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Sunday, January 28, 2007

Birth Control 

Saturday

It was more timing and luck than anything else. The boy had taken an interest in the bathroom, so the wife bought him a little throne to sit on. It plays a song when he does his business (one or two). He only recently turned two, so I thought this was all a bit premature. But then, after dinner Saturday night, there he was, sitting on the stump with his pants around his ankles, reading a book. Then he peed. The wife got it on tape. Her smile glowed.

That was before he stood up, turned around, put his hand down into the bowl, and put his hand into his mouth.

And, no, we aren't sending anything in to America's Funniest Home Videos. She turned the camera off right as he stood up. No $10,000 for us. We've got a setup without a punchline.

Sunday

My wife has had her mind set on getting an ottoman for the couch for a while. I don't know why; seems to me if we add any more furniture to the home, no one will be able to walk anymore around here. But when she mentioned that she wanted to go to some "going out of business" furniture sale, I didn't really have the energy to argue.

Plus, I like going to furniture stores. I like sitting in the chairs. Deciding what a certain piece is ghetto or not. Checking to see if a bookcase has just a cheap cardboard backing or whether they use plywood. Seeing if the drawers are dove-tailed. It's good, nitpicking fun.

When we had seen all the ottomans this place had and found none my wife liked, we decided we'd make a circle of the points of the store we missed to catch any potential deals before leaving. This is kind of our standard operating procedure when it comes to browsing at a store we both don't mind being in.

I found a nice office set we probably couldn't afford. It had drawer-pulls on the front just for decoration -- I didn't like that. Otherwise, it was nice, and as the wife and boy walked ahead of me, I took a look at some accessory pieces. It was then that I heard the crash.

Coming to the scene of the crime, I saw a salesman trying to fit a clock back into a decorative shell. Surely the results of my son, I thought. But I couldn't stop to ask how it had happened -- there was another crash. A very loud, shattering crash. I rounded the corner to witness a four-foot tall vase being saved by my wife and a second salesman from certain destruction. My son was cackling. Beside him, on the floor, lay the shards of the other vase. I guess it had been a twin set.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the fastest way to spend $524 without having to drive around back to the loading dock.

"I want to thank you for sticking around here, sir. A lot of people would have ditched out of here," the manager told me.

"I guess we're not going to Florida in March," I told my wife.

"We have the devil for a son," my wife said.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Your Teeth are All Red and There's a Little Bit About You I Don't Wanna Know 

There is an art to corporate speech. People are not laid off. There are adjustments made. Leverages taken advantage of.

I used to have this job in which a woman sat kitty-corner from me. And it was only a couple days into her time with us that I knew for sure: she wasn't going to make it. It was unavoidable. She maintained a blissful ignorance of any performance standards or professionalism.

And yet . . . . years later, there is much I remember about this woman.
When they fired her, she was so upset that she wouldn't leave the women's restroom for nearly an hour. I still remember the management team pacing and slumping outside the restroom doors, wondering how to deal with this woman they didn't know, who was so crushed by what they had done.

Monday, January 08, 2007

Riding the Brakes 

After a certain age, you can never please people. At some point, people will wonder why you don't have a girlfriend. And then when you get one, they'll wonder when you'll get married. And then when you do, they'll wonder when you'll have kids. And then when you do, they'll wonder when you'll have more.

I get that all the time now. "So, are you two gonna have another baaaaaaby? When are ya gonna have another baaaaaaby?"

And then what happens after that, fine reader? You already know. We'll have one and then they'll ask: "When is the next one coming?"

No more. Got it? The line is drawn in the sand. And I'm not going to be nice about it anymore, either. I'm calling it as I see it: "Do you think the wife and I are stupid? Because stupid people don't learn effect from cause. And we're not stupid."

We know that 1+1=2 little monsters, tearing apart our house all the time and demanding attention. One boy is enough. Actually, he is like six boys in one. He is. I'm not boasting or complaining. Well, a little. But I've seen other boys. This is some kind of reptile we've got.

"But you can't just have ooooooone. He can't be an ooooooonly child. What about a buddy for him?" People say this as if they think they can guilt me and the wife into having another child. Again -- do you think I am an idiot? Some sort of happy sadist? Another one? Listen, I know my limitations once I've reached them, and I've reached them. I'm a good father, but I'm not a fool. The boy will be fine. We'll get him dogs.

I love the gremlin, but I'm not getting him wet. End of story.

Saturday, January 06, 2007

Men's Restrooms and the Downfall of the American Male 

The reason -- to this careful observer -- why women will always finish ahead of men, is found at the nearest bathroom urinal. Regular readers will know that I often bemoan the fact that -- claims of "glass ceilings" or not -- women comprehensively run the culture. I attest -- and let me also point out that I'm really not trying to be funny here -- that the answer, the reason for this great chasm in ability between the sexes, has to do with a dirty little secret men encounter nearly every time we take a leak in a public urinal.

For the women who don't know what I'm talking about, I will explain. It is my wild guess that eight of ten times a man relieves himself in a public urinal, he encounters -- just inches in front of his face -- another man's snot. Yes, there is a large (I want to call it a 'subset', but it's really more like a...) faction of men who unload their nostrils right on the wall in front of them while taking a leak.

I'm not going to go into the action itself. I don't really have an issue with that. It's a restroom -- that's probably the best place for making some space in the sniffer. It's (obviously) the placement of this deposit that irks me. And one finds it everywhere.

It could be a brand new bathroom in a four-star hotel. It could be a noxious port-o-let. It doesn't matter: the age, upkeep, size, and makeup of the bathroom can neither prevent or encourage this behavior.

This leads me to the following conclusions, not to mention a deep embarrassment and shame for my own pathetic kind:
1.) It's gross. This is a given. More importantly...
2.) This is a mind-bogglingly lazy act. OK. You're gonna clean some house in the shnozz. Fine. THEN JUST FLICK THE FUCKING MUCOUS IN THE URINAL IN FRONT OF YOU, YOU SAP! Why smear it on the wall? It's like a dog pissing on every tree to mark land.
3.) Given the percentage of snot per urinal, a great number of us are utterly lazy and disgusting people.

The great assumption here is that women do not encounter such childish laziness on such a regular basis. Maybe I'm wrong -- I hope I am. But my level of instinctively built-in esteem for the other sex leads me to believe this is a fair assumption.

How can we compete, when we remain at a 9-year-old's maturity level when it comes to life's simplest function? They are getting law degrees, curing cancer, and running for congress. We're smearing snot on the tile above the urinal. It's no surprise that we're headed for what? -- careers in low-level "service" jobs. Where we'll probably have to clean the restrooms.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Worse Than You Would Ever Know 

My running for '06:

1843 miles
140 abs of steel workouts
315 days

I think about 15 of the missed days were to injury, another 15 to scheduling/weather problems, and the other 20 to a lack in planning.

***

On an altogether different note, the new Modest Mouse song is really, really good.

***

I left work tonight, wondering how many double-chili cheese dogs this gigantic, fucking ogre I'm forced to work with could eat. Eight? No, far more. Fifteen -- could he take down 15 double-chili cheese dogs in a sitting? I think so. That sounds about right. I never enjoyed that Nickelodeon television show . . . . I think it was called "You Can't Do that on Television". Just wasn't my kind of humor. But I think that if we dumped a large bucket of green slime over the ogre that he would continue mowing down double-chili cheese dogs. You might be thinking there's something noble to that, but you haven't seen the mush of chili, cheese and grease trickle down his gullet as he rips into another one.

***

I think that's enough for one evening.

Monday, January 01, 2007

Confidential to You-Know-Who 

Clementine oranges don't count. The skin practically falls off of them. I mean real oranges, basic oranges.

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