From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XXVII

Introduction

This is the twenty-seventh installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I of the series is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume XIV is here, Volume XV is here, Volume XVI is here, Volume XVII is here, Volume XVIII is here, Volume XIX is here, Volume XX is here, Volume XXI is here, Volume XXII is here, Volume XXIII is here, Volume XXIV is here, Volume XXV is here, and Volume XXVI is here. These volumes speak volumes about my past, but they don’t speak these volumes clearly; I guess I set the volume too low.

So what are albertnet Bits & Bobs posts? They’re just sprinklings of prose I wrote in my youth, typically in letters or emails because I didn’t have a blog yet. (I mean, nobody did.) I’m posting them here to backfill all those people, all those years ago, who typed “www.albertnet.us” on a typewriter and then scratched their heads because nothing “loaded.” Or they searched their email folders for “albertnet” or “blog” and never found anything.

Since many of my friends and family ignored the printed materials and/or emails I sent them back then, yours may be the very first pair of eyes ever to land on these bits and bobs! Read them back to back, front to back, back to front, left to right, right to wrong, top to bottom, bottom to top, randomly, frequently, occasionally, or not at all. The date is given and where I was living.

January 18, 1989 – Santa Barbara

Today I lost concentration while biking home from class, because I was looking at this hot chick in her VW Cabriolet. (I thought it was this girl Molly from my French class.) I took the turn onto Camino Pescadero too fast and too wide, and drifted just a bit into the oncoming lane, and there was a car coming the other way. It almost pegged me, and easily could have, had conditions been only very slightly different. For example, if the girl in the VW had waved, I could be dead now. But life is full of risks, especially at a college like this with so many fine ladies. And life itself is the ultimate risk, with a terrible track record (i.e., nobody's survived it yet).

October 17, 1989 – Santa Barbara

The UCSB cycling team is has a new sponsor: Gold’s Gym. Next time you see me I’ll probably be huge. We also have a sponsor for heart rate monitors. They’re pretty expensive because the company that makes them mainly does medical equipment. But the team still isn’t getting any real cash. And Fletcher Brewing Co. (the maker of Firestone) is no longer a sponsor of collegiate cycling. What a blow!

I can’t remember if I told you this story, but this brewery is pretty new and is trying to popularize non-alcoholic beer by promoting itself through cycling events. Last year they sponsored the collegiate national championships in Colorado. We got it at dinner the night before the road race, and since it’s non-alcoholic there was no reason we couldn’t partake. I didn’t much care for it, and the next day right after the road race I asked a teammate, “Dude, did you try that Firestone last night?” My teammate shook his head and I was about to say, “It was disgusting!” when I noticed somebody in my periphery who seemed to really perk up and take notice. This guys was in a suit, which seemed really odd. I mean, who wears a suit to a bike race? So, acting on instinct, I did a 180 and proceeded to tell my friend, “It was amazing! I could drink that stuff every night!”

Well, the suited guy walked up at this point and said, “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation.” He stuck out his hand and introduced himself: “Hale Fletcher, Fletcher Brewing Company.” The head honcho! And this was great because they’re in SoCal and our UCSB team had been courting them as a sponsor. I chatted the guy up, praised his product to the high heavens, etc. Alas, I didn’t follow up later, and this promising conversation came to nothing.

[Interesting footnote: while Firestone the NA beer never took off, the project eventually became Firestone Walker Brewing Company, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Adam Firestone and David Walker are the founders, and it was actually Adam’s father, Brooks Firestone, a vintner, who got the NA thing going with Hale Fletcher. My older daughter, who graduated from UCSB fairly recently, says Firestone 805 is the go-to beer for partying frat boys. And recently I discovered Firestone’s 8Zero5 NA beer, which is excellent—and which they’ll tell you is their first foray into the NA realm (not acknowledging the original Firestone product). Now you know better. For a neat article on this, click here.]

January 5, 1993 – San Francisco

While I was visiting Boulder I managed to get a dental appointment with our old dentist, Dr. Lewis. That was pretty cool. The hygienist was the one I remember, too, and carried on the usual conversation, chattering happily away. It was more of a monologue actually, since my mouth was obviously full, though I tossed in a quick sound bite every few minutes after rinsing that hideous yellow water away. She’s always asking questions but won’t let me answer. I even bit her once. But anyhow, she’s about eight months pregnant, and was talking about how she had a scare with the baby seat in her car. Seems the seat got disconnected from the seatbelt somehow, so when she braked suddenly the whole thing lurched forward. By the time the cops got there the little kid was just sitting there, trying to scream with his face ripped off. Just kidding—couldn’t resist a “Mad Max” quotation. The kid was fine, his feet stopped him on the back of the front passenger seat. But she was wigged out, and not long after the incident her husband brought home a rented movie—”Raising Arizona,” of all things. So before putting in the movie, he said, “Now listen: there’s a few pretty crazy scenes involving the baby, but I’ll tell you now, nothing bad happens to the baby. He always comes out fine. So don’t flip out.” She’s saying, “What? What the hell are you talking about?” Of course when the scene occurred when Gail leaves little Nathan Junior atop the car, she almost flipped out anyway. “Why did you even rent this?” she cried. So that was pretty funny. Then, I got more than the usual token cameo appearance from Dr. Lewis. He attacked the barb on the inner surface of my right big tooth, which had been damaged in my bike accident last June. He used a dentist’s version of a Dremel tool and just ground it smooth. He says if the tooth turns grey (!) or begins to hurt or be abnormally sensitive, I’ll have to have a root canal. That would sure be a drag. But he said that if it hasn’t happened yet, it probably won’t.

April 17, 1995 – San Francisco

I hear you about dads, and how intimidating it can be to have one, especially if you’re a male adult trying to become a man. [My brother] B— called our dad for advice because his (B—’s) refrigerator had died and he was having trouble fixing it. Our dad seemed really disappointed that B— hadn’t figured it out, and in fact seemed a little bewildered at his son’s total incompetence, like we should all be born knowing how to fix this type of thing. Didn’t offer much advice, really—just placed a really hard pit in B—’s stomach. I mean, our dad designs and builds interferometers, for Christ’s sake. I don’t even know what an interferometer does (other than measuring interference, presumably—but to what end?) As far as refrigerators, I know how to procure and replace the light bulb, but that’s about it. (One time when vacating an apartment I unplugged the fridge to save electricity, after which it eventually defrosted and spewed water all over the carpet of the shithole apartment, which cost me my entire damage deposit.) Anyhow, B— bit the bullet and eventually fixed his fridge! We’re talking A-Team or MacGyver here. I think he had to install a small piece of beef liver somewhere to complete the repair. I don’t know if he even mentioned his ultimate success to our dad. It was probably too sore a subject by then.

June 23, 1996 – San Francisco

A colleague of mine made a comment about a business contact being attracted to her. I joked, “Don’t let your husband know that.” She replied, very casually, “Oh, that doesn’t matter. We’re getting divorced.” I thought it was a deadpan joke. I mean, how could she be so casual about it? I was so sure it was a joke that I replied in similar deadpan fashion, “Well, isn’t that why the modern wedding vows say ‘Till divorce do us part?’” She said, “Well, that’s an interesting way of looking at it.”

I still thought she was joking. “Well, no point letting a failed marriage interfere with your life, right?” To which she replied, “Gosh, you know, I think you’re right. I like that!”

A day or so later, I learned to my horror that she was getting a divorce, and that what I’d taken as deadpan humor was actually dead seriousness … meaning I’d seriously put my foot in my mouth. I couldn’t believe she hadn’t been angry with me—could she have my cynical comments seriously? It seemed impossible. When I profusely apologized, she said, “No, you had some good points!” She actually seemed to find some wisdom in it. I was horrified.

September 27, 1996 – San Francisco

I’m pretty bummed because one of our favorite retail shops has folded: the Schlock Shop. Since you obviously wouldn’t know what the Schlock Shop is—or, well, was—it was a dimly lit, mildew-smelling old place that carried ancient hats of all kinds, including World War I helmets, pith helmets, and English constable hats. They also had pipes, razors, and other oddities. That these items were authentic was suggested by their either being hung from the ceiling just out of most peoples’ arm’s reach, or behind glass. That place was really more like a museum than anything, and I suppose it was somewhat rare that they actually sold anything. I guess I’m complicit in its demise in that I never even considering buying any of the very cool but ultimately useless stuff they offered. I mean, what would I need with a pith helmet? Anyhow, in its place there’s now a brightly-lit store selling modern-day, actual schlock, like $50 ceramic cookie jars in the shape of Homer Simpson, and $25 Star Wars commemorative plastic statues. The new incarnation makes me want to wretch.

April 14, 1997 – San Francisco

We went to Target a few weekends ago to buy a baby shower gift for my friend and his wife. They’re only the second couple we know to have a baby. It’s crazy to think we might get there within a few years; from here it’s as weird as if they’d become astronauts. Anyhow, the bridal registry racket has evidently spilled over into baby showers now. My friends had registered at the Lullaby Club at Target, and we picked out a product I’ve never heard of: the Diaper Genie. In a perfect world you’d rub a lamp and this genie would appear and change your baby’s diaper, but this thing basically looks like a fancy garbage pail. When [my wife] E— and I were in the checkout line at Target the woman behind us, who looked the quintessential suburban mother, said, “Oh, you will just love the Diaper Genie. I bought one and boy did it come in handy. Thing is, it sure fills up quick. But it’s great, keeps the smell down. I used it with both my kids, now, ha, my sister’s got it, she’s just had her first. Anyway, good luck!” We didn’t have the heart to explain it was a gift and we’re childless. Besides, we surely looked the part, hauling that Diaper Genie out to our Volvo station wagon.

October 1, 2001 – Albany

I was trying to assemble our new Diaper Genie, and could not get the damn thing to work. I didn’t even want the Diaper Genie. It was a baby shower gift and we hadn’t registered or anything, our approach being “surprise us!”—and I guess we were. But hey, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, right? But I absolutely could not figure out how to install the bag cartridges that are supposed to ensconce the soiled diapers in a long linked-sausage configuration. Like all new parents I am horribly sleep deprived so my brain barely works to begin with. The only instructions were printed on the ring-shaped cartridge, which is called a “refill.” (Seems like a stupid name for the very first cartridge I’d ever install; it should be called a “fill.”) The stupid thing is, the instructions become obscured in step 2 out of 5 when you put the cartridge into the Genie. Why print them on the cartridge? How about on a damn piece of paper? I had to keep pulling the cartridge out and reading ahead and trying to hold the steps in my head but it was just a fog in there.

Some of my frustration, I’ll concede, was ego-induced. I figured this thing had to be intuitive enough for a high-school dropout trailer trash teen parent to use; why couldn’t I, a college-educated Subject Matter Expert, get it to work? The refill contains this endless plastic bag and you’re supposed to pull some of it out and tie a knot in the bottom and then stuff it back in push it down to the bottom, but the refill didn’t really fit in the DG compartment no matter how I tried to angle it in there. Finally I beat on the top of it with my fist, as if I could just hammer the damn thing into place, and then I hurled the entire contraption down the stairs with a tremendous clatter, much to the amazement of E— and a friend she had over.

I phoned a fellow parent, for whom I bought a Diaper Genie years ago, and after extensive troubleshooting he determined that what I have is an old, small-mouth DG presented in the box of a new, large-mouth DG, along with the “refill” for the new, large-mouth DG. This is why it wouldn’t fit. Probably somebody re-gifted us a barely-used but obsolete DG, throwing in the modern-style refill to make it look new. How could they? But obviously I can’t go complaining to them, that would be ungracious. So instead I think I’ll march into Target with it and demand a replacement. If they don’t pony up, I’m going to spread model airplane cement all over the damn thing and torch it right there on the showroom floor!

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From the Archives - Irksome Little Pony

Introduction

Recently I was struggling (audibly, possibly profanely) with a teapot; I cannot pour from it without spilling.  My wife said, “Hey, I like that teapot—don’t go ‘Diaper Genie’ on it.”  She was referring to when, as a new parent,  I lost my temper over our diaper pail and hurled it down the stairs.  (To this day I feel my action was justified.  A “friend” had given us a lightly used Diaper Genie, which—despite having its original box, so it could be passed off as new—wasn’t compatible with the modern bag/liner cartridge it came with, so in trying to install the cartridge I was unknowingly attempting the impossible.)

As maddening as baby-related accessories can be, parenting itself can be even tougher.  Read on for the tale of how I came this close to executing improper parenting techniques.  This was at Target, where I came into contact with the retail equivalent of an Improvised Explosive Device.

November 8, 2003 - Irksome Little Pony

Today I took Alexa [age 2 at this point] to Target to get a new Diaper Genie.  (The manufacturer stopped making cartridges for our old one.)  I had my wife make a list of other stuff to buy.  “DVD entertainment” was not on the list, but I headed over to the Audio/Video section first thing anyway.  I’m getting tired of Alexa’s meager video library and I must confess, I’ve been so tired lately I’ve been letting her watch non-child oriented fare, like Bond movies.

Of course, the vast majority of Target’s inventory of child-oriented videos are crap, like Barney, the cloying purple dinosaur, and the Teletubbies, those really uncanny, creepy little . . . heck, I don’t know what to call them.  Gnomes, I guess, with TVs built into their bellies.  They give me the willies.  Alexa watches them occasionally at day care, alas, and seems to love them just like the rest of the kids do.  That’s probably the creepiest part.  I mean, I can see why she likes Wallace and Gromit; they’re neat-looking, and there’s lots of action.  But Teletubbies?  These creatures seem barely smarter than cows.  They can’t even talk; they’re just like little pawns.

And don’t get me started on “Baby Mozart,” “Baby Shakespeare,” and “Baby Einstein,” which masquerade as educational fare but actually feature totally dippy, non-name-brand music with the camera panning lovingly over still-lifes of bright new toys, like a damn product catalog.  Over my dead body.  I’d rather put “Dr. No” in again and explain to Alexa, “See?  The woman is sleeping,” and hope that my innocent daughter doesn’t yet understand what gunfire is.

In the video aisle somebody had abandoned a little toy.  Alexa, sitting in the shopping cart seat, legs swinging, immediately became enchanted with it.  I grabbed it, out of idle curiosity, and discovered it was a Poky Little Pony.  I only have a vague awareness of Poky Little Pony.  I’m guessing this toy is an offshoot of a kid’s book.  This one had a fancy mane, made to seem like human hair, and came with a little choking-hazard toy brush and some other stuff.  The accessories were lashed firmly to the packaging, so I figured Alexa couldn’t do much damage to Poky or herself, and I let her play with it while I looked for the video.  (I decided to indulge her partly because she was running a bit ragged; last night was rough, and she was a bit late for her afternoon nap.) 

Alexa struggled in vain to remove Poky from the package.  “Help, Daddy,” she said.  I tried to ignore this, but when she dug deep and came out with, “Help, Daddy, please,” I was so won over by the lessons she’d learned—don’t just scream; ask for help; say please—that I relented and freed Poky.  (After all, some other kid had already ripped open the package and abandoned it in the DVD section.  This was a problem already in motion.)

Man, what a lame toy.  The head didn’t even turn.  No small child could be interested in this toy for more than five minutes.  Or am I underestimating children?  I guess a bright kid could figure out a new, illicit way to have fun with Poky (e.g., taunt a less privileged child with it; try to eat its head; tear out its hair; use it as a spoon; slather it with model airplane cement and torch it).  But of course Alexa loved Poky, and instantly memorized his/her name, turning this name into a mantra as we continued our shopping.

[I guess I should point out that, as I discovered years later, the pony isn’t actually named “Poky.”  It’s called “My Little Pony” and actually there are lots of different ones, with names like Blue Bell, Snuzzle, and Skydancer.  My bad.  I’d seen a New Yorker cartoon showing hip-hop revisions of children’s books, one of which featured Jay-Z fronting The Poky Little Posse.  I thought “Posse” was replacing “Pony” but it’s actually making fun of Poky Little Puppy, apparently some classic children’s book.  So my daughter—oblivious, at this age, of the need to second-guess me—blithely accepted that the horse’s name was Poky.]

After getting the modern Diaper Genie and other items, there was just one more thing to do before checking out:  return Poky.  I vainly hoped Alexa would be excited enough by the new synthetic fireproof blanket I’d put in our cart that she’d forget about the stupid toy, but instead she—adorably—put it to bed on the blanket.  Man.  I can’t think of a more volatile situation than bringing a toddler to the Toys section of Target.  I was tempted to abandon my daughter in some boring aisle, like linens, and then return Poky on my own.  You know, surgical—get in, make the drop, get out.  But this is America, which means if I left Alexa alone for even a second, she would either be abducted, or—worse—somebody would find her, turn her in to the authorities, and I’d end up doing time for abandoning her.

I cursed myself silently for allowing things to escalate like this.  My wife would have never snatched up Poky in the first place.  Heck, she probably wouldn’t have been in the video aisle to begin with—she’d be getting the things on the actual list.  But I’m a softie.  Besides, I’d deluded myself that Alexa would quickly exhaust her joy over Poky, and we as a family would enjoy all the benefits of having actually bought it, with none of the expense, clutter, or model-airplane-cement infernos.  On some subconscious level, I must have convinced myself that if Alexa and I made enough of these shrewd moves, over time, we’d eventually rule the galaxy as father and daughter—Alexa drawing from all the novel stimulation she’d had as a kid, and me drawing from the vast financial empire I’d built up from all the money I didn’t waste.  But instead, I found myself rolling Alexa toward what I feared would be my Waterloo.

I was tempted to employ trickery to save the situation.   But I hate to manipulate a child.  After all, it’s not really fair, given my vast advantage of life experience, to take advantage of young naivety.  Besides, there are so many ways such trickery can fail. 

For one, what if your manipulation doesn’t come off?  That can be humbling.  I’ve tried many times to outsmart the cat—to trick her into coming over by pretending I have food, for example—and she’s looked at me with a feline expression that says, “Exactly how stupid do you think I am?”  Or there was the time I tried to outsmart my niece Lonneke, when she was Alexa’s age.  Lonneke had discovered the TV remote control and was annoying me with it, changing the volume and the channel, etc., so I took the batteries out.  She came after the batteries and I freely gave them to her, figuring that she’d never figure out how to reinstall them in the remote anyway.  I figured wrong.

Another problem with manipulation is that it can give the manipulator, if he’s successful, a touch of contempt for the manipulated.  For example, many times I’ve pretended to throw a stick for a dog, who stupidly runs out to catch it, and then looks all over the sky for it, then starts sniffing all over the ground for it, while I’m standing there still holding the stick, shaking my head.  After the tenth fake throw in a row, as the dog is still gamely running for a phantom stick, I’m completely disgusted with the entire canine kingdom.  I’d hate to draw subconscious conclusions about my own child based on my ability to easily deceive her. 

Third, there’s a guilt problem:  taking advantage of the trust of your own child, and abusing that trust for short-term gain, could easily gnaw on a guy, at least a softie like myself. 

Finally, perhaps most importantly, if you underestimate your kid, a lame attempt at subterfuge could insult her intelligence.  Sure, I might trick the kid when she’s too young to know any better, but that doesn’t mean she won’t remember what happened and put it all together later.  Then she’ll realize what a dick I was, and be suspicious of the more sophisticated deceptions I might be employing later on.

So I stopped the stroller at the end of the Toys aisle (though I pointed it away from the goods).  I asked Alexa to hold the video, and then asked her to hold the fireproof blanket.  Little kids are always so eager to help out, especially when it means holding things.  (I guess the novelty of effectively employing one’s newly prehensile hands takes awhile to wear off.)  Then, Alexa’s hands being full, I took Poky. 

This was the key moment where I forever defined who and what I would be as a parent.  To take Poky without Alexa noticing would be manipulation.  But by distracting her somewhat, I theorized, I could mitigate her sense of loss, and do so without trickery by announcing what I was doing.  “Here, I’ll take Poky,” I said, loud and clear.  And of course she immediately began yelling in protest.  While Alexa yelled, I spun around, located Poky’s clones, reunited “our” Poky with them, and took a moment to satisfy my curiosity about the price ($4.99) before returning to the cart.  Within a minute or so Alexa had basically calmed down.  Sure, the loss wasn’t forgotten; for several hours she kept asking where Poky went, but never did throw the tantrum I’d so dreaded.

I have concluded that Alexa is not (yet) a spoiled rotten brat, but she’s not (yet) a beaten-down, joyless automaton either.  Heck, maybe I actually played the whole thing perfectly.  She derived 90% of the joy and mental stimulation the toy is capable of providing (the other 10% being the use of the hairbrush, which I’d flat refused to remove from the packaging).  I’d survived a battlefield test of my parenting tactics and ideals.  Alexa, for her part, had a not-so-painful lesson in the sad fact that you can’t always get what you want.  And if Target runs out of non-tampered-with Pokies, I’m sure some harried parent will shell out $4.99 for the one with the slightly damaged box.

From the Archives - Descent Into Chaos: My 2005 Holiday Newsletter

Introduction

Every year I write a Holiday Newsletter and send it with my holiday cards.  As newsletters go, mine isn’t very useful; it doesn’t, for example, describe the highlights of the year.  In fact, I usually focus on a single low point of my year, just to counter-balance all the highlights you’ll read about in other people’s newsletters.  Or it’s simply random—the “secret Santa” of holiday newsletters, you might say.

In 2005, I had a hard time thinking clearly enough to write anything.  My kids were four and two and I wasn’t always getting much sleep.  So I decided to embrace randomness as not only the style but the substance of my Holiday Newsletter.  Since this year’s newsletter was inappropriate for a wide audience, I’m posting the 2005 edition from my archives.  Enjoy please enjoy.

Holiday Newsletter - December 17, 2005

I’d hoped to elegantly summarize this past year into a coherent, flowing essay.  But I just don’t think I’m going to get there.  In fact, I think I’ll always remember 2005 as the year I gave up on structure altogether.  I guess this was inevitable, given the whirlwind of family life, especially the inexplicable behavior of children and their sudden tantrums. 

For example, Alexa broke down crying during an argument about whether “Mulamimoto” (the name of her imaginary cat) begins with an “M” or an “R.”  She’d asked me how it was spelled and then refused to accept my answer. 

Pre-verbal Lindsay, meanwhile, will fixate on some food item, cry because it’s not presented quickly enough, stop crying when she gets it, and then start bawling all over again.  Why?  Too hot?  Too cold?  Too much?  Not enough?  When this kind of scenario occupies most of your waking moments, it gets to be too much.  So I finally gave in and accepted that my life had become jumbled and  disordered and there was nothing to be done about it. 

Once I acknowledged the chaos of my life and stopped trying to maintain order, I began to find unpredictability addictive.  I started listening to MP3 music on “shuffle” mode, which has caused some shocking segues.  I’ve decided to bring that randomness to my newsletter and write down whatever ideas come to mind, in no particular order.

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A magazine called “Real Simple” appeared in my bathroom.  It’s an easy read.  It really is simple.  There’s a recipe in there called “cupcakes with ice cream frosting” that has only two ingredients.  One is “cupcakes.”  I’m not kidding!  Anyway, there’s a column in “Real Simple” where readers write in with their time-saving tips.  I’m going to send them this one:  stop worrying about cleaning out the car.  The next time you forget the diaper bag, you’ll be glad you can get by with what’s strewn on the floor.  We keep a bag of clothes in the back that we intend to donate to the Salvation Army.  When we’re really behind on laundry, it’s nice to be able to dip back into that bag to dress the kids.

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Here’s a nice segue:  “Puff the Magic Dragon” right into Beastie Boys’ “Time to Get Ill.”  (Speaking of music, I got stuck in a mall recently and have decided that “Winter Wonderland” should be classified as a munition.  It must have been developed to demoralize the enemy.)

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I had a rough night recently.  At around two in the morning, my wife Erin shook me awake.  There was an incredible racket:  it sounded electronic, and yet human.  A ringing/screaming kind of sound.  Erin handed me a white plastic object and said, “Make it talk.”  Or maybe she said, “Make it stop.”  Or maybe something else entirely.  I took the object in my hand and stared at it.  It was making at least part of the noise.  Then it hit me:  this thing is a phone!  This realization introduced a new problem:  how to make it talk, or make it stop.  Then I remembered:  the talk button.  I found it and pressed it.  Some of the noise subsided.  Now I realized there had been two noises:  a ringing phone, and a crying baby.  But what was Lindsay doing in our bed?  (Only later did I learn that she’d had a nightmare about a “scary monkey” and demanded to sleep with Erin and me.)  Now I was more confused than ever.  I stared at the phone.  Why had it rung?  It dawned on me that somebody must have called, and whoever that was must be on the line and waiting for me to speak.  I put the phone to my ear and said:  “Hello.”

There was a long pause, and then the person on the phone spoke, very quietly, a babbled, murky word, as though spoken across a great distance, and muffled by cotton, or a mouthful of mashed potatoes:  “Brandon.”

I have a colleague named Brandon, but this didn’t sound like him.  It sounded like somebody on his deathbed speaking his last word.  I considered this for a moment before saying, “Brandon?”

Again, the voice gurgled:  “Brandon.”

Totally confused, I decided to go with what I knew to be true.  “This isn’t Brandon,” I said.  “This is Dana.”

A long pause.  Over the screech of Lindsay’s crying, I was finally able to make out that the caller was someone from work trying to solve a problem and looking for Brandon.  He had to settle for me.

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Another time-saving tip for “Real Simple”:  forget the Diaper Genie.  Instead, when you change your baby, just drop the soiled diaper anywhere.  Then, whenever you think to do it, kick a few diapers toward the bathroom trash can.  At some point, gather them from the bathroom floor and throw them out all at once.  This way, you won’t have to wash your hands as often.

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I guess I shouldn’t admit this, but I haven’t seen Lindsay’s glasses in weeks.  I’m not sure anybody else has even realized they’re missing.  I fear we’re not running a very tight ship here.

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Another nice segue:  from Chopin’s Nocturne for Piano in G minor, Op. 15/3, right into “Fell On Black Days” by Soundgarden.

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I think there was a distinct moment when I gave up on structure and accepted senselessness.  It was when buying hair gel.  I hadn’t been getting to the barber as often as I should, so I’d been experimenting with increasingly robust hair gels.  I started with Suave “Mega Hold,” which is rated as an “8” on the hold scale.  (The units aren’t specified.)  On my next trip to the store Mega Hold was gone, but in its place was “Maximum Hold,” at 10.  This all made sense until my next trip, when I discovered “Extreme Hold” at 12.  Given how arbitrary the units were, couldn’t they have made 10 have the top rating?  And since when can you get more hold (or more anything) than Maximum?  Isn’t “Extreme” less than “Maximum”?  The precise calibration of hair gel hold had turned out to be total illusion. 

I almost called Suave for clarification until I remembered my argument with Palmolive customer service.  A sticker on their “new” product had said, “Kills twice the bacteria.”  I called customer service and expressed shock that my old Palmolive was leaving bacteria on my dishes, but they assured me it did not—that both the old and new products killed all the bacteria.  How could this be?  If the old Palmolive killed all the bacteria, how could the new Palmolive kill twice as much?  We went around and around until the service representative said, “Sir, it’s just a slogan.  It doesn’t mean anything.”

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Despite being frazzled a lot of the time, I think my attitude has actually been pretty good.  Still, I sometimes worry.  Tonight Alexa asked me to play a game with her.  (She doesn’t do board games yet; just made-up role-playing games.)  I assumed she meant our standard game, in which I surgically remove her appendix.  But tonight she announced she wanted to play a new game:  Deathbed.  I told her I didn’t know that game, and she told me we could make it up together.  It went fine.  At the end I told her she had to speak her last words.  Her choice:  “Done.”

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A final time-saving tip for “Real Simple”: When it’s time to do big chores, Erin lets me go downstairs to (as she puts it) “play on the computer.” This keeps me out of her hair and gives us something to talk about right before bed.

On that note, I guess I should go. Happy holidays!

From the Archives - Diaper Meltdowns

NOTE: this post is rated PG for very mild strong language and insinuations of antisocial acts.

Introduction

The other night was rough. First, our cat Misha—despite getting her typical middle-of-the-night breakfast—continued meowing plaintively and scratching at the kitchen door, a short flight of stairs down from our bedroom. Then our six-year-old, Lindsay, climbed into bed with us, having had a nightmare. (The nightmare was probably my fault; my bedtime story was a bit on the scary side, involving an ancient girl who was terrified at mistaking a helicopter, which she’d never seen before, for a giant dragonfly.)

In our bed, Lindsay did her semaphore routine, all elbows and knees, continually jabbing me, all the while loudly sucking on her fingers. Countless times I dropped back off to sleep only to be reawakened. She kept resituating herself, smoothing down her special blanket or adjusting her special pillow, which she’d brought in with her. When morning came and my alarm went off I was pretty much awake anyway, but far from rested. Of course, following all this Lindsay slept like a baby all morning. Here she is, still lounging in bed with Misha, our other nighttime nuisance, hours later.

Not that I’m complaining! These are the salad days, after all, sandwiched between the terribly difficult infant/toddler years and the dreaded teen years (which I’m told are particularly hard on parents of daughters). What’s a bad night of sleep here and there compared to the rigors new parents face, of night after sleepless night, and all those diapers on top of it? I’ll never forget the shock of bringing our firstborn, Alexa, home from the hospital and faking it as parents as we tried to learn the ropes.

The following stories are taken from an e-mail I wrote to my brothers and parents, probably as a plea for sympathy, when Alexa was about three weeks old. I reread that e-mail with a shudder, and a delicious sense of relief that those tough times are behind me.

Diaper Meltdowns – October 1, 2001

Erin, to my surprise, is handling the lack of sleep much better than I am. Perhaps it’s a new-mother hormone thing, or perhaps she’s just a better person than I, but she has a lot more patience. She does complain a lot about the cat, though, or so it seems. Every few hours she points out another thing the cat is doing wrong, the poor cat who micturates in her catbox and thus requires no changing, and never cries but instead meows rather demurely and sweetly, who is trying to adjust to the new household situation, which includes cruel banishment from the bedroom because she won’t stay out of the baby’s bassinet. But other than her complaints about the cat, Erin is pretty stoic. (Actually, she probably doesn’t complain about the cat all that often, but in my deranged, frazzled state, it seems to me that she does.)

Yesterday morning I pretty much boiled over. I was trying to change Alexa, and the towel we’d put down on the changing table was wet from an earlier changing (she tends to let loose right when you’ve got her diaper off), and so I wadded it up so that I wouldn’t soil her still-dry outfit, and set her down on this wadded lump, and then saw that she had this major boogerage in her eye (clogged tear duct), so I ran to the bathroom, jumping over a massive pile of bedding that was right in my way (it had been torn off the bed the previous night when Alexa had a diaper blowout).

The reason I ran to the bathroom, instead of walking, is that Alexa was screaming her head off, as though I were shoving bamboo beneath her fingernails. Then it took forever, like it always does, to get hot water out of the tap, and the screaming continued, loud enough to drown out my cussing, and then when the hot water finally came out, I knew that the washcloth would never hold the heat long enough to be comfortable because it’s a “baby” washcloth with less fabric in it than a Post-It would have it were made of molecule-thick cloth. Then I realized that the baby was in a precarious place because of the way I’d wadded up the towel on her changing station, and I feared she’d roll into the space heater we have on the table (to keep her warm during changes) and burn herself.

I leapt over the pile of clothes again, cleaned up the eye, changed the diaper, then realized that despite my best efforts, hazardous as they’d been to the welfare of the child, her outfit was in fact soiled, so I had to leap over the pile again to find an outfit from the bureau near the door. We have approximately 300 outfits for Alexa, many of which won’t fit for weeks or months, some of which haven’t been washed yet (we always wash new clothes lest the chemicals used in their manufacture irritate her skin), and some of which are the wrong type (i.e., sleeveless vs. sleeved) for a chilly morning. I finally found one, after a frantic period of searching (frantic because of the screaming, and because of the knowledge that my lovely daughter at any moment might roll into the space heater, which had become a half-ton ball of burning thermite in my mind), and again hurdled the giant pile of bedclothes.

Now I realized that I couldn’t change her on the changing table because of the vast flood of urine that had soaked everything despite my most irresponsibly dangerous wadding measures. So I moved her to the bed, and tried to wrangle her into her fresh garment. It had about 300 or so snaps, and not all of the male pieces are on one side of the garment. You need a degree from MIT to figure out how to snap everything into place. It’s not symmetrical either, and of course no two baby garments have even a remotely similar design. My fury at this point had invaded every cell of my body except from the wrists down, which I managed to control lest I accidentally harm my child. Finally I gave up and shouted “F––– THIS THING!” and hurled the offensive garment to its death. Actually, it didn’t even suffer from the landing, the damn thing, and I couldn’t pick it up and rend it into a thousand pieces, which would have been my choice, because it had Erin’s friend’s initials on the tag, meaning it’s only a loaner and has to go back, clean and intact, to its rightful owner, who can bloody well have it back right now as far as I’m concerned, perhaps soaked in my own urine since this godforsaken garment from hell will never touch the skin of my precious daughter.

So instead of rending the garment into a thousand pieces I did the flip-off dance. [Note to albertnet readers: you’ll just have to imagine this dance. I’m not posting a video.] It only helped a bit. Then I had to hurdle the fiendish pile of bedclothes once again, find another damn outfit from the 600 in the drawer, evaluate it not just in terms of size and laundering status but also in terms of the likelihood that I’d be able to properly fasten all the snaps along its bizarre appendages and whatnot. I found one, hurdled the pile of bedclothes yet again, and put the new garment on Alexa, who had been continuing to scream bloody murder the whole while, at a decibel level that guarantees she has a V0₂ max surpassing Lance Armstrong’s.

Having finally got my daughter changed, I picked her up, carefully ascended the Col du Bedclothes, made it safely down the other side, and brought the squalling youngster downstairs to her mother, who I hoped would be sitting on the couch, boob out, ready to nurse the baby into silence. Instead, Erin was vacuuming, further rubbing my nose in her superior ability to withstand lack of sleep. I sat down with Alexa and bounced her on my knee, trying to calm her down, and then Erin says, “Well, the cat is ruining this expensive rug.” This pretty much put me over. “Well, should we just put her to sleep then?” From my standpoint at the time this response was perfectly justified. Of course, from Erin's perspective—the more lucid one—my utterance must have seemed utterly bizarre. After all, she had given me the night off by sleeping with Alexa in the guest room, and was occupying her short period of respite from the baby by vacuuming, and had made a fairly innocent comment about the state of our handmade Turkish rug, and got shocking vitriol in response. Not a perfect domestic scene.

That’s not my first blowup, nor perhaps my most spectacular. The other night, I was trying to assemble the Diaper Genie, and could not get the damn thing to work. I don’t even want the Diaper Genie, and we’re only using disposables for a short time, but I figured we have it and should go ahead and use it. But I absolutely could not figure out how to install the bags that are supposed to hold the soiled diapers into a long linked-sausage configuration. Finally, after what was really only a couple of minutes, I became furious at it. It had no instructions, and didn’t seem particularly intuitive. The “refill,” which seems like a stupid name for the bag cartridge that was really the very first one ever installed, had directions on it, but they become obscured in step 2 out of 5 when you put the cartridge into the Genie. Now there’s a smart design! I had to keep pulling the cartridge out and reading ahead. It just didn’t make sense. I figured this thing had to be intuitive enough for the least educated, least intelligent trailer trash Diaper Genie owner to use; why couldn’t I, a college-educated Network Design Engineer, get it to work? I beat on the top of it with my fist, and then hurled it noisily down the stairs, much to the amazement and amusement of Erin and her friend, who’d come over to cook us a meatloaf and help out.

I phoned a couple of other new parents, for whom we bought a Diaper Genie years ago, and after a long period of intense discussion and troubleshooting we determined that what I have is an old, small-mouth DG in the box of a new, large-mouth DG, with the “refill” for the new, large-mouth DG. This is why it wouldn’t fit. Probably somebody re-gifted us a barely-used but obsolete DG, throwing in the modern-style refill to make it look new. But that won’t stop me from marching into Target with it and demanding a replacement. If they don’t pony up, I’m going to spread model airplane cement all over the damn thing and torch it right there on the showroom floor.

Baby peripherals aside, child-rearing is a hoot. Alexa is great. She’s getting cuter by the day, and is generally a very sweet baby. She’s a bit gassy, which is a bummer for everybody, and we can’t seem to burp her. But she’s eating up a storm nonetheless. I love to hold her and offer up my index fingers, which she grabs in her fists. We’ve even figured out how to get her, sometimes, to take the pacifier. That’s a big help because I can’t just sit there 24-7 with a finger in her mouth, and she does love to suck.

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