Swimmingly

I suppose an update is an order, and really I should get that shameful obscenity out of the top spot on my little corner of the web here. So here ya go:

You may have heard: I'm dating. This is still a mind-boggling turn of events for me, but how many times exactly can I keep telling you that you met me at a very strange time in my life? I started with Tinder. I did communicate with a couple of women through it, but mostly it was silence. It was crickets chirping. It was the sound of one hand clapping. So I deleted my account. A friend told me, yeah, that's mostly for hook-ups. Even though all the women with profiles say they're not there for hook-ups. But notice that it wants your GPS location, and a whole lot of the women have no profile at all. So: current location + picture only = hook-ups. And I wasn't getting any of those. Not that I wanted those. At least, I don't think I did. A few more tests. (That's a reference to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Mom). (Yes, I just spoke parenthetically to my Mom while talking about hook-ups).

So I started using OKCupid. Because I'd heard of it. And because it also was free. But then I lost my mind and started paying for it anyway? Because I'm easily lead? Because I was in an internet-fueled feverish haze? Anyway, what was I saying again? Oh yeah. Dating. OKCupid. Right.

I was stunned to discover it worked. I made my profile. I answered my questions. I added my pictures. I browsed my "Matches." I sent messages. I got responses. If the banter went well, I asked women out. Some said yes. A couple even asked me out! It was madness. Pure madness.

So now I've gone on two first dates, with a third scheduled for tomorrow. I have my first second date on Saturday. I have no idea what's going on here. And that's OK!

I have to say, my favorite exchanges have been with women who've been on dating apps for a long time and feel qualified and justified in critiquing my approach. It probably has a name, talking about courtin' while courtin'. Meta courtin'? Meta dating? I don't know. It's hilarious. Experienced women love to take me under their wing. I'm a newb. I'm a rook. Ha ha!

Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh yeah. Here's the most amazing part of all of this: I did something that terrified me. And it was fun. And shows every sign of continuing to be fun. And (I notice this is a recurring theme in this blog) the thing that I feared most didn't come to pass. I was afraid that I would be unappealing to women, that I would attract no interest myself and all of my interest in others would be rejected. Looking back over the last week, I see now how silly that is. In the world of online dating apps, where a person is defined almost entirely by his words, I am a man who can use words well. That has appeal. I have appeal. Also, my fellow men have largely set the bar pretty low, as evidenced by the jaded comments women sometimes feel compelled to include in their profiles, like, "Don't message me if your profile pic is your chest or your crotch."

In the last year, I've had a dear friend with relevant life experience tell me that I would be happy again, when I was sure I would not. I've had an amazing, beautiful woman that I thought of as out of my league demand, "Are you going to kiss me or not?" And now I've asked several women out, and they said yes. I've asked one woman for a second date, and she said yes. My self-esteem has gone from completely bottomed out a little over a year ago to bobbing along at a pretty damned healthy level right now thank you very much, and I couldn't be happier about it.

If I keep dating, though, I'm going to have to get a second job to boost my disposable income. This social life business is expensive! But if I get another job, how will I have time for dating? Such a conundrum.

Fuck It, I Ain't Skeered

As long as I'm handing out advice about being unafraid, I've decided I'm going to do a few things that I wasn't doing for fear of what might happen. First among these is dating. I kind of stumbled into a new relationship almost as soon as I was available, which I didn't see coming at all. I was suddenly available after being faithfully committed to a monogamous relationship for over half my life, then true story: I was asked, after a few weeks of escalating flirtation, "Are you going to kiss me or not?" So I did. And she did. And the upshot is: I've done some flirting, but I've never really done the whole dating thing.  I met my ex-wife in my first year away from home at college. I have never in my life tried, successfully or unsuccessfully, to pick up a woman in a bar. Never. I've never been on any dating websites or used any apps. Never. Never! When I got involved with the woman who was getting tired of waiting for me to work up the nerve to kiss her, I was relieved in part because she's awesome and way more than I thought I deserved at the time, but also in part because the idea of putting myself out there and risking rejection was more than a little terrifying.

So I'm going to do it. Because it's terrifying.

I made a Tinder account two days ago, and it's already a weird mixture of hilarious and depressing. The profile of every fortyish woman in the Greater Austin Metropolitan Area contains the phrases "outdoors, hiking, and wine" as well as "looking for a partner in crime!" And for some reason, height is really important for a woman's Tinder profile. Should my height appear on my profile? Does it matter for men as much as it seems to for women? I'm 6'2". Does it matter that I'm 6'2"? I used to be 6'3", so I'm shrinking. Maybe that should be on my profile: 6'2" and shrinking. Fuck it, I'm going to go add that right now.

So I've done a lot of swiping. Which is getting pretty dull. I feel like a heel making straight up yes/no judgements on so little information, but I suppose that's the point. At first I kept screwing it up, left swiping when I meant to browse pictures. Right swiping when I meant to say, "Nope!" I mostly say no when there's no profile text at all. Saying absolutely nothing about yourself is an attraction strategy I don't really understand. I'm mis-swiping less now, but I think I did accidentally Super Like someone. I don't know what that means. I almost dropped my phone when I got my first match notification, then proceeded to immediately make an ass of myself when I messaged her. I think I did pretty well on my two other matches, but I still haven't heard from anyone.

So there's that. I'm dating. Or will be, if I can get a date. Even though I already have a woman in my life that's very high on the list of Best Things to Ever Happen to Me. Brave? Or stupid? Don't answer that.

Another thing I did because I'm pretty sure I was afraid of it was to invite that amazing woman to date other people, too, if she were so inclined. When we first got together, I told her that monogamy was important to me. On reflection, I thought I may have said that out of fear of competition, that if she put herself out there again, she'd find someone she likes better than she likes me. But fuck it, I ain't skeered. Who's better than me? I'm awesome! And if she finds someone who makes her happier, then more power to her. I want her to be happy. She's awesome, too!

Which all makes me solo poly? I guess? I'm Googlin' all sorts of acronyms, abbreviations, and other mysterious shorthand that appears in Tinder profiles. I'd never heard of solo poly until I saw it on my first night of swiping. I get that the poly part is polyamorous, having multiple relationships. I'm not clear on the solo part, though. I guess. Maybe that makes me fuzzy poly? Maybe I should wait until somebody actually responds to a message before I start wondering what all this makes me. Or maybe I shouldn't give a shit what it makes me. The acronyms are fun, though. There are a lot of personality types, like INFP and ENFJ, on Tinder profiles, which are apparently related to Jungian Functional Preference Ordering. I dozed off before I could slog through what exactly Jungian Functional Preference Ordering means, but it does give me a giggle to use phrases including the word "Jungian" in the same sentence as the word "Tinder."

Another was "6+4+3=2." The woman suggested in her profile that if I knew what that meant, I might have one up on the competition. So I Googled it. She and I were clearly not made for each other.

My favorite so far, though, was TDTF. I assumed it was another personality type. One profile said, among other things, "Please don't be TDTF." I tend to text in full sentences, so I didn't recognize it as texting shorthand. I Googled it, thinking it would be another of the personality types. Am I TDTF? I wondered. Turns out it stands for "Too Drunk to Fuck." Ah. Well! No problem there then. I have not, in fact, been TDTF in quite some time.

Next, I'm going to try hitting on a stranger in a public setting. Maybe a bar. Is it weird for a dude who doesn't drink to hang out in a bar trying to pick up women? If I have a Topo Chico in a glass with lime, who's to say it doesn't have a shot of something in there, right? Do fortyish women go to bars to be picked up? Ah, fuck it. I'm doing it. I ain't skeered.

I'm thinking of trying karaoke, too. And dancing in public. Why not? What's the worst that could happen?

I AM Motherf***in' Civilized!

A fellow employee at the arena, after hearing me recount my story, told me, "You have to blog that!" Which reminded me that I have a blog and that I haven't touched it in, what, 2 months or more? So I thought this might be my entry back in to blogging. I like blogging. I do. I should do it more.

I worked a basketball game tonight, an exciting game whose result came down to the last minute of play. With about two minutes left in the game, a super fan, with his hair painted in the colors of his favored team, abandoned his seat and stood on the landing. We, as ushers, are required by the Fire Marshal to keep landings clear in case of evacuation, plus he was blocking the view of the dozens of fans behind him, so I dashed out to him, trying to stay low, and said, "Sir, you can't stay on the landing. Would you please return to your seat?"

"Yes," he said, and continued to stand there.

"We're required to keep the landings clear in case of evacuation," I said, "and the Fire Marshal is sitting right over there."

"Yeah, OK," he said, and continued to stand there.

"Seriously," I said, "You can't stand here. You have to go out onto the concourse or go back to your seat."

"Seriously!" he snapped. "Are you going to kick me out in the last two minutes?" But he went back up the stairs to his seat.

A moment later, he came down and sat in an empty seat further down. Then he stood in front of the seat. Then the patron sitting next to him, a man in his sixties or seventies, asked him to sit down so that the fans behind him could see. I couldn't hear what the super fan said, but the older patron quickly came down and exited, saying to me as he went by, "That guy's nuts. Really. He's completely nuts."

Next, with the game clock down now to about a minute left, another patron came down and informed me, "That guy told the guy that left that he'd motherf***in' kill him. I thought you should know. He's kind of out there."

"Oh," I thought. "That's why he left and called the guy nuts."

A few seconds later, the super fan came down, staring hard at me all the way, his brightly colored hair standing straight up. In the last minutes of the game, fans often accumulate in the portals (the doorways between the concourse and the seating area) torn between the urge to beat everyone else out the door to avoid the traffic snafus and the urge to see the end of the game. Two other fans were standing next to me, watching the last minute. The super fan stopped across from me in the portal, still glaring.

I said, "Did you really tell that guy that you were going to kill him?"

"Uh, no." He seemed a little taken aback. "I told him if he had a problem with me, I'd see him outside. He saw my kid slip on the stairs and said, 'Must be in the gene pool.' He's going to say that s*** in front of my kid, I'm going to take him outside! And you! You are so motherf***in' white!"

"Wow," I thought. "He, in his late twenties or early thirties, is going to call out a man in his sixties or seventies to have a fistfight in the parking lot?" But of course I didn't say that.

Instead, thinking of him blocking the sight lines of the other fans, I said, "Sir, I was just asking you to act like a civilized human being."

He exploded. "I am motherf***in' civilized! I am so f***in' civilized! My f***in' girlfriend has all of it on video! She has you on video! She has that other guy on video!"

After a few moments of uncomfortable eye contact between us, he thankfully stormed off onto the concourse. The two fans standing next to me both looked at me shaking their heads. One of them said, "The stuff you guys have to put up with."

So yes, I repeated this story a few times to co-workers tonight. "I knew I was white. I just didn't know that I was mother***in' white!" But my favorite facts were:

1) My fellow arena employee, on hearing the tale, wrote "I AM mother***in' civilized!" on a post-it note and declared it would be her new catch phrase.

2) The nut who accused me of being "so motherf***in' white!" was also white, and the two patrons who commiserated with me about "the stuff you guys have to put up with" were both black.

Some might take this as a tale of how awful the general public is. I instead choose to take it as an example of one end of the bell curve, evidence of how many people who come through our doors, and there are thousands after thousands after thousands, who do not behave like people who are biologically incapable of living successfully among other human beings. Wheee! This is why I love working the arena!

The First Day of the Rest of Our Lives

As a stay-at-home dad, my only child's first day of kindergarten was almost surreal, a strange mix of emotions ranging from giddy exultation to moody navel-gazing. He's gone from this:

to this:

in what also seems simultaneously like a blink of an eye and an eternity. This parenthood gig is stranger than anyone would ever be able to make anyone else believe with just words. There's so much you can't know until you know it.

It was a grand day. Aerie worked from home so that she could be there for drop-off and pick-up. He was confident and excited and walked to his classroom with an elbows-up swagger that looked like this:

We hugged and kissed him and said our goodbyes. He shed no tears and was happy to see the back of us, but he didn't even mind all the pictures. Next year he almost certainly will. Aerie managed to hold off her tears until we were outside the school.

We came home and, of course, immediately posted pictures to Facebook, like all parents with kids in school. Then I ran a load of laundry while working on a database project. When I began to fold the laundry, including Thumper's clothes that seem simultaneously tiny and, compared to those little onesies of days gone by, huge. That was when the emotions finally caught up with me, sitting in the utterly silent house folding the little big man's clothes.

It was just as surreal how quickly the day flew by. I did too few chores, accomplished too few work objectives, and utterly relaxed through a pleasantly surprising (first-time!) acupuncture appointment, which added even more weirdness to the day. I tried it to see if it could help some of my allergies and respiratory difficulties, but when I mentioned some shoulder pain, the acupuncturist immediately resolved in about 30 seconds of manipulating needles in my shins the shoulder pain that physical therapy and 3 or 4 years of exercises have not been able to touch. I can raise my arms above my head without sharp pain in my shoulders for the first time in years. Because of needles in my shins. Weird.

Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh yeah. End of an era and whatnot. I'm not sure what the future holds for a full-time stay-at-home dad who no longer has to watch a kid full-time. I'm not rushing back into the full-time workforce, though. Aerie and I agree that there is value to having me available, with an early afternoon school release and with all of the sick days, teacher work days, vacation days, and holidays that will come up over the course of the school year, and with the opportunities to volunteer at the school that will also arise. Timing has worked out well with some additional database projects appearing at just the right time through my part-time employer, and there may, with an extra stress on may, be some full-time employment opportunities for me on the horizon. So I'm staying put, biding my time, and waiting to see what happens.

But still, it does sort of feel like Thumper and I, we're walking into the sunset on this whole grand stay-at-home dad adventure.

I Get Smells Stuck In My Nose

The internet tells me that I have cysts, or brain tumors, or who knows what else. Never consult the internet for medical advice.

Seriously: I get smells stuck in my nose. It's been happening for a couple of years now. Some time during the course of each day, there will be a smell that catches my attention, then it will come back again and again and again throughout the day. It's not, I think, in my hair, or on my skin, or in my clothes. I can shower and change clothes, and it will still be there. Often it's the meal that they're serving for Meals on Wheels. I'll smell fried chicken all day long.

A couple of months ago, I accidentally left a bag of frozen chicken breasts in the trunk of my car. In the Texas heat, in a little less than 36 hours, it went from frozen to rotten. The smell has lingered despite every effort I've made to clean the trunk. Some days, even far from the car, even after Aerie has said that the car doesn't smell bad, that horrible, rotten chicken stench will stay with me, all day long.

Sometimes it's the dead skunk we drove past. Sometimes it's the compost pile or the trash can. I think it's not always an actual smell, because I can sniff, drawing air across my olfactory nerves, and it doesn't provoke a response. It's often not so much a smell as a feeling. Or a memory. Well, not a memory; it's a real, physical sensation. But not always so much a scent like holding an onion to my nose and breathing deeply. It's just sort of there, even if I'm not breathing in. It's there, in my nose.

There's no telling what scent will stick. I've tried countering an offensive smell with a strong, pleasant smell, to no avail. And it doesn't go away with any predictability. Only sleeping and waking up seems to reset my brain or nose or whatever it is that holds on to the smells.

So do I have a brain tumor, or cysts in my sinuses, or what? This is kind of starting to freak me out. I guess I should mention this to the ENT doctor I'm seeing for my respiratory/allergy problems.

I acknowledge that I may just be crazy.

No One Expects the Feminist Inquisition!

Thumper and I are feeding the ducks at the pond near the playground. He notices a mom sitting on a park bench giving a baby wipe bath to a boy about his own age. He wanders over to chat while I keep throwing bread.

I glance over, and the mom is speaking animatedly. Thumper comes back over to me, wearing his angry face.

RODIUS: What's the matter, buddy?

THUMPER: She said I was "appropriate."

R: What did you say that was inappropriate?

T: I said maybe that boy didn't want to sit down.

R: Maybe you should let her worry about that boy and mind your own business.

T: OK. I think she's mean.

R: If she's mean, just stay away from her.

T: OK. I think she's mean. Maybe she's evil.

R: She's not evil, buddy.

We walk further along to the bridge and throw the rest of bread to the ducks. He's still mopey. When the bread's gone, he lays down and says he wants to go home. I pick him up, put him on my shoulders, and head towards the parking lot. The path takes us past the bench, where the woman is still wiping down her kid. Maybe he fell in the pond or something, I don't know. I decide to ask her what happened.

RODIUS: Excuse me. Did something happen? With my son?

NUTJOB: He just started smart-mouthing me. When I told him that was inappropriate, he said his dad was over there, so I told him maybe he should go back over there before I tell his dad what he said.

R: What did he say?

N: He was smart-mouthing me and exhibiting male chauvinist behavior.

R: Well, what did he say, so I can correct him?

N: He was being a chauvinist.

R: He's three.

T: He's showing off the behavior you've shown him.

R: Lady, I'm a stay-at-home dad. I'm showing him non-traditional gender roles. I don't think I'm a chauvinist.

THUMPER: Hey, Dad! Is she mean? Dad? Dad? Is she evil and mean? Dad? Is she?

N: Well he's calling me names right now, and you're not correcting him.

R: Thinking to myself, "I'm not entirely sure he's wrong..." I say nothing.

N: Asshole!

I decide this is a fruitless endeavor and walk on. We go to the bathroom. When we're walking out, she's walking past.

NUTJOB: Asshole! Have a nice day, asshole!

RODIUS: You're the only one using words like that. You realize that don't you?

N: flips me the bird and walks away.

THUMPER: What did she say, Daddy?

R: She called me a name that's not very nice.

T: I think she's mean. I think if she's going to call you a "werdernerder," she should call herself a "werdernerder."

R: You're right.

T: She's mean.

R: Yes, she is.

I swear that I did not exaggerate, embellish, or omit in order to make myself look blameless. I really have no idea what I could have done differently.

Some days it's not worth leaving the house.

Sick

I used to be a daily Today Show viewer. Most of the time, I complained about it. I disliked Katie Couric and how she really, really, really wanted the families of the Columbine victims to squeeze out a few more tears. But it was better than the other network morning shows, I liked watching TV while eating my breakfast, and it made me feel like I was somewhat informed about national news. So I watched it, and I ridiculed it.

I didn't want to watch it with Thumper around, though, so we've been daily viewers of Sesame Street instead. Elmo is a whole other kettle of fish when it comes to the horrors of television, but I certainly haven't missed Matt and Meredith at all. In fact now, when I do catch a few minutes of it because Thumper isn't up yet, and Aerie was watching the local newscast for the weather which then bounced back to the network feed, I'm mildly horrified. It's an endless parade of tragedies and celebrity freak show voyeurism. Why did I watch that?

This morning, Thumper was still asleep, and Aerie was hanging around the house a little later than usual. She had Today on when I walked through, and I caught a few details. The sad story of Michael Brewer was particularly bleak, and it made me realize another way in which parenting has changed me. Before, I would have consumed the entire segment and felt superior to the people who could commit such an atrocity and to the parents who spawned them. I'd feel a twinge of empathy, a hint of horror, and my certainty about the black pit at the center of human nature would be confirmed. And then I'd sit there and wait for the next three-minute segment of human depravity to be paraded before me.

This morning, I had to walk away. As soon as I heard enough of the story to imagine Thumper as the victim of such an act, I couldn't watch another second. Now I know what people mean by "chilling."

Hypocritically, when I thought about writing a blog post, I searched for the segment on the show's website and watched it in its entirety. I wanted to see if I could find an answer to the question in my mind: Why would the mother agree to be on the show, to let herself and her child be this week's morsel drooled over by Meredith as she serves it up for our consumption, to be forgotten in favor of some other morsel tomorrow or next week? The mother did make a plea for peace, for the rejection of violence as a solution to human problems, but Meredith sidestepped that plea without comment and came right back, prodding for the soft spot that would get the tears flowing. The mother didn't break down completely during the interview, so at the end, Meredith tells Matt that the interview was filmed before the show went on the air, and the mother did break down after the interview was over. While still on camera! And we have it here! We asked her if it was OK if we showed it, and she said yes! So they show several moments of her sobbing, and we, the audience, we slurp it up.

I don't want to be a part of that anymore. The celebrity gossip! The murders! The rapes! The abuse! The 18-year-long kidnap victim! and Michael Jackson on endless loop! I mostly get it now only from the magazine covers when I stand in line at the grocery store. I'm going to try to avert my eyes from now on. I also watch TV Guide Channel because we don't have digital cable and never know what's on. I put the Mute on and suffer through the slow motion scrolling of the schedule beneath Michael Jackson and Flava Flav and New York and Ashton Kutcher, but still. Even muted, it seeps in through the eyes. If this is being informed, I'd rather be ignorant.

Sick.

Lifeguard III: The Redemption

So we jogged to the playground this morning. As the clock ticked past 10, the lifeguards started showing up for work at the adjacent pool. We ambled over and watched them work from outside the fence. We counted them. There were four. One had a broom. One had a big broom. One had a hose. We talked about how they were sweeping; they were cleaning up; they were getting the pool ready for the kids.

Eventually Thumper started talking to them. "Hi! Hi! Hi, Lifeguard! Hi!" The lifeguard responded, but didn't come near. No one poked him.

I asked if we could look at a tube. "What, like, just to look at?" said the lifeguard. Yes, just to look at. So she passed one through the fence. I set it down, and asked Thumper if he wanted to touch it.

"No." he said. So I left it there. After a few minutes, of course, he couldn't resist. He touched it. We talked about it. I told him it helps people swim, like his Noodle.

"Swim, like a Noodle!" he said. "It not hurt you!" he said.

"No," I said, "it won't hurt you. The lifeguards use it help people."

And so on, for a half hour or so. We watched; we talked.

"He's got a broom! He's sweeping! Like a Noodle! It not hurt you!"

So hopefully that went a ways towards desensitization. I'm thinking we'll try the pool again after we go to the gym tomorrow. Maybe, just maybe, the sight of a lifeguard won't send him right over the edge this time. Maybe.

Lifeguard! He's So Silly

I've tried two more times to take the boy to a pool, but once he sees a lifeguard, it's all over. Today he started to lose it in the locker room, but I managed to calm him down and get him changed. We've talked several times about lifeguards. I call them friends. I call them nice. I say they help people. I say I like lifeguards.

"I like lifeguards, too!" he says. Or sometimes he says, "Lifeguard! He's so silly!" So I thought maybe we could do it today. But as soon as he saw one, he was done again, crying hysterically and saying, "Put on shirt? Go home?"

So I dressed him, picked him up, and headed toward the exit. On the way, though, I stopped by one of the female lifeguards. I told her lifeguards make him nervous and asked if he could touch her tube. She took her sunglasses off and talked to him. Of course, she had to poke him a couple of times, too. I don't know what it is with the poking. Anyway, he stayed calm, but he didn't want to look at her or talk to her. He did touch the tube once, though. So maybe that's progress. I guess we'll keep trying.

Seriously. Quit Poking Him.

I took Thumper swimming yesterday. Or tried to, anyway. We've been more than a few times this summer, to two different pools, and he loves it. When I asked him yesterday if he wanted to go swimming, he was thrilled. I asked him what swim suit he wanted, and he picked out the blue trunks with the fishies swimming on them. When we got to the pool, he marched right up to the gate, carrying his Noodle.

When we got past the gate, he asked, "Where's the lifeguard?" I pointed out the one in this chair, and the one in that chair, and the one over there hosing off the deck. "Yeah!" he said. "It's a hose!" We found a seat in the shade, I stripped him down, put on his swim diaper, and was just pulling up his trunks when he freaked out. He so loudly and suddenly burst into frantic tears, that he made me jump. My first thought was that he'd been stung by a bee. Well, actually, my first thought was that I'd accidentally squashed his cojones when I was pulling up his trunks, but he hadn't a mark on him, and he didn't seem particularly focused on the groinal region.

He crushed himself to my chest, and I asked him what was wrong. Did he have a boo boo? What happened? He wouldn't say; he just kept repeating, "Put your shirt on? Put your shirt on?" Now, I wouldn't be surprised if me taking my shirt off caused someone to scream at the pool, but my shirt was still on. With his confusion over pronouns, he was telling me he wanted to put his shirt back on. When I did, he said, "Go home." Do you want to go home? "Yeah." OK.

As soon as I said, "OK," he calmed down. So we switched him back out of his swim diaper and into a regular one, put his shorts and shoes back on, and left. By the time we were finally walking out, he seemed fine again, even cheerful. I asked him several more times what happened, but he has never said. I don't have a clue what happened.





OK, that's not true, I do have a clue. On the walk back to the car, he said, "Met the lifeguard!" And I thought, "Aha!" The last time we went to that pool, he saw one of the lifeguards squatting in the shallow end near us with his whistle in his mouth, his bright red rescue floatation device at his chest, and his huge, reflective aviator sunglasses on. The lifeguard noticed Thumper staring at him and took an interest. He talked to him. He showed him his whistle. He told us he goes through quite a few of them, because with a whistle in your mouth all the time, it's hard not to chew on it. He explained that the floatation device was called a "tube." But while he talked, he kept sort of prodding Thumper with the tube. Gently, but repeatedly. The more he did it, the more nervous Thumper got. When he's nervous, he tilts his head down, opens his mouth, and kind of pulls his lips in tight, like this, only more so. And recently he's begun putting one hand up to his mouth, too. Often people think it's a cute face and it encourages them to continue interacting with him, but to me it clearly says, "Oh, hi! You know, you're kind of weirding me out. Maybe you could back off a little bit?" This is a signal not understood by the little old lady at the senior center yesterday who kept saying, "Come here! Come here!" and trying to reach out and grab his hand. It's a signal also not understood by the usher in line in front of me at event signup today who kept poking him in the belly and saying, "What's your name? If I push your belly, does your tongue come out?" The answer was, "No, but my anxiety level begins to rise. See?" Strangers apparently like to poke toddlers. And give them candy. Or cookies. Or both.

So anyway, back to the pool. The lifeguards eventually rotate posts and the prodder goes away, and we go home to meet Mama for dinner, and Thumper mentions several times over the next few days how we, "Met the lifeguard!" It didn't seem like he'd been too traumatized by the experience, but it had definitely made an impression on him.

Well, when I was putting his trunks on him yesterday, I noticed the same lifeguard in the same giant aviator sunglasses. He was NOT one of the ones we saw when we came in. He was on the other side of the pool, posted by the water slides. And Thumper was looking over in that direction when he lost it.

A YMCA lifeguard terrified my son.

In a Slump

You don't want to read this one, either. Additional details about me will be revealed that you will be unable to unlearn.








I'm in a slump. I can't get motivated. I don't feel like cleaning the house again because I swear I just did it. I'm bored with playing with the baby because we do the same things over and over. I don't want to go babysit because the talking and the talking and the talking, ugh, it's exhausting. I sort of worked out yesterday, but I half-assed it. And I quit early.

I'm loathe to say anything like this these days. One, I don't want this blog to be a place to bitch about my life. I've read some of those blogs, and they get kind of old. Two, as a SAHD, it seems like it's my job to put up a happy front. I feel like if I complain, the answer is simple: "you chose this, jackass." So whenever anyone asks me about it, it's wonderful! It's fantastic! We're having a fabulous time! My old full-time position was recently vacated by my replacement. My former supervisor jokingly asked me if I wanted my job back, and I said, "Ha! No thanks." A former co-worker, too, asked me if I was going to take my old job back. He thought this stay-at-home dad thing was just an arrangement for a few months, until the kid was old enough for day care, like any normal baby; he was flabbergasted when I said it was for years, not months. "Really?" he said. "Of course!" I replied. "It's so much fun!"

And it is, and I do love it. But man, I'm in a slump.

I know the answer I'll probably get, at least from my mother, is "get out there and connect with other parents! Go to the SAHD playdates! Go to their Dads' Nights Out!" And yes, I should. But who can be bothered? And Thumper's still napping through the playdates, and the Dads' Nights Out are during babysitting. I have been chatting with mothers at playgrounds more, but I haven't managed to wrangle the boy a girlfriend yet.

No, really I'm thinking it's time for a fast. There was a time when I tried to live by the principles of BFF's bible. It's largely about how to combine foods properly in healthy ways, like meat and bread don't go together because they require different enzymes from your stomach to digest. And melon is the perfect food for humans, but it shouldn't be eaten with anything else. That kind of stuff. I followed it very closely for a good six months, and didn't feel like it really changed my life. So I dropped most of it. But I did keep one aspect for several years after. Ready for it? This is the part you don't want to know: colonics.

Yep. Self-administered colonics. Twice a year. In combination with a week-long fast. Since cheapness counts, I couldn't imagine spending hundreds of dollars on a Colema board (you don't want to click on that), so I made one myself. With $60 worth of wood and a wastebasket from Target. And yes, I thought it was crazy, too. I thought BFF was crazy. But the craziness appealed to me, in a way. "Hey, won't this be wacky? I'll be one of those nuts who hoses out his insides! Hee hee!"

But strangely enough, the fasting and colonics made me feel incredible. I fasted by eating nothing and drinking sometimes carrot juice, sometimes grape juice, or carrot-grape juice. Sometimes just water. Sometimes I used solutions for the colonic other than plain water, like coffee and water, or garlic and water. The first day or two of the week-long fast, with nightly colonic sessions, I would be exhausted and hungry. By the third or fourth day, though, I started to feel recharged. Energized. And that gut-gnawing sensation of hunger was gone. By the end of the week, I was refreshed, renewed, ready to start again. I'd ease back into eating with light and healthy meals. It was like pushing a reset button.

But after a few years, I'd stopped smoking. I was working out more, losing weight, feeling good. I didn't feel like I needed a cleansing, a restarting. And the tedium part of the colonics, the preparation, the cleanup, started to get to me. Not to mention having to clean the juicer daily from all those grapes and carrots. So I decided I was done with it and threw out my board. I haven't fasted since, and it's been probably two or three years.

So now, in a slump and feeling like I really need a good renewal ritual, I'm thinking about fasting again. And since I've been eating a lot lately, snacking when I don't really need it, I want to re-learn that feeling of hunger as a positive thing, to remember that being hungry isn't so bad. I don't think I can get behind building a new board, and I certainly can't get behind buying one, so I'll just skip the colonics this time around.

Maybe I shouldn't use the words "get behind" and "colonics" in the same sentence, huh?

Anyway, does anybody else out there fast? I've never done it without the colonics, and I wonder if it will be the same jolt of power and energy that I remember.

So who's with me? Who's up for a week of emptying the vessel and starting over? Come on! I promise I'll stop saying the word "colonic" now.

Birth Story

We went to the regular weekly OB check up at 37 1/2 weeks with some mild concern. On Saturday, Mrs. Rodius had a couple of strong contractions, then nothing. Beginning on Sunday, and continuing into Monday, little Thumper was more lethargic than his usual self. He wiggled around in there, but not with his usual frequency or vigor. He was even unenthusiastic about his post-ice cream dancing. The OB had told us that decreased fetal movement was one of the four reasons to call and wake her up in the middle of the night, but Thumper had sleepy days before, and we didn't want to be the nervous parents who called at the slightest provocation. We should have called.

The nurse took Mrs. Rodius blood pressure. She didn't tell us the numbers, as she usually does, but said that it was fine. When the doctor came in, we expressed our concern about Thumper's lethargy, and she chastised us kindly and put Mrs. Rodius on a fetal heart monitor for twenty minutes. Halfway through, she came to check on us, and wasn't encouraged by the squiggly lines on the stock-ticker paper. She gave Mrs. Rodius a couple of juice boxes with which to stimulate Thumper's thumper, but when she came back again, she announced that we had failed the test. It wasn't so much that his heart rate was fast or slow, it was just flat. She expected to see it increase and decrease over the course of the twenty minutes as he moved around in there, especially after the stimulation of the juice. Instead, it remained fairly constant, between 135 and 145 beats per minute. She also mentioned that Mrs. Rodius blood pressure was elevated. After an ultrasound, she said that Thumper was transverse. He'd been head-down at the previous week's appointment, but maybe during those contractions on Saturday, he'd been spun around sideways. The doctor's concern was that if Mrs. Rodius went into labor with him in that position, there was a risk of the cord "presenting" first, which would be bad. Very bad.

"You're having a baby today," she said. Huh? What? Today, like today? Well, can we go home and get the bag?

"No. I don't want you to be concerned. This isn't an emergency where we're rushing you over for immediate surgery, but I'm concerned enough not to let you go home for the bag. It looks like you're going to have this baby in the next few hours. Go across the street to the hospital, straight up to the third floor, and check in. I'll call ahead and let them know you're coming."

Huh. Wow. Today. We're having a baby! While Mrs. Rodius went to the restroom, I listened to the doctor call the hospital. She reiterated the same equation: heart rate + blood pressure + position = c-section. Today. I wasn't so much excited, or scared, or nervous. I was simply stunned. I felt like I'd been programmed to proceed with a set of directions, but I wasn't really thinking much. I was in cruise control. But by the time we'd pulled into a spot in the garage, it was starting to hit me. His birthday would be July 31. We were really doing this.

Mrs. Rodius called her office to let them know she wouldn't be coming in. I called my office and did the same. I don't remember who else I called. I think I called my mother. And maybe Mrs. Rodius' mother. Or maybe she called her herself, I don't know. Things were starting to feel a little unreal. When I left the hospital the next day to go home and give Puck his antibiotics, I would have absolutely no idea where I'd parked the car.

And speaking of Puck and his antibiotics, I felt guilty every time I left Mrs. Rodius at the hospital over the next four days. Puck had already been through one round of antibiotics to fight a urinary tract infection, and I really didn't want it to come back again because we didn't finish this round. So I went home twice a day every day but one. To give the cat a pill. At his follow-up this week, they pronounced the infection beaten. Thank God, because I don't think we really need that to deal with on top of everything else.

So, we went to the third floor, dropped Mrs. Rodius' name like a password, and were immediately ushered to a room. A nurse, named Angie if I recall, hooked Mrs. Rodius up to a blood pressure monitor, a fetal heart monitor, and IV fluids. We watched bad weekday morning TV. We made small talk and laughed nervously at each other. We listened to the underwater sound of the heartbeat on the monitor. We listened to the underwater heartbeat of the baby in the belly in the room next door, too. We watched another stock-ticker stream of paper slowly ooze out of the machine.

Angie typed an exhaustive medical history into the computer next to the bed. I'd wondered aloud to Mrs. Rodius earlier if I could get internet on that computer, so I could blog, "Today's the day!" She said probably not. After maybe an hour or so, Angie pronounced Mrs. Rodius' blood pressure perfect, examined the squiggly lines and declared Thumper "the most beautiful baby ever." His heart rate was rising and falling just as it should. She speculated that perhaps Mrs. Rodius had been dehydrated, causing the reduced movement and flat heart rate, and that her stress over that had elevated her pressure. But with the introduction of IV fluids, both problems had resolved themselves. Mrs. Rodius didn't really see how she could possibly be dehydrated, though, with all of the water she was drinking, and all of the trips to the bathroom to get rid of it again. But whether dehydrated and rehydrated, whether high blood pressure or low, the kid was still stuck in there sideways.

So after we called the offices and the moms again to say maybe it wouldn't be today after all, the doctor came in to check on us, and agreed with Angie's assessment. Things looked good; maybe today wasn't the day. But: he's a big kid, with a big head, and he's only going to get bigger. He's in there sideways. Mrs. Rodius' swollen legs and feet indicated that blood pressure was likely to eventually become a problem again anyway. We're here; we're ready; what do you say we just go ahead and get this kid out of there?

Hey, sure! What the hell? Why not? Let's have us a kid today!

From that moment, things moved rapidly along. From "What the hell, why not?" to "Holy crap, that's my son!" was probably about 45 minutes. I got papered over, with hat and mask and gown and booties. They wheeled Mrs. Rodius into an operating room to prep her and give her a spinal. I stood in the hall holding her purse until a nurse took pity on me and showed me where I could leave it. Then she sat me on a stainless steel chair outside the operating room to wait.

I noticed I was breathing hard, fogging up my glasses above the mask. I did some breathing exercises from BFF's bible. I tried not to look as if I was listening to two nurses trying to detective out what happened to some narcotics. One was sure she'd given it to the right patient, but marked it down to the wrong patient in the computer. They were poking away furiously at a touchscreen computer. Surgeons came and flirted with the nurses while they washed their hands. None of them paid any attention to me.

I was beginning to feel exactly like I did right before riding a roller coaster the last time I went to an amusement park. When I was a kid, I could ride all the rides and never get sick. But after many years in roller-coasting hiatus, I returned to discover that even the kiddie coaster made me vomit. After the first vomit experience, I suddenly became very nervous while standing in line and especially while sitting in the coaster as it click-click-clicked its way up that first anticipatory hill. Saying to myself, "Don't throw up, don't throw up, please don't throw up," oddly had absolutely no effect, and I threw up on every ride I tried.

Big Brother had told me about his surreal cesarean experience of talking to his conscious and coherent wife on one side of the screen while looking right down into her exposed guts on the other side. Many years ago, after several stitches experiences, I decided I was going to sit up and watch the doctor stitch up a cut in my hand. He thought it was a bad idea, but wasn't inclined to stop me. As soon as the needle touched my skin, a nauseating wave of heat hit me in the face, and I suddenly had to lie down. Watching was indeed a bad idea.

So between the roller coaster, the brother, and the stitches, I was not at all confident of my ability to stay conscious in the operating room. So I sat still as a stone on that steel chair, my eyes darting all over at the doctors and nurses bustling by. Occasionally a nurse would pop out to tell me "almost ready for you." I tried to keep breathing. I tried to stop with the "don't pass out" mantra. Finally, they called me in.

I needn't have worried. Perhaps they've had experiences with the fabulous fainting fathers, so they immediately directed me to a chair by her head and told me to hold her hand. The screen hid everything below her neck. It was high and insurmountable, and I said a prayer of thanks for that. We grinned nervously at each other. The anesthesiologist said a few encouraging words. Mrs. Rodius kind of jiggled around a little bit as they tugged and prodded her. After a few minutes, she said, "Have they started yet?" just as the doctor said, "Here he is! He's definitely a boy. Oh, he's peeing already!" He started crying immediately, and so did we. They carried the bloody squirming bundle of arms and legs over to another table that wasn't hidden behind the screen. Somebody told me I could go over and look, so I did. My mind's eye was blinded by the white-hot flash of that singular moment, though, and I cannot see him there in my memory. He peed on two more nurses there; I do remember that. They carried him over to Mrs. Rodius, and she cried as she kissed his fuzzy little head. Then they said I could carry him to the nursery, and I thought, "What, me?" I followed the nurse, walking, walking, turning, walking, turning again. It was a labyrinth. I didn't look at him, for fear of tripping. But he was hot and squirmy on my chest and arms. He squeaked and snuffled. "Don't pass out" had been replaced by, "My son. My son. He's here. My son."

We got to the nursery, and I handed him over to his nurse for the day, Jennifer. I was told to discard all of my coverings, except the gown, because that goes into linens. Then I could watch from outside. So I did. Jennifer wiped more goo off of him, weighed him, took his temperature, and looked over his various body parts. Thumper, in turn, peed on her. Twice. He had now christened one doctor and three nurses, all within his first five minutes out here in the world. Before long, he'd get his mother too, making a beautiful four-foot arc as I changed his diaper to hit her from the crib beside her bed. It must've been all those IV fluids. Then Jennifer gave him a more thorough bath and shampoo, which lowered his temperature, so they had to bake him under the heat lamps for awhile. I stood and watched him wiggle, squirm, cry, and sleep for about another 45 minutes with another new father. His baby, his third daughter, had that newborn conehead, as did several of Thumper's cellmates. Some had hair, some didn't. Some were outraged, some were placid. Thumper was the second biggest, but he was by far the most beautiful.

I took out my phone to call my mother and tell her the good news, and it rang before I could dial. It was Mrs. Rodius' oldest sister, calling to check on us, so that's how she became the first to hear the news and his name. She works hard at brainwashing the nieces and nephews into calling her becoming the favorite Aunty, and I have no doubt she will carry on the tradition with Thumper. So that's how Grandma became the second person to hear, through no fault of my own, except that I answered the phone when it rang.

Eventually, Jennifer pronounced him done baking, and asked me if Mrs. Rodius was ready for him. I had no idea, as I'd been standing there staring at Thumper. She called to find out, then swaddled and capped him, and let me push him back to Mrs. Rodius in a miniature plexiglass crib. For liability reasons, the baby had to be in the crib while out of the room, except for that one "New Dad Walking" march from the operating room.

Mrs. Rodius looked exhausted, but relieved and thrilled to finally be able to hold the baby. I've since seen her looking more exhausted, though. That was the beginning of the strangest, most surreal, exhausting, exhilirating, thrilling, desperate, frightening, worrisome, funniest, saddest, happiest time of my life. She kissed him on the head again. Neither of has stopped since.

Has This Ever Happened to You?

"I think someone broke in," Mrs. Rodius said. "And it looks like they cut themselves."

We had just come home from work, and I was still closing the front door as she walked in ahead of me. I followed her into the living room to see what she was talking about. My mind couldn't make sense of what I was seeing. It looked like a murder had been committed on our living room carpet.

We bought this townhouse primarily to save money while we straightened out our financial affairs and reduced our credit and student loan debt. It was a successful plan of action and helped enable us to buy the home we have now. But price was our first and greatest concern. We didn't research or explore the neighborhood much before we bought it, so we discovered over time that one of its drawbacks was a proliferation of loose dogs.

We learned something about our sweet, little Harley in this townhouse that we hadn't known before: he was tough and tenacious. He seemed to be more a master of the meditative arts than the martial. He was an active kitten that we adopted from the shelter. His owner had abandoned him there because, his information card said, he was "too much trouble." This was probably just a heart-string-pulling kind of marketing on the part of the shelter, but it worked on us. They called him Ernie because he came with a little doll of the Sesame Street character. He didn't look like an Ernie to us. He ran around like a little lunatic, and when he stopped long enough to sleep on me, he demonstrated a flatulence problem that would have been embarrassing in anyone else, but was just kind of adorable in him. He was consistently the most sweetly dispositioned cat I have ever known. He once went nose to nose with a skunk outside our apartment in Everett, Massachussets. I sweat bullets as I watched, and thought of what I'd heard about tomato juice baths. Harley was undisturbed, though, and only seemed to say, "You're a funny looking kitty. What have you been rolling in?" Then the two parted and went contentedly about their separate business.

As he grew older, Harley spent most of his time in meditation, and he was much more accepting of our adoption of Puck, a feral kitten, than his righteously bitchy little sister, Tasha, had ever been. He was a lover, so far as we knew, not a fighter. Mrs. Rodius and I were very much surprised, then, when a roaming Rottweiler barked at us through the open front window of our townhouse, and the 8- or 9-pound Harley, without a thought for his own safety, began charging at the screen. He rammed into it head-first several times before Mrs. Rodius grabbed him and carried him into another room. He threw himself against the screen with such determination that he bent the frame and almost knocked it entirely out of the window. "Aw," we thought. "How cute! The little guy's protecting his Mama!" All of our cats, we are sure, have thought of her as that: Mama. If she had not married me, she may very well have developed into the quintessential cat lady. They have always filled a deep and earnest need within her soul, and she, apparently, has done the same for them.

So we fixed the screen. We were careful not to leave windows open when we weren't home. We told the tale of our brave little Harley at parties. I for one, though probably not Mrs. Rodius, chuckled a bit at what a surprise the brave little boy would have had if he'd succeeded in getting at that Rottweiler. We thought of it as a charming little quirk to this small cat, like the fact that he clearly understood the mechanics of doorknobs, but without thumbs, was sadly unable to put that understanding to practical use. He stretched his full length and rattled the knobs, but his fuzzy little feet weren't able to gain enough purchase to make the damn things turn. We noted the Rottweiler incident as another interesting little fact about him, and then we kind of forgot all about it.

And it didn't come to mind immediately as we stood looking at the blood. It was soaked into the carpet. It was splattered on the entertainment center, the windowsill, the broken fragments of glass. We looked around, but nothing seemed to be missing. The TV, the stereo, the computer were all where we'd left them. Perhaps the burglar had cut himself breaking the window and decided to leave before he could make off with anything. But why did the bloody carpet look so smeared? Had he decided to roll around on the floor awhile, cradling his injured arm, or leg, or carotid artery?

Almost immediately, though, Mrs. Rodius said, "Where are the cats?" So we did some reconnaissance. Tasha came out when we called to her, but she was limping. Puck was hidden in the first place we looked: the deepest darkest spot under the bed. But Harley was not to be found. We agreed he probably went out the window to explore, but he wouldn't have gone far. He'd never stray far from his Mama.

And he hadn't. I found him in the back yard, stiff and still.

A new idea began to form for us about what had happened that day. But it seemed so bizarre, so surreal, that we called the police anyway. They sent out an officer, and we nearly begged him to come up with a more likely explanation. Harley had puncture wounds in his side, and his fur was matted like he'd been licked by a big, slobbery tongue. There was a trail of blood drops that began at the top of our fence. I followed it down the sidewalk to where it disappeared into the grass several units down from ours. The officer agreed: it looked like a dog jumped our fence, broke our window, entered our house, killed our cat, carried him into the back yard, jumped the fence again, and went on his merry way, probably with a minor wound from the broken glass.

Have you ever heard of that before? I mean, really. Is that, or is that not, a very freaky occurrence?

We took Harley's body to the vet, who confirmed that he had bled to death from puncture wounds in his side that were consistent with a dog bite. Mrs. Rodius sister and her best friend came over to clean up the blood while I boarded up the window. Once the window was replaced, there was nothing left to tell the tale of the carnage, except a faint pink stain, almost invisible to those who didn't know it was there. We had our suspicions about which dog had done the deed, but there was no way to confirm it. There was a Spuds Mackenzie dog that lived in a back yard in the direction the blood spots had lead. He was a bull terrier, I know now, but when I was trying to remember what kind of dog the Spuds Mackenzie dog was, "rat bastard terrier" was all that would come to mind. That dog had previously demonstrated his ability to clear his own fence and was frequently seen wandering around loose. Perhaps the glass wounds would have given him away, but we couldn't confirm it without making the accusation, and we'd already spent enough energy in neighbor battles over noise, and parking. We didn't have the heart to jump into another one with people who would probably not be willing to admit their fault anyway, even if the dog did have cuts on his belly. So we let it go.

We imagined the scene, though. The dog, in his wanderings, scales our fence. Harley becomes enraged at the interloper's audacity and attacks the window. The dog, seeing the cat, becomes excited and jumps up, his paws on the window. Sometime around this point, Tasha makes a frantic dash from the scene, pulling a muscle in her hip and accounting for the limping we will notice when we get home. Puck probably beat her under the bed, and for the first and only time in their lives, they are huddling together, unified in their terror. Harley and the dog proceed to drive each other to greater and greater levels of hysteria until finally the window breaks. From that point, we try not to imagine the scene any more.

We had our little Buddha kitty cremated. We moved him with us in his little box to our new home, because it just didn't seem right to spread his ashes there at the site of his murder. We thought about releasing him into our beautiful new garden, but Mrs. Rodius isn't yet ready to see him go. The previous owners built a deck, and installed a small pet door for their lhasa apso. The dog door is now a kitty door, and the first home project I undertook after we moved in was screening in the deck. Tasha and Puck spend most of their time out there now, watching the birds as they ransack the feeder I hung. Harley would have liked this place. I can see him curled up with Puck, something Tasha still, after all these years, refuses to do. I can see him out there in the last patch of afternoon sun, breathing in the smell of the flowers, eyes closed as he contemplates "the echo of the empty valley, bearing tidings heard from the soundless sound."