December 2008 - Posts

• The Reason for the Season, Putting the Christ in Christmas and Other Thoughts on Trite Catchphrases

  Christmas is coming. I don’t know if you heard. In some ways Christmas is a complicated holiday for those of us who are Christians.  It is difficult to embrace and celebrate both the religious and cultural aspects of the holiday without giving short shrift to one or the other. Growing up in conservative East Tennessee, one of my best friends was Muslim (actually a secret Muslim – just like Obama – you didn’t really want to be out as a Muslim in East Tennessee during the first Gulf war.  She was also Iraqi, but I think she told people she was from Argentina or something.  We were all pretty stupid.)  Anyway, I remember asking her, one year, whether her family celebrated Christmas (I mean, how could you not?)  She joked that her family just celebrated “the commercial part of Christmas.”  I always thought that this was wonderfully honest, but it does of course beg the question of how many of us who celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, in actuality, end up only celebrating the “commercial part of Christmas.” As a child I have strong memories of thinking about how the holiday was all about the birth of Jesus and how wonderful that was, and at the same time thinking “Aright, now where are the presents?” Santa Claus probably doesn’t help.  I love the idea of Santa Claus and have told my kids all about him, but I’m not sure that an old guy living in the winter tundra cobbling toys together with his army of semi-human slaves and then traveling around the world in an 18th century mode of magical transportation really helps to clarify the holiday season. I was listening to a Christian radio program once when a lady called in and said that to help her own kids remember the “reason for the season,” she told them that, yes, Santa made the toys, but that Jesus was really the one deciding who was naughty and nice and who would receive the toys.  Santa was really just a low-cost UPS service for the savior of the world’s meritocratic gift giving program. You want to talk about some kids who are going to need therapy later in life. I struggle with all of this, because I think that in many ways the commercial aspect of Christmas is wonderful.   I love Christmas morning and watching the kids run downstairs to see their toys and I certainly have treasured memories of those moments from my own childhood.  I absolutely do not subscribe to the “pitch the baby out with the bathwater” mentality of some people who have become rightfully frustrated with the tone Christmas has taken in recent years / decades. My pastor gave a wonderful sermon last week about the over-commercialization of Christmas and how it has become not just a time for over indulgence, but that more often than not, people go into debt to buy buy buy all the gifts that they give, often out of a sense of obligation instead of desire. It was a well thought out and beautifully made point, but I have to admit that while I was sincerely nodding my head and saying, “yes, that’s absolutely true.”  I was also mentally thinking, “Ok, I need to get one more gift for Sarah, something else small for Audra and then I need to plan Christmas dinner and……” And that is what I worry about.  In our American desire to make everything perfect and to recreate this elusive Norman Rockwell holiday that is all stuck in our minds, we spend months planning and spending and worrying all for a few hour payoff on the morning of the 25th that, more often than not, leaves us feeling a little empty afterward. There is so much to do to take care of the “stuff” of Christmas that no matter how hard I try to focus on the “reason” for Christmas I find it almost impossible.  This is the insidious duality of the holiday.  Both parts of Christmas (the religious and the gift giving) are inherently good.  But one takes a lot more time, is a lot more fun, and tends to, as they say in the theater world, draw focus. So every year, I try to focus on the meaning of Christmas while simultaneously spending all my time and energy focusing on the event of Christmas and I never quite succeed, but I seem lured on by the belief that I could. I’m not entirely sure what to do about this.  My pastor, a practical man, suggested that in an effort to balance the two, we each decide to buy one less gift, or return one that we have already purchased, and instead give a donation to a charity. If you are inclined to do this, two wonderful charities that very much reflect the Christmas season are: The Heifer Project which gives animals to poor families and teaches them how to use an animal such as a cow or a chicken to provide long term food and financial stability.  www.heifer.org Kiva is an extraordinary program where you personally make micro loans to families around the world.  Each person requesting a loan tells you what they need the money for and when they expect to pay it back.  You sort through the thousands of people until you find someone you want to support.  For instance, Mario wants $350 to purchase wood for his carpentry business (you can give all $350 or just a portion).  He plans to repay that in 7 months.  You can also look and see that Mario has never been delinquent or defaulted on his loan.  There are pictures and descriptions of Mario and the work he is doing.  After 7 months, the money you have given will be paid back and you can choose to cash out, or to support someone else.  It is a simple, straightforward, inexpensive way to change someone’s life.  www.kiva.org Charitable giving is, obviously, a great way to focus a little more on the point of Christmas, but for me (who has a problem with guilt) sometimes it feels like this is little more than a guilt trade off.  “Ok, God.  I know I’m focusing too much on the whole “target / toysrus” part of Christmas, so I tell you what.  How about I give $50 to some poor people and we call it square?” I think God is pleased when we help out the poor, but I suspect he still wants us to be focusing on the true meaning of Christmas and not just the true value.  So what can I say?  I’m going to keep trying.  I am a deeply flawed person but, on the upside, I at least recognize that about myself.  It’s easy to forget on Christmas morning while surrounded by lights and sweet smells, and piles of packages and the remnants of some old bearded guy who just broke into your house without setting off the alarm, that the real reason for this wacky American holiday is this: That 2,000 years ago, God decided to help us poor ignorant sods out.  And to do that he made the tremendous sacrifice of allowing his son to come to earth in the most humble of ways – to be born to a young, average family so overwhelmed by their circumstances that they ended up sleeping in and delivering their baby in a barn surrounded by animals.  And that this tiny baby, this innocent child,  would one day grow up to change the world. Christians, often deservedly, get a bad rap.  The actions of Christians over history and in the present has not always been admirable - in fact it has often been deplorable.  But when you look at the life and the words of Jesus and what he has called us to do, there is nothing but goodness in that.  And on this bizarrely wonderful holiday that we have cobbled together from Christian tradition, pagan ritual and commercial greed, it is important to remember that it all comes about because of the birth and life of God’s son.  And while we are all surrounded by wrapping paper and pretending to be pleased with the salad shooter we have just received from Aunt Agnes, it is more than important to remember that.  It is imperative that we take time to remember and worship and thank God, for the extraordinary gift that he so willingly gave to us. Note:  I’ll be taking a week or two off from blogging to enjoy the holiday and try to be as good a person as I’m always telling other people to be.  Have a wonderful holiday and I’ll see you again in 2009.  Posted Dec 23 2008, 06:09 AM by superdad with 1 comment(s) Filed under: charity, christmas [Edit Tags]

• I M SO NT KOOL

  I am not cool. Let’s just get that out there up front.  But I try.  And for whatever it’s worth, compared to my High School Days, I am exceedingly cool.  Hip even.  Of course in high school I wore a pair of royal blue linen pants, and sweaters with little pins of animals on the left breast.  So, it didn’t take much to improve from there.  But I’m pretty cool now.  I mean, I write a blog.  It doesn’t get any hipper than that does it? (or is that dorky now?  I can’t remember)  Anyway, I try to stay down with all of the new hip things happening in the world.  I read the Washington Post AND Entertainment Weekly.  I listen to NPR  (oh wait.  That probably is one of the non-cool things isn’t it?)  I even have CDs by singers who are on the MTV  (of course, I have them on CD which probably instantly makes me uncool, but I do listen to them on my Ipod which makes me cool.  Although my ipod is about 4 years old with a black and white screen which probably puts me in the uncool category again.  Shoot.) Anyway, I tell you all this, because my once semi-secure grasp on coolness seems to be quickly fading away.  Now, I never expected to be as cool as my hip friends who live on Capitol hill and are always whipping out their iphones to search for the closest Norwegian lutefisk bar, but I have a blackberry and that’s, you know, pretty cool  - for the late 90s. One of my best group of friends are these 4 moms I met through my daughter’s preschool.  We range in age from 25 – 45 which creates some occasionally interesting revelations (You went to a Rick Astley concert? ……… Whose Rick Astley?)  Well, one day we were all picking on the young’n of the group because she had a facebook page. Really a facebook page?  Come on.  What are you, 17?  Do you want me to buy you some pants with the word Juicy on the butt so you can text me about them later?  (OMG D PANTZ R D BOM!) Ha ha!  Young people are funny with their texting and their facebooking aren’t they? (PS: I text.  That makes me young and cool) Well, a few weeks later I turn on my computer and my inbox is flooded with a series of emails from all these people I don’t know asking to “friend” my wife, or write things “on her wall.”  Or “comment on her status.”  And other nonsensical stuff taken from a demented Dr. Seuss book. Apparently, behind my back, my wife got a facebook page.  And now she has like 50 friends, half of whom I don’t know and the other half are my friends who have just “friended” her (how is that a verb?) because I don’t have a page. For about two weeks I became a facebook widow.  Every night she would stay up till 2am friending people and writing on walls and uploading pictures and writing in grammatically questionable sentences: SARAH IS: wishing that Friday was here. Well, that’s all fine and good.  My wife is a smart woman.  She works in a big fancy office downtown and she has hip glasses.  If she wants to have a facebook page who am I to complain.  She is younger than me after all. However, a couple of weeks ago, my wife says, quite casually, “So I was chatting with my mom on facebook.” “Your mom has a facebook page!?!” Sarah’s mom is a lovely person, but she lives on a farm in upstate New York and makes her own jam.  How in the world does she have a facebook page and I don’t?  It gets worse.  Not only is Sarah’s mom on facebook, so are both of her aunts.  One is in a retirement village in Florida.  The other is in Moldova - a country that may not have electricity.  I have been technologically surpassed by a group of people who grew up in a one room school house that had an outhouse out back.  How is this possible? But the final blow came last night. My parents drove in from Kentucky yesterday for the Christmas holidays.  Now, my parents are lovely, intelligent people and my dad is even somewhat technologically savvy, but hip they are not.  My dad plays the accordion and tells long meandering jokes about the Pythagorean Theorem.  My mom still writes checks at the grocery store and runs a quilt museum. Now there’s nothing wrong with that.  Those are very age appropriate things for them to do. They are grandparents after all.  They’re 65.  That’s only 5 years away from buying a Lincoln continental, driving 20mph on the highway with their left blinker on and saying things like “dagnabbit.”  There’s nothing wrong with any of it.  But it doesn’t make them hip.  So, last night, while we’re all sitting around the living room listening to Christmas music and watching the fire pop, I look over and my dad is tapping away at a cell phone. “Is that a new phone Dad?” He hands it over to me.  It’s an iphone. AN IPHONE! I turn to my mom, “I can’t believe Dad has an iphone!” My mom just casually says, “oh, I have one too.” I look around the room.  Somehow, I am, by far, the lamest, most un-hip, uncoolest person in the room.  How did this happen?  I’m sure the animal pins didn’t help, but come on!  I wrote a blog and I own music by people with apostrophes in their names and I even watched half an episode of MTV Cribs once.  Does that count for nothing? How did this happen that my kids’ grandparents are all hipper than I am? We’re going to go home to our parents for the holidays one year and they’re all going to be sitting around in Rocawear and Manolo Blahniks listening to Beck albums and talking about what is and what isn’t technically Emo music. And I’ll just be sitting around wearing my Sears brand jeans watching 60 minutes and saying things like, “hoo boy!  That Andy Rooney’s still got it!” I need an injection of something from Ambercrombie and Fitch STAT! Oh well, I’m still ahead of my kids who like to dance around to Bob the Builder songs, although they do probably dress better than I do (except for Micah who has to wear overalls because he has no waist). You know, I expected to be passed on by my kids and the younger generation.  That’s how life is supposed to work.  The world changes and younger, hipper people leave you behind. I just didn’t think that people who were born during the Roosevelt administration would be making me feel so old and pathetic.  Oh well, I can always text myself U R LM How true. Posted Dec 22 2008, 06:07 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: parents, Better off Dad, pop culture, christmas, hip [Edit Tags]

• Santa Claus Is Coming To Town

  So last week we were sitting around the table and Audra started talking about the card / wish list she had written to Santa Claus in school.  She said that it was very important that we go see Santa in person so that she could hand it to him.  Apparently, even at age 6, she understands that you don’t want to trust your most important items to the US postal service. During this conversation, Jessie, (one of the college students living with us) says, “you know, I don’t think I never believed in Santa Claus.” I shot Jessie a “shut the heck up” look across the table and said.  “Jessie!  Ixnay on the antasay!”  He looked at me blankly and gesturing at the kids said “they still believe in Santa?” “Yes!” I hissed through my teeth.  “My 6 year old, 3 year old and 1 year old do!” Luckily, Jessie’s got a deep mumbly voice and Audra never actually stops talking at the dinner table, so no one heard our conversation, but it was close.  This would have been particularly damaging since my waif of a daughter regularly refers to the 19 year old Jessie as her brother.  It’s all the more damaging when you find out the truth from your brother. Last night we went to visit Santa so Audra could give him her card.  And because we’re incredibly smart and attractive individuals we did NOT choose to go to the mall and stand in line with 5,000 whiny children with Christmas bows plastered to their head, all for the opportunity to pay $24.95 for one 5x7 photo and two wallets. No, we went to Austin Grill which Santa was visiting from 6-8pm and where kids meals were free with adult purchase.  It was an excellent choice.  Santa was there by the front door entertaining the kids while we waited for our table.  We took photos with Santa with all three kids (for nothing) and when Audra gave Santa her list / card he looked so pleased and told her he would put it on the mantle for he and Mrs. Claus to enjoy.  Audra was thrilled. And he was a bonafide Santa too.  He had a real beard, some mistletoe hotglued to his cap and he even told the kids the true history of the candy cane.  How many non-Santas would know that?  (It had something to do with bratty kids in some German choir.  So the choir director got the candy man to make hook shaped candy so the kids wouldn’t drop them – or something.  I may have spaced a little bit). And then we had Mexican food.  My wife, who is not a big fan of malls or lines, was so happy with the whole event that she proposed that we make it an annual event.  Now, I don’t know what it says that we’re talking about making this Tex-mex Christmas an annual tradition, but it’s hard to beat Santa, Chips and salsa and free kids meals. Anyway, after dinner, Sarah took the kids home to put them to bed and Jessie and I went out to do a little Christmas shopping.  I am mostly done, but had to pick up a few minor things (and I had to use my 30% off Borders coupon!).  So while I was picking out a western for Sarah’s grandfather and getting some gift cards for the teacher and bus driver, Jessie wandered off.  He came back a few minutes later with a Hannah Montana poster for Audra.  He remembered seeing Audra oohing and aahing over it a few weeks ago. Jessie, who is a part-time, temporary, holiday worker at UPS took some of his tip money and used it to buy a present for my daughter.  Not only that, but he bought her the perfect gift – one that she would dearly love, but that her father would never buy her because it is so unbelievably tacky. But you know what?  That’s what big brothers do.  They help their little sisters subvert their parents’ wishes.  And you know what else? I don’t care what Jessie says, I’m pretty sure there really is a Santa Claus after all.  He just happens to be a tender hearted young man from Mississippi. Posted Dec 19 2008, 06:02 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Audra, Better off Dad, santa, jessie [Edit Tags]

• What the

  Have you ever been sitting around and had the thought “What in the world are people thinking?” I have.  It occurs to me quite a bit.  In general, you can’t know for sure what people are thinking, you just get hints of it through their actions.  For instance, last Christmas everyone was thinking “I want a Wii.”  This Christmas however, based on crowds in the mall, it seems like everyone’s thinking “I want to be able to have food in January.”  But for most of history it has been all but impossible to tell what is ricocheting around the national Zeitgeist. Until now. My wife came across something that smarter people probably figured out a long time ago, but for us simple folk is still rather fascinating.  If you go to google and begin typing in a search query, you’ve probably noticed that google starts offering you suggestions underneath your query. For instance, if you type in “What is the cap….”  Before you can even type another letter, google has already provided you with a list of options.  The first being:  “What is the Capital of California.”  The 4th being: “What is the Capital of Mexico.  And the 10th being “What is the captain of a Curling foursome called” Uh, what? And that’s where you get the sneak peek into the National thinking.  Apparently lots and lots of people need to know the capital of California, but the tenth largest group of people have all the states and nations capitals down, but just can’t keep their obscure winter sport hierarchical titles straight. What makes this so intriguing is that this list of suggestions is based on whatever the top 10 searches for that letter sequence are for that day.  So if you check day to day, the suggestions will change based on what America is searching for.  So, if today you type in “ger,” your suggestions come up “germany,” “gerber” etc.  But if Oprah has author Gerald Durrel on her show tomorrow, then you can bet, that’s going to be in the top searches. So I invite you to explore with me, through a little google Psychology, what is going on in out nation and world today.  I have discovered that the most interesting results come from the most open ended searches.  For instance the first two suggestions for  “How do…”  are How do you know if a guy likes you How do you know if your pregnant Seems to me like they might be somewhat related.  As in, you discovered that the guy did like you and then you had to hurry back to the computer for the second search. “What are” returns the following list: What are stem cells What are hot dogs made of What are cookies The first two answers being completely legitimate questions and the third one being asked by the large number of brain damaged google users who have never come across those peculiar round things with the black spots. Similarly, a search for “What do” provides: What does my name mean What does the secretary of state do What do my dreams mean What do I want for Christmas Very interesting.  The first one seems legitimate.  The 2nd one is clearly being done by Hillary Clinton’s staff and the 4th one is done by the same people confused by cookies who are desperately hoping the magic glowing box can tell them their hearts truest desires. And you can learn a lot about your fellow travelers on this planet.  For instance, when I typed in “Who is” I learned that most of them watch “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” because 4 of the top 5 suggestions were various spellings of “who is Big Poppa,”  which appears to have something to do with the show, although I have no idea what. Number 9 on the search was the rather deep “who is God” and the cookie collective was back with #10 “Who is Barack Obama.”  (My goodness, everyone keeps talking about these cookie things and This Barack Obama guy, what is going on!) The search simply for the word “Why” reveals this list: Why so serious Why is the sky blue Why did I get married All excellent questions.  I’m not sure the computer is the best place to get to the bottom of the third response, but my guess is because you didn’t know the answer to “how do I know if I’m pregnant.” “where” provides you Where the wild things are Where was Obama born Where the hell is Matt Matt, you got some ‘splaining to do! I will not list the responses for “can you” but if you wonder why the nation’s teen pregnancy rate is so high, this will provide you the answer:  teens appear to be very stupid. Also, I can’t post the results, but if you want to understand why men and women are so different, it appears to have something to do with the fact that we know nothing about each other.  Check out the lists for “What do women,”  “what do men”  “how do women” “How do men” and “why do women” and “why do men.”  It’s like the two genders never talk at all. And finally, this is one of my favorite lists.  Just a simple: Why do Why do cats purr Why do men have nipples Why do men cheat Why do we dream Why do we yawn Why do dogs eat grass Why do dogs eat poop All truly excellent questions.  Good job America. I encourage you to spend a little time getting to know the way the world thinks.  It may frighten you, but you’ll be better prepared to deal with the raving dunderheads that are driving beside you on the nations’ highways.  So, please, waste 15 minutes at work today googling and let me know if you find anything interesting. Oh, and if anyone does know what hot dogs are made of, please keep it to yourself.  That’s one I think I’m better off not knowing.  Posted Dec 18 2008, 06:55 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Better off Dad, google, computer [Edit Tags]

• All the News You May Have Missed

  As a world renowned blogger with readership that often runs in the low two-figures, I have a lot of responsibility.  One of those responsibilities is to collect important and interesting stories that you, gentle reader (oh, you’re so gentle.  That’s what I like about you!) may have overlooked. It’s understandable.  You’re busy.  Sure, you saw Bush get attacked by a couple of flying shoes (was it just me or did that sort of seem like some Friends episode where Rachel got really mad at Ross and…– throw shoe.  (duck)  Woosh!.  Throw second shoe.  (duck again)  Woosh.  “Oooooh, I hate you Ross!  You and you’re Stupid monkey!”) But it’s hard to keep up with everything you need to know, especially the stuff that is going to make you seem witty, well read and interesting at the water cooler.  And that’s what I’m hear to help you with today.  I have three news stories that will allow you to be the smartest most intriguing person in the office; although for those of you who work at the department of Interior, it probably won’t take that much. #1  Inbred NJ Racists Can’t Get Personalized Hitler Cake http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28269290/?gt1=43001 A couple of pasty skinned middle school dropouts from the part of NJ that is known for smelling slightly better than Wilmington are very upset because the local grocery store would not make them a cake that said “Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler Campbell.” Yes, the non-shampoo owning Campbell family which appears to be made up of that creepy skinny kid who always hung out behind the high school dumpster and Meryl Streep in one of her ugly roles named their child Adolf Hitler.  It was the logical choice for a family of meth addicts living in what I can only assume is the nicest trailer a job at White Castle can afford. "I think people need to take their heads out of the cloud they've been in and start focusing on the future and not on the past," said the greasy headed shop class reject defending the fact that he named his son after, perhaps,  the worst person to have ever  lived. Yes, because it would be foolish to live in the past and do something like name your kid after an historical figure. The family is clearly after attention.  Or possibly world domination, which is why they have named their subsequent litter:   (get ready for this) JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell.  (Oh, why do so few people name their daughters after the head of the S.S. and Concentration Camps?) The poor ShopRite bakery worker who is certainly not getting paid enough to put up with this crap said, that the family has called to make requests the last two years and had been denied.  Additionally,  their request to have a swastika decoration on the cake was rejected.  It is of course, hugely unfair to this family.  Must it always be the children who suffer with nameless cakes? The unfortunately virile father of this clan (Klan?) said that 12 children came to little Adolf’s party (I can only imagine what kind of games they played – pin the stache on Hitler?   Goose step relays?  And exactly what kind of gift do you bring to Lil’ Adolf on his birthday?  Poland?) and that several of them were of mixed race. “If we’re so racist, then why would I have them come into my home?”  he asked.  I don’t know.  Maybe so you could eat them? The story has a happy ending, though.  Little Adolph finally got his cake from (and I swear, you can’t make this stuff up)  “a Wal-mart in Pennsylvania.” Of course he did. # 2  Half of all Young Adults are Totally Messed Up http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28002991/?gt1=43001 Have you ever thought to yourself, “Man kids these days are so crazy!”  Well, you’re half right. In a recent study of wildly questionable accuracy it was determined that a full half of all 19-24 year olds have some kind of “psychiatric condition.” Now before you go out and purchase a taser just so you can walk past the apple store, let me reassure you.  First of all, this study was done by old people.  So all young kids seem crazy to them (Oy! The music you kids listen to.  It sounds like goat intestines being eaten by tortured cats!  Why would you be wanting to listen to this horrible music?  What is wrong with the Polka?)  Secondly, the people who did this are  college professors, so all they see are students who are hyped on coffee and nodoz, coming to class late, and bleary eyed and asking for extensions on their quantum physics homework. Thirdly, the interviews this study is based on were all completed in 2001 and 2002.  (Geez, can you think of any reason people would have been depressed back then?) The study also indicates that the largest percent of kids with “psychiatric conditions” are those with a “drug or alcohol abuse” problem.  Now, I in no way want to make light of alcohol abuse, but what exactly qualifies a 20 year old as abusing alcohol?  Drinking it?   It is illegal after all.  And if they are willing to break the law merely to drink alchohol, that seems like the sign of something pretty serious.  Underage college students drinking beer?  Absurd! However, after alcohol abuse, the second largest category of psychiatric conditions was “personality disorders.”  That seems pretty scary doesn’t it?  But the study defines personality disorders as: “obsessive, anti-social and paranoid behaviors.”  Honestly, I think that would include the entire art department at most schools.  They wear black.  They mope around the campus with earrings shoved in places that are not ears and they think the “man” is out to get them just because they wanted to do an exhibit of dog genitalia in the gallery and were turned down. I don’t know.  If you did this same survey, what percent of the Woodstock generation would have been considered to have had a “psychiatric condition?”  100%?  Make that 99.9999%, my parents were pretty straight arrows.  My mom really liked Eddie Fisher and my dad played the accordion in college.  I take that back, I’m almost sure my dad would have qualified, based on the accordion alone.  If that’s not anti-social behavior, I don’t know what is. So in short, you might want to be wary of 22 year olds, (I have seen “The Real Life”) but you might also want to be wary of College Professors.  They think you’re crazy. #3 – Supreme Court Overturns Bush V. Gore http://www.theonion.com/content/news/supreme_court_overturns_bush_v Ok, it’s from the Onion.  But it still cracked me up.  Oh the irony. It made me laugh and sort of cry all at the same time.  Of course, you know what that means? I have a Psychiatric Condition.  But then again, so does 50% of the Supreme Court.   Posted Dec 17 2008, 07:51 AM by superdad with 1 comment(s) Filed under: news, Better off Dad, stupidity [Edit Tags]

• Sin-it Seat

  Well, it’s been an interesting week or two in politics hasn’t it?  It must be such a relief for Jay Leno and Jon Stewart.  I can only imagine that they each sat around on November 4th with a bottle of Jim Beam wondering what in the world they were going to joke about now that the election was over.  And with Obama’s notoriously even personality and annoying habit of pronouncing words correctly, it looked like a long few years of boring competence in Washington. But then Rod Blagojevich came riding in on a white hog.  As the future patron saint of political comedians, Blagojevich has single handedly saved the country from monologues filled solely with Britney Spears jokes.  It is hard to believe that one man could be so stupid, but apparently that is a quality Illinoisans look for in their leaders.  Having blown the honesty wad early on Abraham Lincoln, they are now evening things out with a series of corrupt governors.  This article, which was written back when Blagojevich was still, merely, an unpopular governor and not, in fact, a criminal one, notes that half of Illinois’ Governors in the last 50 years have been indicted. http://illinoisissues.uis.edu/features/2007jan/elect.html Wow!  That’s quite a record.  Do you know how hard that would be to accomplish in any other state? (Louisiana excepted)  But offering Obama’s Senate seat on ebay isn’t even the story that intrigues me the most right now. I’m more interested in Hillary Clinton’s seat. Being a Senator from New York comes with automatic cache.  You may be a freshman Senator without any seniority whatsoever, but the cameras are going to follow you around in ways that will never happen to, say, Senator Daniel Inouye. Who?  You may ask. Senator Inouye is the third longest serving senator in Washington.  He’s been a Senator from Hawaii since 1963 – 45 years.  And I’ve never even heard of him.  Nor can I pronounce his name.  Nor did I know that the Senate even had a Senator of Asian descent.  Heck, I’m not even sure I knew that Hawaii had senators.  And if forced to guess who they were, I think I would have gone with Don Ho and Magnum PI. So getting a plum job like NY Senator, especially without having to run a campaign that would probably top out at $100 million is pretty darn desirable.  And there are already some big names being thrown around.  Caroline Kennedy is an interesting possibility, although it seems odd that someone who has never been particularly active in politics is now seeking her uncle’s Senate seat.  Although perhaps it would be good to keep that seat available to individuals who are deserving primarily because of their family connections, (Ouch!  That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?) (I don’t know, seems pretty accurate to me) But once you get beyond the big names:  the Kennedys, the Cuomos and, heck, even the Clintons (crazy people are throwing Bill’s name around) the game gets a little more interesting.  If you drop down to that 2nd tier of candidates (or possibly third) you get some really interesting names.  For instance:  Fran Drescher -  The Nanny. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/12/09/drescher-senat/ That’s right.  Former TV star, and elocution antichrist Fran Drescher is interested in succeeding Hillary Clinton as New York’s Senator. I know on the surface it seems crazy, but let’s give it some thought.  First, she easily fills the residency requirement.  As we all know, she was working in a bridal shop in Flushing Queens.  And since leaving the lucrative world of film, after realizing that the world really only needs one TV character that sounds like that, she has become a spokesperson for women’s health issues and a State Department Public Envoy (heck that’s already more than Caroline Kennedy has done) So, I wholeheartedly support future Senator Drescher.  And to help out, I have written her a new theme song to help her campaign.  (I bet Caroline Kennedy doesn’t have a theme song) She was working on a TV show adored by Flushing’s Queens When the whole thing got cancelled from our TV screens What would happen now?  Would she just grow old, just like Tony BENNETT? So over the bridge from Flushing to the Gov’nor’s door. She said forget Andy Cuomo and that Kennedy…. uh…..  lady. She is crass! She has sass! Healthcare she’ll pass Let’s send her to… the SENATE! Who would have guessed that this mensch I’ve outlined, Could become the hottest Senator of all time!  (sorry Barbara Mikulski) Now New Yorkers find her beguiling (Go N-Y-C.!). and upstaters are actually smiling (they love TV!). She's the chick in hot pants when everybody else is wearing soo-oo-oots... The flashy girl from Flushing, Now a Senator to boot! Posted Dec 16 2008, 07:12 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Obama, Politics, Clinton, Better off Dad [Edit Tags]

• It's Cold. The Kids are Cranky. Let's Go See Some Plants!

  Yesterday, we were in the midst of that common winter dilemma (yes, yes, I know it’s technically still Fall – I don’t care, It’s cold) of trying to figure out what to do with a household of children.  It’s too cold to go outside (unless you live in Minnesota and you’re used to that kind of thing) but boy are you ready to get out of the house.  So I did some looking on the web and we headed down to the United States Botanic Gardens. I know, you’re thinking that, perhaps, children might not like going to a place that bills itself as a “fascinating plant museum.”  But, as usual, you would be wrong.  If you haven’t been to the gardens before, now is the time to trim back any hesitations and go.  The gardens are normally a fascinating place (some would say a fascinating plant museum), but it is especially attractive to kids right now.  The gardens are all indoors (except for the parts that are outdoors, but you don’t want to bother with that right now) and the rooms are divided into different habitats.  So there’s a desert area, an orchid room, a dinosaur era area, and a two story jungle habitat.  So, even on a normal day, it’s worth checking out.  But right now, you simply have to go.  I insist.  And if you come soon, before our economy completely collapses, it’s free! A few years ago, they hired some guy to make little buildings out of plants (I know, it sounds terrible, like something they would make for a little garden gnome village at that weird family owned theme park near your cousin’s house in central Pennsylvania).  But somehow he has created large 3 foot replicas of all of the major DC landmarks.  There is a massive capitol building, the Jefferson memorial with a giant gourd used as the dome, and just about every other monument and building you can think of.  The amazing thing is that they look too good to have been made simply from plants.  They are in the “you have to see it to believe it category.” But it doesn’t stop there!  No sirree! They have also put together a room they call a fantasy wonderland…. Or a land of wonder and fantasy… or Wonder at this Fantasy that happened on Land…. Or something like that.  Anyway, it is a whole room with a Santa’s village, storybook homes, a massive 15 foot high castle and this creepy Gremlin hollow area.  Everything is made out of plants and there are a dozen or so trains that all chug chug in and around the homes and scenes.  It is beautiful and amazingly intricate and, surprisingly, not nearly as tacky as you’d think. My son, Asher, managed to get himself in a foul mood on the way to the gardens.  One of those moods where he’s crying and saying he “doesn’t like plants” and “doesn’t want to get ice cream.  I hate ice cream,”  and other bald faced lies.  But as soon as we got in the land of wondering about fantasies, he was entranced.  He tried to play sullen for a while, but he couldn’t help himself and soon he was up out of the stroller and peering intently at the trains and Santa’s village etc. It really is worth taking your kids down to see if you can weed out the time in your schedule (Ha!  I kill me).  On one hand it’s a little hard to explain what a replica of the national archives made out of plants and model trains have to do with the holidays, but there were enough poinsettias around that it seemed to all make sense. What made this an especially nice trip is that the botanical gardens is right across the street from the Capitol, so after your journey through this museum “designed to collect, grow, and distribute plants that might contribute to the welfare of the American people” you can pop across the street to see the Capitol Christmas tree. This is a tall, skinny, beautifully decorated tree directly in front of the capitol.  I told my kids that it was a Norwegian Spruce and has become a traditional gift from the people of Norway to the people of the United States for our help during the 4th Peloponnesian War.  I’m not sure if this is 100% accurate, but I’m pretty sure I heard something like that on the radio. But it’s a nice tree and the capitol is an impressive building and you can see where they are constructing the stands for the inauguration and then you can stand around like a real Washingtonian and talk about what  a debacle it’s going to be to try to fit 250,000 people into this space and the other 4,750,000 on the mall.  Oh we are so erudite, us fake Washingtonians. So, now that I’ve planted the seed of inspiration, if you want to be a good dad like me, take your kids down to the US Botanic Garden.  I’m sure they’ll dig it!  I don’t know if they’ll thank you for it, but they’ll have a reasonably good time.  And what else can you ask for that’s free… and inside… and warm… and has something vaguely to do with the holidays…  and did I mention it was free?  Posted Dec 15 2008, 06:49 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Better off Dad, field trip, washington DC, gardens [Edit Tags]

• Oh Honey, You Don't Know What Mean Is

  A few days ago, Audra’s front tooth fell out.  And by fell out, I mean she pulled it, tugged it, wiggled it and sucked on it until she managed to work the bloody thing loose from her gums.  Ironically though, after all that effort, it ended up falling out on it’s own at about 5:00a.m.  I know this, because she came into our bedroom at 5:00a.m. wanting to know whether we thought the tooth fairy would still be able to make it that night. She would not. We explained that the tooth fairy worked 8 hour shifts from 8:00pm to 4:00am and because of the downturn in the economy, they were not allowing any overtime. But, the next night, the tooth fairy did come, and left Audra a shiny gold dollar coin with Andrew Jackson’s face on it.  Audra proudly carried this around with her all day.  And every day, the first thing she said when she walked in the door after school was “can we go somewhere to spend the money today?” My answer was always the same.  I always say “maybe,” because any parent worth their salt knows you never promise anything unless you’re already there.  Any number of things could happen between now and that theoretical trip to the store.  People could get sick.  Cars could break down.  Vomiting could occur.  Or you could just be too tired.  There’s no need to set yourself up for endless amounts of crying, whining, and refrains of “but, you promised!” if you don’t have to.  Never promise anything.  It’s one of the secrets of my parenting success. The other problem here is that there are very few places you can go and spend $1.00.  I knew we were going to the mall later, but what in the world could you get for a dollar at the mall?   I suppose you could get 2/3 of a bottle of soda, part of one sock, or possibly a single cigarette from the sketchy 7-11 across the street, b.  But at most places, a dollar gets you Bupkiss.  At Nordstrom’s  a dollar won’t even buy you bupkiss when it’s 70% off. So, anyway, later that night we were at the mall celebrating Felecia and Aloysius having finished up their semester of community college (barely – of the 9 classes they started off with, they only completed 4 of them -  but that’s a different blog).  It was late, the kids were getting wacky and it was time to go.  Audra was begging to go to a store and I told her we could go in one store but that I didn’t think they were likely to have anything for a dollar.  Long story short, we went in the store and she started climbing on some ride on toys.  I asked her to get off.  She didn’t.  So we left immediately.  There was lots of crying and sadness to follow. Anyway, that evening we were reading “Beezus and Ramona” while I put Audra to bed and the chapter was about how Ramona had refused to behave so she missed a party.  Near the end of the party, Ramona comes out of her room crying, saying she’s ready to be good now.  But it’s too late. Being a good father, I decided to make this a teachable moment.  I talked about how what happened at the toy store was just like what happened to Ramona and that if you do things the first time you are asked, then you don’t have to leave toy stores or miss parties. Some people might call this “rubbing it in,” but I prefer to go with the phrase “teachable moment.” Well, after that, Audra looked up at me and said coyly, “Jesus was the only person on the planet who was always good.” Pause. “Uh huh,” I said.  This wasn’t going to go anywhere good.  I could already tell. “Sometimes you’re mean,” she said. “Yep, sometimes you are too,” I shot back.  “Everyone is mean sometimes, sweetie.  When was I mean?” I know this wasn’t a great strategy – opening myself up to whatever feelings of ill will she’s been harboring, but I wanted to see where this was going.  “Well,” she began, as if she hadn’t been planning this for days, “There was that time you yelled at me at the computer?” “Was it because you had come up to me 20 times over a 5 minute period when I told you I needed to be working?” “No, it was when you yelled at me when I was touching the printer and I hadn’t said anything.” Dammit.  Ok, yeah, that was a time that I did snap at her.  She had been coming up and bugging me over and over again while I was trying to pay a bill online or write my blog, or watch a video of Tina Fey or something important and when she appeared at my elbow for, what I’m certain, was the 500th time, I snapped at her before she had a chance to ask if she could eat a cookie, or have a playdate or field dress an armadillo or whatever it was she wanted.  And of course, that was the one time she was just coming to get a piece of paper out of the printer to draw on.  At the time I apologized, but any smart kid knows you take the one moment you were in the right and hold on to it for future combat. After a fairly significant sigh, I said yes, she was right.  I had been mean, and I was sorry.  That everybody was mean sometimes and that we should all be working on not being mean as much as possible and blah, blah, blah. “Because Jesus was the only person who was never mean, right daddy?” “Yes,” I said, before turning off the light and saying good night.  What I thought, but didn’t say was: “Of course, Jesus didn’t have any kids.” Posted Dec 12 2008, 05:50 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Audra, Better off Dad, teeth [Edit Tags]

• Put a Spork in Me, I'm Done

  We went to KFC for dinner last week.  It’s not something that we do very often.  In fact, the last time I was actually inside a KFC eating a meal was probably in the 80s, but we needed to eat somewhere before Aloysius’ basketball game and my Mississippi teens were hankering for some fried chicken. In general, things have not changed much at the Kentucky Fried Chicken.  The chicken is still fried, they still use 11 herbs and spices, and the mashed potatoes still appear to be made from powder (God only knows what the gravy is made from).  Interesting side note on the 11 herbs and spices thing.  Apparently this is a big deal for KFC.  They only have one copy of the recipe and it is kept under lock and key and only two executives have access to it at one time and they are never allowed to travel in the same vehicle (sort of like the president and vice president…. but different.)  But recently they moved the recipe to a more secure location, next to the nuclear codes and Dick Cheney.  The hand written recipe had previously been kept in a locked file cabinet, but after someone read an article about Watergate, they immediately started developing a plan to put it in a safe, and 35 years later made that change.  It was all just as you might imagine.  It involved a man with a suitcase handcuffed to his wrist and the whole shebang.  Check it out:  http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=5758482 Well, that’s all very interesting (and a little silly) but what I was saying before we took that brief trip to tangent town is that KFC hasn’t changed all that much.  (sure, they now have those chicken bowls with mashed potatoes, chicken, corn and gravy all mixed together, but that’s just nasty and I don’t want to talk about it).  But there is one change that deeply disturbs me (more than their chicken bowls).  KFC no longer uses sporks. WHAAAA? I know!  That was my reaction too!  We sat down with our 12 piece original recipe meal with mashed potatoes, gravy, coleslaw and toxic looking macaroni and I started looking through the bag for the beloved sporks wrapped hygienically with that wafer thin napkin, and there was no fork to be found, only a cheap black fork that broke when I tried to stab some cloeslaw. “What the heck is this?”  I asked aloud, holding the chintzy fork aloft to my bewildered children who, with a touch of concern, quietly said, “It’s a fork daddy.” I immediately walked up to the counter and asked the nice geriatric pensioner working at KFC for minimum wage “So, what’s up with the sporks?” “Oh sweety,” she said, immediately understanding my concern, “We don’t have sporks any more.” No sporks? Why, a KFC without sporks is like Paris without the Eiffel Tower or Crystal Gayle without her hair, or Thanksgiving without butter (by the by, you want to know how many sticks of butter I used to make Thanksgiving dinner?  No seriously, take a guess.  Go on…….18.  That’s right, 4 ½ pounds of butter.  Thank you sweet potato casserole). I was horrified by this spork revelation.  As far as I’m concerned, sporks are the primary reason to go to KFC.  Without sporks, KFC is just one more chicken place.  It’s not like I’m real tied to the Kentucky aspect of the restaurant, or the fact that their founder looks like Scarlet O’Hara’s crazy uncle.   It’s the sporks! No one seems to know what has become of the sporks.  I was looking on the spork webpage… Yes, you read that correctly.  http://www.sonic.net/~ian/Spork/ You’ll be relieved to know that it is a very crappy web page, but it does have some very nice spork Haikus and a lovely spork song to the tune of “Brandy you’re a fine girl,”:  Sailor says Sporkie, you're a fine spoon,  But a good fork you'll never be But you're still my favorite utensil, under the sea My favorite spork Haiku is: food or philosophy, wielding our sporks with panache life itself is tined Hmm, deep. Anyway, the spork webpage had not gathered any info on what had caused KFC to move away from the beloved sporks.  Although some conspiracy theorist point their finger at Pepsico, noting that KFC moved away from sporks shortly after being acquired by the corporate giant.  I can’t say whether this is true or not, but I will say that it’s enough reason to switch to being an exclusive coke drinker. For those of you who are confused, this has basically turned into a rant without a point.  I’m just ticked off about the spork thing, but since we’re ranting about fast food, let’s shift our gaze over to McDonalds for a minute.  Now McDonalds is a beloved institution.  Without question they have the best fries and the best happy meal toys and they even had that movie made about them, but they’ve done something that disturbs me and I’m not talking about their seasonal eggnog shakes.  I’m talking about this: www.nuggnuts.com This is their new marketing campaign for chicken nuggets (did you know that McDs had chicken nuggets?  They’re ad campaign must be working!)  They have signs up referring to people who like mcnuggets as “nuggnuts.” Now, perhaps it’s just me, but does the word nuggnuts seem a little…. how to put this?  Unwholesome? I don’t exactly know what a nuggnut is, but it sounds an awful lot like something you would need to see a proctologist about.  “Hello sir, what seems to be the problem?” “Well, doc, I think I‘ve developed a bad case of nuggnuts.” If someone called me a nuggnut, I think I would respond by saying something unkind about their sister.  I don’t know, maybe I’m off in left field, but it just seems wrong.  In the same way that I don’t think they’re should be Whopper Whippers, or Frosty Freaking or Chili Dog Chompers, I think nuggnuts is inappropriate.  (Come to think of it, I’m not entirely sure I’m comfortable with the phrase “quarter pounder”) But for those of you without these concerns, nuggnuts,com offers some wonderful holiday gift shopping ideas.  They have a nuggnuts t-shirt and a mug that declares yourself, the “world’s greatest nuggnut.”  I think Christmas shopping for Grandpa can be wrapped up now. So, what to say about the debauchery of McDonalds and the downfall of the KFC?  I don’t know, it’s all so horrible, especially in these trying economic times.  I can only hope that the upstart, bohemian energy of the spork website fighting for spork equality can have more of an impact than the corporate gloss of nuggnuts.com.  Is it too much to say that the future of humanity rides on the outcome? Yes it is, but not by much. Posted Dec 11 2008, 06:21 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Better off Dad, pop culture, fast food, KFC [Edit Tags]

• Like Mother, Like Daughter...... or maybe not

  Parenting is such a unique adventure.  It manages to confirm or change so much of what you believed back when you were just a naive childless person. For instance, before kids, I would have said that the nurture / nature debate was weighted heavily in the nurture category.  Now that I have children, that no longer seems to be the case.   I mean where did these kids come from?  If I hadn’t been there I’d say that Sarah just picked them up off the street and brought them home.  None of them really look like us and they don’t seem to act much like us either. For instance, my wife was a big old tomboy as a child.  She refused to wear dresses.  She played basketball, soccer, t-ball and probably Jai-Lai.  She had her own rifle and earned money scoring trap at the local gun club. She had her hair cut in a short bob and as a child liked to pretend that she was a boy, and insisted that everyone call her Sam.  My daughter, on the other hand, wants to be a princess, ballerina or possibly cheerleader.  She loves going to church just so she can wear a dress and everyone can tell her how pretty she is.  In preschool, when she was asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she said “Rock Star Pony.” What does that even mean? As an observer of this relationship, it is amusing to watch Sarah’s confusion with her daughter’s choices in life, partly because I suspect they resemble her own mother’s confusion with her.  Sarah will literally stare at our daughter with a mixture of horror and bewilderment when our 6 year old, Audra, talks about wanting to wear make up and date boys and play the flute. The flute for crying out loud! A few nights ago we were sitting around the table at dinner and I made some joke about being King of the Castle (which I believe made my wife actually snort derisively).  Audra liked this idea and immediately started assigning jobs.  She decided that Sarah could be the queen, Asher could be a prince, and that the two male teenagers living with us could be guards.  She initially said that the one female teenager, Felecia, could be a princess, but then changed her mind and made her a maid.  She announced that she alone would be the princess.  I asked if she wanted to reconsider the princess thing since, to my knowledge, princesses were generally depressed, divorced and died in tunnels. Blank stare. I told her that maybe Felicia could be a duchess and that maybe the princess could just do the cleaning.  Audra was horrified.  “Princesses don’t clean!” she said.  (Oh brother) Taking the bait, I asked, well what do princesses do? “Oh you know,” she answered, smiling dreamily.  “Princesses just put on make up and look beautiful and wait for Princes to come rescue them.” I think Sarah literally started to break out into hives. Interestingly enough, the confusion with life choices can go both ways.  Last week, Sarah was wearing an old college soccer sweatshirt.  It’s a bulky, bland sweatshirt, designed primarily for warmth.  Audra asked Sarah what it was and Sarah smiled and replied that “this is an old sweatshirt from when I was in college.  I used to wear this all the time when Daddy and I went on dates.” This is true.  We were at a small liberal arts college in Jersey where jeans and sweatshirts were considered the height of fashion.  Our dates tended to consist of eating at Chili’s or going to the movies and I definitely have lots of memories of that sweatshirt.  And I have to say, she looked pretty hot in that bulky formless garment.  She also had this green flannel button-down that I still think about on cold lonely nights.   Mmmmm, flannel. Anyway, upon hearing the history of this now beaten up sweatshirt, Audra looked at Sarah, then she looked at the sweatshirt. “You wore that on dates?” she asked, skeptically. “That’s right,” said Sarah. Audra looked confused.  She looked at the sweatshirt again and said. “Didn’t you want to look nice when you went on dates?” Ouch. Yep, that’s our daughter.  The pink loving, purse carrying, dress wearing 6-year-old who would probably love nothing more than a tube of lipstick and a nice pair of thigh high boots for Christmas.  I don’t know where she came from, but in the same way that I just can’t get enough of my wife’s sweatshirt and jeans combo, my daughter’s long hair and lacey dresses seem just right for her.   And I suspect that everything will come back around twenty years from now, when my daughter gives birth to a little girl whose favorite color is black and who asks for a fire fighter costume for her birthday.   And I will enjoy accompanying them both to my granddaughter’s soccer games and watching my beautiful daughter try to figure out how to walk on turf in stilettos and how to coach slow pitch softball without chipping her nails. Because the thing I’ve learned the most is, no matter what you thought your kid might be like before they were born, you are happy to change everything to help them be who they are.   Sarah age 6                       Audra age 6                                                       Posted Dec 10 2008, 04:40 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Audra, mom, Better off Dad, Sarah, parenting [Edit Tags]

• Jen, I tell ya

  Developmentally, there is a time when kids begin to understand the differences between male and female.  On some level, kids understand these differences early on, but on another level it apparently takes a while for the details to fill in.  As a stay at home dad, my kids have gotten their fair share of all being squeezed into the handicapped stall at the Target.  And while a handicapped stall usually offers bars to swing on, toilet paper to unravel and a changing tables to open and close, none of this seems to be as exciting as watching Daddy go to the bathroom.  I don’t really mind, but it is a little weird.  I have gotten used to striking what I think of as a “defensive pose” and being on the guard for any children getting too close to the stream.  But no matter how often it happens, you never quite get used to the extreme level of investigation that your children seem to pursue in this arena.  And as normal as I tell myself all of this is, it’s still just kind of weird.  But I’ve at least had lots of practice getting used to it.  My wife on the other hand has not had to subject herself to quite as much examination. I said earlier that there comes a point where kids begin to understand the differences between the genders.  For our three-year-old, Asher, that point came yesterday.  My wife was using the restroom and my son, following our children’s usual approach to privacy just walked right in and began the somewhat rhetorical: “What are you doing?” I wasn’t there, but I’m sure my wife sighed, made a mental note to lock the door in the future, and said, “going to the bathroom.” But then it happened.  The revelation came.  My son looked down and said. “Mommy!  What kind of a penis is that?!?” More sighing, more stringent mental reminders to lock the door. “I don’t have a penis honey.  Girls don’t have penises.” “Yes, you do!  That’s how you go pee pee.” Unfortunately, this line of logic is fairly difficult to counteract.  So my wife decided to reiterate her point once more and then just let it go.  The truly odd thing is that I’m sure Asher has seen both my wife and I dozens of times before, and his sister more often than that.  I don’t know whether he’s just not that observant, just isn’t detail oriented, or just hadn’t ever put two and two together before. Regardless, as of yesterday, that border has been crossed.  My son now knows that men and women are different creatures.  And, honestly, I doubt that’s the last gender related revelation he’s going to have.  He still thinks tampons are pocket sized num-chucks.   So, while I can’t say that today my boy became a man, I can at least say that today he became “not a girl.” Posted Dec 04 2008, 06:06 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Asher, Better off Dad [Edit Tags]

• The Perfect Christmas Gift - For Children You Hate

  Audra came home with her Christmas wish list yesterday.  Apparently that’s what they’re doing in school nowadays, writing letters to Santa.  This is fine, except that my daughter is apparently greatly influenced by her peers.  For instance, she asked for a DS.  That’s a hand held computer game for those of you who don’t know.  The category of “those of you who don’t know” would also include my daughter who has never seen one before, and became extremely vague as soon as I asked her about it.  Apparently her best friend is getting a DS for Christmas and so Audra wants one too.  Her best friend also rides motor bikes in little kiddy dirt bike competitions, so I guess I should be grateful. This did get me thinking about the big holiday though.   Every day we get half a dozen catalogs that sit on the counter for a few days before I get around to a mass recycling.  I’ve been looking through them and you wouldn’t believe some of the great stuff they have out there for kids.  You also wouldn’t believe some of the absolute crap they’re selling.  So, to help you out, here is your holiday “don’t buy” list. First Category: Stuff Kids Don’t Want Some adults, especially that one weird old aunt that you’ve got who always wears sandals with socks and always brings a box of organic wheat germ tofu-cookies when she comes to visit, have a belief that toys should be natural, non-commercial and simple:  AKA – not fun.  These are the people that kids hate to get gifts from, because they always bring things like: The Green Tea “Pretend” Party Do you like to play “pretend” tea party?  Do you find the taste of plastic or china to be too realistic and smooth?   Do you enjoy pulling splinters out of your lips?  Then here is the perfect gift for you! This all wooden tea party includes a wooden tea pot, wooden tea cups, wooden tea bags, wooden sugar cubes and wooden cookies! Enjoy plunking a wooden tea bag and two wooden sugar cubes into your wooden cup.  What playful fun!  It even comes with wooden cherries, for reasons that aren’t even a little bit clear to me.  And if you accidentally choke on one of the wooden sugar cubes, you can gag yourself with a wooden spoon.       Block Play Families Is your kid always losing her Barbie’s clothes?  Do you have problems with limbs coming off or being bent in unnatural poses?  Are you annoyed by the fact that your kid’s dolls are attractive? Well fear not, the Block Play Family is here!  These plastic, non moving figurines were apparently painted by blind monkeys in Thailand.  Their uncomfortably thick eyebrows and fashions from the mid 80s should concern even the easiest to please child.  And don’t worry about needing to buy expensive playhouses or sports cars for these figurines.   They were designed to play on blocks.  Their awkward poses and immovable limbs were designed especially to stand on a piece of wood.  These figures come in black, Latino, white or Asian families!  Great for recreating classic sitcoms like the Cosby Show!  Family Ties!  The George Lopez Show!  And…. Uh….. Hmmm.  There’s that one Asian girl on ER I guess.  Or did she get killed off?  Uh…  nevermind.       And My favorite toy that kids don’t want? The Cardboard box! The “Home Sweet Cardboard Playhome” is the must have toy of the season!  This undecorated, vaguely perforated box is the perfect toy for children overwhelmed by colors, functionality and sturdiness.  This dishwasher sized box is so much better than a dishwasher box because it already has holes punched in it! For the low low price of $89.00 (no joke, land of nod, look it up: http://www.landofnod.com/family.aspx?c=9573&f=4856&q=3710481&fromLocation=Search&DIMID=400001&SearchPage=1) your child can live just like a hobo in this toy he or she must decorate themselves.  Ironically, this product can not be gift boxed, but you can just put a ribbon around it and no one will know the difference!           Our second category of toys are those that your child may want, but really, really shouldn’t.  Such as: Bug Bands No silly, this isn’t a group of plastic bugs that play instruments!  These are real bugs that have been killed, placed in a plastic box and attached to a leather rope so that your son or daughter (ok, lets be honest: son) can wear them as the creepiest most inappropriate bracelet ever! The set comes with a spider, hornet, ant and beetle!  One for every day of the month that your child doesn’t get beat up!  For the kid who’s not quite ready to start dissecting opossums they find on the side of the road, this is the perfect gateway gift to a lifetime of freakdom and social isolation.       Makeup and Hair Styling Doll Girls love makeup and these disturbing beheaded toys have been around for years, so what makes this one special?  It talks!  While your daughter (or wildly effeminate son) is  plastering rouge on Betty no-body, she will helpfully say things like “I feel like a princess!” Really?  Cause you look like a two-bit……  (side note, as I was writing this, my daughter came in, saw the picture and said “Oh Daddy can I have that?  Please!  I want it so badly!”)               There you go.  That’s my list. Of course, it’s just a partial list.  With any luck there will be lots more wonderful gifts I’ll discover in the coming weeks before the big day.  And if not, I can always just get everybody this: Because who doesn’t want a freaky doll strapped to their chest?  Mimicking your every move?  I swear I saw that in a horror movie. Speaking of horror movies.  The catalog says this creepy doll is available in “light skin” or “dark skin.” Are you kidding me?  Is it still 1957 and I didn’t get the memo?  Does the catalog also sell George Wallace doorstops?  Sheesh! Posted Dec 03 2008, 07:13 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Better off Dad, christmas, gifts [Edit Tags]

• The Thanks Part of Thanksgiving

  Thanksgiving was a little complicated this year.  My oven decided that Nov. 26 was a good day to stop working and the 24 pound turkey I had just would not fit in my 30 year old microwave. We had company coming in from out of town and a feast to prepare for 14 people My wife told me to treat the whole situation like an episode of Top Chef: “Your task is to prepare a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for 14.  You will have 5 children, three teenagers, and 6 adults.  One of the adults is vegetarian.  One of the teenagers refuses to eat vegetables.  You must prepare a meal that everyone will enjoy and   (here’s the twist) you can not use your oven.  Go!” So I carted the turkey out to a friend’s house, half an hour away, prepped it and threw it in the oven.  I used a mini wall oven for the sides (one at a time) and somehow managed to have it all arrive on the table vaguely warm and edible.  So all in all, the meal turned out great, but in the midst of the chaos (and dare I say, a little stress) we forgot to go around the table and tell what we were thankful for.  At the time I was just so happy to be sitting down and eating food, I’m not sure I could have come up with anything else.  But with a couple days of relative sanity behind me, I wanted to take some time to list some of the things that I am currently thankful for. • My wife My wife, Sarah, is wonderful.  She’s cute, funny, a great mom and, apparently, a right smart lawyer.  I have to take her word on the lawyering part, but the rest I can attest to first hand.  People sometimes refer to their spouse as their partner, and while it’s not the most romantic term, in many ways, for us,  it’s very true.  In the daily battles of life, she is the one who I depend on, the one who I know understands, the one who will always support me.  We work together, somewhat seamlessly, in the task of running this family.  And when all the chores are done for the day – when dinner is cooked, when the kids are put to bed and there’s finally a little peace in the house, she’s the one I get to snuggle on the couch with until a few minutes later when we both fall asleep.  I’m a pretty lucky guy. • My Kids Yeah, yeah, I know.  Everyone’s thankful for their kids, and health and blah blah blah.  But I do want to take at least half a second to give a shout out to my chillins.  (did you see how I used the phrase “shout out” correctly?  That’s because I am hip).  My kids are pretty awesome.  I don’t say that much, because I don’t want them to get a swelled head, and because it makes people with non-awesome kids feel bad.  But once a year, it’s worth throwing out there. Audra is cute and vivacious and full of so much personality we occasionally have to have it liposuctioned away.  She is constantly making up plays and songs and asking to take your order for some unknown restaurant.  She has imagination to spare and enough spunk to jump start a 747.  Our three-year-old, Asher, is about as funny a kid as ever pranced around a living room.  He alternates between sitting quietly and putting puzzles together and running around the grocery store shooting lasers (or something) at the elderly.  He thinks life is one long game, including things like putting his pants on.  The game, of course, being “can I wiggle and giggle so much that Dad can’t get my pants on.”  Asher makes me laugh ten times a day and only grit my teeth about half that much. Micah is only 1, but boy he’s going to be something else.  He has no interest in walking yet but he can crawl faster than either of his siblings.  He only has two or three words, but talks in full, completely indistinguishable, sentences.   He likes to be held, but, even more, he likes to get down so he can crawl to the top of the playset when I’m not looking.  You know those old cartoons where a baby gets loose and ends up crawling through a construction site while the dog that’s supposed to be watching him tries to stop him?  That’s Micah.  He’s the baby on the 41st floor crawling out on a steel beam as the crane lifts it into place.  The only problem is that, in this scenario, I’m the dog who inevitably gets crushed by the wheelbarrow of bricks. • Friends I know, everyone’s got friends (well, I do know this one guy….)   But I am truly blessed by some wonderful people who make me laugh, help me out and generally keep me sane.  I am rarely at a loss for someone to talk to, have lunch with or ask for help from.  I am very aware of how all my friends bless my life every day.  I know I don’t tell them thank you often enough, but hopefully I can just write a poorly worded paragraph in my blog and that will suffice. Ok, enough of the sappy stuff.  In no particular order, here are a dozen or more things that I am also really thankful for: • Dr. Pepper – You’re gonna feel fine drinking that sweet southern wine • My minivan – most 35 year old men are not thankful for their minivan, but I put between 500 and 800 miles a week on it and I am so ridiculously thankful for having a van than drives well, is comfortable, functional and has a sun roof.  It is truly the little things in life that keep me going (plus lots and lots of cupholders. • Chipotle – love me some chipotle • NPR – Did I mention that I was in the car a lot?  I probably listen to 20 hours of NPR a week (with some books on tape and an Ipod thrown in for good measure).  And while I’m still mad about the whole Bob Edwards debacle, Steve Inskeep is growing on me and there’s always Nina Totenberg (oh Nina, I could never be mad at you). •  Williams Sonoma’s Filled Pancake Pan – I have been looking for a special Christmas morning breakfast treat and boy have I just found it.  Willams Somona sells this pan that makes round pancakes that you can fill with stuff like apple butter or strawberries or chocolate.  It is fabulous and it’s one of my new favorite things (take that Oprah).  http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/c332/index.cfm?pkey=ccookware%2Dnew • An ice cold glass of sweet tea – I make a darn good pitcher of sweet tea and I am thankful for my ability to do that.  People who drink unsweetened tea are freaks. • Art – I really like things that have been made by hand (none of that lithograph crap either).  Paintings, pottery, woodwork.  I just love having things around that came out of someone’s imagination and were crafted by their skill.  We don’t have all that much but I love what we have and am always on the look out for more.  This is what makes me a horrible elitist. • Our new president – I can’t even tell you how thankful • Music – I’ve got over 500 cds and there’s only about 2 or 3 of them that I don’t like.  Music sustains me, energizes me and makes me feel young.  I would be hard pressed to live without it. • Rita’s gelati – Man!  This stuff is darn near perfect on a hot day. • Fall – I love living in a place where we have the change of seasons.  We have woods out our back door, and although, at the moment, I’m not that thankful for the 5 billion leaves in the yard, I love looking out and seeing the fall colors blanket the grass, the tall naked trees cutting silhouettes against the sky and the deer running through the woods scared s***less that someone’s about to shoot them. • My iphone – Ok, I don’t actually have an iphone, but I really really want to be thankful for having one. • Church – Our church is flawed and complicated and at times frustrating, but it is a family of good people trying to do good things in this world and I am so glad that we are a part of it.  We visited probably 20 churches before we found this one, and I feel blessed that we did. • Bearnaise sauce – Is there anything better in the whole world than a juicy steak with béarnaise sauce on it?  The answer is no. • TV – I know it doesn’t make me a good person, but boy at the end of a long day, it sure does hit the spot.  TV is sort of the Shoney’s Hot Fudge cake of the entertainment world.  It’s not all that good and it’s not really the best thing for you, but sometimes there’s nothing better in the whole world than sitting at a sticky table at 10pm and eating a hot fudge cake and drinking coffee out of a chipped ceramic mug.  (PS.  I like to, you know, read and stuff too.) So there’s my list.  It’s not all inclusive, there’s lots of things that got left off, like being thankful for warm sweaters, the smell of wood burning, the efficiency of chik-fil-a’s drive through and the existence of the song “If you want to sing out, sing out” by Cat Stevens.  I could go on and on, but I think I’ll end with the thing that I am most thankful for right now: the fact that my oven is still under warranty. Posted Dec 02 2008, 07:05 AM by superdad with no comments Filed under: Better off Dad, thanksgiving [Edit Tags]