to our neighbors (sort of a “Ta-Da!” moment) but in the end, just threw out the diaper. At least, on this night, we had a spare.

Care to share any poop stories of your own?

Letter to Malcolm's baseball coach

2009-06-30T14:24:00.000-07:00

I want to strangle Malcolm’s baseball coach. Not strangle from behind, chop into little bits and feed to the cat, like we do with the UPS driver. No, I want to strangle the coach almost to the point of asphyxiation, only to bring him back so that I can tell him what 3 and 4 year olds are like. We signed Malkie up for baseball and soccer classes this summer in the hopes that Malcolm would learn an appreciation for team sports, but I am deathly afraid that the coach is going to ruin everything. So in an effort to avoid having to do him bodily harm, I am going to offer a few suggestions to him.

First, preschoolers don’t know anything about baseball. If they are standing at home and you tell them to go “hit first,” they are more likely to slug the person next to them than touch first base. I suggest yelling, “run straight ahead and touch first base with your foot!” They also don’t know what “tag him!” or “tag the bag” mean. I suggest a little bit more clarity in these instructions as well. They will definitely not understand you when you say, “if you get to first before the other team throws the ball to the first baseman who steps on the bag, then you are safe, otherwise you are out.”

Second, preschoolers have an attention span of 3 seconds. It’s a fact. If you are trying to get the batter to hold the bat properly, take a wide stance, and take a few practice swings before eventually hitting, don’t be surprised that, when the ball is actually hit, the third baseman is now chasing a grasshopper and the second baseman is lying down playing in the sand. Yelling their names and asking them to get back in position won’t help. To keep them focused, each drill should take no more than a few seconds, or you’ll end up trying to herd kids (much in the same way you would herd cats) back into organization.

Third, don’t bother with any small talk. If you start the day (at 11 am, mind you) by asking if everyone had woken up, you’re likely to get the answer that Malcolm gave, “I had yoguwt for bweakfast, and waffles. My shoes are reawy, reawy fast.” I know that you wake up late (last week you showed up hungover and 30 minutes late, but kids don’t really need to be sweet talked, just get ‘em playing.

Fourth, some people have accents. When woman of some sort of asian ethnicity says that the white, blonde haired boy’s name is “Sum,” you might want to factor in that the woman is the nanny, and boy is named Sam. If you don’t you will be calling the boy, “Sum” all season long and the other parents will giggle at you.

Fifth, preschoolers don’t need to play simulated games. They merely need to be introduced to the major elements involved and taught to enjoy themselves. Today, “Coach” explained how a game worked and then was sooooo satisfied with his work that he quizzed the kids, “So Devon, what do you do when the ball is hit at you?” A minute or so passed before another kid yelled, “firefly!” and then the left half of the infield went and asked their mommies for water. When “Coach” tried to bring the left side infielders back, the right side infielders went skipping into the outfield, while the kids on the bench gathered around the tee and started jumping on it. The batter, then tried to use the bat like a riot shield and push the bench kids back into the dugout. The parents giggled. Next time, just do group activities designed to help the kids learn to run, catch, throw, and hit. They will learn the thrill of an actual game later. That is, if they aren’t too many butterflies around.

A weekend in the country

2009-05-27T11:38:00.000-07:00

We have rancher friends. That’s right, there are people in this world who don’t have strip malls, traffic woes, or neighbors that aren’t relatives. My high school friend, Regina, and her husband Judd, live on a ranch, complete with cows, horses, tractors and lots and lots of alfalfa. They met in college, and after a stint traveling the world, they settled in to work the land on Judd’s family farm. Now, they are raising a family in the country and seem as happy as two squirrels in a gunny sack. I’m not sure that the squirrel/gunny sack reference is used properly, but I have heard them use the expression and wanted to repeat it here.

We visited Judd, Regina, their daughter Dylan and the unborn fetus that is expected to arrive sometime in July. In addition to the humans, the Hannas are also made up of 5 dogs, 16 or 17 orange cats, a bunch of horses and the countless number of deers and squirrels that run around their farm eating their crops. (More on the squirrels later.)

For the past two Memorial days, the Hannas have graciously invited us up to the ranch for what Regina has called, my “Mancation.” You see, as a stay at home parent, and self proclaimed liberal wacko, I have become somewhat of a candy-ass. Going to the ranch, allows me to get in touch with my inner macho stud, and I spent the weekend doing manly things. I’m not sure Amy liked what she saw, as she likes her little sissy husband, but it’s definitely good for me to get out there and live it up.

We arrived at the ranch on Friday night, and were treated to hamburgers, in what was the first course of our red meat orgy that lasted the whole weekend. I knew we had arrived in Etna when the people we passed on the road to the Hanna’s house all waved to us, even though they had no idea who we were. In the country, you wave to everyone you pass on the road, as if to say, “Hey there pardner, welcome to paradise.” Wanting to seem like a local, I waved back at everyone. I reckoned I was beginning to fit in.

Our first full day on the ranch began with venison sausages (a result of one of Judd’s hunting trips) and Regina’s homemade scones. We then went outside to check out the new baby horse, Sugar. Sugar was only a few weeks old and was easily the youngest horse we had ever seen. Malcolm had a great time watching and attempting to feed hay to the horses, but became concerned when we wouldn’t let him ride the still-way-to-skittish foal. To rectify this, we saddled up one of the older horses and lead the kids around the yard on a leash. Malcolm had a great time, and, considering he was deathly afraid of riding the horses last year, he showed a lot of guts riding by himself.

When the kids went down for a nap, Judd forever changed my life by introducing me to the greatest thing ever: shooting squirrels. Squirrels are a scourge to ranchers. They dig lots and lots of holes in the ground, and this presents a hazard, as the cattle will often fall into the holes and hurt themselves. Injured cattle are impossible to deal with as they way 14 million pounds each, and moving a cow with a broken leg is about as hard as getting me to go to church. In case you are still outraged that I would go squirrel hunting you can pretend that we out to protect ourselves from these:

To remove the scourge, ranchers have developed a unique method of reducing the squirrel population: they shoot them. Ordinarily, I eschew gun violence as a mortal sin, but since I was on a mancation, I happily obliged Judd.

We started out behind the Hanna’s house, outfitted with a .22 rifle with a bitchin’ scope on top. Judd, of course, laughed at me because I shoot lefthanded for some reason. I think he was a little impressed, though, when I actually got one, and soon all the squirrels in the yard were either dead or hiding. From there, things got interesting. Judd took me in his 4 wheel drive truck and we roamed the nearby pastures looking for miniature game. Whenever either of us saw a squirrel, Judd stopped, and if it was on my side, I took the gun, balanced it against the window frame, and fired. If the squirrel was on Judd’s side, he would do the same. We had a great time stalking our prey, laughing and telling stories, although I felt like in some respects like Sarah Palin hunting moose from a helicopter. Our helicopter was little more country, though, as Judd’s ranch truck is completely covered in trash, spent .22 casings, and mud. This is how I imagined we looked:

After our bountiful excursion, we returned to the house, where Judd and Regina had arranged for a babysitter to come and look after the kids while we went out eat at the Etna brew pub. That’s right, we actually got a night out drinking good beer and enjoying each other’s company. I tell you, as far as hosts go, Regina and Judd are the bomb. We returned to a quiet house to drink premium bourbon and hear more stories about life on the ranch.

The next day, Judd and I went to move pipe. A little known fact about alfalfa is that is doesn’t grow without water. Well, most people know that, but I didn’t. To water the acres and acres of the stuff, they employ a system of huge pipes attached to large wheels. The pipes needed to be moved twice a day, and we would head out there, disconnect the water supply, move the wheels forward 30-40 feet, and then reconnect them. Moving the pipes during the day isn’t all that fun, but getting there sure was. To get to the fields, we rode 4 wheelers, and I had a great time buzzing around in the fields, pretending I was racing ATV’s. Judd must have thought I was pretending to help him move the pipes because it took twice as long for him to get everything done with me there.

We took Judd’s truck to the barn where the ATV’s are stored, and Judd laughed at me because I instinctively reached to put on the seatbelt each time we got in the truck. I put on the seatbelt the first time I got in, but I decided that since I was on mancation, seatbelts were for sissies. I have never felt so alive.

We arrived back at the ranch to witness Judd’s little cousin beginning the process of breaking a cow for the big 4-h show later in the summer. Cows don’t really like being broken, and it takes a lot of work to get the cow comfortable around humans and a harness. Malkie was intrigued by the whole thing only because of the sheer volume of cow shit he witnessed coming out of the cow’s ass.

Later in the morning, we saddled up the horses and all went out for a ride together. Dylan rode on Judd’s lap, Malcolm rode on Amy’s lap, and I cried all the time without a lap to ride on, as I am not very good at riding horses. The only thing that made it cool for me was that I had not packed any long pants, and got to borrow a pair of Judd’s Wranglers for the ride. Yep, I wore Wranglers. Mancation indeed! The ride went well, except for the fact that my horse was a complete asshole and kept walking right under trees, subjecting me to the scrapes and scratches of the branches hanging down. I am pretty sure my horse smiled every time he walked under some branches.

Judd and I went squirrel huntin’ again during nap time, and Amy I and also went out for some off-roading in the 4 wheelers. During our little jaunt, we saw the ranch’s “dead pile” where they drag all the cows that die in the fields. While staring at the remains of a two day old carcass, we saw a small black bear running away. He have been sampling the steak tartar before we got there, as bear sightings are rare there. We also saw some wild turkeys, but they weren’t in season so I couldn’t shoot at them from Judd’s truck.

On the way back, we stopped at Judd’s nephew’s birthday party. Judd, his two brothers, and his parents all live next to each other, so going anywhere usually involves stopping at someone’s house and seeing what they are up to. The birthday party had begun to quiet down, so we sat in the yard drinking shitty beer and watching the kids jump around on a trampoline. Everyone in the country has a trampoline, and Amy, Malcolm and I even took turns showing our poor coordination. I was beginning to get the hang of it, but left the trampoline in shame when, on one of my jumps, the trampoline bowed so low that my butt actually touched the ground.

We capped off the evening with some steak, watermelon and a nice little tantrum by Malcolm. Malcolm was pretty well behaved for the weekend, so the fact that he only had one meltdown was pretty acceptable to us. Earlier in the day, however, Malcolm was on my lap on the couch when, for no apparent reason and no real notice, he threw up on my and the couch. I’m still not really sure why he did this, maybe it was his body reacting to the steady diet of red meat.

The next morning, we packed up the car, got a quick chicken fried steak and eggs from the local breakfast haunt, and said our goodbyes. Regina and Judd were great hosts, talented cooks, and nice friends to spend a weekend with. There was talk that the previously once a year event, “Etnapalooza” may be reincarnated, and if they do, I suggest that you try and make the trip and join us. Of course, you must be man enough to want to.

Careful what you ask for in life, you just might get it

2009-04-30T10:18:00.000-07:00

When we remodeled our house several years ago, one of the things that excited us most was the addition of a cat door. This two foot by one foot slice of heaven allowed the cats to go outside without us opening the door for them, and as a result, eliminated the need for the indoor cat box. Some might question whether it is wise to spend several hundred thousand dollars so that you don’t have to open the door when your cat wants to go outside, but anyone who has scooped cat diarrhea out of a box knows, this was pure bliss.

Actually, we had stopped shoveling anything and everything out of the cat box prior to the remodel, only because we found the job so revolting and frankly, beneath us. After a little research (google search: automatic kitty litter box), we purchased an automated kitty litter box. That thing was awesome, it looked like Darth Vader and used some combination of technology and magic to somehow scoop the poop, but not the litter, into a tray below. Cleaning this futuristic cat box required only that you clean out the tray every few days. Alas, this was too much for us to handle, and we took so much joy from the Darth Cat Pooper that we never remembered to clean the tray. This was unfortunate, because when the tray backed up, cat poop stuck to the outside of the giant globe, causing everything to stink and making Darth look quite unsightly. Things got so out of control that we eventually turned over the entire upstairs master bedroom, orange shag carpeting and all, to the cats’ boudoir. Enter an architect, constructions crews, a boatload of money, and voila, cats go out the cat door and start using the neighbors yard to relieve themselves.

This worked out well until I started noticing that on some mornings, the cat’s food bowl would be empty and that the water bowl was filthy. After a few weeks of this, I discovered what was happening. One night, as I was watching TV with my cat on my lap, I heard the cat door open and something enter the house. I got up to investigate, and lo and behold there was a mid-sized raccoon going to town on the cat’s food. The little critter turned, looked at me, turned back for a few last gulps of food and then retreated back through the cat door. I was shocked and outraged! I called animal control who’s advice was this: “Oh, you don’t want the raccoon coming through your cat door? Close up the cat door.” Obviously, this was not going to be the solution, as we had just remodeled the house with this important feature in mind, and we surely not going to going through another remodel just to come up with plan B. We tried to close the cat door only at night, and this worked well for keeping out the masked intruders, but also had the predictable consequence of making the cat’s shit inside the house. Poop covered Vader was no longer an option, so we decided to grin and bear a little raccoon presence every now and again, hoping that our cat was not being subjected to this.

Having resigned ourselves to the reality that semi-wild animals were welcome to enter our house and possibly chew off Malcolm’s face, I recently noticed that other cats have now started coming into our house. The other day, while we were sitting on the couch reading books to Malcolm, a nice, fluffy white cat jumped in the cat door and started goofing off with our cat. Our kitty seemed inclined to show the newbie around, so he did. He lead a little tour which went something like this: “Over here is the food and water. The bowls are usually full, but you probably shouldn’t eat late at night, or you run the risk of a raccoon coming in and chewing off your face. Here are the people sitting on the couch. The little one is dangerous, likes to pull tails and sit on top of you when you he gets the chance. The big one is nice enough, although he smells a little funny. This is my favorite blanket to sleep on, and I’m sure you’ll find it quite comfortable.” The tour continued for a few minutes, and then the white cat lied on the floor for the rest of the night.

A week or so later I went upstairs to get dressed and when I got up there, a different cat came bounding out from underneath our bed and ran down the stairs and out the cat door. I have seen this cat a few other times, and I have definitely noticed the smell of cat urine in our bathroom on a number of occasions. So, if you’re keeping score at home here’s the play-by-play, in order to eliminate the need for us to have a cat box, we have invited the neighborhood cats over and pee all over our floors. Why can't all cats be potty trained? There is no justice in this world. Every time I see any of these other cats frolicking about the house I make a run at them to scare them into thinking I am about the place kick them through the cat door, but I don’t think they are scared of me. I think they enjoy pissing on my floors and then scurrying out of the house, knowing that I know what they have just done.

Things got worsened the other night, when Amy went upstairs to find a huge pile of hair in our bedroom. She originally thought that I had done some manscaping in anticipation of our trip to Florida, but the straight, oily hair could only have one origin. Fucking cats! Actually, to be more precise, these were shitting cats, because accompanying the large pile of hair was a large turd right in the middle of it all. I am not 100% sure what happened, I judging from the physical evidence I can reconstruct what occurred: Neighborhood cat comes into the house, to piss on the floors and then relax on our bed. Our cat comes home and catches him lazing the day away in our room with an empty bladder. A fight ensues, with much pawing and kicking, and hair pulling. A brief time out is called so that one of the participants can squeeze a loaf off, then the festivities are resumed. Eventually, the neighborhood cat gets tired of pulling out all the hair on our (relative wimpy) cat and leaves to go have sex with the slutty short haired vixen across the street. Now I know what you are thinking, because I have already thought about it. I will not take this to CSI for an episode on cat mischief, as I do not want our cat to have to live a life under the microscope that fame brings.

I guess there is only one real solution. We have to kill out cat and cover up the cat door with cement. Actually, that will probably not work (I have stuck the cat in a burlap sack twice but have been unable to pull the trigger and whack the bag against the side of the house.) People get attached to their pets and I want our kitty to live a long and fun filled life getting its ass kicked and living in perpetual fear of the masked bandit breaking in at night. I guess we’ll just live with this too, so if you visit our house and use the bathroom and it smells like pee. Be mindful of the fact that it is totally the neighborhood cats and not just poor aim on my part.

As I write this, I am sitting in our kitchen which smells strongly of fish. Amy cooked fish last night, and the house still reeks of it. Why not just open a window you ask? Well, the reason why is that when the cats are not pissing and shitting in our house, they are doing it right beneath our kitchen window. When you open said window, instead of lovely fresh air, you get cat box aroma. Sometimes, I hate my life.

Tofutti, it's what's for dinner?

2009-04-25T16:09:00.000-07:00

I don’t know where you were today, but me, I was at a vegan cooking class. In a Presbyterian church. Now those of you who know me understand that me heading to a church for some vegan cooking lessons is tantamount to Dracula strapping a garlicky crucifix to his neck and heading to the beach for the day. Amy’s mom, Jean bought me some cooking classes for Christmas and the first one that I wanted to go to was today: Hearty Italian Cooking. (I opted to skip the first two classes: I passed on the vegan baking class on recommendations from vegetarian friends who warned me that vegans hate to eat dessert and the "demystifying tofu" class just sounded silly).

So there I was, ready to learn about how to cook Italian food without meat or animal byproducts, when the instructor had us go around the room to introduce ourselves and state why we were there. I said my name and told everyone there that I was a stay at home dad and did all the cooking. That was fine enough, the hard part came when it I had to talk about why I was there. I went the honest route, which turned out to be a huge mistake. I said that my mother-in-law had bought me some gift certificates for Christmas and that I thought she was crazy for suggesting that I learn to cook without meat. After I said this, I heard a gasp, and all of the air got sucked out of the room. I looked around and the granola-ey people who were smiling earlier, now recoiled and looked at me like I had just called them a bunch of idiots, which, I guess, I just had. It didn’t help that I was wearing a Beer Nuts hat which read, Beer Nuts: Good Times, Great Nuts. I guess it beat the, “Beef, it’s what’s for dinner” hat I had on last night. I was floundering, and things didn’t get any better when I called myself a “self-described Meatasaur” and that there was no way I was going vegan after one class, but maybe, just maybe, I would cook a meal every once in a while without meat in it. Crickets. The instructor made a quick joke about how good of a teacher she was and then moved on. I felt bad, like I had gone to band camp and told them all how dorky I thought band geeks were. Actually, I was little impressed with myself that I was able to introduce myself a church on a Saturday morning without saying, “my name is Paul and I am an alcoholic.”

We began cooking and made polenta with roast red pepper sauce, pizza, risotto with spring vegetables, and chocolate un-cheese cake. For the most part the food was pretty good. I would say it was one step short of gourmet, but the real draw of the day was the instructor. The instructor, colleen, had tons of energy, lots of wit, and a button that said, “be kind to animals, don’t eat them.” She made us all giggle a lot, and made the 3 hours together very enjoyable. For anyone of you who read this, you can find Colleen's organization, Compassionate Cooks here. Some of the granolaheads, though, had elevated the woman to rock star status, and would laugh at an inappropriately volume at all of her jokes. They would also mutter under their breath about how smart she was, too. (“That is sooooo true, if you don’t stir in the cornmeal slowly, then your polenta will clump together. Wow, she really knows her stuff.”) I accepted all this though, as I figured the protein starved vegans hadn’t really ever run into one of their own with this much energy before.

I sat in the back, asking a few questions (“How do you pick a good tomato?” “Is pizza sauce the same as pasta sauce?” “Are bacon and eggs vegan?”) and considered how the cooking class would change my eating/cooking. I realize the health benefits of skipping meat some of the time. I also realize that a lot of animals suffer needlessly as part of the food establishment. I cannot, for two reasons, justify swearing off meat, just yet. We took Malcolm to Earth, the new Disney nature movie, last night, and it was apparent that eating other animals is part of the natural order. (Seriously, why does Disney love violence so much? For a kids movie, why not show more little baby ducklings hopping out of trees and less wolves eating caribou, sharks eating seals, lions eating elephants, polar bears attacking walruses, and cheetahs eating deer. Then again, I should be glad that Disney didn’t arm the polar bears with shotguns to shoot the holy hell out of all the walruses.) The second reason that I eat meat is that my cat eats sushi. Yes, that's right, we gave our cat leftover sushi, so that means I get to eat steak tonight.

I am not ready to give up cheese or meat, but I decided that I would at least try a few things. I tasted some fake butter and vowed to try it on my popcorn and/or cookies. I also will try to use a thickening agent in some dessert recipes instead of eggs. I am going to write Colleen and let her know that I have made these two concessions. I am not sure whether she will be impressed or not, but, hey if a guy wearing a beer nuts hat tells you that you’ve made a difference, it ought to make your day.

A Birthday Party

2009-04-05T19:32:00.000-07:00

Today, we went to a birthday party for a 5 year old. Normally, I prefer to stay at arms length for such events, as I am mortified that our lives will one day become little more than participants in a never ending series of children’s birthday parties. Actually, that is probably more of a rationalization as to why we don’t have any friends and never get invited anywhere.

Today, however, we made an exception. The birthday party was held in Piedmont and the real draw is that it included a tour of a fire station. Yes, you read that right, a real live fire station. To those of you without kids, or even worse, those of you who have girls, you may not fully comprehend the importance of a real fire station visit. Imagine an alcoholic visiting the Jack Daniel’s distillery or Michael Jackson visiting an elementary school; that is how excited Malcolm was to go to a fire station and talk to a real live firefighter.

I should maybe explain why Malcolm is so into firefighters. Actually, I have no idea. I really try to stay involved in Malcolm’s life, but I actually know very little about why he is the way he is. All I know is that the cabal that Malcolm runs with at pre-school are firefighters and, according to Malcolm, “Firefighters are Bad Guys!!!!” One hope that I had was that this trip to the firehouse would convince Malcolm that firefighters are indeed good people and not an excuse to terrorize opposing gangs with at school.

So we arrived at the park across the street from the firehouse and Malcolm played with the other kids (most of whom he’d never met before). Now, I am used to everyone around knowing exactly who Malcolm is. Usually, it is because I have repeated his name so many times that anyone within a 20 foot radius knows exactly who he is and what he has been up to. “Malcolm stop that. Malcolm put that down. Malcolm come here. Malcolm don’t hit. Malcolm, don’t push. Malcolm stop biting that kid!!!!!!” Today, however, everyone knew who Malcolm was because everyone was asking, “who is that kid?”

Malcolm evidently thought it was his birthday because he was everywhere doing everything. He attempted to reorganize the “pin the fire helmet on the fireman” game into, “line up your stickers to make a fire helmet train.” He got mad at the birthday boy when the birthday boy failed to locate a stuffed Dalmatian that was hidden away in the playground in a timely manner. He attempted to eat 3 sandwiches (especially troubling because not all the kids got a sandwich.) Then, when we actually got to the firehouse, Malcolm kept raising his hands and “asking questions.” His “questions” went like this: “I have a question. Firefighters save grammies and grampas.” Or, “I have a question. Firetrucks have to go back.” When this last “question” wasn’t immediately “answered,” he kept yelling, “I have a question!” (and wildly gesturing as if he was driving the fire truck) until the firemen giving the presentation acknowledged Malcolm’s wisdom. The thing I found most enjoyable is that he would preface each comment with “I have a question,” and then say something silly like, “I have a question. Firefighters go with the people and get the rangers.” After contemplating this last one for a while, I think there is a reference to a rival pre-school cabal, evidently one that involves rangers.

After the kids got to sit in the fire truck and then shoot water from the hose, the party headed back to the park for some cake and presents. The woman running the show was not the mother of the birthday boy, but a woman who offered to host the party at a school auction. You might think that someone who essentially sells herself as an emcee for 5 year old’s birthday party would enjoy kids. This older, lumbering woman made had a distant, tired look in her eyes and body language which screamed, “happy birthday, unhappy birthday, what do I care?” She eventually wrangled the kids together for a regurgitation of the birthday song and a dispassionate splitting up of the cake. She seemed to convey the same amount of interest in the happiness of the kids as a cattle rancher has in his stock.

While the kids were sitting around eating, a woman came up to us and asked if Malcolm was our son. We said yes, and she told us how sweet and cute he was, an observation then echoed by several other parents. I found this curious, since I found Malcolm somewhat embarrassing, but I guess we all have different concepts of what is cool. We left, mindful of the classes Malcolm needs in passive observation, buy hopeful that he is engage, spirited, and getting the hint that firefighters are not, indeed, bad guys.

Trying to be Famous

2009-04-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

On Monday, the good folks at the Learning Channel came to our dad’s group to shoot an introductory video about who we are and what we do. They started off the day by coming to our house and shooting morning playtime with Malkie and I. We had a great time together and we both laughed a lot. The hardest part was the lengthy interview they did of me. I never got really comfortable, and, it being 9 am, it was too early to drink myself pretty. From there, they got in the car with Malcolm and I as we made our way to the park. I didn’t get into a wreck, and the only drama was a squirrel dancing in the road that I almost ran over.

At the park, we did our normal thing, talked NCAA hoops, made fun of each other, and enjoyed the awesome weather. (That last part was put in there merely to brag to people who live in snowy climates). At one point, Malcolm and 2 of his buddies got up on the table and started dancing. I walked over there to ask them to get down, and boy did they. They got down by shaking their butts all over the place, then started shouting, “shake your booty!” The only booty I thought Malcolm knew about was Pirate Booty!

They were with us for a good while, hoping to catch Malcolm dishing out a little punishment, but they only got an attempted biting; luckily the kid Malcolm seized was too quick to be a snack. The kids enjoyed performing for the camera, and for the most part were well behaved. Later we found out that most of the kids melted down after we dropped them off at home with the wives.

Why did we drop off the kids? Because we hit up a bar for dad’s night out. Things were going along swimmingly there until one of our members decided it would be a good idea for us to drop a shot of whiskey in our beers and then slam the whole thing. (If you’re wondering what this is, it’s called a boilermaker, and it tastes like caramel). Things degenerated quickly after this, especially because a few of the dads didn’t take their shot, so a couple of us ended up doing their shots for them. I know that this behavior may surprise some of you, as I am normally a vehemently anti-binge drinking, but I was merely attempting to go with the flow. So there we were, late in the evening, pretty drunk, and exhausted from a long day, when the conversation turned to birth control and sex. Some of the guys were pretty forthcoming about everything, but somehow I managed to avoid making any wild admissions. Of course, I could be totally wrong and it’s possible that I told everyone that Amy makes me dress up like a cabbage patch doll and discipline me for being a bad little boy. I’m pretty sure that I’ve kept that a secret, though.

So that was our day, a lot of laughs, a lot of goofiness, and a whole bunch of us being us. The network will take a couple of months to make a decision. They are trying to decide whether to use our group, a group from another city, both of us, or neither. We’re not sure about whether we want to be on TV, bring added stress to our totally fun Monday mornings, or whether Child Protective Services watch cable, but for now, we had a good time filming for a day.

In case you ever find yourself shooting TV footage, I have compile a simple list of tips I learned from Monday. First, Don’t look at the camera. The camera makes you apprehensive (it is usually 4 or 5 inches from your face.) The camera makes you shy. The camera adds 15 pounds. Pretend that there are no cameras there, and you will feel freer, more confident, and thinner.

Second, use your status as TV shootee to your advantage. If there are hot moms at the park who notice you are being followed by a TV crew, hit on them. Tell the crew they made your car dirty and have them wash it. You only have so much time being the center of attention, make the most of it! I only wish that I had told the production company that we grilled steak and lobster instead of chicken apple sausages.

Lastly, the microphone turns off. This is perhaps the most important thing you will ever need to remember. I was mic’d all day, and at the bar, I realized I could actually turn of the microphone. I immediately realized, then, that I could have turned off the mic when, say, I went to the bathroom. 5 times prior to this. The audio and video went to everyone at the shoot (the execs followed the action by watching hand held monitors and listening to remote audio feeds). That means I treated the executives to the glorious sounds of my pee entering the alameda county sewer system, accompanied by the other emanations I coerced out of my body at the time. Hard to look people in the eye who have listened to you pee on headphones. I guess I know why I started doing shots…

My Narcissism Kicks In To Overdrive

2009-03-06T16:23:00.000-08:00

I am not the best father in the world. I can say this now, while Malcolm hasn’t learned how to read, but it is in fact true. At my stay at home dad’s group, we guys sit around drinking beer and making fun of each other (and each other’s kids) while the kids desperately beg for attention. Malcolm constantly must tell me to put down my phone so that we can finish our role playing games (in the latest one, I was the driver of the circus train who was mauled by the lion in the caboose when the train derailed and the animals were set free. Who comes up with stuff like that?) Malcolm tells me to stop “working” on facebook and put away my computer so that we can do puzzles together. I know my limitations and try to keep focused on the job of raising our son as best as I can.

Recently, however, my thoughts have been taken up by a new circumstance. I few months ago, my dad’s group was approached by a representative from The Learning Channel about an idea for a show they were considering. They wanted to follow a dad’s group around and see what it is like for a man to function as a stay at home parent. I thought this was an excellent idea, and was interested in learning how to be a better parent. Sadly, they wanted to show us. We submitted an audition tape for them to get a sense of who we were. I did a little too much opening up, though, and for some reason I found myself talking about my favorite toothless prostitutes in Oakland in my audition tape. Did I mention that this was for a show on a network called “The Learning Channel?” At the time, the group was a little tight in front of the camera, so I wanted to set the stage for everyone to loosen up. I ended up overcompensating and going far, far off the deep end, ending up discussing things more appropriate for a priest in a confession booth.

Imagine my surprise a few months later when TLC got hold of us again and told us that they had selected our group and one other to proceed with. (!) They told us they weren’t quite sure what they had yet, and still needed to decide whether to use our group, the other group, both groups, or a show about the Octamom. Here’s where things get distracting for me. They also told me that they were going to shoot a pilot using our dad’s group and that they were going to send a film crew up to film a couple of days in our life. They want to show what the dad’s group is like, and also follow people home to see what happens in the home. At this point, I am on the short list of people that they want to follow home, and this is particularly terrifying because of the dizzying pace of lies I told on the audition tape. (I am going to have to start donating time to charity and cooking well, or they will know that the jig is up!)

So today, at a local kid’s play area, Malcolm threw pitchers of water on toddlers, took pretend eggs away from little girls, and threw pitchers of water on himself. Why? I was too busy trying to set up a web video conference with the dad’s and the production company. They are coming to tape in a few weeks, and nobody quite knows what to expect. I am not sure whether they will actually try to make a show out of us, and even if they do, whether I will be involved. I don’t know whether we will even be able to tolerate having strangers in our house. I do know, however, that I want to get the message out that there is no real reason why women need to be the ones that give up their careers to raise children and that men must go out and make the money. On second thought, maybe I’m all wrong, while I was writing this, Malcolm just dumped the entire box of crackers on the newly cleaned floor. Dumb distractions. I’ll keep you posted, but for now, if you see me on the street and I ignore you, its because I’m famous and you are not.

Mary Poppins, Rebooted

2009-02-05T11:42:00.000-08:00

My son Malcolm has an almost fetishistic love of the movie, “Mary Poppins.” We own the DVD, we listen to the CD in the car, and we even have the sheet music at our house so Amy and her parents can play the songs on our electric piano while at home. POPPINS PIC We even saw the movie at the PARAMOUNT THEATER here in Oakland, and enjoyed it on the big screen as if we had never seen it before. We’ve probably seen the movie 30 times, and no matter how hard I try, every time it is on I get sucked into it and start humming to the music.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the movie. It is sweet, has catchy music, and, unlike every other Disney movie I have seen, it contains no gun violence. Most of all, the movie has characters to take note of. Poppins allows the children to explore their imagination and creativity, the mother is passionate about political causes, and the father, while flawed, is capable of personal growth. Moreover, the entire subtext of the movie is that a truly loving and happy family is one that is enthusiastically involved in each others’ lives. For my money, you can’t beat that kind of stuff.

Even so, I was watching the movie again yesterday as Malcolm was sweating off his fever, and wondered whether the movie, made in 1964, could use a remake. Movies like Batman and James Bond were recently given new treatments and the newer versions were, in my opinion, awesome. With that in mind, I decided to rewrite Mary Poppins to reflect to world in which we live in today, and here is what I came up with.

Two children, Madison and Hunter, find themselves without a nanny. Their previous nanny-share arrangement fell apart when the father was nominated for a cabinet position and it became apparent that family had not paid payroll taxes for the household help. The mother, unable to care for the kids because of her duties as a blogger, marches around the house constantly extolling the virtues of one of her many book clubs. The father posts the position to Craig’s List, but the posting was mysteriously deleted by a kind and technologically savvy nanny who arrives whenever the political winds change.

In steps the hero of the movie, (and anyone who knows what I do for a living knew this was coming) Manny Poppins, the stay at home dad, played by this guy. (This name is remarkably perfect: What do you call a male nanny? Manny!) Manny rides in on his Hybrid Umbrella and blackmails Mr. Banks into giving him the job, (something about some illicit conduct in an airport bathroom). Manny gains instant credibility with the kids with his sweet IPhone, and downloads music easily while watching the children clean up their room.

Manny and the kids set off to the park, and, once there, run into Bert. In this version, though, Bert is short for Roberta, and is played by a lesbian contractor with a nose ring. Bert can’t find work because of the housing slump, and is spending the day at the park updating her facebook profile on her laptop. Bert and Manny take the kids on a magical adventure, changing reality television star’s bios on Wikipedia. In an ironic turn, they change the entry for “Super-cali-frag-ilistic- expi-ali-do-cious” to “Paris-Hilton-has-a-dog-whose-face-is-quite-atrocious.” The rain comes, shorting Bert’s computer, and the children are whisked home, where they are given a spoonful of Splenda with their Tom’s of Maine Bronchial Syrup. Alcohol free!

The next day, Manny takes the children to Uncle Albert’s house, but instead of having a tea party on the ceiling, Manny plays poker with his friends and the kids play Wii. During the poker game, the following conversation takes place:

Manny: I knew a guy named Smith who has a wooden leg.
Albert: That’s not cool, dude. My cousin was in Iraq and now has a prothestic.
Manny: Oh man, that sucks. I didn’t know that.
Albert: Ya, they may have been able to save the leg, but VA is so fucked up that they couldn’t help him in time.
Manny: Well, yes, but Smith was just going to ask…
Albert: It’s shit like that which caused the American’s With Disability Act to be created in the first place, you know?
Manny: Oh.

The group returns home, and Mr. Banks, angered that the kids still didn’t know how to do math, prepares to fire Manny. Manny reminds Mr. Banks of his indiscretions, and convinces Mr. Banks to take the children to work so that Manny can go golfing the next day.

On their way to work, Hunter sees an old woman in front of the Capitol protesting genetically modified corn, and he tries to give her a dollar. Mr. Banks, receiving large sums of money from ConAgra, refuses to allow this and takes the children inside to show them the financial advantages of medical savings accounts. Once inside however, the children become frightened over a fracas on the Senate floor about gay marriage, and run home wondering why the Senators have nothing better to do.

Mr. Banks cannot survive the many scandals he has gotten himself into and is ousted from the Senate. He returns home, makes a giant bowl of genetically modified popcorn, and sits down with the kids to watch American Idol. Manny, seeing the family together again, slowly withdraws, knowing that his work is done. As he does, he hears the family singing together.

Oh, oh, oh, let’s go watch TV.
We love reality.
Let’s go watch TV.
‘Cause books are boring.

Kids go get me beer.
HD is crystal clear.
Idol is on … toooonight!

Now that would be epic.

In the Blink of an Eye

2009-01-20T15:33:00.000-08:00

Malcolm is potty trained! This is one of those milestones in a child’s life that is worth noting. Some, sadly are not. The first erection, eating the first booger, and throwing the phone in the toilet for the first time are all firsts, but they don’t really change life much. Like learning to crawl or talking though, becoming potty trained is something that affects who Malcolm is, and how we live our lives. Now, we have to ask Malcolm whether he has to go to the bathroom before we go anywhere, driving to the grandparent’s house takes twice as long, and Malcolm can no longer take a dump in the middle of the grocery store. Well, he better not anyways. I am also relieved to say, that we are creating about half as much landfill as we used to.

This significant development feels like it happened over night, although in reality it was the final step in a journey that began almost a year and a half ago. We got Malcolm a small, plastic potty long ago, and told him all about how big kids go potty in the big kid’s toilet, and little kids go in their diapers. When we told Malcolm this, he looked somewhere between betrayed and dazzled, much in the same way a child would look if you handed them a shotgun and said, “This is what killed Bambi.” (What is it with Disney and gun violence, by the way?) We buttressed our efforts by reading Malcolm books about using the potty, until he finally realized that the future did indeed rest in evacuating himself into something other than his clothes.

Eventually, he started going pee in the little potty after brushing his teeth and before taking his bath. He really enjoyed peeing in the bathtub, though, and it was hard to break him of this habit. On many occasions, Malcolm stood up in the bathtub and let the golden showers rain down, proud that he had tricked his mommy and daddy into thinking that the small yellow pool in the potty was the full extent of the contents of his bladder. Mostly, though, Malcolm enjoyed going to the big boy potty and was proud of his accomplishment.

This only lasted until Malcolm decided to try and poop in the potty. Amy was there, and I wasn’t so I only heard about it second hand. The results were terrifying. After about 15 minutes of pushing, Malkie heard a loud plop, and immediately stood up to see what happened. He shrieked when he saw the poop in the bowl, and started pointing and crying about what had just come out of him. His reaction was similar to how I would react if, after pooping, I looked down and saw a large tarantula crawling around in the toilet, “That came from me?” Amy tried to explain that this was normal, and in fact the very same thing that happened when he pooped in his diaper, but Malcolm was convinced that the toilet itself had some mystical powers that altered his feces. For months afterwards, Malcolm refused to go near the potty, and didn’t even take much joy in peeing in the tub.

Slowly but surely, Malcolm returned to his nighttime ritual of going pee in the potty, although far less frequently, and never with his mommy, who must have played some role in the poop episode (poopisode”). During this time, I would occasionally ask Malcolm during the day if he wanted to go pee in the potty, and would ask at the beginning of the day if he wanted to wear big boy underwear. This time was a struggle, as Malcolm was nearing three years old and I saw most of his classmates wearing their underpants, signaling haw far Malcolm was falling behind his classmates. I wanted to engage the sink or swim method, and cut Malcolm off from diapers cold turkey during what was sure to be an exhausting, humiliating weekend of parenting struggle. Amy was flatly opposed to the idea, insisting that the long term damage to Malcolm’s psyche wasn’t worth it, and reminded me of how easier it was to put Malcolm in a diaper and remain blissfully ignorant of whether he had to, or had recently gone, to the bathroom in his diaper.

So there we were, at about 3 years and 2 months of age, considering diaper changes only when Malcolm stunk like a port-o-potty at a rock concert, or when his diaper was so full that it dragged down his pants, revealing a considerable amount of butt crack. One morning, though, I asked Malcolm whether he wanted to wear big boy underpants. I was so shocked when he actually said yes that I didn’t know what to do. After coming to my senses, I sounded the horn, set security levels to defcon 1, and ran around the house desparately trying to find some underwear. I eventually found them, slipped them on Malcolm, and we headed upstairs to show mommy the latest in Gerbers training underpants fashion. Mommy was very excited, Malcolm was very proud, and he hasn’t wanted to go near diapers ever since. I must have asked him 20 times a day if he had to go pee, and when he did, he excitedly ran to the toilet to pee. He stands up at the big toilet, arching way back putting his nee nee over the toilet like Kate Winslet in Titanic yelling “I’m on top of the world!”

The real test of his new found status was his first potty poop, for which I announced would immediately result in the delivery of one very yummy chocolate chip cookie. As hoped, Malcolm said that he had to go poop, sat down on the little potty, and pushed and pushed (with me near him in the bathroom imitating Bill Cosby shouting, “Push it out! Shove it out! Waaaaaay Out!”) He eventually did the deed, and when he stood it up and looked, it was pride that shone in his eyes, not fear and disbelief. As promised, he got a cookie. We continued down this path of trading cookies for poo, until a week or so later, when the event wasn’t such an exciting ordeal, and no cookie was necessary.

He still wears pull diapers to bed, but they are no longer called pull up diapers, they are just “pull ups.” He has only made one mistake, that being a fountain of urine that erupted in the middle of the kitchen, as Malcolm announced, “Daddy, I am peeing.” This accident did not scare him into a setback, and neither has the handful of times that he has wet through his pull-up at night or during his nap. So now, he is potty trained, and our lives are different because of it. It is certainly less convenient for us out in the world, but you just can’t beat seeing the joy in your kid’s eyes when they have tackled something scary, and come out ahead.

Man About Town

2009-01-09T16:46:00.000-08:00

One of my New Year’s Resolutions this year was to get involved in politics somehow. As luck would have it, I came across a posting on Craig’s list looking for someone with computer skills who wanted to get involved in progressive politics. I thought this might be a good fit, so I emailed the group back and told them I was interested. A few days later, I spoke with the head of the organization and immediately remembered that non-profits are so dysfunctional that they take the fun out of dysfunction. (Dysction?) For those of you who have never seen yourself in a non-profit setting, there are basically two types of people who work at non-profits: people who want to tell every single experience they have in life and older women with cat fetishes. The head honcho at this place was clearly the latter, as he called me up 40 minutes late and took 24 minutes to tell me why he had to reschedule our conversation until later. (I know because my phone tells me exactly how long the call is.) Dude, I want to save the world, not hear about the tenuous nature of your relationship with the leader of a fellow non-profit.) An hour or so later, and 20 minutes after he was supposed to call, I spoke with him again and I introduced myself to him and told him about my background. After I had finished, he told me that if he were handing out scores, I would get 99 out of a 100. Some might take that as a complement, but I, of course immediately thought, “What the fuck would it take to get a 100? I am a liberal labor lawyer with mad computer skills. I am also willing to volunteer for no money!!!! Would I have to take off my pants and bring bags of cash with me to get a perfect score?” We eventually ended the conversation and I agreed to come to their office for the orientation for “all their volunteers.”

On orientation day, I found that the team of volunteers consisted of me and one other woman, a recent college graduate who has no shot at finding a job in this economy. I felt dejected about the size of the team, as one of the things I was secretly hoping would happen was that I would find some wacko liberal friends that would introduce me to a whole new world. I am not saying that we had to smoke hash and hang out in Jazz clubs, but it would be nice to once in a while get a call from someone who said, “Hey, we are going to go protest Dick Cheney at a local gun club. Wanna come along?” Slightly bummed, we received our marching orders and I told them that I would be unavailable during the holidays, that I would probably work on the stuff at home and maybe come in after the New Year.

Despite the 3 or 4 emails I received over the holidays asking when I could come in, I remained true to my word and headed into their office for the first time yesterday. I didn’t want to pay for parking, so I opted to park our car at Malcolm’s school after I dropped him off and took the bus to downtown Oakland. This is where the fun started. Not wanting to scrounge for coins every time I took the bus, I opted to go to the drug store and buy a ten ride pass. Upon exiting the store, the squat woman in front of me who was happily humming a tune while walking up the street, stopped, took out her phone, made a call and then yelled, “Why you talkin’ shit?” loudly into the phone. I was concerned over the rapid transformation from R. Kelly fan into ruthless enemy, but I figured sticking around to hear the juicy details would not have gone over all that well. In the next few moments, I attempted to think of the circumstances that would cause me to act in a similar way and could only come up with the following scenario: Excited by my new purchase of a roll of stamps, I exited the store, while bopping my head to the sounds of my theme music, the song, “Yoda” by Weird Al. Thinking about Yoda, I consider the line uttered by Brad Pitt in the movie Seven, where he says, “Just because the fucker's got a library card doesn't make him Yoda!”The mere mention of the library makes my blood boil because my friend Dale works at a library, and she recently said that our other friend Tunzel made a better tasting chili than I did. In a rage I call her up and yell, “Why you talkin’ shit?” but I am pretty sure that’s not what happened to the squat woman.

The bus is one of the last great hiding places of democracy. Immediately, I noticed the black female driver talking to a white woman about the Oakland police department’s recent shooting of an unarmed man who had already been subdued by officers. Neither the driver nor the passenger had anything groundbreaking to say, but the mere fact that they were talking about it with each other inspired me. I was definitely not inspired the evening before, when I encountered the mass protest against the BART police that shut down my BART station. Instead of joining, or even just watching the protests, I caught a bus to another station so that I could join my white friends at a dive bar in the City to get drunk and play poker. Community discourse I good and I was proud of my city.

The bus was a pretty good cross section of Oakland. On one side two older latina women sat next to a college aged black guy and middle aged asian guy, all looking out the windows. On the other side, 4 white people nervously scanned their reading materials, looking up occasionally to make sure they hadn’t missed their stop. In the back, a number of school aged black kids loudly cracked on each other and laughed. I wanted to say, “This is Oakland. These are my peeps,” but I hang out with white guys in the City and get drunk, so I can’t really say that.

I got off the bus and was immediately confronted with the issue of whether to cross at the crosswalk where the crazy guy was singing while his dick was hanging out of his pants, or jaywalk halfway down the block to avoid him. I am a stay at home dad, so I see a fair share of neenees during the diaper changing process, and I proceeded down the crosswalk. Unfortunately, I made a mistake and was walking the wrong way on the block, so I had to double back and walk past the crazy guy again. He was singing “Blue Moon” with the blunt force of a bowling ball being thrown against a garage door, and said, “hey snatchy guy!” to me on my way by.

I eventually made my way to the office building and realized again that non-profits all tend to buy the same office space in crappy buildings on the fringe of downtown. Here, the political website I was heading to shared floors with places like “Redefining Progress,” “Diversity Alliance For America,” and “Grassroots Fundraising Journal.” I also realized that I was lucky to be in this setting because I hadn’t showered, my socks didn’t match and I had crust in my eyes which betrayed a hangover from the night before. Wacko liberals don’t generally care about hygiene, and for that, I am eternally grateful.

I stayed at the office, working on my analysis of the most liberal members of state legislators around the country, stopping now and then to chat with the secretary, a recent college graduate who has no shot at finding a better job in this economy. The office consisted of two tiny rooms each buried under the weight of what appeared to be copies of newspapers from the 1960’s. I was fortunate that the place did not smell bad, so I counted my blessings. I was actually progressing in my task until the boss showed up in a whirlwind and made the office considerably louder. Eventually, I finished my analysis of the North Carolina legislature and decided to head home.

The entry onto the bus home started with a scare, as a 4 year old pointed a handgun at me and said, “bang!” Who the fuck gives a gun to a 4 year old! If you want your 4 year old to have a weapon, why not try something more restrained, like one of those fuzzy things in the Star Trek show. The most daring weapon we have given Malcolm is a Nerf football. Let’s see him to some damage with that! The kids in the back were still loud and obnoxious, consumed by how long it would take to get home and “hit dat weed.” Shortly before my stop, two girls sat behind me and gossiped about a friend of theirs whose baby daddy was trying to get her to keep “this one.” Evidently, the baby daddy had asked her to not have an abortion this time so that the daughter that they do have will have a cute li’l youngin’” to play with. If I understood them correctly, this means that the couple had sex and got pregnant, kept the first baby, had sex, got pregnant, and aborted the second, and had sex, got pregnant, and were on the fence about the third. I was shocked! This meant that the couple had sex THREE TIMES in high school, besting my record by nearly 200%. Fascinated, I continued to listen as the two girls professed their love (which I share) of Chinese food, and that they ate so much of it that one of them could be a “Chinaman” for Halloween. And who says all the good costumes are taken? I eventually made it back to my car, picked up Malcolm and headed back home, glad to back amongst the people and doing something I consider worthwhile.

Resolved

2009-01-06T16:46:00.000-08:00

We cleaned the house Sunday. Well, we didn’t really clean, we just put all of the Christmas stuff away. Now, all that remains of the holiday season is some new toys for us all to play with and the glitter that fell off the fake holly. That, and the handful of Christmas cards that we have still have to send out.

I realized that things were a little crazy over the holidays, and that I hadn’t even had time to make New Year’s resolutions. I have a laundry list of things to improve on: I am too fat, too addicted to TV, I have bad posture and I secretly stole all of Amy’s money and hid it in the Bahamas. Those have been true for some time though, and I honestly felt like skipping the whole New Year’s Resolution this year, because every year I say the same shit. After a bit of reflection, though, I took a different approach.

Instead of dealing with behavior I’d like to change, I decided instead to save my soul, and hope the other stuff just takes care of itself. If I am truly happy, then I won’t do anything that makes me unhappy, right? So, I want to become Awesome. That’s no typo, Awesome with a capital A. I want to become so kick ass that the mere thought of me makes you smile. I want people to whisper and look at me as I walk past them down the street. I want there to be a poem, and I also want the last line in that poem to read, “’Cause Paul Schwartz is so fuckin’ Awesome.” You may ask yourself, “self, how can he do this?” I have a four part approach.

Step 1: How Paulie got his groove back

The first prong is to recapture my moral high ground. I used to be a labor lawyer. I fought battles against the bosses. I stuck up for the little guy (and gal) who got screwed by the man (and the woman). I even road around in a fire truck one day screaming at Macys! I used an entire part of my brain to figure out how to make the lives of working people a little bit better and to make the bad guys change their mind. Sadly, that part of my brain has been dormant for a while now. My moral high ground gave me a backbone, so anytime I felt like I was wasting time, spinning my wheels, gambling in Vegas, I could at least say, “so what, I am out there fighting the good fight the rest of the time.”

Now, I can’t really say that. Sure, I‘ll tell anyone who’ll listen that I am a social movement of one, reversing traditional gender roles, but there’s only so many times that the girls at the alley cat club will laugh at that line and sound sincere. Now, I need a new way to save the world. I recently decided to volunteer at a progressive political website, and will use some computer skills to assist in the cause of making the world free of nasty republican ideals. I am also going to try and become a mentor to a kid in Oakland whose parents are either dead or in jail. This is just the start too, I will seek out more stuff and do more stuff when I can. Do you have an idea about how to save the world? Tell me about it and I will try to help. I am hoping all this will help with my posture; it’ll give me a posture and a good place to approach things from again.

Step 2: Grab life by the balls

The second prong is to be more productive at the things I like. All too often, I get caught up in the flow of things that I can’t even remember to do the things in life that make me happy. So I will. I like riding my bike and playing basketball, I like writing blog posts; I will do them more. I like to cook and eat, but I don’t try anything new. I just bought Alice Waters’ book about simple cooking. I’ll cook my way through it and keep trying until the food is actually edible. I like it when Malcolm conquers new tasks, I will help him devour them more often. This may mean that some of the things that I don’t like to do fall by the wayside. So be it. Who needs to be current with their taxes anyways. Life is too short. You gotta get in there and grab what you want from life like getting a gall stone out of a cow’s rectum. Are you with me still?

Step 3: Changing my connectivity settings

I hide from things. I make up reasons not to respond to emails or phone calls. I camp out in the house and invent things to do that don’t involve other people. I use tools like Yelp which are based on user reviews, but I never review anything. (I did submit reviews on Zagats once, but that was only to get a free copy of the book.) There is a neighborhood list serv for our neighbors to stay in touch about things, and I never tell people how crazy and stupid they are. Recently, I counted and realized I had but 13 friends on facebook. Who lives like that?

I need to connect more to others. I recently began a crusade to contact people on Facebook that I hadn’t seen or heard from in years. My friend list is 66 and growing! I am going to tell my neighbors they are crazy and stupid: first up, skewering the guy who complained that someone put there garbage in his can and whined that the shrimp tails should have been put in the compost heap. Shrimp tails?! Get a life! I am going to tell everyone on Yelp that my acupuncturist has lousy treatment rooms, but she has a massage therapist with the strongest hands I have ever encountered. No more sitting and watching life go by. I am gonna get connected and stay involved.

Step 4: Keep my lady happy

My wife is a goddess. She cares about the same things that I do, doesn’t care about the same things I don’t. She saved me from a life of stress and long hours. She talked me out of voting for John McCain. She supports me in the things that I like to do. She supports me by making money and letting me have some of it. She lets me got to the alley cat club. Oh, she is smoking hot too.

How do I repay her? I show her my butt crack in the mornings and then get snooty when she asks not to see it. I make fun of her when she coughs up blood when she is sick. I secretly steal her money and send it to the Bahamas. No more! I am going to worship her. I am gong to shower her with praise. I am gonna avoid picking fights with her, even when she tells me that my cooking is terrible. I owe so much to her, and I don’t think I let her know. So this year, I will. I’ll do this and more. I’ll ask her out on dates. I’ll send her emails. I’ll make sure my pajamas are always at my waist, and if they aren’t, I will make sure hers aren’t either. I won’t treat her better, I’ll try and treat her the best.

I figure if I can do all this stuff, it won’t matter that I watch Arrested Development while eating nachos.

Paully Rides a Bike

2008-09-23T16:00:00.000-07:00

I have recently become chubby. I haven’t really been in shape since high school, but I am carrying around more weight now than at any point in my life. At first I was OK with this, considering I am a housewife and have nothing to look nice for 95% of the time. After some time, I realized that my wife is smokin’ hot and I better get my act together or she will find someone who is what I am not: good looking, has a job, and is good with kids.

I also noticed that, not only did my pants stop fitting, but that my shorts have actually started bursting. Anyone who has seen me on my birthday knows how challenging it is for me to keep my pants on. My recent girth, however, has made it almost impossible to stay fully clothed. There are two pairs of shorts that I wear that have permanently lost the buttons from the strain. Even worse, my shorts that close with snaps burst open all the time. They burst open getting into and out of the car. They burst open getting off the couch. They even burst open just bending over to lecture Malcolm. If you ever want people to look at you funny try buttoning your pants up in public. I gate a lot of strange looks while refastening myself out in the world, but by far the worst is arriving at Malcolm’s school. Every time I wear the snapping shorts, I get out of the car to bring Malcolm inside and immediately have to secure my pants. Parents who are there to drop off their kids look at me and give me a look that says, “why doesn’t Malcolm’s daddy wear pants in the car?” A woman at the grocery store last week thought I had arrived at the store fresh from pleasuring myself, so I decided that needed to drop the weight.

The first order of business was to figure out how to exercise while Malcolm was at school. I immediately decided to starting riding my bike. The idea of getting away from the world and listening to my Ipod on the open road seemed appetizing to me, so I went into the garage to take stock of our bikes. We bought decent bikes after we got married, but we haven’t ridden them in about 4 years. After inspecting them, I knew that we would have to take them to the shop, and one week later, bam, I was hitting the trails.

I decided to go to Lake Chabot because I remembered the trails being relatively flat and someone on the internet said it was about 12 miles long. I got to the lake, got on my bike and I was off. I immediately felt like something was wrong because the bike felt too short. Much in the same way that Malcolm feels in pajamas that are way to small, I didn’t ever seem to get to extend my legs. At first I was afraid that I had actually forgotten how to ride a bike, but after a while it got a little easier. I knew I had forgotten how to ride the bike when I hit the first hill. I did not remember how to shift so on the first incline I made it really hard to pedal and had to stop after I lost all my inertia. On the far side of the hill, I tried to shift again and got it wrong, ending up pedaling at 100 mph and not really going anywhere. After a while I got the knack for switching gears and had a great time listening to the Barenaked Ladies and darting around turns, hitting hills and actually breaking a sweat! Things were great until I had to stand up to peddle up a hill and my pants burst open. This was shortly followed by my headphones get stuck around the steering wheel, necessitating me to ride leaning over with my head near my hip until I could stop. I had now been bicycling for 15 minutes and had already stopped 4 times. Not good.

That positive outlook lasted until I hit the first really large hill. I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to go, since it was an intersection of four paths, and had to stop to look at the map at the bottom of the hill. I realized that the 12 mile long bike path went straight up the hill, so I gutted it out and started peddling up the hill as fast as I could. About 1/3 of the way up, I couldn’t take it anymore and had to get off the bike and walk up the rest of the hill. After 2/3 of the way, I decided that I had probably read the map wrong and went back down the hill to check it out (again). I was really pissed to find that I needed to go up after all, and tried in vain to scale the hill. I started walking about ¼ of the way up, and eventually made my way to the top. After getting all the way up, I found that there was another hill, only this hill was about twice the size of the first one. I said screw it and went back down the hill to check out another path. I was breathing pretty heavily (some say wheezing) and I was glad to have a few minutes of even trails. This was short lived, as it turned out that this “new” trail also had hills. Ack! I decided that I had biked enough for today, so I headed back to my car, wounded in the knowledge that I couldn’t take a hill and that I would probably be fat for another week.

I was completely exhausted by the time I hit the parking lot and, when I got to the entryway to the park, couldn’t take another hill and proceeded to walk my bike out of the entrance. Sadly, this is where the guard shack was located and the guards both looked at me walking my bike up the (not-so-difficult) hill and sneered that I was such a wuss. Things didn’t get much better upon arriving at my car, as the water bottle I had brought with me was Amy’s castoff: a huge pink thermos looking thing which I drained by my car. All in all, I considered the outing a success, if only because I will go back again sometime.

When I got home I put the bike in the garage and looked at the other bike, which actually contained the lock I used during Law School. I was riding Amy’s bike!

Ten Things About Me

2008-09-18T10:44:00.000-07:00

10 Things You May Not Know About Me

These are all the rage now, so here is my take.

1. I never learned what profits are. My dad is a minister and my mom is a nurse. They never cared much about making more money than the next guy. The only profits I ever heard about were in the bible. That is why I never really made any money. As my classmates from law school went off and made $100-200,000, I made $60k for the government and then $52k for an employee side law firm. It seemed like good money to me.

2. I love bologna. I talk about smart foods that are healthy and close to the farm, but heaven to me is a bologna and American cheese sandwich on white bread with tons of mayo and mustard. No pickles, no tomatoes, no lettuce. Meat, cheese, bread. Sometimes in college I would make double-decker bologna sandwiches, and my eyes would glaze over in ecstasy.

3. Itunes thinks I am insane. My tastes include: Weird Al, Dave Mathews, NWA, Nirvana, Indigo Girls, Frank Sinatra, Linkin Park, Pottery Barn Margarita Music, David Sedaris Books on tape, ABBA, Bob Dylan and Journey. Usually, I listen to one of these because I feel guilty about listening to one of the others. I listen to ABBA if I have to clean the house. It has energy and I hate cleaning. The cycle then begins as I begin to loathe myself like a smoker who buys a brand new pack. I then put on something to make me feel cool. Linkin Park or dirty rap will usually do the trick. I typically feel a little guilty that these selections have no redeeming social qualities to them, so I will throw on Dylan or Dave Mathews until my brain hurts. As soon as my brain hurts, I relax to the easy digested Weird Al, and the cycle repeats itself.

4. I don’t care for old people. It’s not that I don’t trust them, it’s that they are perpetually in my way. Have you seen an old person trying to buy some milk at the grocery store? You’d think that they were choosing a dental plan. Any time I am late and need to get somewhere fast, I end up trailing a blue haired beauty in some 1960’s boat, who travels at about 5 miles an hour, never signals and uses every lane in the road. As far as I am concerned, everyone who hits 75 should be sent to a retirement community and not let out unless supervised.

5. I can’t fight off viruses. I get cold sores when I am out in the sun without chapstick. For prolonged exposure, my entire mouth breaks out and I look like the Scottish King’s dad on Braveheart. Either he or the old witch on Robin Hood. Definitely someone from that genre though. When I was in 3rd or 4th grade, a virus attacked my heart. I was in the ICU for a week with doctors constantly monitoring me for way out of whack test results. They thought I might die, since my test results were so bizarre, but I survived and got to go to Chucky Cheese after I got out of the hospital. When I was in college, I developed “Hoof and Mouth” disease which brought on small red bumps all over my hands, feet and mouth. Needless to say, the doctors at the hospital were surprised that a human had contracted this typically bovine affliction. I swear they thought I had sex with a dirty cow. My current issue is the small bumps I have on my hands. I have 30-40 small bumps on my hands and to combat them I have been going to the doctor. She freezes off the bumps (or at least tries) and this kills off the flesh in my hands. Ironically, it is a double whammy, and the old doctor can’t see very well and instead of pinpointing each bump like a smart bomb, she opts instead for a scorched earth policy. Right now, my hands look like I either have the plague or leprosy. Or both. I am tired of explaining all this to people, so I bought some gloves (reminiscent of cycling gloves) that cover my hands, but expose the fingers. People see my gloves and ask what they are for. I have enjoyed over the last week or so making up different reasons for how I hurt myself. I told one group that I jammed my wrist sliding head first into second base, and another group learned that I almost broke my wrist skateboarding. My softball team knows me a little better so I told them the truth. I have hand herpes.

6. I used to like the Miami Dolphins. I grew up a 49er fan. Somewhere in middle school, I felt that they were a little too cookie cutter, so I found a new team, with a bad ass quarterback and two bad ass receivers. I am not sure why I began to like this team, but I carried this with me until around college. I now root for the raiders, but honestly, I’d rather have sex with a cow than watch them lose like they do.

7. I am good at word games. I destroy people while playing Boggle. I amaze crowds with my ability to solve puzzles on Wheel of Fortune. I am not quite as good at scrabble, but I am getting better. I know that qat is a word and so is sequoyah. This is quite strange, because I don’t use good English and I always hated the subject in school. Maybe I just hated my teachers, and secretly enjoyed the subject matter. Somewhere, Jim Scruggs is smiling when I drop a nine letter word on you at Boggle.

8. I secretly wonder why women I meet want to have sex with me. Some women are trapped in unhappy marriages. Some women are attracted to my funny, post modern ways. For every woman, there is a different story. Sometimes I think my life is a reality show in Cinemax. I am certain, though, that all women (who look at me) are angling to get me in the sack. Sadly, most of these women have been unsuccessful. Occasionally, I believe that some men want me as well. I mean, who wouldn’t want to sleep with a guy who wants to play Boggle, eat bologna and occasionally looks like a leper?

9. I always prefer blue over red. I root for Cal over Stanford. I root for Michigan over Ohio State. But it goes beyond sports. I like Cool Ranch Doritos instead of the regular. I like blue raspberry, not the red stuff. Oh, but its so much more. I have 2 blue suits, but no red ones. I have 27 blue shirts, and 1 red one. No red socks. I like blue states. I have a blue car. The only time I dislike blue is when the Dodgers are on.

10. I used to be a kleptomaniac. It started in junior high, when I would lift sunglasses, shirts and candy. I once stole a Tinkerbell figurine from Disneyland for my girlfriend, who was into that kind of stuff. In high school, I moved on to baseball cards, but this ended when I got caught with the entire set of 1987 Topps baseball cards in my pants. I learned my lesson and didn’t steal anything until I learned that Malcolm’s stroller could hide groceries in it. Hey, times are tight, man.

Malkie Dances with Baby Cougars

2008-09-11T17:00:00.000-07:00

Check it

I am working on Malcolm's American Idol Entry. Check back for details.

Am I a racist, a sexist, or just an idiot?

2008-08-30T11:07:00.000-07:00

So there we were, Malcolm and I at the Oakland public library, like we do most Wednesdays. A new librarian was droning on and on about frogs or ducks or something so my attention wandered to the little boy wandering around messing with everyone. The kid’s face looked like he was about 40, but was just learning to walk so I put his age at about 11 months. He was meandering about the small group pulling on other kid’s hair, giving hugs, and generally acting like a spazz. I find it comforting when Malcolm is not the biggest thug in the room.

After story time ended, we headed over the grocery store to buy some stuff. I know that you want me to tell you exactly what stuff I had to buy, but I won’t. I won’t, I won’t, I won’t. I won’t even tell you why. So don’t ask. Anyways, I was looking for milk and apple juice and ran into the dad of the spazz. I said hi, and asked how old the little boy was. The dad said that she was a year old. Huh? That mess is a girl? I quickly looked her up and down for signs of femaleness and I found none. The kid had a squat body, skinny froggy legs, and nothing on the onesie she was wearing suggested that she either liked sports (which would make her a boy) or unicorns (which would make her a gay boy). Both dad and kid were black, so I immediately wondered if my total lack of perspective was because I am racist. I stared at the face of the spazz and wondered how the hell that little face could be a girls. Was it the fact that I am a racist which clouded my judgment? Was my being a sexist and looking for typically “male” features part of the problem? Was that kid really a girl. No way.

Ah hell. I don’t give a rats ass about this stupid story. My fantasy football draft is tomorrow. I love fantasy football like a dog likes his balls. If fantasy football was a steaming hot pile of pig droppings, I would get down there and rub it all over my face. Fantasy football could appoint a horse trainer to head up FEMA, start a war with Iraq without adequate planning, and ruin absolutely everything everywhere, and I would vote for it a second or third time. I care about fantasy football. I even use my brain. I normally am not the kind of guy who thinks a lot, preferring instead to react to situations with either blind rage or quiet sheepishness. Except for two situations, where I am quite analytical. First is fantasy football. Second is ordering meat at the butcher. I got so sick and tired of ordering half a pound of delicious ham only to have my grandiose plans thwarted by the meat clerk, who after slicing up my tasty swine would ask, “It’s a little over, is that allright?” Fuck no daddio, I don’t want .63 pounds. It’s too much ham!!! To control the situation, I have started bluffing about how much meat I actually need. Now I say I need .42 pounds of ham, and smile with glee when they ask, “is a half a pound ok?” You bet your sweet tits its ok.

Fantasy football challenges me in ways I never thought possible. If you don’t know what fantasy football is, I am not going to tell you. Instead I will punch you in the neck next time I see you and tell you how much you suck. To prepare for my draft, I simultaneously consider factors such as age, injury risk, prior year’s performance, quality of offensive line, and whether I hate the player’s guts. I then create lists, flow charts and squiggly lines to help me when I hit the ground on draft day. After draft day, I will spend every Sunday indoors at a dive bar watching the games with my “friends.” I say that they are my friends, but in fantasy football, there are no friends. Only sworn enemies. I will then come home and watch the Sunday games with my family and dance all around the house when something good happens and hit Malcolm with a pipe when bad stuff occurs. I may not win the championship this year, but it won’t be because of a lack of effort. I think about fantasy football all the time. I look at Malcolm and wonder whether there are any trades I should be making with my sworn enemies. I look at a tree outside our house and wonder who the best kicker in the league is. I see a radiator and wonder whether the Vietnamese gardener who is locked in our crawl space is still alive. God I love fantasy football. The only thing I would do differently is change the name. Anything that I take this seriously shouldn’t be called fantasy anything. That’s like calling an elite army unit the fighting “cupcakes.” If I could rename fantasy football, I would call it Intensely Rewarding Football Analytical Numerology. So that is interesting for a whole new reason. The first letters spell IRFAN, who was a huge fat disgusting Persian guy I knew in college. At least I thought he was a guy. You never know, I am a racist.

Malkie Goes to the Fair

2008-07-04T14:46:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, I went to the fair every year. I remember smuggling in beer and scoping out girls when at the Kern County Fair in Bakersfield, and throwing up hot dogs during rides at the state fair in Carson City, Nevada. I hadn’t been to the fair yet in Alameda County, and thought this was the year when I realized that the fair had animals, rides, and food that is bad for you, which are three of Malcolm’s favorite things. Actually that is a bit of a lie. Those are the only things that Malcolm enjoys nowadays.

The fair has changed a lot since I was a kid. I used to think that the county fair is where the community goes to go have fun together. If you didn’t know any better (and Malcolm doesn’t) you/he would think that the county fair is actually where you go to buy things, (lots and lots of expensive things). The first thing that we did when we got there (after paying $8 for parking and $10 for entrance fee) was to walk down a long outdoor corridor that gave you the opportunity to purchase hot tubs, gazebos, sun rooms, cookware and outdoor pools. Don’t think, though, that it was merely one kiosk for each of those. No, there four or five hot tubs shops, three gazebo places and half a dozen sun room outlets. Who the hell buys an addition to their home at the county fair? I guess the conversation fair organizers you want to have when you get home goes like this, “How was your tip to the fair, honey? It was good; we rode the rides, ate some cotton candy, and bought a new backyard, complete with pool, spa, BBQ and palapa. Oh, and after we ordered deep fried snicker bars, we bought a sunroom. All in all, our trip to the fair cost us $15,000.” Things were so ridiculous that there was a 100,000 square foot tent set up with the following sign, “AIR-CONDITIONED shopping, THIS WAY!!!!” Since it is usually around 100 degrees during the fair, I would guess that people go to this tent, because it is the only place in the fair with AC. I guess everyone needs to make a buck in today’s world.

Our first stop at the farm was the races. The horses were running at the track later on in the day, so we stuck to the pig races. Yes, no typo there, in what is quite possibly my new favorite sport, Malcolm and I watched little piglets running around a tiny track, making cute little grunts all the way around the track. Since it was 11:00 on a Thursday, we sat right next to the track, and took in all the action. The only thing wrong with seeing Amazing Pork take first place in the finals was that I wasn’t able to wager on it. I would definitely have boxed AP with Spider Ham who ended up losing by, you guessed it, a nose.

We saw some baby cows and sheep, and then headed over to the 4-H pavilion where you could get up close and personal with more cows and more sheep. While in the pavilion, I saw the weirdest sport I had ever witnessed. In a ring, surrounded by grandstands, 10 or 20 young kids in bright white uniforms with green neckties chased pigs around in circles. I don’t know if you have ever been around pigs, but they are hard to give orders to. That is why the kids, in order to make the pigs go where they wanted them to, whacked the pigs in the face with a long, thin stick. Yes, that last sentence was right. A group of 50 or 60 parents sat in the stands watching their kids walking around a ring, whacking pigs in the face with a stick. The oddest thing about this Pig Smack-Off was that it was done in complete silence. For ten minutes, I watched in horror, wondering where the pigs were supposed to be going, while at the same hoping someone would intervene and stop those kids from whacking the pigs in the face all the time. Having considered it now, I think I prefer silence to cheers from the parents in the audience. Yells like, “C’Mon, Cindy Sue, hit that sow!!! Or Bobby, smack the shit outta that pig!!!” would have been ten times worse. I considered the very real possibility that the kids were tenderizing the meat for the corn dog stand and whisked Malcolm away to the Kids area.

We enjoyed a couple of shows, rode a kid’s train, ate corn dogs and fries, and Malcolm even rode a horse, but by far my favorite event of the day was seeing the ridiculously large penis of the shetland pony. My god, that sucker was huge, easily the length of Malcolm’s arm. The kicker was that the pony was only as tall as Malcolm’s shoulders. I stood in stunned silence, seeing the huge appendage almost dragging on the ground, I couldn’t help but think of the enormous, (and I mean enormous!) sense of pride that pony must have walking into the locker room. It’s not often you tip your cap to a farm animal, but that giants hat definitely gave its propers to “Honey,” who in my opinion, is the pound for pound the largest penis owner in the entire planet.

We finished our day and headed back to the car. Malcolm had a great time, and it was probably because he didn’t suffer from my neuroses. He didn’t gawk at having to spend $60 for a day at the fair. He didn’t care about the trans-fats in the corn dogs, or the sugar content of the sno-cones. He didn’t care why the kids were beating the shit out of the pigs, or feel bad that Honey’s penis was about 25 times the size of his. He just let go and had fun for a day at the fair. And now that I think of it, that was just what I used to do.

Hanging with the Cool Kids

2008-07-04T14:31:00.000-07:00

I play cards every Wednesday night with a bunch of degenerates I call my friends. We used to be in a softball league together, but now I suspect we tolerate the softball in order to pursue our favorite pastime: poker. Our evening ended last week the same way that it always did, except for one crucial fact: the carpool driver was lonely. Instead of driving back across the bay bridge and dropping every off like every other week, Rob decided he was going to some show called Guitar-O-Rama or something in the city. Everyone else had been doing drugs earlier in the evening, so they readily agreed. I of course was thinking how difficult my day with Malcolm would be if I stayed out late and drank. The plan was to go to the club, and I would walk to BART and get home my own way. That plan evaporated when the “club” they were looking for was closed, and they suddenly remembered the Guitarapalooza was at a different club. By the time we got to the second club, it was too late to catch BART, so I was effectively taken hostage by some stoned losers I used to think were my friends. I hoped that there would be a huge cover charge at the club, and my friends being unemployed, unemployable and just cheap would decide that this was not such a good idea after all.
Sadly, there was no cover. Not only did this mean that we would have to go in, but also that I would be stuck watching a band that could not charge people to attend. Sweet. I walked in and was immediately slapped in the face by the smell of really, really bad body odor. It was like a moose farted on some old cheese and wiped it on an old sponge. I guess the kind of person who is going to free concerts on Wednesday evening at 11:30 p.m. is not the kind of person who showers before they go.
I got the lay of the land from my friends who told me that the “band” was actually a mix of the best guitarists from bay area bands, mixed in with two women of color to provide the drums and bass. At least, I thought they were women of color. Sometimes in the bay area its hard to tell (especially with bad lighting). The resulting sound was something in between Emmett Otter’s Jug Band Christmas and Lynyrd Skynyrd. You know you are sad when your frame of reference for a rock concert is a kids Christmas show. I relish my parenthood, so when my friend told me that one of the guitarists played in ALO (it was loud, I think he said it stood for Angry Lithuanian Oxfuckers), who used to open for Jack Johnson, I was proud to reply, “Jack Johnson sang the soundtrack to Curious George!” Well, it was very, very loud, so i actually said, "JACK JOHNSON SANG THE SOUNTRACK TO CURIOUS GEORGE!!!" So proud, I was, of my musical appreciation, that I actually tried that line on every skanky looking girl in the joint, and not a single one of them replied. Looks like I got some boning up to do on the art of wooing young females.
After a while, I remembered that I had been to a grand total of three concerts in my life, so I should take the opportunity to enjoy myself a little. Granted, the quality of music put out by the furry white guys on stage who were all a little too fat, a little too old, and a little too uncomfortable looking on stage was somewhat below Metallica/Guns and Roses and Alannis Morissette, but hey, I can relate to being a fat sweaty mess. I nodded my head up and down like the other people who had no clue how to keep a beat, and briefly considered moving my feet, until I realized moving my feet constitutes “dancing” and I sure as shit wasn’t gonna get caught doing that. I opted instead to tap my toe every once in a while and sway casually to the twine of the guitars, while trying my best to avoid making eye contact with any of the kids there. I would have been more social had I not been wearing shorts, a polo shirt and athletic tennis shoes, which totally clashed with the jeans, clever tee shirts, and skate shoes everyone else was wearing. Also, I did not stink to high heaven. What’s wrong with these people? I was young once, and do not remember making a point to smell like a ape when going out on the town. I guess things have changed.
The band finally wrapped up after a 20 minute long final song that was the musical equivalent of an alzheimers patient rambling on about head of lettuce that was nice to them once. I was struck though about how into it my friends were. I know part of it was the drugs talking, but they were really into dropping the names of the guitarists and chronicling of their history with various bands they played with. I could care less, but I think they were actually tried to impress me with the fact that one of my friends went camping with the members of Tea Leaf Green. Some of them actually danced (gasp!) and even went so far as to hold one arm in the air as if they were receiving the holy spirit. I guess living with the burden of looking like Brad Pitt has numbed me to allure of fame, to the point that brushes with fame are not all that exciting.
I thought that the music was just OK, barely worth enduring the smell, but the other members of the car pool seemed to think that we had just witnessed an “epic" show. I have argued with them, but i didn't want to seem lame and was too busy fending off the allegation from the back seat that i was from "San Mateo." We finally went home and I was glad that the group’s plan to go do more drugs until 4 in the morning meant that I got dropped off first. I drifted off to sleep, actually glad I had braved it out and played with the (smelly) cool kids for the night.

All by Myself

2008-06-23T17:33:00.000-07:00

So, you don’t really know how good you’ve got it until you don’t have it at all. My one my best qualities is my ability to sleep. I know this is sad, but some people knit, some fight racism, I sleep. I sleep well. At least I thought I did, until Amy went out of town on a business trip this week. (On a side note, Amy left for Las Vegas for a “business trip” on a Sunday. Who has a meeting in Vegas on a Sunday? If she comes back with a tan and blood shot eyes, I am gonna be pissed!)
I was down a few hours of sleep in the past few days to begin with, as Malcolm has learned how to climb out of his crib, and now runs up to our room and wakes us up at 6 a.m. by slapping us in the face while shouting, “I sleep long time. Malcolm has good rest.” I planned on going to sleep early, but the movie Coal Miner’s Daughter put an end to all that by luring me in until all hours of the night. In case you haven’t seen it, it stars Sissy Spacek, Tommy Lee Jones, the guy who plays Earl, with brothers Darryl and Darryl on Newhart, and contains my new favorite all time movie line: “You’re 14 now, you’re almost a woman.” I was moderately interested in the movie until Sissy’s character called another woman a sow and chased her with a stick. At that point, I was hooked and didn’t go to bed until 11, a half hour past my normal bedtime.

This was not a fatal mistake, but alone in the house, I heard every stinking noise outside and with each sound I panicked like I was being attacked by our neighbors. In reality the neighborhood cats were either fighting, screwing or both. Ironically, I failed to pick up on the similarities between the cats outside and the lovemaking rituals depicted in the movie I watched earlier.

After I had finally gotten used to the nocturnal feline escapades (NFE’s on the animal channel), I slowly drifted off to sleep. Until, that is, I was awakened by the high pitched buzz of a mosquito. There is something about my blood which makes me irresistible to mosquitoes. That’s why I had already been bitten three times by the time I learned that I was being hunted. In the next hour and half, I went on three mosquito hunting expeditions, treating our neighbors who may have wondered what was going on to the sight of me in my pajamas skulking about with a rolled up Restoration Hardware catalogue slowly inspecting the walls and ceiling for bloodsuckers. In between unsuccessful attempts to bring down the scourge of the skies, I tried to completely hide my body underneath the blanket, leaving only my nose and mouth outside the comforter. If you need any mental imagery, it was a bit similar to the cartoon bear hiding under the water from the swarming bees in the air, while breathing through a little straw in the water. Finally, at 1 a.m., I spotted my prize catch on the crossbeams to our skylight and the justice was swift and permanent. I knew I had the right prey, when a large dollop of bright red blood was splattered along with the mosquito. I smiled quietly to myself as I strutted off to bed, as I previously switched from using an Entertainment Weekly as my weapon, but I didn’t want to sully it and face Amy’s wrath at ruining the interview with Angelina Jolie.

After I had fallen asleep again, I was jolted out of bed at 2:30 by the loud sound of crashing wood. At this point, I knew that our ultra-religious neighbors to the north were starting a new crusade and had started by beating our French doors down to show us the true path. I looked out the window to confirm just this and saw that half of our back fence had fallen down. I was confused as to why something like this had happened, until I realized that this same fence had been leaning over because our rear neighbor’s compost heap was slowly pushing towards us. But still, a compost heap causing half of our fence to fall down at 2:30 in the morning? Come on!!! Safe with the knowledge that it was a bulging compost heap, and not marauding Christians from the North, I finally, at 3 a.m., fell asleep for good. Well, I slept until 5:55 a.m. when Malcolm slapped me in the face to let me know that he wanted some apple juice. Amy come home!

Paulie goes to the Doctor

2008-06-22T06:01:00.000-07:00

I went to the Doctor yesterday. A couple of friends of mine got the skin cancer and, as a tribute to them, I went to the dermatologist. I was a little nervous about going, since I regularly played sports outside (with no shirt on and no suntan lotion) when I was growing up. Now, my body looks like a mini-solar system, dotted with molar constellations all over the place. The other reason I was nervous was my junk. I have moles on my private parts, and the prospect of having someone not named Amy or Scarlette Johanssen rummage around my twig and berries is a bit terrifying. It is precisely this reason why the search for the dermatologist took so long. My skin doc had to be a) a woman b) who is older (but not old: old people scare the hell out of me) that c) looks like a troll. I ruled out a man doctor immediately because the image of an older man touching me downstairs reminds me too much of grade school. (Oddly enough, my 1st grade teacher was named, “Mr. Robinson.”) I thought I wanted a recent medical school grad, and secretly hoped that she would be good looking, that way I could double the number of good looking women who had touched my private parts in the last decade. I soon realized the horrible feeling of shame that would attach to getting an erection during a medical examination. An old ugly woman would avoid any nightmares while minimizing the risk of inappropriate genital swelling (IGS in the medical literature). I entered these parameters into my insurance’s doctor finder and found that the nearest doctor who matched my needs lived in Boise, Idaho. Not wanting to commute that far, I started calling doctors and asking, “excuse me, do you have any old ugly, lady doctors in your office who are accepting new patients? The trollier the better.” Lucky for me, I found one that did, and made my appointment.

After filling out paperwork, I had the age old dilemma of selecting a magazine in the waiting room. If I were all alone, I would easily grab the first US Weekly or People magazine I could find and scour the pages looking for embarrassing pictures of celebs. However, there were a lot of people in the waiting room with me, so I did the following: I scanned the generous selection of magazines while commenting, “Baron’s, got that one at home, New Yorker, don’t have the newest one yet, Time, too mainstream, ahh yes, Conde Naste Investor, I made $1,500 last time I read this one.” I had never heard of this magazine, so I figured it was definitely a step up from my normal trash. But since I have the attention span of a cocker-spaniel, I quickly slipped a US weekly inside it, to entertain myself during the wait.

The assistant, Claudia, called me into the office, and I dropped off the magazine at the table, commenting, “interesting derivatives strategy, I’ll call my broker.” I have no idea what any of that meant. Claudia took me back and asked me the same questions that were on the paperwork, which I found annoying. Are my written answers less trustworthy. Do they even read them? Next time I will consider putting wildly inflammatory answers on the forms, to see if they do actually read them. Any allergies? Your breath, you alcoholic deadbeat. Family history of cancer? My grandma had a severe cancer of the sense of humor. Never told a joke that one. Currently taking any medication? I drink the blood of the innocents.

I thought this appointment would be educational, as the doctor team would tell me about skin cancer and the proper way to avoid it. Interestingly, nothing of the sort happened. After asking all the same questions again, Claudia told me that you can get skin cancer in your finger and toe nails and that you could also get it in your anus. Huh? What made things worse was that Claudia had a severe accent or lisp, so I didn’t really understand it for a few seconds and right after she said this, she smiled and looked away. The specter of anal skin cancer loomed about for a while we both sat silently in the room looking at the wall. She then asked whether I used sunscreen, and when I answered in the affirmative, she said, “ya but you probably ushe shtlirty. When I replied, “no I use SPF 50, I like the banana boat no tears kind,” Claudia looked at my paperwork and then nodded after reading my answer to “occupation: proud stay at home daddy to Malcolm, the zaniest 2.5 year old you will ever meet!”

Claudia told me to take everything off except for my underwear and that she’d be right back with the doctor. At this point, I realized that I had made a grave error when preparing for the doctor visit. I had rushed to get Malcolm out of the house that day, and while I had remembered to brush my teeth, I had neglected to put on deodorant. Malcolm and I had gone to the park earlier that day and it was warm, so I was a bit sweaty. I leaned over and quickly realized that I stunk. Also, since I had not realized that my anus would be up for inspection, I was a little unsure about back door cleanliness. I am not saying I have a dirty butt, but I am sure you would agree that extra diligence is required for cleaning your ass if you knew that someone would be inspecting it up close that day. With my mind racing about these disaster scenarios, the doctor entered the room.

The sad thing is that the doctor, who much to my liking looked like a hobbit, entered the room and, without saying a thing, began going through my hair like a monkey. A lot of people would have been put off by this, but I love it when people, hobbit or otherwise, run their fingers through my hair. My eyes immediately went to half mast and I loved it. She eventually said “2 millimeters, pink, or something similar, before saying that “people can get skin cancer in a lot of places. I had to get something removed from behind my ears. Believe me, you don’t want that. By the way, nice to meet you, my name is Dr. So and So.” Well, at least we’ve met.

The good doctor proceeded to scour every inch of my body with a fancy looking glass measuring the size of every mole I had. This took a while. Of course, the first place she looked was under my arm pits, which by now stunk pretty good. I felt pretty happy about that afterwards. Lucky for me, I only had I mark that needed a biopsy. I say lucky for me, unless than one turns out positive and I have the cancer. That won’t be so lucky. We’ll see.

I also learned that I have a pink-grey spot on my nee nee (Malcolm’s words, not mine) that I should really pay attention to. Sweet! The doctor said I need to pay more attention to my weiner! That is the sexual equivalent of medical marijuana. I have spent the past few days vigorously inspecting my genitals for any change in the situation. I plan to continue this for the foreseeable future.

The ass inspection was quite the scene, and every bit as terrifying as I thought. The doctor told me to get on my stomach and then pulled my boxers off. She then bent over my butt and looked straight into my anus, like she was inspecting my tonsils from below. Not having embarrassed me enough, then proceeded to spread my cheeks to vary the view. Are you frickin’ kidding me? I wanted to curl up in the corner to cry.

The visit ended with the doctor freezing off some bumps that had developed on my hands. I didn’t realize until later that the freezing process turned relatively innocuous, small bumps into large, swollen, occasionally bloody blisters. Later that day, my hands looked like I had leprosy. Sweet, especially since I had a joint birthday party in my honor that night.

The doctor told me that I needed to make an appointment for the biopsy and then quickly left the room. Sitting on the examination table in my underpants, I remained in the room, wondering what to do next. After about five minutes, the good doctor returned and asked why I was still there. “Oh, I didn’t know what to do. Can I please put my clothes back on?” She told me I could go and I went out to schedule my next appointment. By the front desk was a cosmetics rep who must have been the best looking woman I had ever seen. I wanted to say something witty to her, but the only thing I was able to actually get out was, for some reason, the word “mutton.” At least she didn’t stare into my anus.

Malkie visits a Farm!

2008-06-02T17:09:00.000-07:00

We visited a farm! A friend of mine from high school married a cattle rancher/alfalfa farmer near the Oregon/California border. We hadn’t been up to see them in a number of years, and we figured the timing was right to take Malcolm up there.

The trip got off to a rocky start when we stopped for lunch at a Togo’s at a truck stop along highway 5. You know you are in for a bad dining experience when you say, “we stopped to eat at a truck stop…” I guess we would have been OK if we had found a place to eat chicken fried steak, but instead we opted for sandwiches instead, since I remembered liking pastrami sandwiches at Togo’s before. Here is our ordering experience:

We waited for 5 minutes in the drive-thru before someone came on over the intercom.

Hi there, welcome to Togo’s, may I take your order?

Ya, can I get a turkey avocado sandwich please.

2 minute pause.

Would you like everything on that?

No onions please.

What size?

Regular.

Would you like cheese? We have American, Swiss and Provolone.

Provolone.

4 minute pause.

Hello? Are you still there?

Yes.

One turkey sandwich with Cheddar.

No, a turkey avocado with provolone with no onions please. [What the hell, cheddar wasn’t even an option!]

Ok, I’d also like a large pastrami sandwich with no pickles or tomatoes.

What size?

Large. [I just said large numbskull. What’s wrong with these people?]

OK, what kind of bread would you like?

A regular roll please.

What kind of bread would you like?

[Didn’t they just ask this? We should leave right now.] A REGULAR ROLL PLEASE!

White or wheat?

WHITE!

What size was that again?

[Oh, go fuck yourself!] LARGE!!!!

OK, a large pastrami with no tomatoes or onions.

[Listen you retard, it’s a sandwich. This is not that tough.] No, I want onions, I don’t want pickles.

No pickles or onions.

[ARE YOU WRITING ANY OF THIS DOWN? I AM SERIOUSLY GOING TO SHOOT YOU IN THE FACE!!!] Whatever.

To my surprise, this was the worst tasting sandwich I ever ate, with the bread tasting like it was made in Russia in the 70’s and the pastrami looking more like discarded gristle than sandwich meat. I was so seriously irritated, I can’t believe I didn’t drive off, and was mad at myself for giving those people money. Oh ya, Amy got American cheese on her sandwich.

The rest of the drive went smoothly and we arrived in Etna at our friends ranch early in the evening. The Hanna ranch is a perfect place for Malcolm. It had 3 horses on site, 2 Saint Bernards, 2 other dogs and what seemed like 16 orange cats. That kid was swimming in animals! I must admit, though, that the sight of a sweet, energetic Saint Bernard charging at you at 100 miles an hour, is a bit terrifying (especially if you are only 3 feet tall). Malcolm handled it well though.

My friend Regina lived across the street from me in high school. She married Judd, her college sweetheart, and moved up to the ranch when returning home from traveling the world after college. They have a cute little girl named Dylan who I mistakenly referred to as a boy after receiving the birth announcement. Judd and Regina live on a ranch that Judd works with his father, uncle, brothers, and other family members. The cows roam on grassy mountains and are natural, meaning they don’t get any hormones or antibiotics. It’s cool that there are still family operations like this. Reading books like Fast Food Nation makes you think that raising cattle is more like operating a huge cattle farm.

While we were there, Malcolm enjoyed playing on the myriad of abandoned tractors they have dotting the countryside. It’s one thing to have a matchbox tractor, it’s quite another to sit in the seat of a real live caterpillar that has a steering wheel the size of a kitchen table.

The highlight of the weekend was undoubtedly the ride in Judd’s new swather, a 20 foot tall, highly maneuverable tractor used to cut hay in the fields. Luckily for us, Judd also can use it to cut weeds in the front yard, which he did with Malcolm sitting next to him in the cab. Malcolm had the distant look of determination in his eyes, while zipping around the yard, that I had the first time I inhaled keyboard cleaner. He had a blast, and is still asking if he can go for tractor rides. I stupidly told him that we were going to get one for our backyard one day, and he hasn’t let me off the hook yet.

We visited a whole bunch of animals while there. We saw, at one place or another, horsies, cowses, goats, sheep, chickens, bunnies, squirrels, and even honeybees. We had grand plans of getting Malkie up on a horse, but he completely freaked out when he got near the tall beast. I guess I would to, my daddy had taken me to go see Yao Ming, and then all of a sudden, tried to put me on his back. Oh well, we figured next time we’ll be ready for the horses.

While there, we went for ice cream one afternoon. Dylan had never had ice cream before, so she didn't know that you weren't supposed to try to eat the cone in one bite. I had never seen anyone's jaw open that far before. Malcolm wanted to re-enact an Oascar fave, so we got him one of these:

I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE!!!!

We had some good adult time on the ranch too. Judd and Regina got a baby sitter to look after the kids, and we even had an adult’s night out! They have a brew pub, so we got handcrafted brews, while talking about traveling, books, and politics. Ah, who am I kidding, we talked about poop and nipples the whole time, but in my mind, we were very cosmopolitan. Judd and Regina are an interesting ranch family though. Regina is Brazilian, so she kinda sticks out like an Alpaca in Manhattan. Judd teaches English at the local college and listens to books on tape while he cuts hay in the summer. There is just so much to absorb that we peppered them with questions like we foreign exchange students. I actually poked Amy in the ribs to get her to shut up after asking Judd 10 questions back to back about cows. [What kinds are there? What colors do they come in? What happens when their dicks break?] Judd was glad to see us leave, feeling like the Spanish inquisition had just moved on.

I really liked Etna, we had a great time. It’s the kind of place where everyone honks at you from the road to say hi (even if you’re not in a bikini). There’s no fashion pressures, as a camouflage hat and sandals with wool socks are the norm (provided, of course that somewhere on your body there is either a reference to a farm equipment manufacturer or a woman with exceptionally large breasts). Malcolm was constantly amazed and loved every minute of it. I would brag about how well behaved he was too, except that he spent a good deal of the weekend trying to kick the living shit of sweet little Dylan. Part of me wanted to leave Malcolm up there. Maybe next time.

Odd Stuff Around Our House

2008-05-20T11:47:00.000-07:00

I can’t ever seem to find anything I am looking for. When I search high and low for socks in my sock drawer, all I can find is a random assortment of receipts and old pen caps. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I am pack rat, and I have resolved to change my ways. My first step is to admit that I have a problem and disclose the true depths of my ways. Accordingly, here are the 10 weirdest things that we have in our house right now.

We have organic basil in our master bathroom. I know what you are thinking, “Paul, why organic?” Pesticides my friends, pesticides. Not sure how the organic basil got there in the first place, but it sure has spiced up our bathroom routines!

We have a tray sitting on top of our entertainment center which contains the following: a pink headband, an assortment of European power converters, duct tape, and about $2 in Turkish currency (even though we have never been to Turkey). Every time we clean (twice a year, before our superbowl party and before our oscar party) we move this stuff around, but we have never seen fit to actually remove the items from our family room. I assure you that the day we do, the need will arise for someone in a pink headband to simultaneously convert power and Turkish currency while repairing a hose out front. Wait, that’s just the pack rat talking. Sorry.

We have a huge glittery purple vibrator in our guest bedroom dresser. Amy received the sex toy (which looks rather straight out of a Harry Potter movie) for her 30 birthday and it has been relegated to the dresser ever since. At least, that’s what Amy has told me. OK, I just moved that one to the closet when I realized our parents use that dresser to store clothes in. I am not sure they appreciated seeing a vibrator where their jammies go. I think I just admitted that I have never seen a Harry Potter movie.

My old ID for the gym is in the buffet in the dining room. Each time I see it there, I laugh and think to myself, “what’s that doing there?” I then leave it in the drawer, and continue looking for whatever it was I was looking for.

I have a packet of Lipton Onion Soup Mix in the pocket of my black suede jacket which I wore two years ago. I used to love this stuff, using it to flavor chicken dishes and sour cream based dips. I guess sometime along the way, I thought, “I should have a way to make dip on special occasions.” Guess that magic moment never came.

There is a box in my office that contains a baby rattle, leftover Christmas cards, a PM Dawn CD, paper measuring tape from Ikea and an IPOD. I couldn’t even begin to deconstruct all that, so I hid the box underneath the desk, next to the broken child car seat and the pile of checks from bank accounts that we have closed over the years.

We have a Stuffed Sole entrée from Omaha steaks sitting in our freezer. I find this especially troubling because I hate fish, and have no idea how a Sole got to Omaha in the first place. I will never, ever either eat or cook this, but it still remains in our freezer taking up space. I curse it every time I try to jam more ice cream or corn dogs in there.

We have about 35,000 35 mm slides from my parents sitting in garbage bags right by the front entrance to our house. Last year, I promised my parents that I would convert them into digital files, but I still have not done it. So, the first thing you see when you walk in our house is seven or eight garbage bags full of pictures. Can’t figure out why we don’t entertain more.

There is a JC Penney gift card we received from Amy’s grandma ten years ago sitting next to the phone and answering machine in our kitchen. I don’t know if JC Penney’s is still in business, but if they are, we have some free money there. Yay.

I was sure Malcolm’s closet had something absolutely bizarre in it. I was surprised to find nothing out of the ordinary there, old clothes and toys mostly. I was worried that the closet would stick out a little, so I moved the huge, purple vibrator there. Now it fits in with the rest of the house.

P.S. I just went in to my office to use the computer and next to my monitor was a jar of red chile flakes and a can of spray paint for touching up our kitchen cabinets. There is no hope for us.

Somewhere Along the Way, I Think I Married My Hairdresser

2008-05-08T15:47:00.000-07:00

The guy who cuts my hair is named Lam. He has been cutting my hair for years, and I realized the other day that we are, in fact, married. Before Lam, I had a series of meaningless encounters with faceless hairstylists. The primary reason I floated along getting bad haircut after bad haircut is that I generally didn’t like to pay more than $10 for a haircut.

I knew I hit rock bottom when, at the dingy barber I went to at my first job out of law school, I picked up a People magazine and underneath it was a Swank magazine. Mind you, it wasn’t even “classy” porn like Playboy, but Swank, the pornographic equivalent of NASCAR or chicken fried steak. Porn at the barber? I guess that’s why you have to wear an apron. This discovery was similar to waking up the night after a drunken escapade lying next to someone who is hairier, smellier and has more toes and less teeth than you would otherwise choose in a mate. I stumbled home on my own walk of shame, feeling dirty inside (because I just had to sneak a peak at the Swank) looking like a rhesus monkey, because $12 at that barber will make you sexually interested, but sadly won’t make you look good enough to actually get sex.

Approximately a month later, I stumbled across a salon in downtown Oakland that looked brand new, which I thought might translate into grand opening specials. A youngish looking Asian male named Lam introduced himself to me and had me sit down on a brand new chair. Lam was effeminate, had outrageously fashionable hair, and weird looking clothes. I assumed he was gay. The whole first time with Lam appeared, for all intents and purposes, like we were on a first date. He began by giving me a 10 minute scalp massage that made me question my sexuality. I was equally impressed when he flashed his scissors around like he was in a Jet Li movie, alternating hands and coming at my hair from all sorts of different angles. I knew that was seriously in trouble when ABBA came over the radio and I started tapping my feet to “Dancing Queen” and shyly blushing when Lam kept telling me what a handsome man I was. It was just plain over when he gave me a second scalp massage during the rinse and something in my hair afterwards which appeared to do nothing other than make my hair smell like dance club sweat. I walked out that day $30 lighter, but, for once, I actually looked good and was slightly more aroused by Lam than Swank.

Things continued that way for a while. I would go in looking disheveled and stressed about life, then he would make me feel good for about an hour, and then I would leave and feel good for the next month because of a stylish haircut. I was in love with my hair stylist. Not the kind of love I have for Amy, but a simpler love, like the love for the guy at the coffee shop who gets your mocha just right or the sandwich lady who turns salami, mayonnaise, pepperjack cheese, and a dutch crunch roll into perfection.

I started to notice after about 4 years, that things had gotten old. Much like the married couple who get crippled by the routine, things with Lam had become stale. The scalp massages were brief, and it appeared that he was going over baseball stats in his head while he was doing it. What made it truly astounding was that he told me that he was married and was sending for his wife and kid in China. What the fuck, you have a wife and kid? You’re not gay? Well, that just takes the zing out of it don’t it. Now, its just two straight guys disinterestedly rubbing each other, while talking about real estate or kids. I could get that on C-SPAN. We had become an old married couple, and things for us were uninvolved.

Things have been cool for a while now. I don’t usually shower, shave or change my clothes before I show up. As if to let me know how little he has invested, one time he wouldn’t even take me himself, passing me off to his brother. When he does actually cut my hair, he usually rushes through it. One time he cut my hair using the electric shears the whole time. We are the equivalent of the Midwest couple who’s idea of date night is Monday Night Football at Hooters. The quality is not off, he is still solid, but it is no longer the 5 sense experience it used to be. I do not know what circumstances would cause me to go out looking for a haircut tryst, but if I walk by a place with coeds in spandex giving ridiculously bad hairdos, I am cheating on Lam in a minute.

Instead of picking my nose today, i picked some stocks

2007-10-19T09:27:00.000-07:00

I had been looking at one of our mutual funds for some time. It was a "socially conscious " mutual fund that tried to change corporate America into something that loves gay people and hates nuclear energy and tobacco. For a while, the fact that my money was out there trying to do good was enough for me, as the returns have been less than stellar. Now that i have to scrounge up change underneath the couch in order to fill up the car with gas, i have decided that i don't care what my money is out there doing, as long as it is recruiting more money to come my way.

So, after figuratively flogging the dying hippie mutual fund for some time (occasionally selling it in order to pay for abnormally high credit card bills or property taxes, or as it was really the case, strippers in reno) i decided to get rid of the tie-dyed shareholder report and replace it with something that makes me richer. How do you pick a stock? I heard anecdotal evidence that companies on the fortune "Best Companies to Work For" outperformed the S & P by like a billion percent. I am sure that you will read somewhere that this is the silliest thing you could ever do with your money (other than throwing it on stage to strippers in Reno), as you should never create a stock porfolio strategy on something your wife put in a presentation to sell software.

I don't care, i like the idea of making money from companies that treat their people well. Not because i like people, mind you, but rather because low turnover is good for business and happy employees are more productive. I am still not sure why this means i should buy stock in any given company at any given time, but this is the first time i have purchased stocks (rather than mutual funds) and i will allow myself some room for error.

So there I was, ready to make my fortune in "the market" (as we investors like to call it) and the top company to work for was google. I glanced over the fundamentals, much in the same way a blind french person wold review a McDonals menu in sanskrit. I knew that you don't want you P/E ratio to be too high, but to tell you the truth, i liked PE in school, so i didn't really care that Google's P/E ratio was in the stratosphere. It was time to by some stock.

I am looking for somewhat of a balanced portfolio for the $10,000 i wanted to invest in my own stock picks, so i didn't want to overcommit to google. After doing the math, i realized i could afford a whopping two shares of stock. TWO FUCKING SHARES? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The market involves billions of dollars flying around as sophisticated trades respond to market conditions and predetermined advanced strategies, and here is little ole me, in my pajamas and slippers, sitting at the breakfast table saying, "Hey world! Someone sell me a share or two of google. I'll pay 50 cents less than what it is worth now!" Humbling indeed.

I did get the order filled, and actually, they had to break up my order in two! That's right, my mammoth order had to split in order to make the market. I assume the transaction went as follows: a broker, much in the same way a short order cook freaks out when a large group arrives, sees my order and immediately gets on the phone and says, "Holy Shit! Paul Schwartz is making his move in stocks finally and he is trying to corner the market on Google! Let's get on board with him and ride this thing all the way to the top!!!" Sadly, it probably went more like this: HAHAHAHAHA, look guys, this douchebag is trying to buy 2 shares of Google. Two Shares!!! Response: is he trying to use a coupon? HAHAHAHAHA. Say, i'll give him one if you give him one, that way he won't feel so bad."

I needed to round out my portfolio with stocks, so i played it safe and picked other companies off the list that i had heard of, Nordstrom, American Express, Whole foods, mixed with some tech firms whom i recognized from the purchase of naming rights to prominent baseball/football stadiums. I figured you can't really outsource hi-end retail places with good service, so those firms were safe for the time being. Also, i won't feel so bad at spending $25 for strawberries and $30 for socks since ultimately i am helping my own bottom line. (Bottom line is an investor term i learned which refers to the last line of some report filed with the SEC and contains just enough errors and omissions so as not to be "material." I tried to make sense of that all, but Ellen was coming on and i wanted to see her cry over someone taking her halloween candy away, so i quit.

I am not really a good personality match for waiting for "buy" orders to get filled, as i a habitual checker and have refreshed my browser page about 400 times in the time it took to write this post. After some minor price changes, we are now the proud owner of nearly $9,000 worth of stock! From now on, any comments i make about my "portfolio" will be references to these stocks. References to my "package" mean what they have always meant. Bring on the market!!!!

Malkie makes a peepee!

2007-10-17T15:06:00.000-07:00

We have been trying to get Malcolm started on the potty. Each night, we have him sit on his fake plastic potty before going into the bath tub and ask him to make pee pee on the potty. Up until today, his response has been to say “pssssssssssssssssss” while looking out over his belly to see his penis (or his “nee nee” as he calls it). After a few seconds of not peeing he would ask to go in the tub, where he would promptly stand up, start peeing and then making the “psssssssssssssssss” sound while staring at you while smiling.

Today, we got home from an outing and malkie had been splashing around in some puddles. I knew that I would have to change his pants anyway, so I asked him if he wanted to go pee pee in the potty while daddy went pee pee in the big potty. He nodded yes, I stripped him down and put him down on his plastic potty. He looked out over his belly and grabbed his nee nee and made the “psssssssssssssssss” sound.

He stayed with it a little more this time, and began playing with his nee nee while making various noises. First, he kneaded his little weenie, like there was some sort of cork which stopped the pee pee from coming out. He found this terribly funny and began laughing hysterically. With adrenaline rushing through his veins, he stepped up from kneading to something more reminiscent of a boxing speed punching bag. He shrieked wildly as his little package made “thud-a-dud-dud” sound over and over again while being slapped to and fro. Any of you who have met Malcolm know his “HAH HAH HAH” old smoker lady laugh, and he busted it out in full force for this.

He eventually got over himself, and I knew we were getting somewhere when I saw his stomach muscles flex. He began to knead wildly again, and a moment later: BAM! He peed straight outward missing the potty by a mile and peeing directly on the floor. I helped him aim the stream back into the potty and a minute later, he was overjoyed at having made the leap from peeing like a baby into peeing like a man (as long as the man pees while sitting down and getting most of it on the floor. Gee, I wonder where he gets that from?) I was a proud parent today, and even better, Malkie was a proud baby, err young man. I don’t know if he will do it again, but I don’t care. He took a step in the right direction today. Now we just need to make him shit on command!!!

Something goes terribly wrong at the Oakland Public Library

2007-10-17T15:00:00.000-07:00

It rained today. This meant that Malkie and I had to find something to do that was not at a park, or, for that matter, outside. I had heard that the OPL had a story time on Wednesdays so I went down to the library, not really knowing what was in store, but hoping that it would provide an hour or two of entertainment/distraction.

Things started alright, as a frumpy, friendly, older woman (synonymous with the word: librarian) got us set up with a name tag and offered us snack. Being my father’s son, I gladly accepted the free grub and got Malcolm up into a chair after fetching us some juice and muffins. Only, when Malcolm settled into his seat he fell over the edge and went careening down onto the cement floor on his head. A hush came over the moms there, as the sickening “thud!” of a child’s head smashing the floor will generally cause everyone to stare at you until your kid stops wailing. Luckily, Malcolm didn’t hit any one part cleanly, so he lacked any large welts and quieted down once he realized there was a blueberry muffin in it for him.

I made a discovery while returning the concerned looks the mommies/nannies were giving me while Malcolm was crying. All of the other adults there were female, that I am used to. More interestingly, there was a unique asian-cracker fusion going on where almost every other family there was either a white mommy with an asian baby or an asian nanny with a white baby. Imagine how much we stuck out, especially when I told Malcolm to “rub some dirt on it” when he fell down. We now import almost everything we need in our country from china. We get the babies from china, the toys the babies play with, the clothes the babies wear, and the people that take care of the babies. Wouldn’t we be better off if we shipped our babies to china and got them back in 22 years with a college diploma?

Things took a turn for the worse when the HLIC (head librarian in charge) told us it was time to sing a song. She broke out the sheep sock puppet and we all came together for a less than rousing version of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” This was truly sad, for HLIC circled the group smiling gaily at everyone, while a weak chorus of high pitched singers quietly mouthed the story about Mary and her stupid pet and how upsetting it was to have a sheep at school. I felt like I was back in church listening to the geriatric crowd murmur their versions of “Joy to the World,” and questioned why I went.

Next came sticker time. We were given a paper animal and a couple pages of stickers so that the kids could put the stickers on the paper animal. Malcolm put about 8 stickers on the lion we were given, having a good time while doing it. Stickers 9 through 28 either went in his mouth or were flicked (much in the same manner a booger is flicked) onto the cold hard ground. When I tried to get him to resume placing the stickers on the lion, he looked at me as if he were saying “why dad? The lion already has 8 stickers. How many stickers does it need?” He made a good point, so I focused my efforts on peeling the stickers off the floor.

The HLIC told us that our time was up and made some announcements about what would happen next week. I was pretty sure that I would never return, except that the HLIC turned on some music and a throng of kids formed to stomp, clap and nod their way through 6 or 7 songs. It was truly a cute scene, except Malcolm got a little nervous while standing (while definitely not stomping, clapping or nodding) in the middle of it all, not really knowing what to do. He begged me to pick him up so that he could watch the whole affair, and I couldn’t help but think this is what I did during every junior high dance I ever went to. I decided that I needed to bring Malkie back, if only to teach how to dance socially. So we are in, and by God, Malcolm will someday follow in his daddy’s footsteps at the last 5 weddings he has been to, and learn to stomp, clap and nod his way to the music.

When we got home, I was filled with the sudden urge to have creative project time. I got a magazine, a glue stick, some scissors and some construction paper expecting to fill up pages and pages of highly interesting pictures. The problem with my grand plan was that the only magazine we had handy was ESPN – The Magazine. I turned every page of that rag, asking Malcolm to point to everything he found interesting. At the end of the frustrating exercise, we had three pictures down, a robot, a fast red car, and a pint of Newcastle beer. Not the collage I thought we’d have, but at least you can tell it was a father-son art project. The other way could tell was that Malcolm ate a good deal of the glue stick and it just so happened that the actual glue was purple. Nothing like sticky purple proof of an art project!