As some of you may have noticed, I didn’t get a blog written yesterday.  I meant to.  I had some absolutely hysterical and insightful things to say about mutton chops, but alas it was not to be. 

My youngest, Micah, has come down with some kind of sickness.  Just one of those common baby illnesses that seem to involve vomit and diarrhea and snot and various other fluids coming out of various other orifices. 

One of the problems with the whole parenting gig is the scheduling.  It’s a 24/7 gig and I got to tell ya, being on call from midnight to 6 a.m. is not my forte.

Last night Micah was up at 4am crying and pooping and stuff.  My wife, Sarah, took one for the team and went in there to deal with it, but shortly thereafter I got called in to help out since it turned out to be a two person job.  I then went back to sleep, or, rather, I went back to bed only to lie there awake and listen to more crying.

I finally got up to see if Sarah needed anything else only to realize that it was my other son, Asher, who was crying because his flashlight didn’t work. 

At any other time of day I’d have a talk about how this wasn’t worth crying over and how perhaps he didn’t really even need a flashlight to sleep, etc. etc.  But at four in the morning you just get your kid another flashlight and go back to sleep. 

Or not.

I laid in bed for a while longer waiting for Sarah to return from Micah’s room and get an update.  Around a quarter to 5 she crawled back into bed.  If there’s anything better than snuggling up to your wife in the middle of the night after you’ve both been up dealing with vomit, I don’t know what it is.

Anyway, she said she finally got him to sleep, the Tylenol seemed to have kicked in and the fever was starting to break.  Good.

Well, we both quickly fell asleep, but 15 minutes later when the crying kicked in again, I knew it was my turn.  The previous afternoon Micah had been so sick I had put him down for a third nap around 5:00 in the afternoon.  He never woke up and apparently decided that after 12 hours it was time to arise.

So, I took Micah downstairs to sit on the couch and watch TV.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I wanted to be up at 5:00am, but there was something sort of wonderful about it too.

First of all, we watched an episode I had recorded of my favorite TV show:  Pushing Daisies.  It’s a wonderful quirky detective show that has nothing but throwaway jokes and obscure pop culture references. 

For instance, two weeks ago they did a whole episode about a lighthouse that kept referencing the old seventies Disney movie Pete’s Dragon.  I suspect I may have been the only individual to pick up on that, but I certainly enjoyed it.  They’ve also sung They Might be Giants songs, done a Sound of Music parody and, did I mention, that they all work in a restaurant called the pie hole?

Last night they were up against a group of Norwegian Detectives who had come to the US, because the Norwegian murder rate was too low.  The Norwegians rode around in their “Mobile Investigation Lab Facility” or MILF.

Best show on television.  So, of course it’s been cancelled.  To be fair, I was the only one I know who ever watched it, so I guess that’s not too surprising.

Anyway, my sick little boy sat on my lap and together we watched one of my favorite tv shows in the early morning dark.

As your kids get older, the moments that they will just quietly sit on your lap and snuggle you become fewer and fewer, until, one day, you realize that your kids haven’t sat on your lap for more than a couple of minutes in months.

So, for me, this fairly disgusting sickness has been bitter sweet.  My active little boy who usually wants nothing more than to crawl around and climb on to tables and juggle knives has relented to sitting on my lap for hours at a time.  For the last few days we have spent hours and hours sitting and snuggling and rocking and wiping up vomit.

Yesterday I was rocking Micah to sleep, something I don’t normally ever do.  Usually I just plop him in bed throw him a blanket and rush off to the next thing on my to do list.  But today sleep wasn’t coming easily and so I rocked him.  I held him close and felt his hot little body snuggle into me while I sang him his lullabye. 

It occurred to me that this could be the last chance I ever have to rock my baby to sleep.  Soon, he’ll be all better and will hardly pause to climb on me, much less acquiesce to being held and rocked until he drifts into sleep.

So, I tried to make the most of it, to remember what that moment was like, and to imprint it on my memory.  And then I laid my sleeping little boy in his crib and left the room. 

And then I said goodbye to that portion of my life – that time of holding and quietly rocking a baby. 

Unless, of course, he gets sick again soon.

Here’s hoping.

 
Yesterday I laid out some New Year’s Resolutions for myself.  This is because I am a good person and self reflection and improvement is important.  But there are limits, aren’t there?  I mean, as previously stated, I’m already a good person.  How much better could I possibly make myself?

Now, obviously we should all strive to better ourselves as much as possible, but let’s be honest.  We’re all doing pretty well.  It’s not really “us” who is the problem.  You know who really needs some New Year’s Resolutions?

Others.

And you know what?  They are exactly the kind of people who are least likely to be making resolutions!

It’s a shame really. 

Luckily I am here to help them with their resolutions.  Aren’t they lucky to have me?

1.  For the crazy guy driving the red cherokee on Rt 50

I resolve to be less of a jerk when I’m driving. 

I understand that I do not have the requisite skills to blink while eating an apple much less to drive a car, merge lanes, talk on my phone and fiddle with the radio at the same time. 

So, I promise that in 2009 I will turn off all external stimulus and focus my limited intellectual capacity on the task of driving.  In this manner, I plan not to cut anybody off as I meander willy nilly around the interstate, thus protecting myself and, more importantly, others.

2.  For the people in low level government jobs who have just an eensy teensy bit of power.

We, the DMV employees, Social Security office agents and everyone who has ever worked for a major city’s government or Public School office, resolve to calm the heck down, be a ton nicer and not to think so dang highly of ourselves.

We know that we have a crappy job.  We figured that out pretty much by lunch break on our first day.  Every day we sit at a desk while an unending line of cranky people come to complain to us about something that someone else in our agency has screwed up. 

Yes.  The job blows. 

But somewhere along the line we forgot that our whole job, the whole reason we get paid that whopping $8.25 an hour, is to serve the customer.  I think that’s even why they call us customer service agents.

I have to confess that there were days when we got sick of our jobs and maybe even decided to take it out on those cranky people coming in to our office.  Occasionally, we may have even used the little bit of power we had to make someone else’s life miserable just so that they could share in the pain and sadness that is our daily existence.

Well no more!

From here on out we promise to be cheery and friendly.  When you come into our office at 9am with a simple question we will not glare at you, sigh audibly and dismiss you as if we have been working for 12 hours straight instead of 15 minutes.  We will attempt to help you and maybe even assist you in making sense of all of the crazy rules we have.  Because you know what?  That’s actually our job and even though it’s a crummy, poorly paid job, we’re going to perform it to the best of our abilities.  And maybe, just maybe, acting friendly will actually make us feel friendly so that when we’re sitting home at night in our 1 bedroom efficiency eating a microwave dinner and watching Pat Sajak, we won’t feel quite so bitter, resentful, and generally depressed.

3.  To the Inbred Rednecks who Live up the Street

I Resolve to be less inbred. 

I know, I know, I’ve been kind of a jerk this year.  Me and my teenage inbred buddies have been running around the neighborhood in our big truck and doing donuts in the cul-de-sac and tearing up everyone’s lawns by spinning out into them.  I know, it was dumb.  I thought it would be fun, but it turns out it’s just destructive and cruel and the kind of thing I’m likely to get arrested for if that crazy stay at home dad at the end of the street can ever catch my license plate.  Hee hee.

But what I really, really resolve to be is to stop being such an ignorant, backwoods, nuggnuts racist. 

At the time I thought it would be funny to take cans of spray paint and turn that yellow “T-shaped” intersection sign into a swastika.  I also thought it would be funny to write “KKK” on the “slow, 20mph” sign.  But it turns out I’m just a total moron who is likely to have no greater achievement in life than obtaining a job scooping up horse dung at the fairgrounds and telling off color jokes while I smoke Marlboro lights and hit on girls wearing shirts with Travis Tritt on them.

I know, I’m pathetic. 

But I resolve to do better.  I’m going to re-sod everybody’s lawn, personally scrub all of the offending material off of the street signs and get a job this summer and donate my entire salary to the Southern Poverty Law Center so they can track poor, pathetic, under-endowed dipsh*ts like myself.

So there you have it.  My resolutions for others!

You know, that’s only three people that I’ve helped today, but I’m sure we could help some more.  Who do you think needs some help with their resolutions?   We didn’t even get to all of the celebrities who may need to change their direction in life a little bit (Sissy Spacek!  I’m looking at you!)  Just think of all the good that could be done if people would just make the right resolutions – the ones I want them to make.

Together we can make a difference!

Or at least we can get that loser in the Cherokee to keep his truck in his own lane.  That would be change enough for me.

 Ah, 2009!  A fresh start, a time for renewal and, most of all, a time to finally stop doing all of those horrible things that you did during all of 2008 and start being a better person, or at least a person who isn’t so darn fat.

Yes, it’s time for New Year’s Resolutions.

A time to reflect on our inner selves and look not at the person we are, but at the person we could be.  A time to cast off all of the bad habits and self destructive behavior of the past and to, as Oprah says, become the “new you!”  (Does Oprah really say that?  I don’t know.  But boy it sounds like something Oprah would say doesn’t it?)

And most of all, this is a time to look down at your protruding gut and say, “man, why did I ever have that 4th helping of pecan pie?”

So, here without further ado are my New Year’s Resolutions for 2009:

1.  Quit Eating so Darn Much

Ok, so a dieting resolution is just trite isn’t it?   Everyone plans to go on a diet, and everyone gets suckered in by that “buy six months get six months free” gym membership, but then thy only go for about a month.   And by mid February we’re all back to lying on the couch watching our new Buck Rogers DVD set and eating ho-hos.

So let’s be realistic shall we?

First of all, I have no intention whatsoever of even telling myself that I will pretend to think about exercising.  I don’t have the time (or much more the inclination).  It takes too long to exercise and besides I’m tired and busy and my knees hurt.  So let’s just throw that idea right out the window.  The best I can promise to do is to run down the stairs while carrying a really smelly diaper or to race our 12 year old arthritic dog to the mailbox.

So I guess it will have to just count on the  dieting.  But I don’t really have the time or patience for a real diet either – what with all the cards and points and not eating things.  No, I need something more subtle than that.  So first, I’m going to have to switch back to Diet Dr. Pepper.

Over the Christmas holidays I let myself celebrate by indulging in the sweet full bodied flavor of a crisp, cold, full calorie Dr. Pepper.  But the problem is that these things make you fat (who knew?)

I have what you might call a drinking problem.  I drink a lot.  I mean a lot lot.  If we go out to eat, I will likely have 4 or 5 refills over the course of the meal.  This is fine.  It is good to be hydrated, but I realized one day that if I am having 4 or 5 refills of coke, I am ingesting somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 calories in fizzy beverage alone. 

That’s crazy.

So I’m switching back to diet soda.  I’ll probably die of cancer of the aspartame gland or something, but I’m counting on them finding a cure for cancer before I get to that point.

Yeah, I’m also going to try to eat more fruit and not eat McDonalds fries as a “snack,” but mainly just the diet coke thing

 2.  Stop Being Such a Heathen

This is a carryover from last year.  I did a decent job with it, but I could still use some guilt ridden resolution assistance. 

I resolve to read my Bible every day, well just Monday through Friday.  I figure you don’t need to read on Sundays (at church you have somebody to read it for you!)  And on Saturdays I truly believe God just wants you to sleep in and go to Starbucks in the morning.  I fully suspect that God just sits back with a latte and a cranberry orange muffin and reads the Post on Saturdays.  Sure he has to make a quick pop in appearance at all of the Seventh Day Adventist services, but how long can that really take?

So I’m going to continue to get up at 6:00 and read my Bible everyday.  The difference this year is that I am going to actually try to understand what I read.  Last year I felt like just reading was enough, but this led to a lot of mornings where I just opened it up and allowed my eyes to scan the words while I yawned and wondered how long it would take the coffee to stop brewing.  So, this year I’m actually going to try to pay attention to what I’m reading and attempt to comprehend it.

Wow, I’m such a good person.

3.  Be More Patient!

So, this is one of those resolutions that I make every week or so.  The scenario goes something like this:

The kids are all running around acting crazy and I’m trying to cook dinner or clean the living room or scrub poop stains off of a sweater or something and one of the kids runs up and starts saying “DADDY DADDY DADDY DADDDY DADDY DADDY etc” and I quietly and calmly say “just a minute, just a minute, just a minute” and then I do something like drop scalding water on my hand or smear poop on my face and then I yell “I SAID JUST A MINUTE WHY DON’T YOU LISTEN TO ME DIDN’T YOU HEAR ME? AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!”

I know that the kids are just being kids, but it doesn’t make my head want to explode any less.  So I am resolving to be more patient. 

As I said, I have to make this resolution every week or so, but not because I don’t become more patient.  I think that every week, I DO become more patient.  The problem is that every week the kids seem a little crazier than they were the previous week and so I need to be even more patient than I was the week before.  So every week I resolve to increase my patientnessness, but it never seems to be enough.

I’m sure this is a problem uniquely endemic to me.  I’m sure that no other parents could possibly identify with this.

4.  Help out the Delta Force More

As you know, we have 3 teenagers from Mississippi living with us while they attend community college and look for jobs.  None of them have driver’s licenses (this is apparently not required to drive a car in Mississippi).  So I spend inordinate amounts of time driving them to school every day and cooking for 8 and cleaning for 40 etc. 

Last year, with just one Mississippi teenager living in the basement, I did a lot more of sitting around at 10:00 at night helping him with homework and such.  But this year there seems to be much more to do. 

The driving and the cleaning and the cooking and such. 

Plus I’m getting up at 6:00am because of stupid resolution #2.  So by the time 10:00pm rolls around I’m usually catatonic on the couch and couldn’t help someone with their American History homework if Abraham Lincoln crawled out of my colon.

However, this strategy of not helping did not seem to work real well.  Of the 11 courses that were taken last semester only 4 were passed. 

For those of you who have been out of school for a while, this is not a good ratio.

So I resolve to try to be a better help with schoolwork.  I also resolve to find some medication that will allow me to operate without sleep, possibly something from Sweden.

5.  Clean Less

Finally, I’m resolving to spend more quality time with my kids. 

I already spend lots of time with my kids.  I am a stay at home dad after all, but usually I spend time with them while I’m driving the car, or doing the dishes, or shopping at Target.   I try to make the most of this time.  I talk to them and we play stupid games while we walk through the grocery store.  I sing songs and act silly while I’m cleaning, and I think I’m going to start playing Old Maid with them while I’m driving, but it’s not enough.

I need to start spending more one on one, non-multi-tasking time with my children.

I’m around them enough to realize that they’re pretty cool kids.  They’re smart and funny and have great imaginations.  One of them may even be potty trained now, I can’t be sure.  But I also know that they are growing, and while there are times when it seems like this era of diaper changes, school buses, and Dr. Seuss will never end.  (No seriously.  Sometimes I don’t think it will EVER end), I know that it will.

I look around and I see that my kindergartener is reading whole books on her own.  I see that my 3 year old is starting to climb to the top of our play structure using only one foot, his elbow and an old scarf.  And I see that my baby is starting to take his first steps (about 6 months later than he’s supposed to, but still….)

These kids are growing up and I know that some day I would pay a million dollars just to change a diaper (ironic, since now I would pay a million dollars not to). 

I don’t doubt for a second that these next 5-6 years when my kids range from 1-6 years old and 6-12 years old are probably going to be seen, in retrospect, as the best years of my life, and some days I am deathly afraid that I will look back at them as a time where I did a lot of shopping, and cleaning and very little playing chutes and ladders.

But until I find that Swedish drug that will allow me to not sleep, something’s going to have to go.  So I propose to give up cleaning.  We have to eat, so I can’t give up shopping or cooking.  So I guess it will have to be cleaning that goes.  (Some smart alecky friends of mine might suggest that I gave up cleaning last year.  Ha Ha.  You’re not funny.  Don’t mock my pain!)

So there it is:  Reading instead of Rinsing.  Storytelling instead of Toilet Scrubbing.  Snuggling instead of Sweeping.

It’s going to be a happy but dirty 2009

So, those are my New Year’s Resolutions.  And I’ve got to say, I feel pretty good about them.  I just realized I didn’t say anything about my wife. So,…uh… I resolve to love her more.  And I should probably walk the dog more often.  But in general I feel good about my list. 

And so far, I’m off to a good start.  I read my Bible today.  I haven’t had a single full calorie soda since I woke up two hours ago.  I only snapped at the kids once this morning (what do you want from me.  I’m not a saint.  My Bible reading this morning made that abundantly clear.)  I haven’t helped any of the Mississippi kids this morning, but that’s because they’re not here.  They all missed their plane yesterday because…. well… (what was that I promised about being patient?)   And most importantly, there’s a full sink of dirty dishes in the sink.

So I think I’m doing a pretty good job around here.  I already feel skinnier, nicer and happier.

Happy New Year to me.

 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. 

 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.

 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.

 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. 

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.

 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!

 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? 

 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.”

 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.

 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