Birth of the True

Baby Ella is finally here! Actually, she got here two weeks ago, but I'm just getting around to posting. According to my nephew, they ran out of caps at the hospital and my little last-minute-left-over-yarn-cap came in pretty handy. Hey, we Pisces have to stick together. Here she is with dad.


My nephew and I share the same birthday and we were hoping she would arrive on that day, but she just missed it. It'll be fun having a girl Pisces in the family. My sister loathes me and my nephew, so maybe we can recruit Baby E as an ally.

I always love how wise babies look... Or maybe like Charles Bronson.


I've been calling her Minnow Pea for months and no one has gotten it. I guess it's not that funny. But I'll probably call her that the rest of her life, poor thing. Or maybe I'll call her The Ella G Show. Here is a list of nicknames I called my nephews:

Lobs
Lobster Tail
Tail of the Lobster That Bit Me
Chief Hair-in-the-Face
Doughfus
Chief Spotted Foot
J'Ray
Dotsch
Mymy
Blotch
It's not as harrowing as it sounds. If you start calling them weird things when they're young, they just accept it as part of life and don't give it a second thought. It also gives them a rationale for understanding why their mother hates their uncle. I'm not sure what the motivation there is. I'd like to think she's jealous that she didn't come up with such great nicknames, but I'm sure it's much more deep-seated than that.

It Wasn't My Baby

Well, if I, the father, was not slain last week in The Great Sledding Episode, then this afternoon I was laid in the grave. I attended a baby shower. I don't do baby showers. And wedding ones are even more huh-uh. Ask Purple Bunny. She loves to recount how I didn't even attend the shower people at work hosted for Killer's birth. I may be edjumacated, but I still retain a few selected redneck qualities and an objection to men and women showering together is one them.

I was not planning on going to this thing. The shower was for my nephew and the female carrying an embryo to which he has contributed DNA. He's the second of my nephews to forego such inconveniences as wedding vows or any other public committments to care for his family, but that's irrelevant here. It was in Tulsa and the girls were going to be gone all day. Even though I desperately need some time alone to recharge, I felt guilty for not spending the day with them, so I decided I would go with them and drop them off then go kill a couple of hours. I should have applied the sage advice of SAT coaches and stuck with my first answer. C. F. Kats opted out of family life anyway because the dirge of daily life has become just too much. So we other three journeyed down the turnpike with only the promise of Quik Trip's gleaming cornucopia of mixed drinks to pull me onward.

Upon arrival, my nephew came rushing out to great us. I couldn't even begin to relate to you how much I love this nephew and what a wonderful guy he is (despite that other stuff). Suffice to say, he is as good a nephew as you could get -- he was born on my birthday. And his daughter may pull off the trifecta since she is due to arrive very near our birthday. He is as near a human clone of me as the current administration would allow, so it would be really cool to see how close a girl would end up being like us. Anyway, he and his dad were both there and gave every indication of staying. I was in a tough spot. If I called them sissies for attending a baby shower, they would have beaten me to a pulp. Finally I asked him if he was staying. "Yeah," he said. "I want to be here." Damn. What has this world come to.

So not only did I stay, I played a shower game. I won the shower game. It was a game where you try and match kinds of candy to the peculiarities surrounding the birth process. My prize was a bag full of about 20 kinds of candy. Somehow Raisinets and Milky Ways are less appetizing now. Before long I was talking about how much better Avent bottles are. I extolled the virtues of the ever-versatile receiving blanket; listing its many uses as every thing from burping rag to vomit cleanup. Cradle cap. Booger removal via squeezy rubber thing. I ruminated on how the cuter the little outfits are, the less time they will be able to wear them. Not having been to one of these before I kept a wary eye on my escape route because I was pretty certain that women tell war stories involving epidurals, blood, guts and all that rite of passage stuff. Luckily that didn't come up. And I thanked every deity I could imagine that I wasn't at one of those showers in England they have after the baby arrives and snack on the placenta.

But who knows, instead of slaying the father, maybe it's a new paradigm. Maybe Killer will reject a suitor who refuses to go to a friend's shower, thinking if it was good enough for her dad, why isn't good enough for him. Nahhh...not likely.

Think I'll go have a Skor candy bar now...

That's No Moon

Sunday I officially became old. I still remember the day I witnessed my own dad's fall from immortality and I think he was the same age I am now. I'm not sure if girls share this phenomenon about their mothers, but with boys it often happens that there is a defining moment in their lives when they slay the father. I say boys, but it may not happen until midlife or ever in some cases.

For most boys, your dad is always bigger, faster, stronger, smarter than you and by the time you reach puberty it appears he always will be. It's not just physical prowess either; non-physical dads can be just as alpha through being revered, successful or powerful. In most cases you aren't even aware you're competing with him. But then one day you have a moment of crystal clarity and you realize the old gazelle has lost a step to the lions.

For me this happened when I was 14. Gym class at the cult school was frequently led by visiting parents and other virile male cult members and on this particular day my dad ran the recreational activities. Flag Football. I was in the slot and my dad was covering me on a simple out route and I picked up a step on him when I made the turn. I made the catch and ten yards before going out. That was it. A first down. But I beat him. Not two days before he had me in an unrecoverable headlock. For years I was wrestled into panic-stricken positions on the living room floor ("Get off!! I can't breathe!" "If you can't breathe, how are you shouting?"), regular footrace challenges left me gasping for air, he could make me kneel down by doing something to my pinkie. I was bested in dinner discussions, he could fix anything, he always knew when I was lying. But on this day, I beat him. I hadn't even known I'd been competing with him for ten years. But I realized it then and it was sweet.

By the way, if you're male and you haven't slain your father yet, I suggest you savor the moment when it happens. It doesn't last long. You immediately become emboldened by your new found chest-beating and begin to challenge him at every turn. Victory gets easier and easier. And before you know it you realize they are hollow victories. He's not fighting you anymore. It's like Obi-Wan turning off his lightsaber once he sees Luke safely aboard the Falcon. His job is done; he's shown you the basics, and yeah, his voice might pop into your head when you need him in a crisis, but it's you v. world now.

So Sunday, I was out in the yard showing SGK how to use a snow shovel for a sled (like the one George Bailey rides into the icy pond). It didn't work very well, so I got a cardboard box and flattened it out. We have just enough slope on the driveway to make it fun for little ones, but she still wasn't clear on the concept. So I did what we poor kids did in the winter, lay a box on the ground, get as much steam up as you can on the slippery surface, and dive head first on the box. It worked great when I was six. Sunday, I hit the ground and I was suddenly aware that I couldn't hear anything. I looked up at SGK and I saw her little cherubic visage begin to be encircled by a ring of bluish white squirmy things like flagellants under a microscope. I was really confused and then, still unable to make out any sounds around me, I heard a very small, clear voice calmly say, "Don't forget to breathe." I rolled over and sucked in as much air as I could get. The little blue things were still wiggling, but quickly fading. Whew, I thought, I'm not dying -- just got my bell wrung. Pretty sure I bruised my sternum and those little knobby things on the breastplate up where your neck starts. I know if I had a son who'd witnessed my buffoonery, that would've been his moments. For now, I assuming little girls don't want to slay their fathers.

Once I got my hearing back the first thing I heard was YHWH bleating, "I don't think that box is big enough! And that hill isn't steep enough, either!" At least she didn't laugh at me. I'll take henpecking over humiliation any day. I quickly picked myself up and carried myself into the house under false bravado. YHWH plaintively apologized as I walked through the garage begging me not to go inside and, closing the door, I heard SGK saying, "You made daddy mad, mom!" I paused to consider refuting the charge that I was going inside to pout but thought, what the hell, better to be thought of as a pouter than a mere mortal.

Ice Ice Baby

A couple of days ago I was going to blog about how the local weather guys did their usual local news fearmongering and stirred everyone up into a frenzy over something that turned out to be nothing. But half-way through blocking out the post in my mind, I realized that is a terribly provinicial way of thinking. It suddenly struck me that what I think of as the local news station is actually THE news station for two-thirds of the state. One of those things I knew but didn't think about.

It really struck home yesterday when I finally got through to my dad and learned that he has been without power since Friday night and facing 'a week or so' more in the cold and dark. They have closed off the kitchen and dining room by hanging blankets and have been running the fireplace nonstop. He said it's 'kind of fun' except for the harrowing KRAK! in the middle of the night as tree limbs and telephone poles snap. Then in the mornings he goes out to assess the damage. So far, a storage shed has a good-sized oak limb across it, his stockade fence has buckled over, and his driveway is blocked by a snapped power pole. Apparently, a glance down the street at the power poles looks like sappers from the French Resistance have been busy. His resolve? "I didn't have any electricity for the first 20 years of my life. A lot of that is coming back to me now." So add to that that a dozen or so people have died in the area and it's hard to criticize the newsfolks for overplaying the preps. He got extra wood, extra food and water, propane for his camping stove, and made sure his cell phone was charged. It paid off. And that is absolutely the last time I will say anything remotely nice about the local news people.

The Ol' College Try

Last night YHWH and I attended a work function of hers. It's one of the few large-scale gatherings of it's kind I have ever been able to suffer through. I've been going for about a decade now and even though I still don't feel a part of the group (mainly because I'm not), last night was the first time I realized it may be the closest thing I have to an extended family.

From my vantage at Table 7, I panned around and saw people I have known for 20 years now in various capacities. There was Mr. and Mrs. Tex at the power table (No. 5). At this table was a couple I'd traveled thousands of miles across the country with. At that table was a woman I'd gone to school with who is now a professor. Over there was one of my major profs who inexplicably will not speak to me (he's Canadian, tho) and next to him was the guy who taught Queen and me (maybe Gouldie, too) creative writing who also won't speak to me. My ex-wife's sister was there. A Jeopardy!-style game on stage featured Mr. Tex, Tex's friend, and a woman I had a date with once as contestants. And when I extended it out, I realized that pretty much everyone I associate with for better or worse can be traced back to someone in that room. I don't know what all that means. Maybe it'll turn in to another post sometime in future. All I can say for now is, "Choose your college wisely, kids!"

Just finished some legwarmers for SGK:














Have to get on that cable knit hat now...

Have You Any Dreams You'd Like To Sell?

Ew..I just quoted Fleetwood Mac. Actually, that Rumours album is one of my guilty pleasures because it is centered around one of my fondest memories. It was the summer of '75 - the last summer vacation my family ever took. Not because of some tragedy or anything, it was just that for some reason we were too poor after that to go anywhere but the lake. Or as my dad says, "We weren't poor, just broke." We might've even been too poor to have taken the trip we did, I just can't remember. My dad was sent by our mainstream Protestant church to check out the seminary in Louisville with the prospect that they would swap tuition for a committment to lead the congregation. Or something like that. I'm sketchy on that part. Anyway, we headed east in our 1972 Chevy Impala. It was my first time east of the Mississippi River and my first time to see 'big cities' like St. Louis and Evansville and Louisville. Yeah, I lost my urban virginity to St. Louis. OK, ok. I just wanted to say we listened to my sister's Rumours 8-track on an endless loop all across the Ohio Valley. I still have every song memorized. Nothing quite like listening to the line, "Won't you lay me down in the tall grass and let me do my stuff" with your parents in the car. They didn't say anything about it, though. That's also the trip where I found out - during a brief radio interlude - that Mrs. Robinson wasn't a Christian song ("Jesus loves you more than you will know").

And no, my dad didn't go to seminary. He joined the previously mentioned bad theology gang - The Fort Lauderdale Five.

Ok, the whole reason I brought any of that up was that after an email exchange with Adjective Queen about dreams I realized I don't remember any of my dreams. I would say I don't dream at all, but 'they' say that everyone dreams at about the same rate. So I don't know whether I'm really getting a good value out of my dreams because if I can't remember them, what good are they? Kind of a tree falling in the forest type thing.

Had a weird evening at The Self's annual Honor Society ceremony. Top 10% and all that. OK, this group of best and brightest had no actual, identifiable nerds in it. I mean no one looked like Bill Gates or Napoleon Dynamite or Eleanor Roosevelt. I just thought the top 1% should at least look nerdy. I'm afraid that rather than being actually smart, they're just rule followers. Sheep. I could tell this by the fact that after the ceremony about 60 kids sat perfectly still while their parents snapped photos and directed their poses. Not one of them acted silly, made a face, stuck fake ears behind someone's head, nothing. That's pretty sad.

Today, one of my co-workers answered a reference question and the caller was on a cell-phone and she actually heard him using the restroom and flushing the toilet. Ewww. Now that's multitasking! There's got to be a word for that. Hmmm, I wonder if I can get Sally Kern to make a law banning people from making a call while eliminating. I mean since she' s already solved all of the other problems in our state.