Part-time fun

After two weeks, finally got back to the Denton Record-Chronicle to work a couple of shifts. I agreed to fill in part-time after I left. Finding a sports copy editor isn’t easy, and I needed the money.

I realized quickly what I didn’t miss: the rush at deadline and the lingering fear that hits you driving home that maybe you misspelled "Ohio" in a 70-point bold sans serif head on the front page.

But I have missed some things. Getting out of the house by myself. Coffee binging. Adult conversation (And by adult conversation, I mean a discussion over whether a blog post about Tony Romo’s face melting off pushed the envelope a wee bit much).

It was a little weird to be back. When I came in on Sunday, there was only one guy in the sports department, and all that he could manage after two weeks was an almost silent "eh" when I sat down. Yep, back in sports. Everyone treats everyone like a complete bastard.

A Chuck Norris fact I haven't seen before

Chuck Norris understands the ending to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Heh. I read the book and still can't be sure.

Back, with notes

Hello. It’s been something like 87 days since I last posted. Didn’t mean to take this long of a break, but I’ve kinda just spent the last three weeks rebooting after THE CHANGE.

This post is long and scattered.

Home life
Sam is napping right now. Actually, it’s this half-whining/half-napping thing he does when he’s too tired to do anything, but doesn’t like being tired. He’s really good at starting this thing at 5:30 in the morning.

I don’t really feel like I’ve stopped working and become the master of my domestic domain. It’s more like I’m just on extended leave and will return to work soon. It’s better to look at it that way than to start fretting over the job search and get all panicky.

My days more or less follow a routine:

6:30 a.m.: Wake up, eat breakfast or, if Sam is awake, feed him, then feed self.

7:30 a.m.: Entertain Sam by laying him on his stomach and then asking him to do things in a childish voice.

Why is the childish voice necessary? He has two syllables so far – "Ah" and "Goo." Does it matter to him if I add silly wittle soundsy at the ends of my wordsy?

9 a.m.: Hand Sam off to Mom, take nap.

1 p.m. – 3 p.m.: Take Sam back from Mom, repeat entertaining and feeding schedule interspersed with naps, which allow me to get ahead of the chores or goof off. Mainly goof off.

9 p.m.: Bed time.

The wardrobe of the stay-at-home dad.
Monday: Sweat pants, T-shirt.
Tuesday: Sweat pants, T-shirt.
Wednesday: Fleece pants, T-shirt.
Thursday: Shorts, T-shirt, flannel shirt.
Friday: Sweat pants, T-shirt.

Sometimes I go nuts and bother putting on tennis shoes.

Christmastime, was here, time to spread some cheer
This year I made my first egg nog.

As the recipe seemed a little large for me and a couple of friends. I halved it. There were some problems: I didn’t have any nutmeg, and I beat the mixture a little too long and made it too fluffy.

Also, I forgot to halve the amount of liquor in the drink, and I also put in the amount the recipe required to make it "strongly spirited."

Hence, I had an egg nog that would’ve fueled Santa’s sleigh -- if Santa’s sleigh had flames on the side and the deer wore black studded leather.

Christmas take
I didn’t get any earth-shattering presents this year, but I got some nice stuff.

Thanks to some amazon gift certificates, I have a new sleeping bag for some trips I hope to be taking soon. My wife gave me a pizza stone (Yes, it’s what I asked for.) I’ll have some pictures of that. It allows me to attempt to produce what I was making when I was working for the Central Market café. I’ll just say that I’m not close. I gave my wife the thick, pink flannel pajamas that she asked for.

My family draws names for gift giving, and we set a $20 limit, which all of us break, on presents.

Thing is, we used to buy each other actual presents. Now, the entire routine has boiled down into asking where they like to shop, and then getting a gift certificate to that place.

Not wanting to do this, I gave my brother a hydration pack from Cabela’s. He said "Thanks," but I could tell he would’ve preferred the gift certificate.

I dunno. Gift certificates don’t show much effort. But since everyone has price limits, exactly what are you going buy that’s worth a damn?

Picture
At the family shindig in Hico, I was really happy to get this picture.

That’s Sam with his great grandparents, father’s mother’s side. Harold and Theda V are doing good, but it’s hard to get to see them as often as I’d like. Grandma played with Sam for quite some time before he got impatient. Don’t worry about my Grand dad. Tell him that you like the Dallas Cowboys, and remember that he served in World War II and doesn’t talk about it.

Some thoughts after the Gator Bowl

• Yahoo!
• God loves Mike Leach.
• The TV color guy got excited and said "The Raiders are set to run the table next year!" I’m sure every Tech fan across the country immediately thought we’d been jinxed.
• Next season, Texas Football will pick Tech to finish behind Oklahoma, Texas, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M and TCU for good measure.

Calling down time

Just to let folks know. I'm finishing up my last shift at work now, and will otherwise be too busy with holiday things soon to post.

See you after Christmas. Or maybe the new year's.

Be well

Merry Christmas to all, may your holidays be charmed,

My wife said if I didn't post this, she'd cause bodily harm.

Christmas comes early

Jackson and New Line reach an agreement to produce The Hobbit.

Yep, I'm already jumping on one foot to the other in anticipation. I don't get why he needs to do two films, but whatever.

Another plus, I won't have to bother reading "The Hobbit" to Sam. Now I can just take him to the movie. And buy the video game(s). Awesome.

Awwwww ...

Granola chick lives in a log cabin with a little baby coyote and her cat.

Won't be so cute once the pup decides to cash in all of Morriss' nine lives, but for now it's cool.

When life gives you sausage ...

You're not going to take it. At least not in the 12 ounce size.

Friend at work passed this on. Funniest thing I've heard this month. Warning: Bad words. Man gets intense about Jimmy Dean. And his little plump Scottish girl.

News

It’s now official at work, so I’m passing on the news here.

I’m quitting my job. (Don’t say "Again?")

I’ve had some good times at the Denton Record-Chronicle, but I’m leaving my full-time job as assistant sports editor in a couple of weeks.

My wife’s family leave time is about up.

Whereas:

• We both work night shifts.
• There is no such thing as late-night day care.
• Meredith makes, like, a bajillion more than I do.

I have to quit my job so she can go back to work. This is not the ideal situation for either of us. I realize this is not the prevailing view right now, but I strongly believe that a boy needs his Mama at this point in his life a lot more than he needs Daddy. (Sam’s Mama agrees.)

And I really wish Daddy had some kind of job that could make this situation possible. But, after about a year of searching, nothing has panned out so far. I even applied to graduate school, but got rejected by North Texas because 10 years ago I made a D in chemistry. I wanted a public relations degree. (With a thanks here to Dave and John for saying they’d vouch for me. I may need you later.)

So we’re kind of left in a lurch right now. It hit me the other day, how I used to make fun of women over the biological clock thing. (I recall bringing one girl to tears just by repeating "tick-tock" until she broke.)

Now I’m faced with my own countdown. I don’t just want a job to eke out a living on the edge.

I’m like everyone else, I want to contribute, be in the center of things, make my mark. The problem is that the older you get, the time you have left to establish yourself in any given field diminishes, the amount of time you have for people to take you seriously when you’re starting off gets smaller and smaller and smaller.

So I’m considering this a short window of opportunity to figure out what I’m going to do.

I’m also looking forward to some aspects of life as Mr. Mom: Teach the boy things, get in shape, work more on this blog and other projects. My wife says the extra time is an illusion, but at the very least I’ll be back on daylight hours, which will be no small joy.

I’ll miss the Record-Chronicle. The atmosphere there is laid back, loud, eclectic. It was almost a college atmosphere, and reminded me of why I thought I would in the very least have fun as a journalist when I graduated.

Still, as an assistant sports editor, I’d stepped about as high up the career ladder in sports as I could go. I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of any sport, and I don’t want to spend the next three years of my life learning that knowledge so that I can then graduate to running agate at a mid-major for $45,000 a year.

So, for the time being. I’ll be going to part-time at the Record-Chronicle until they hire a replacement, I find another job, or we both lose interest.

Meredith (God bless her) will go back to work. I’ll be at home with Sam.

And we’ll all be working toward changing things around.

Fat cats

On Friday, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram printed what I think is the terminal article on a feature about, yes, pets and weight loss.

A couple of months back they started running a series about overweight pets and, gameshow like, kept a running tally on their efforts to lose weight. (Sample article here.)

I would look at the pictures during the series because I like critter shots and these were even better -- freak critter shots that raised my self-esteem about my own pets.

But I could never bring myself to read the articles, for the simple reason that the premise of the whole series was based on a problem that, as far as I could tell, the writer managed to go three months without facing:

They're freakin' dogs. (And a few cats.)

Want JoJo to to lose weight? Howsabout you don't shove so much food down his pie-hole?

He's a domesticated dog. He's not going to develop an opposable thumb and go refrigerator raiding at 2 a.m. Dominoes don't know what "arf" means. Fido ain't going to sneak out through the fire escape, scarf down a large double-meatsa, sprint towards the nearest KFC and later wake up, covered in feathers next to a naked Michael Moore*.

Both of my dogs have looked chunky from time to time. Know what I did? I cut back on their food supply. They lost weight. Why the hell didn't I get my picture in the paper?

It doesn't compare to humans. We've all gone through times when we didn't have anything better to do than not eat another donut. I even have a kind of admiration for those with girth who carry it around without complaining. It's an anti-establishment statement for the times we live in.

But dogs and cats? No excuses, sorry. Just don't feed'em.

*On second thought, that could happen.

Fantasyland

We're beginning playoffs in both fantasy leagues that I'm playing in. And for the first time, I'm a higher seed than my opponent in one, and I'm actually getting a bye in the other.

I've never done this well. Of course, I didn't pick either of my teams and I've refused any and all trade offers since.

But that just shows I'm learning.

More notes ...

Things I thought about writing about over Thanksgiving, but forgot.


Gibberish talk
My wife tells me that I must stop speaking gibberish to the child, as per orders of one of the roughly 38 books on baby raising that now sit on top of our coffee table. It has something to do with the synapses of his brain. Also, some of the sounds I make come close to some politically incorrect words, and I should add that making gooby-boo noises over and over again really annoys my woman.

Still. I’ve realized recently that the first few months after his child’s birth is about the only time in a man’s life when he gets away with making nonsense noises. And I’ve realized that making these noises is fun. Therefore, the gibberish will continue. Besides, Sam seems to like it for now.

He may think differently when he graduates high school, but we’ll work through it.


BCS situation
Listening to the talk over Thanksgiving in Hico, I realized that I’m the only college football postseason traditionalist in my family.

"Traditionalist" being defined as someone who likes something the way it is. What I don’t like is this week of the year, when the entire sporting nation goes all teeth-gnashy about the lack of a college football playoff and the way it’s turning the game into an addled farce.

My basic argument: Yeah right. College football is being killed by the lack of a playoff. People are turning away from college football in droves. All those new stadium building projects are sad statements based on the false hope that people can some how be fooled into buying tickets for just one more farcical season.

I have more thought-out arguments, but this is the first thing that came into my mind at dinner after a brother-in-law described the current bowl system as "socialism."


King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
Official site here

I plan on writing more about this movie, but for right now, I'll definitely give it a high recommendation. The basic premise: Geeks fight over the world record of Donkey Kong, the ’80s video game. I cheered loud enough to wake up my child. The story is better than anything Hollywood has come up with in the last few years. The villain is probably the most entertaining character in movies this year and the soundtrack consists of a lot of ’80s songs that have been playing in my head since. Good times.

Thanksgiving notes

This is late. I’ve noticed that having a newborn lengthens your recovery times from holidays and special events. Keep that in mind when you procreate.

First off, the latest pictures of Sam, taken a coupla minutes ago.

Sam emphasizes the importance of fresh basil,
or maybe he bemoans the lost art of the bunt in baseball.

We had the two-month checkup this week and everything checked out well. My wife said that Sam laughed the other day, which is a good sign.


Hello, I must be going
We spent Thanksgiving on the road, trying to attend dueling family events. Thanksgiving day was at the Mama’s parents house in Trinidad (small town on Cedar Creek reservoir) and the day after, we drove to Hico for the event with my family. Then I had to drive back to work. All in all, about nine hours on the road for about four hours of celebrations, talking and eating.

Working for newspapers can really suck sometimes.


Welcome to Tarleton
I got a little love on the Denton Record-Chronicle high school blog the other day after recommending the Hard Eight Restaurant to fellow writer Adam Boedeker. It was gratifying to read the entry because he liked the food recommendation and noted how idiotically the Tarleton State Memorial Stadium press box is run, as I had warned.

This is inside baseball here, but it’s something that amazes me. Every other press box I’ve ever visited, the staff is generally tripping over themselves to help you. In Stephenville, the sole purpose of the staff is to make sure you don’t wander into the empty rooms to work, even after the normal press room is full. And God forbid if you open the cooler and grab a coke (located in the press room).

I have a soft spot in my heart for Tarleton, but, dude.

By the way, Boedeker has a blog. It’s hard-core sports stuff, and mainly picks, but there's an opportunity to randomly make fun of a stranger for those who are interested.


A little coffee thingy
My sister-in-law and her in-the-Army husband are based in Italy. They visited for Thanksgiving, and dropped off their gift: an authentic ole-fashion’ espresso maker from Italy.

Here’s how it works:

Put water in the bottom container.
Put the grounds in the filter thingy on top of the bottom container.
Screw the cute little pitcher on top of the assortment, and put on stove.
Espresso! Or something. It’s been a little too weak so far, I’m experimenting. The thing came without instructions, or maybe it did, only everything was written in Italian.

The kid’s debut
Sam’s first appearance to my family was the Thanksgiving event in Hico. Plenty of oooing and ahhing, and the boy was passed around like a football.

People kept telling me, "You did a good job with this one."

I haven’t come up with something appropriate, or appropriately inappropriate, to say back. So I pretty much stayed with "Yup" and "Dang right." And occasionally "Thanks." It’s kind of like accepting congratulations for ... well ... you know. And it’s hard to come up with something to say that won’t get you slapped by your brother’s wife.


Sad throw
Speaking of footballs, my nephew Brown brought one to the Hico festivities. I threw it maybe three times before giving up. My problem: I had previously injured my shoulder while sleeping.

I’ll end with that. I’ll have news soon. I’m not exactly sure what that news will be. But it will be news.

The ability to drool

Cute for exactly two days, 14 hours and 15 minutes.

Happy turkey eating

So, if you're like me, you have an oddly-houred day at work followed by several exhaustive trips all over the damn state. And you're already behind on sleep and beginning to be paranoid about catching a seasonal disease that makes you miserable.

Also, you still haven't figured out exactly what you're going to do with the dogs -- a vital part of your life that's despised by everyone else.

And you're worried about how your kid is going to handle his first overnight trip and hours of driving. Plus you feel guilty because you still haven't made it over to the grandparents, and good Lord the job search is sliding ...

OK. So maybe you're not like me. And you probably aren't going to have as much fun. But have a great holiday, be careful, etc. etc.

oh yeah.

wahoo!

Seeing Dave Barry

It’s been two months, but the birth of my son got in the way of me completing this post – and some other stuff. I wanted to get this down before I couldn’t remember anything.

My wife scored two tickets to see Dave Barry at his Fort Worth appearance to promote his latest book, Dave Barry’s History of the Millennium (So Far).

All things considered, this was a good alignment of the planets. The presentation was on Monday, both of our nights off, and Dave Barry is one of the few writers out there I’d pay to see.

The presentation at Bass Hall basically consisted of the host, Star-Telegram feature writer Jeff Guinn, treating Dave Barry as if he was an imminent historian, and Dave Barry blowing off the question:

Guinn: So how were you able to gain the incredible amounts of knowledge necessary to write such a complex work as this?

Barry: I made it up.

Guinn: What was your educational background? How did you arrive at your pre-eminent position among American historians?

Barry: Actually I get angry letters from American historians all the time, telling me it’s not funny what I said about Missouri.

And so on and so forth. Guinn became grating after a bit, but he needed to play the part so Barry could work his shtick. After a while, Barry was just giving the spoken version of his greatest hits – talking about having a sewage pump station in North Dakota named after him, about his college band Federal Duck, and about the time that he drove the Wienermobile to pick up his kid at school.

All in all he had the crowd rolling. His presentation is generally flawless and he knows how to tell a story.

It was a contrast from the first time I saw him on TV, back when Jay Leno was still guest hosting the Tonight Show. Barry was introduced as the funniest man in America and came out stiff. It was like he was mentally reading bits from his columns at pre-determined points in the conversation.

Leno: You travel a lot, is there anything out there that annoys you?

Barry: I hate these people who I call "hall talkers." They stand in the hotel hallway late at night and say things like, "Well, I should be going to bed now," or "I guess it’s time to leave."

Heh, that’s not bad once you write it down. Anyway, he bombed.

I took this as a good thing. If Dave Barry isn’t funny in person, I thought, "Perhaps I, too, have a future in writing comedy."

His presentation at Bass Hall wound down after about 90 minutes, at which time Guinn announced that they could take a few questions. And, in what is still a shock to my wife, I stood up and walked towards a microphone.

I’m not much of a public speaker. (Or private speaker for that matter.) I hate talking to more than two people at a time.

A lot of people talk about a book that changed their life. Generally it’s something for a pretentious teenage male to brag about, like Catcher in the Rye. On the other hand, in the summer before my sophomore year in high school, my mom brought home a copy of Barry’s "Stay Fit and Healthy Until You’re Dead."

I’d read a lot of comedy before, but never something this outlandish and this well done. It was like seeing Monty Python for the first time after a steady diet of Benny Hill. And it changed my life.

I read everything by Barry I could get me hands on and was imitating or outright stealing his jokes for the column I wrote in the Monterey High School newspaper.

Nowadays, I only read him occasionally. It’s not that he’s less funny, it’s just that, once you come to know someone well enough you begin to complete his sentences.

So, there I stood in a sitting crowd of about 2,000 people, behind a woman who struck me as an overenthusiastic English teacher. I was fighting off a panic attack and drawing a blank while trying to come up with a question.

Thankfully, I had the right read on the woman in front of me.

"Are you still amazed at all the things that are under the sea?"

Barry kind of gives her a "huh?" look. She repeats the question, then says that she was referring to a piece he wrote some years back on scuba diving. And, you know, surely he has an instant memory of EVERY SINGLE FREAKING THING HE’S EVER WRITTEN OVER THE PAST 40 YEARS.

The question is flubbed. The pressure on me lightens.

I step forward and put my mouth near the mike. I haven’t come up with anything good, so I ask the question that all struggling writers submit to the successful ones.

"What do you do when you run out of ideas?"

Dave Barry: "What? You mean with writing?"

In my defense, I knew as soon as the question left my mouth that I’d left an opening. And at least it wasn’t about looking at crap under water.

Barry then got a little bit more serious and gave the answer all successful writers give to the struggling ones (None of the quotes here are exact, by the way):

"I don’t really run out of ideas. I don’t sit down with an entire column in my head and just write it out. Usually I may have one or two jokes in mind and then try to come up with something that connects them.

"And that’s generally the way that most writers work. It’s mainly a question of making yourself sit down and work. I know a lot of writers who are waiting to be inspired. You’re not always going to have some great thought come to you. It’s not inspiration, it’s work."

I heard a person sitting behind me say, "Good question."

It was a great moment. Save for that awkward feeling that happens when you ask someone a question in front of crowd: "OK, he’s looking at me so I won’t sit down ... There he’s looking at the crowd, I’ll sit down ... No he’s looking at me again ..."

And then ...

The Lights Come On.

I noticed on Sunday that Sam’s eyes were tracking the living room lamp as I took him to bed. (Where he’d immediately start crying, but we know that, so it’s like a game. An incredibly frustrating, drive you to the point of insanity, kind of game.)

And Monday morning I take him while he’s waking up to change his diaper, and for the first time he looks at me. Watches while I walk to pick up a wet wipe, and watches with mild concern while I clean him up.

It’s like someone flipped a switch. Prior to this point his emotions could pretty much be categorized as "awake," "hungry," and "sleeping."

He’s now aware enough and can see enough details to start thinking about things. It’s like he’s passed into a more thorough humanness. He sees things, he judges, he makes decisions.

Of course, once I was through with his diaper, his first decision was to start crying because I don’t secrete milk.

The last few weeks weren’t easy. Sam spent most of his time crying. His smiles are fleeting, lasting about 15 seconds, and then he’s back to the wailing.

He’s now growing out of that. It’s like we’ve reached some kind of milestone, some kind of marker that encourages us to keep trudging forward.

Being part of a family is not easy. Being one of the leaders of one is much harder. I’ve thought about this the last few weeks. Couldn’t really help it. When you go four weeks without really seeing the sun or having the time to do the things that keep you sane, and then throw in a soundtrack of non-stop wailing, your thoughts are going to go depressive.

Most people grow up with frothified images of marriage and parenthood. Most of us had a great deal of happiness as children, why shouldn’t we have equal amounts of fun as a parent?

Now, six weeks after I’ve heard the cry for the first time, I realize most of the fun I had was because my parents weren’t having any. They did all the worrying, they did all the work. They had to show all the patience while I struggled from infant immaturity to adolescent immaturity (and on to adult immaturity, but that’s something else).

And they had to occasionally lay down the law, working up enough anger so that the point would stick. None of these things are fun.

I don’t believe the people who talk about how raising their kids is easy. You are a liar full of lies who pours lies over your Cheerios for breakfast.

Most snippets of advice we get contradict each other, and are really just kind of mental pacifiers people give to each other – "Let’s try this when he’s crying or refuses to sleep, maybe this is the answer."

You just keep moving forward, throwing together your fathering and mothering "skills" on the fly. It’s the sense of obligation you feel, it’s the price of being an adult. It’s the debt you pay to your parents, and somewhere in the back of your head you hope it’s going to be the best thing you’ve ever done.

Just to say ...

That I'm not really posting much as these last two weeks have sucked. How so? Let me count the ways ...

(I'm counting inside my head. I hate whining outwardly. So I'm posting this to let you know I'm whining inwardly. Which kind of breaks the rules, but, eh.)

Have a super weekend!

Sam's Halloween Pics

Sam had two outfits. I understand he needed both of them before the night was over.

We had something like five trick-or-treaters. My wife would open the door and look at the costumes and say, "Awwwww..." then the kids would look at Sam and say "Awwwwwww..." Maybe it's a good thing I was designing sports pages.
Meredith believes that Sam has started to smile. I'm not sure I agree. She has, however, made a valiant effort to capture this on film. After about 80 pictures, this is the best we can do.
I'll include this one, just to show we didn't use extreme g-forces to create the above pic.