May 2008 - Posts

• An Ode to Paducah

  My parents live in Paducah KY which is a small town in Western Kentucky, that’s also the largest town in about two hours in any direction.  I’ve been there a few times before and I always enjoy going, because despite what its name may lead you to believe, is a great place to spend a few days. They have a wonderful, thriving downtown, a surprisingly active arts scene and the best bakery I’ve ever been to.  They also have John Scopes of the Scopes monkey trial buried there, and that’s got to count for something.   I am a bit prejudiced I suppose, since my father is the city manager and my mom is the director of the national quilt museum (a quick word on the quilt museum:  if you think that sounds lame, spend 30 seconds at the website.  It is mind boggling what these artists are able to create.)   Of course, there are downsides to visiting Western Kentucky.  I didn’t see a changing table in the restroom anywhere in the entire state (and there’s not much more disgusting than changing an infant on the floor of a 5x5 bathroom, while you and your kids all try to cram into the one corner that’s outside the “splash zone.”)    Also, on the second day I was there, this was the headline of the newspaper “Hospital to Prohibit Smoking Next Year.”    That’s right.  Hospital.  Smoking. NEXT YEAR!  The accompanying picture had an old woman on an IV lighting up in the hallway – no joke.    Watch out for the oxygen tanks! I know it’s Kentucky, but for crying out loud.  I saw more people smoking in the last week than I have in the last year.  I swear, if we ever do get universal healthcare, I say we leave Kentucky out.  We can’t afford them.   To be fair, Paducah outlawed smoking in their restaurants a while back.  It almost started a riot, but it happened.  So if you’re traveling to Kentucky, by all means stay in Paducah.   Paducah also has a segway store. That’s right, Paducah has a segway store.  Do you think that’s odd or something?  I think a segway store is a healthy addition to a town of 20,000.  Why not?   On the plus side, Kentuckians don’t like to walk.  On the downside, unless the segway has a shotgun attachment and can be used to ride out into the woods and drag back a deer, I don’t know how many they’re going to sell.  Actually I do know how many they’re going to sell.  Bupkiss.    I mentioned my concerns to a lady at the chamber of commerce, and she leaned over and whispered, “You know, I’m surprised that he’s offering segway tours of downtown…. Because, well… it’s just not that big.  You can walk around it in a few minutes.” Ah yes.   I am deeply disappointed that I didn’t get to take the Segway tour, but I couldn’t figure out what to do with the kids.  Besides, it was $35 an hour and that’s like three days worth of cigarettes.   Paducah also has a flood wall because, apparently it floods there regularly, and people find this annoying.  But the town has hired a guy to come out and paint pictures on the flood wall so it’s not just an ugly concrete wall blocking the view of the river, but instead, an ugly concrete wall with big pictures on it.  The pictures are really well done, if not somewhat random, and do a great job telling the history of the town.  Granted, there appears to be one painting of a dog urinating in the snow, (2nd page) but I suppose that’s history too.   Perhaps the coolest thing about Paducah is that every Saturday evening all the downtown stores stay open late (even segway!  $10 for 10 minutes!) and there is live music, carriage rides and all the fun you can squeeze into a hot Kentucky night.  We took the kids in a carriage ride shaped like Cinderella’s pumpkin.  My 5 year old, Audra, was ecstatic.   Paducah isn’t likely to be on anyone’s way, unless your driving from Possum Trot to Monkey Eyebrow (Real towns, by the by, -  I saw it on a t-shirt.  Heaven help me, I saw it on a t-shirt), but it’s still worth a visit.  So, head up I-24, grab a croissant at Kirschoff’s, visit the quilt museum, and schedule a segway tour.  And if you’re there on Saturday, take the carriage ride and ask the guide to tell you the story of the flood.  It’s good stuff.  Posted May 31 2008, 04:15 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: daddy issues, travel, Vacations, parents, Paducah [Edit Tags]

• Barack Obama, Leviticus, and James Joyce

  My daughter is special.  Special special if you know what I mean.  She woke up from her nap early and I told her to go play quietly until her brothers woke up.  Well, I was in the other room and I could hear her talking.  Talking, talking, talking non-stop.  Just as if someone was in the room.  Like usual, I started to tune her out, because Audra talks all day long, from the moment she wakes up till when she falls asleep.  It is a stream of consciousness monologue that has no beginning or end, only a constant, droning middle.  Think of her as the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Preschooler.  (Who doesn’t love a good Joyce reference).   Anyway, I began hearing words that seemed particularly random, even for her:  “Barack Obama”   “Republican”   “Righteous Nation”   I began eavesdropping and realized that she was creating some kind of conversation between three of her dolls:  Cinderella, Jasmine and “Candidate for President Barbie” (thank you Mom). It was one of those moments where you realize that the kids are constantly listening to your adult conversations but rarely understand what it is your talking about.  The democratic primary has been a big conversation topic between my wife and I (Go Barack!) and apparently Audra’s nightly Bible story is having some kind of an impact, because it was all getting nicely combined in the blender of her mind.   Once I heard the first few lines, I grabbed my laptop, sat outside the door and typed furiously trying to record, word for word, what she was saying.  I know I missed some of it and I am endlessly sorry for that, but what follows is a 5 minutes transcript of the conversation between Barbie, Cinderella, Jasmine and possibly Thomas the Tank Engine.  Welcome to the mind of a 5 year old. Audra:   “This is like a game for choosing the leader.  We decide the leader and we decide Barack Obama.  He’s got spirit.  He’s got spirit for the holy nation.  We must all live in our holy nation so redemption can pour out. Our last name is Barbie.  Can you say that?  Barbie.  Good. Now the sign might say an important thing.  Ladies and gentleman you obey that thing.  You will be republicans.  You don’t want to be republicans.  You want to be Christians because Christians is the name of the holy God.    When a republican girl jumps on your neck then your hopping, hopping, hopping and you laugh and you stretch your body wide.   The shoe fell off again.  What should I do?   It’s time to vote.  We all need to put our votes for who we want to be leader.    Who should be the greatest?  Democrats or Republicans?  They lose. The presidents are running for the state.   Everyone must obey this sign.  This girl is holding the sign.  She looks like a doctor, but they don’t care.   Who got from England?  Eng-uh-land Eng-uh-land Eng-uh-land.   Alright, we need business done.    I look cute.  The wonderings.  The wonderings it is.   We need to be make a decision about who will run the state. We weren’t turning out the good way God wanted us to.  We weren’t coming through the body.   We weren’t coming through the thing he wanted us to.   It’s 10:00.  It’s time to be in the oven.  It should be in the oven by now.   It’s been 20 seconds.  Now we add a little mix to this and this cake of mine.   First I have to roll my dough.   This is the president.  This is the sister.  She just joined the family and they are all voting to be president today. I am the first lady.  From Tottington Hall. Mrs. Tottington is my name.  Everyone obey me. I am here to speak to you tonight for all of the presidential candidals.  I’m here to talk about the candidals but I don’t know what they mean.  Do you?  Does anyone know?   Yes.  Good!   Individual.  Individual under God.  Yes! ” I know there was more.  Before I could get the laptop out she mentioned the words “Hillary Clinton,” “redemption” and “neverland.”  I’d say most of it was at least as coherent as anything coming out of the Sunday morning talk shows.  I wish I could have gotten it all, but I’m just not that fast of a typist.   And if Barbie ends up being a superdelegate, I’ll be sure to let you know. Posted May 30 2008, 04:07 AM by superdad with 1 comment(s) Filed under: daddy issues, religion, Obama, Audra [Edit Tags]

• In Praise of Car DVD Players

  Man has invented many things over the last several millennia: the printing press, the electric lightbulb, the triple blade razor, but perhaps none has had more of a positive impact on society than the in-car DVD player.    Last week I drove 14 hours straight with my three kids a college student and a dog.  I allowed everyone out of the car exactly twice, once for lunch and once for ice cream.  Other than that, it was full speed ahead for the 800 some miles that we traveled from Eastern Maryland to Western Kentucky.   I know what you’re thinking.  “Are you crazy?”  (almost certainly) “Did you lose your sanity?”  (Oh, that was gone a long time ago) “Why the heck would you go to Western Kentucky?”  (Well, that’s a reasonable question.  My parents are here and it’s actually quite nice.  Well downtown Paducah is.. the rest of Western Kentucky… well…I’m sure something important comes out of  it – maybe soybeans)   But the miracle of miracles is that the kids did fine.  Now to be fair, my children are somewhat unique in their ability to suffer through interminable trips strapped into a carseat.  It’s a skill we forced each of them to develop as infants driving back and forth to see various grandparents.  But the main credit goes to that DVD player.   When my daughter was 20 months old, we were living in Charleston, WV.  We had bought a house in Maryland, but still had a couple of months at my wife’s old job in Charleston (we enjoy paying mortgages on houses we’re not living in whenever possible).  So every weekend we drove 6 hours out to Maryland to paint the new house, clean etc.  Well, shockingly, my daughter did not like sitting in a carseat for 6 hours at a time and she spent most of the trip screaming.  We carried a giant basket of toys with us and threw them to her one at a time. She would play with each toy for approximately 30 seconds then throw it on the floor and start screaming again.  Eventually we would run out of toys and she would just scream until she fell asleep, which was invariably about 15 minutes before we arrived.    Well, about a month into this, we traded in our 1997 Buick Century for a minivan which happened to have a (ta da) in-car DVD player.  Well, we took off on our 6 hour drive and my daughter stared enraptured at the TV for the entire trip.  No crying.  No shrieks of pain that sounded as if hot pokers were searing her flesh.  She just sat there and watched Dora and learned how to say “Hello friends, where is the big red chicken?” in Spanish (I’m sure that will come in handy).   Well after that, the TV was on in the car everywhere we went.  If we were driving 20 minutes to the park, well let’s see what Blue is up to.  If we had errands to run, then Clifford was our constant companion.  And if we had a two minute drive to the grocery store, by golly the TV better be on and some animated creature better be running around teaching shapes or colors or woodworking.   Our subsequent children have become equally addicted to the magic 7 inch screen.  And this is precisely what allowed me to drive 14 hours with absolutely no complaints.  Now I don’t doubt that my kids are a little special (believe me) but I still think that’s pretty remarkable.   Now I have some friends who will say with somewhat haughty condescension that they would never get a TV for their car.    Here’s my question.  Why the hell not?  What exactly are you saving your kids from?  Was your three year old going to break out her copy of Proust, but instead spent the time watching Bob the Builder?  I mean, they’re in the car.  It’s not like they could be playing outside or painting instead.  When you’re a passenger in a car for 14 hours, the only thing you can do is stare blankly out the car window or hit your brother.  I just don’t see the downside of watching Muppet show episodes.   On the flip side, our kids rarely watch TV in the house.  (A time when they can be playing outside or reading Proust).  And I like the idea that I can easily control what they are watching.  Nobody is getting brainwashed into buying Hannah Montana deodorant, because there are no commercials on DVDs.    So I thank the inventor of the in car DVD player from the bottom of my heart.  I’m sure the guy who invented penicillin was real swell and all, but you can pump my kids full of that and they’re still going to whine and fuss on a five minute drive to preschool, but you put in an Animaniacs DVD, and you can drive my kids to Alaska while performing a root canal on them.  To me, that’s a real benefit to society or at least to my sanity.   Alert the Nobel committee Posted May 29 2008, 04:00 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: daddy issues, dvd, travel, Vacations [Edit Tags]

• And I Screamed Like a Little Girl!

  Our house backs on to the woods, which most of the time is wonderful.  We regularly see deer running up the hill behind our house, and have no end of humming birds, cardinals, woodpeckers etc.  I like nature and absolutely love the setting of our house.  It is peaceful, calming, and usually 5-10 degrees cooler than it is just a few minutes away in Annapolis.  However, nature has its downsides too.   We have a pool and recently we got hit with a big storm that brought down a lot of tree limbs and leaves and general detritus.  I’ve been trying to scoop it all out of the pool on a regular basis and keep our filters clean blah, blah, blah. Anyway, I was emptying one of the filter traps and as I walked by one of our box hedges that surround the pool, I looked down and saw a black snake curled up peacefully in its branches.    I would like to tell you that I stared at it with scientific curiosity, or even that I took several careful steps backward.  But no, I screamed like a girl.   I am not using that term in a derisive way.  I am not suggesting that I screamed and that in my screaming I resembled a scared member of the fairer sex.  No, I am saying that when I screamed, the pitch and timber most resembled that of a 6 year old girl.   I have a fairly high voice to begin with.  I regularly get called ma’am at the McDonalds drive through and when I show up for choir rehearsal, no one bothers to ask me what part I sing.  But still, this was beyond the realm of a man with a high voice screaming.  I am confident that if any of our neighbors heard the scream, they all thought to themselves “Oh my, It sounds like Gargamel is after those darling smurfs again.”   The wussy scream aside, I wish I could tell you what it is about snakes that freaks me out so much.   I am a relatively intelligent person, and looking back, it seems like the snake was probably pretty harmless.  It was maybe the width of a bratwurst and probably only 4 feet long at the most.  I’m pretty sure it wasn’t poisonous.  It was just sitting there on the branches, flicking its tongue looking evil.   That’s just all there is to it.  Snakes look evil.  I don’t know why.  I almost stepped on an alligator when I was 8 and didn’t make nearly as much of a ruckus as I did today running away screaming from a snake as if it was going to leap out of the tree and fly after me.    No, there’s nothing logical about it.  It’s all primal gut instinct.  Which is why I’m going to make my wife empty the filters tomorrow.  That way, if she does scream like a girl, at least she’ll have an excuse. Posted May 28 2008, 12:20 PM by superdad with 1 comment(s) Filed under: daddy issues, pool, wildlife [Edit Tags]

• Definitely not a 9 volt

  My two year old son, Asher has just recently taken an interest in potty training.  And by interest, I mean that he likes to flush the toilet and hand me toilet paper.  This is, in fact, a very important step according to our baby book.  That’s all well and good, I just wish he would wait until I’m finished to flush.  There’s something about a mid-flush that is very disconcerting.  So, to move him on to that next level, we have been trying to encourage him to sit on the potty and try to get some pee pee to come out.  This would probably have been more successful were it not for an incident we had a few weeks ago.  Asher and his sister were taking a bath together when Asher stood up and started urinating into the tub water.  A lot of screaming ensued.  My wife snatched him out of the tub and I tried to get Audra to get out of the tub immediately!  But she didn’t seem as concerned as I did, so it took some conjoling. Anyway, my wife, Sarah took Asher completely naked, cold, and dripping wet and put him on our adult toilet.  He was sliding around, screaming and, in my mind, understandably freaked out.  That couldn’t be a good sensation.  Needless to say, his body automatically went into lock down mode and no more pee came out.  Eventually, we just rinsed everyone off, gave up on bathing our children for the day and dedicated an excessive amount of scrubbing bubbles to the bathtub. Well, this instance clearly scarred Asher somewhat, because from then on whenever I would say to him, “Do you want to try to sit on the potty?”  He would just turn to me and say matter of factly, “No.  I don’t like the potty.”  This was a hard argument to work against.  Dr. Brazelton has taught us all that we’re not supposed to force our kids into potty training, it’s supposed to come in its own time.  Or not. Weeks went by with no interest and then finally, Dr. Brazelton proved himself right.   Our son would not be the only 8 year old wearing depends on the soccer field.  I asked him, for the umpteenth time whether he would like to be a big boy and sit on the potty and he said ok.  So we went in there and got him up on the potty and he started grunting.  And we talked about how you don’t have to grunt to go pee, and that he should just relax, blah blah, blah. He tried for a couple of minutes and then, giving up, said.  “It not working… It needs batteries.” I stared at him for several moments wondering whether he meant the toilet or himself.  And as he hopped off and his little white bottom waddles away, I thought, and if so… where do I put them? Posted May 22 2008, 09:22 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: daddy issues [Edit Tags]

• Organic, my fanny

  I was in Target yesterday (I swear, if most of my posts don’t start off with those 4 words it will be a miracle.)  I was waiting on a prescription for my daughter, Audra, who the doctor assured us had an ear infection. I say it like that, because our daughter has become the “girl who cried ear infection.”  We went through a period of about 6 months where every day or so she would tell us that her ear hurt.  Normally she would do this when she wanted something, like to get out of bed or to sit on mommy’s lap in the middle of dinner, or, to say, eat candy.  I was never quite sure why having an ear infection would require that you get candy, but it all made sense in Audra’s mind.   Needless to say, we’ve been to the doctor more than once only to be told that our daughter doesn’t have an ear infection, but is merely conniving and a bit of a drama queen.  I don’t remember if that was the exact diagnosis, but it’s close enough.   Anyway, after Audra added a 103 degree temperature to her complaints about her ear, I decided to go to the doctor.  And sure enough she had an ear infection.  So, here I was at Target and I needed to kill 30 minutes while the pharmacist figured out how to pour 3 ounces of amoxypennithricasopinkluiop, or some such latin named magic juice, into a little red bottle.  Clearly a task requiring half an hour.  Of course, who am I to talk, sometimes it takes me that long to find a single pair of matching socks for my son. So, I had a half hour.  What I didn’t need to do was wander around Target and randomly buy things I don’t need.  What I did need to do was feed the kids lunch, so I did something I have never done before.  I went over to the Target snack counter and ordered lunch at the Target Archer’s Farms Pizza Hut Starbucks Deli Counter.     When I was a kid growing up in Beaufort, South Carolina, every once in a while my mom would take me to have lunch at the little cafeteria in the K-mart.  I actually have very fond memories of this.  We would get little trays that had different compartments on them and I could choose two southern fried vegetables (which don’t really count as vegetables) to go with my chicken fried steak. In retrospect, I’m sure the food was terrible, but to a four year old, it seemed pretty cool.  I mean, we were eating in the same place we bought toilet paper.  That’s awesome!  I can only hope that my kids have similarly positive memories of this meal, because it will almost certainly be the last time they ever eat at Target.     I read off the kids meal options to my munchkins: hot dog, chicken nuggets, or organic macaroni and cheese… Organic macaroni and cheese?   What does that even mean?  I get organic carrots.  That means nobody sprayed pesticides on them when they were growing.  Ok, that seems like a good idea.  I don’t really care all that much, but it seems like a good idea.  But how do you make processed food organic?  Can you have an organic cheeto?  An organic snickers bar?  Swedish fish?  When you’re eating something where you can’t even identify all of the ingredients, I have difficulty seeing where the organic part comes in. Anyway, my kids both proclaimed that “organic macaroni and cheese” was precisely what they wanted for lunch.  So I ordered some up and watched as the “cook” took this big fluorescent yellow sausage looking thing out of the freezer and dropped it like a rock into the microwave.  2 minutes and 30 seconds later, I had a bowl of some toxic rubbery substance plopped down in front of my kids.  It was truly a color that doesn’t occur in nature, but that, I suspect, regularly occurs in nuclear power plants.  I am at a total loss for words to express how not organic this meal looked.  It made that orange powdered Kraft macaroni look like it had been prepared by Julia Child. It just looked so unnatural, which leads me to my confusion about the organic label.  Did they use organic fluorescent orange food dye?  Organic chemically processed cheese substitute?  As far as I’m concerned, you could feed the cows heroin and DDT and I’d still rather eat the cheddar cheese they produced over this unholy concoction.  But I will say this, earache or not, my daughter had the common sense to not eat it.  She did eat a cookie monster blue go-gurt, but you can’t have everything.  I’m just glad that she won’t be the girl who cried “organic macaroni and cheese,” unless of course, it’s at the doctor’s office. Posted May 18 2008, 09:17 AM by superdad with 2 comment(s) Filed under: daddy issues [Edit Tags]

• Holy Sheep!

  Sarah was out of town and I was cruising around for something to do with the kids and I came across the sheep and wool festival up in Howard County, Maryland.  This seemed like a good idea, right?  There would be sheep shearing and sheep dog trials, and if I was lucky, some kettle corn.  I do love me some kettle corn. So I loaded up the battle van and headed up to Howard County.  I was driving along a little country road when all of a sudden I got caught up in traffic.  I was trying to figure out what in the world was going on when I noticed that the car in front of me was a green forester with a “family is a choice” bumper sticker and the car beside me was a Subaru outback with a rainbow air freshener and a “where there’s a wool, there’s a way” sticker and I thought, “holy crap!  This is the line for the sheep and wool fest!” And heavens to murgatroid, it was. There must have been (and I am truly trying not to exaggerate) tens of thousands of people there.  It took me 30 minutes to get in and get to a parking space, although, to be fair, this was largely due to one of the world’s more unskilled boy scout troops directing traffic.  I assume no one got their orange cone flashlight shaped merit badge that day. I kept thinking to myself that this was nuts!  What were all these people doing here, didn’t they know it was a festival for sheep?   Now in the sake of honesty, I have to confess something:  I knit.  I know, I know, my manhood quotient just dropped another few points in most of your minds.  I’m sure that for some of you I’m in negative numbers by now.  I have made lovely sweaters for my wife, mother and kids.  I know that this deeply impresses some of you and mortifies others.  Welcome to my world. Anyway, I loaded up my two oldest, Audra and Asher, in the double stroller (a phil and teds – love it) and strapped Micah to my chest in the bjorn (which I always pronounce “Buh-Jorn,” just because).  I’m sure I looked ridiculous.  If I actually bought some nice cashmere-merino wool like I wanted to, I suspected my testicles would fully rescind into my body cavity under the sheer force of my lack of manliness.  I was definitely going to have to drink a beer tonight just to get some testosterone back.  Maybe straight out of the can. We started off past a line 20 deep to use a porta-potty and tried to force ourselves into one of the exhibit halls with a million other people.  I was glad the festival prohibited dogs, because otherwise I probably would have been stupid enough to bring our Golden Retriever, Minnie, as well.  I’m just that dumb. I walked past a line of about 100 people waiting to buy festival t-shirts, and headed toward the sheep shearing, but never made it due to an endless parade of people blocking the entrance to just about everything.  It was like Disney World with hoof and mouth. Eventually I just gave up.  The kids were hot and cranky and I wasn’t too far behind.  The lines for Lamb kebobs (doesn’t that seem a little tacky?  Sort of like a Louisville slugger sale at a Nancy Kerrigan ice capade) were way too long and I wasn’t sure that was what I really wanted for lunch anyhow.  Eventually I admitted defeat and headed back to the car.  We didn’t get to see the sheep dogs, or check out any new spinning techniques.  I left feeling like a bit of a failure, but also like a survivor, sort of what I suspect the fourth place finisher on American Idol feels like.  Never even got my kettle corn. But still, I’ll probably go next year.  Maybe I’ll aim to get there a little earlier, but I’ll go.  It’s hard to resist the pull of high-end knitting needles, sheep with curly horns and kettle corn.  Did I mention that I love Kettle corn? Posted May 12 2008, 09:13 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: daddy issues [Edit Tags]