Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Or Not
OK, so maybe I've got him to sleep in his crib a couple of times, and maybe a couple of times he's resisted with every fiber of his tiny, fisty being. Maybe it's not a battle. Maybe it's just an experience we're all going through, all learning from. See, that way it's almost like we're not losing...
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Milestone
Kicked the kid out into his own room today, so Mrs. Rodius could get some sleep without Grunty waking her up every minute and a half. Broke out the baby monitor from the closet, too. He got mad after about 5 minutes when he woke and realized he was not on one of his favorite mattresses (my chest or that of Mrs. Rodius), but I picked him up, walked him around on my shoulder until he fell asleep again, and put him back in bed. It's been about half an hour now. We will win. He will not. Though it might help if we got some light-blocking curtains.
Uh oh, I think he's figured out he's alone again. He hates that.
Uh oh, I think he's figured out he's alone again. He hates that.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Socially Inept
Tracey's comment on the previous post made me realize I didn't really blog about meeting her and Rich at all. So:
I am a horribly shy person. I hate meeting new people. I even considered making some excuse not to go to the party yesterday, just to avoid that moment of "Hi, nice to meet you." I dreaded it, just as I've dreaded it with other people in other situations. I even avoid social situations with people I've known for years because of a terror of social awkwardness. I went through all kinds of horrible paroxysms about how fat I am, and how pompous, and how I couldn't possibly live up in real life to whatever expectations Tracey and Rich and whichever of their readers would be at that party may have cultivated about me. But in the end, I just told myself to shut up and go. And I did.
Bailey opened the door for us. He was very friendly, and later told me all about the different languages he speaks, and how he can count in Korean because of karate, and even demonstrated some sweet, sweet moves for me. Then one of the first adults I met was Lisa. She said, "I know who you are. You must be the man himself." And I nearly turned around and walked out. In person, I'm not the man. At all.
And the funny thing was, I totally would've recognized Rich, even out of context and in a crowd. He looked exactly as I expected from his pictures. But Tracey, not so much. I stood in front of her and thought, "Is that her? Maybe that's her. What if I call her Tracey and she's not?" There was another chick there who could've been Tracey, (I think it was her sister; I don't know. Mrs. Rodius met more people there. She told me on the drive home about Tracey and her sister, and how they alternate travelling monthly to each other's cities for visits, and how Mrs. Rodius would like to start doing that with her brother's family. I think I know who her sister was. Maybe. I don't know. I may have mentioned I'm socially inept. Where was I? Oh yeah.)
And then Tracey was socially gracious and introduced herself and knew who we were, and offered to hold Thumper, and pointed us in the direction of food and beverages, and introduced us to people, and acted like a completely non-awkward regular human being, and spent a generous amount of time with us, knowing we didn't know many people there. I was grateful, and all went well. Sorry if I was weird. If it wasn't for Mrs. Rodius, I'd live in a cave and never speak to anyone, except by blog or email.
So anyway, thanks for being a normal human being, and I hope we get to see you and your family again someday. And as Thumper grows up, I'll try to teach him not to shove his arm down women's shirts. At least not without an invitation.
I am a horribly shy person. I hate meeting new people. I even considered making some excuse not to go to the party yesterday, just to avoid that moment of "Hi, nice to meet you." I dreaded it, just as I've dreaded it with other people in other situations. I even avoid social situations with people I've known for years because of a terror of social awkwardness. I went through all kinds of horrible paroxysms about how fat I am, and how pompous, and how I couldn't possibly live up in real life to whatever expectations Tracey and Rich and whichever of their readers would be at that party may have cultivated about me. But in the end, I just told myself to shut up and go. And I did.
Bailey opened the door for us. He was very friendly, and later told me all about the different languages he speaks, and how he can count in Korean because of karate, and even demonstrated some sweet, sweet moves for me. Then one of the first adults I met was Lisa. She said, "I know who you are. You must be the man himself." And I nearly turned around and walked out. In person, I'm not the man. At all.
And the funny thing was, I totally would've recognized Rich, even out of context and in a crowd. He looked exactly as I expected from his pictures. But Tracey, not so much. I stood in front of her and thought, "Is that her? Maybe that's her. What if I call her Tracey and she's not?" There was another chick there who could've been Tracey, (I think it was her sister; I don't know. Mrs. Rodius met more people there. She told me on the drive home about Tracey and her sister, and how they alternate travelling monthly to each other's cities for visits, and how Mrs. Rodius would like to start doing that with her brother's family. I think I know who her sister was. Maybe. I don't know. I may have mentioned I'm socially inept. Where was I? Oh yeah.)
And then Tracey was socially gracious and introduced herself and knew who we were, and offered to hold Thumper, and pointed us in the direction of food and beverages, and introduced us to people, and acted like a completely non-awkward regular human being, and spent a generous amount of time with us, knowing we didn't know many people there. I was grateful, and all went well. Sorry if I was weird. If it wasn't for Mrs. Rodius, I'd live in a cave and never speak to anyone, except by blog or email.
So anyway, thanks for being a normal human being, and I hope we get to see you and your family again someday. And as Thumper grows up, I'll try to teach him not to shove his arm down women's shirts. At least not without an invitation.
Worlds Colliding
Yesterday I got to meet in the real world folks who only previously existed in electronic form: More Than a Minivan Mom and St. Richard, and also Lisa. It was great to meet you and your kids and see you in 3-D for a change. Thumper even got to second base with Tracey, twice. And she didn't seem to mind.
Though blogging has been a wholly different experience, meeting Tracey and Rich and Lisa brought to mind the first time we ever met in real life our internet friends. In the mid-90's, Mrs.Rodius discovered this thing called a "chat room." This was the days when people still talked about their baud rate, we regularly lost our dial-up connection, and the internet was new and shiny. I was working second shift, and I came home one night to her enthusiastic description of this place she had discovered called "The Tunnel of Love," where she was someone called Aerie. Soon I'd joined in, becoming Horatio. We quickly became part of the core regular users of the room who called themselves the Tunnel Rats.
A lot of people used the room to find cybersex partners. I dabbled in it here and there, but it quickly became boring and repetitive. For me, the appeal was the camaradarie of the group. I'd never really been part of the cool cliques when I was in school, and I revelled in it in the chat room. The most entertaining sport was brutally ridiculing newcomers. In a forum where a person was defined solely by the words they used, it was astounding how inarticulate many of the cybersex seekers were. They were downright pathetic much of the time, and engaging them in verbal sparring was endlessly giggle-producing.
Eventually the core group decided to meet in New York. We were mostly from across the United States, with a few from England and Australia. As we got to know each other better, it became clear that many of the regulars were middle-aged divorced people seeking and finding new loves online. There were many long-distance couples, like Sarah in Rhode Island and Stroke in Houston. We were by far the youngest of the group, and we were the only couple who actually lived not only in the same state, but in the same apartment.
So we went to New York for twenty-four hours, taking pictures of each other with the Statue of Liberty over our shoulders and spending a lot of time drinking and laughing in hotel rooms. Though we'd learned vital stats and ages of most of the attendees and seen pictures of some of them, it was a little surreal putting actual faces and voices to our text-based friends. We did keep up a more regular friendship with Sarah in Rhode Island for awhile (she talked us into getting tattoos in Newport, but after we'd both done ours, she chickened out), but I think the New York trip was the beginning of the end of the appeal of the chat room for me. It started seeming a little shabby, a little seedy, a little too like a soap opera, with the desperate people in their forties and fifties, with dual custody of teenage kids, getting together and breaking up, and falling madly, passionately, forever in love over and over again with people they'd never met. But I still recall fondly the feeling of being one of the cool kids picking on the losers.
Though blogging has been a wholly different experience, meeting Tracey and Rich and Lisa brought to mind the first time we ever met in real life our internet friends. In the mid-90's, Mrs.Rodius discovered this thing called a "chat room." This was the days when people still talked about their baud rate, we regularly lost our dial-up connection, and the internet was new and shiny. I was working second shift, and I came home one night to her enthusiastic description of this place she had discovered called "The Tunnel of Love," where she was someone called Aerie. Soon I'd joined in, becoming Horatio. We quickly became part of the core regular users of the room who called themselves the Tunnel Rats.
A lot of people used the room to find cybersex partners. I dabbled in it here and there, but it quickly became boring and repetitive. For me, the appeal was the camaradarie of the group. I'd never really been part of the cool cliques when I was in school, and I revelled in it in the chat room. The most entertaining sport was brutally ridiculing newcomers. In a forum where a person was defined solely by the words they used, it was astounding how inarticulate many of the cybersex seekers were. They were downright pathetic much of the time, and engaging them in verbal sparring was endlessly giggle-producing.
Eventually the core group decided to meet in New York. We were mostly from across the United States, with a few from England and Australia. As we got to know each other better, it became clear that many of the regulars were middle-aged divorced people seeking and finding new loves online. There were many long-distance couples, like Sarah in Rhode Island and Stroke in Houston. We were by far the youngest of the group, and we were the only couple who actually lived not only in the same state, but in the same apartment.
So we went to New York for twenty-four hours, taking pictures of each other with the Statue of Liberty over our shoulders and spending a lot of time drinking and laughing in hotel rooms. Though we'd learned vital stats and ages of most of the attendees and seen pictures of some of them, it was a little surreal putting actual faces and voices to our text-based friends. We did keep up a more regular friendship with Sarah in Rhode Island for awhile (she talked us into getting tattoos in Newport, but after we'd both done ours, she chickened out), but I think the New York trip was the beginning of the end of the appeal of the chat room for me. It started seeming a little shabby, a little seedy, a little too like a soap opera, with the desperate people in their forties and fifties, with dual custody of teenage kids, getting together and breaking up, and falling madly, passionately, forever in love over and over again with people they'd never met. But I still recall fondly the feeling of being one of the cool kids picking on the losers.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
8 Things
Jennie wants to know 8 things about me.
1. I have a cowlick on each side of a widow's peak. Thumper's got at least one of my cowlicks. A friend of my mother's, when I was a mere babe, enjoyed licking her thumb and forefinger and giving me an Eddie Munster 'do. Pops believes this is why I still have a widow's peak to this day.
2. When I was a pre-teen lad in suburban north Dallas, my brother, several of our friends, and I spent many hours crawling through the sewers. We'd suck in our guts and slip into a storm drain in one part of town, wind through the tunnels, and come up miles away. We occasionally took skateboards with us, lying prone with the board on our chests and our legs lifted, zipping along. When I was 13, my brother and a friend of his crawled through a sewer with a candle and ignited a leak in a natural gas line, changing their lives forever and thus ending the practice of sewer crawling for all of us.
3. I lost my virginity to the future Mrs. Rodius at the age of twenty. When I was 18, the older brother of a friend was so aghast at my admission of virginity that he insisted on taking me to a prostitute. I managed to avoid him, and the trip to the prostitute, forever after, and I never again admitted my virginity to anyone but Mrs. Rodius. Oh, and you.
4. In my early teens, a small group of friends and I were flicking matches and stomping them out in the underbrush on the fringes of a golf course. Flick, stomp, turn around, flick, stomp. Apparently we hadn't quite stomped the last one out, and we turned around to a roaring fire. We ran. We ended up at the home of an unpopular kid whom we'd abandoned as a friend several years before. He was surprised to see us, but took us in to play video games. His mother, bringing us snacks, mentioned that we smelled like smoke. We laughed nervously and said the video game console must be overheating. We never found out how much damage we may have done to the golf course.
5. When I was twelve, I let my brother's girlfriend paint me up with full makeup. She had written his name in giant letters on the wall of her bedroom with colored yarn.
6. I have a giant lump on my left pinky toe that I believe is the result of an undiagnosed break many years ago. Or maybe it's a corn. What the hell is a corn, anyway?
7. I have twice punched holes in walls, the last one in ugly siding in the bedroom of a rented apartment ten years ago. I was lucky not to break any bones on either occasion and have since learned to control my anger better.
8. When I was sixteen, I took a driver's education class, including an eye test. The test administrator told me to look into a machine and read the third line. I looked into the machine and asked, "Are you sure it's on?" I was told to get glasses. When I picked up the glasses at the Lenscrafters at the mall and put them on, I said, "You mean this is how everybody sees?" I was one of the cool kids who sat at the back of the class, and I had always assumed that nobody past the first row could actually read the chalkboard.
And I'm sorry, Jennie, I just can't bring myself to pass the taggy thingy on. I guess I'm still one of those cool kids at the back of the class who refuses to participate in the group activities. That, and of course I don't know 8 people to tag.
1. I have a cowlick on each side of a widow's peak. Thumper's got at least one of my cowlicks. A friend of my mother's, when I was a mere babe, enjoyed licking her thumb and forefinger and giving me an Eddie Munster 'do. Pops believes this is why I still have a widow's peak to this day.
2. When I was a pre-teen lad in suburban north Dallas, my brother, several of our friends, and I spent many hours crawling through the sewers. We'd suck in our guts and slip into a storm drain in one part of town, wind through the tunnels, and come up miles away. We occasionally took skateboards with us, lying prone with the board on our chests and our legs lifted, zipping along. When I was 13, my brother and a friend of his crawled through a sewer with a candle and ignited a leak in a natural gas line, changing their lives forever and thus ending the practice of sewer crawling for all of us.
3. I lost my virginity to the future Mrs. Rodius at the age of twenty. When I was 18, the older brother of a friend was so aghast at my admission of virginity that he insisted on taking me to a prostitute. I managed to avoid him, and the trip to the prostitute, forever after, and I never again admitted my virginity to anyone but Mrs. Rodius. Oh, and you.
4. In my early teens, a small group of friends and I were flicking matches and stomping them out in the underbrush on the fringes of a golf course. Flick, stomp, turn around, flick, stomp. Apparently we hadn't quite stomped the last one out, and we turned around to a roaring fire. We ran. We ended up at the home of an unpopular kid whom we'd abandoned as a friend several years before. He was surprised to see us, but took us in to play video games. His mother, bringing us snacks, mentioned that we smelled like smoke. We laughed nervously and said the video game console must be overheating. We never found out how much damage we may have done to the golf course.
5. When I was twelve, I let my brother's girlfriend paint me up with full makeup. She had written his name in giant letters on the wall of her bedroom with colored yarn.
6. I have a giant lump on my left pinky toe that I believe is the result of an undiagnosed break many years ago. Or maybe it's a corn. What the hell is a corn, anyway?
7. I have twice punched holes in walls, the last one in ugly siding in the bedroom of a rented apartment ten years ago. I was lucky not to break any bones on either occasion and have since learned to control my anger better.
8. When I was sixteen, I took a driver's education class, including an eye test. The test administrator told me to look into a machine and read the third line. I looked into the machine and asked, "Are you sure it's on?" I was told to get glasses. When I picked up the glasses at the Lenscrafters at the mall and put them on, I said, "You mean this is how everybody sees?" I was one of the cool kids who sat at the back of the class, and I had always assumed that nobody past the first row could actually read the chalkboard.
And I'm sorry, Jennie, I just can't bring myself to pass the taggy thingy on. I guess I'm still one of those cool kids at the back of the class who refuses to participate in the group activities. That, and of course I don't know 8 people to tag.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
The Father of Invention
A friend sent me a link to this article in the New York Times about the increase in involved fathers leading to an increase in new inventions by those fathers. I told another friend about it, and his response was, "Makes sense. If you want to find the most efficient way to do something, give it to the laziest guy to do. And men are a lot lazier than women." True enough. I'm not sure, though, that it's more efficient to invent a nipple for water bottles than to just put the water in a baby bottle in the first place, but I get his point.
So I've been thinking about what inventions I might contribute. I've noticed that the snot sucking booger bulb is a highly ineffective piece of technology; why not something with a little stronger suction? A POWER snot sucker! Great idea! But somebody else already thought of it. I ordered one on eBay ($5 cheaper and free shipping!), so I'll let you know if it's my miracle product.
I've also thought of the toilet-mounted cloth diaper wringer. I wasn't able to find one of those, though, so I've asked Pops, Woodworker Extraordinaire, if he'll help me with that one. If necessary, maybe we can collaborate with Big Brother, World's Greatest Structural Engineer, on the design, though he's currently obsessing on the solution to a hexagonal Rubik's puzzle, so he may be unavailable indefinitely.
Not that we've actually begun using the cloth diapers, though. We should be starting this week. Our supplier had a little trouble with her supplier, so the order was slow in coming, but they're still a bit big for him anyway. We're about to run out of our stock of disposables, though, so we'll be starting on them soon. So I don't really know yet if a wringer will be necessary or helpful, but surely if we're hosing the things out in the toilet and storing them in a dry bucket until they go in the laundry, a wringer would be called for, right? But then I wouldn't expect "toilet-mounted diaper wringer" to be a fruitless Google search. Maybe Pops and I can make a fortune...
So I've been thinking about what inventions I might contribute. I've noticed that the snot sucking booger bulb is a highly ineffective piece of technology; why not something with a little stronger suction? A POWER snot sucker! Great idea! But somebody else already thought of it. I ordered one on eBay ($5 cheaper and free shipping!), so I'll let you know if it's my miracle product.
I've also thought of the toilet-mounted cloth diaper wringer. I wasn't able to find one of those, though, so I've asked Pops, Woodworker Extraordinaire, if he'll help me with that one. If necessary, maybe we can collaborate with Big Brother, World's Greatest Structural Engineer, on the design, though he's currently obsessing on the solution to a hexagonal Rubik's puzzle, so he may be unavailable indefinitely.
Not that we've actually begun using the cloth diapers, though. We should be starting this week. Our supplier had a little trouble with her supplier, so the order was slow in coming, but they're still a bit big for him anyway. We're about to run out of our stock of disposables, though, so we'll be starting on them soon. So I don't really know yet if a wringer will be necessary or helpful, but surely if we're hosing the things out in the toilet and storing them in a dry bucket until they go in the laundry, a wringer would be called for, right? But then I wouldn't expect "toilet-mounted diaper wringer" to be a fruitless Google search. Maybe Pops and I can make a fortune...
Saturday, September 1, 2007
Bad Idea
With a screaming baby at quarter of five in the morning, I thought I'd give Mrs. Rodius some quiet in which to sleep and take Thumper for a walk. A smirking jogger commented, "I remember those walks" as he passed us. When Thumper fell asleep within a minute or two, I was congratulating myself on my excellent baby management skills. But at exactly the halfway point around the big three-mile loop around our neighborhood, when going back would have been exactly the same as going on, he woke up. And commenced with the screaming again. And suddenly I realized I was sweating profusely in the humidity, despite what I originally thought was a pleasantly cool temperature.
So I spent fifteen minutes pushing him briskly along in the stroller, sure he'd wear himself out and fall asleep again. I felt painfully self-conscious when another jogger passed us, this one a woman. She was probably wondering where that baby's mother was. Then I started to believe that a sheriff's deputy would pull up alongside me at any moment and arrest me for kidnapping a baby, or arrest me for having a half-naked screaming baby out at a ridiculous hour, with no diapers or bottles or other baby equipment. So I picked him up, carrying him in the crook of one arm and pushing the empty stroller with the other. He stopped crying instantly, and I carried him over a mile that way. We were both soaked through with sweat when we got home, but he was alert and perfectly happy. Next time I think I'll take him for a drive.
So I spent fifteen minutes pushing him briskly along in the stroller, sure he'd wear himself out and fall asleep again. I felt painfully self-conscious when another jogger passed us, this one a woman. She was probably wondering where that baby's mother was. Then I started to believe that a sheriff's deputy would pull up alongside me at any moment and arrest me for kidnapping a baby, or arrest me for having a half-naked screaming baby out at a ridiculous hour, with no diapers or bottles or other baby equipment. So I picked him up, carrying him in the crook of one arm and pushing the empty stroller with the other. He stopped crying instantly, and I carried him over a mile that way. We were both soaked through with sweat when we got home, but he was alert and perfectly happy. Next time I think I'll take him for a drive.
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