BEAR CLAW! RAWR!

Not too much to report on the procreation front. Since the last round of medical procedures, Carly's doctor has put us on hiatus in terms of baby-making. Her body needs time to recover. At least two months. With some of Mandy's more prurient suggestions aside, that means we have two main options:

1. Don't have sex.
2. Use a backup method of birth control.

Carly vetoed the first one right away, so we're left with #2. And lemme tell you, it's been a damned long time since I had to buy condoms.

The one thing that struck me, right away, was how the packaging has improved. When I was a lad, rubbers at the store was easy! You'd just look for the white box with the black label that says, "CONDOMS." Now, well, there's quite a bit of variety.

In the display I was perusing, there were a few I could cross off the list right away. Magnums, vibrating condoms, colored condoms, flavored condoms. These all seemed to get away from my requirements. Then there are the funny ones, like the Ultra-Ribbed-For-Her-Pleasure, Fire & Ice, Ultra-Sensitive, and, my personal favorite, Bareskin. Or, as we like to call it, BEARSKIN! RAWR RAWR!



Carly has got me thinking of THOSE POOR BEARS, with the PENIS-SHAPES CUT OUT of their FLANKS!

And, for those of you who think that it isn't ridiculous enough, here's the actual Trojan Brand Bareskin commercial. Somehow, this sells rubbers. (It did, to ME!)

Sister Wives: the Musings

Carly goes on these weird binges of bad reality TV shows. Tonight, it is "Sister Wives." She claims that she just wants to see what the hype is about, but she goes pretty slack jawed on the things right away and secretly watches the rest of the season when I'm not looking.

This stuff is nuts. This guy is clearly a bit of a stud who likes the attention of women, and is lucky enough to have found a religion that supports his lifestyle. He actually converted to the religion. It's a weird thing. The big reveal in the first episode is that he's going to bring another wife (total 4) into the mix. He's running the idea by his children.

Part of the episode, they prep the audience by talking about how he keeps his wives basically separately, that there's no sexual congress between the lot of them, and so on. But here's something kind of creepy about the situation: in addition to being married to three women, with whom he has 12 or 13 kids, he is out there dating another chick.

I wonder, when the guy goes and proposes to the new wife, is she excited about the prospect of being a 4th wife?

They think of these things in terms of fate and divine provenance, but all I see is a bunch of women being brainwashed into allowing their husband to go out and date other women. You can hear the concern and jealousy and justifications in their monologues... they tolerate the behavior, but it puts them on edge. They know that, despite their relative brainwashing, their husband isn't truly their own. He could leave them all and go set up shop wherever. Three of the wives are not legally married to him, and when he dies they won't get a cut of his estate if wife #1 decides to probate the fucker.

And then there are all the kids. In an age when population growth is more or less the signpost for the apocalypse, how does this guy get away with quadrupling his genetic footprint on the planet? Why, instead of producing a million kids, don't they adopt some needy babies? Does this only work because they were lucky, and none of their kids have genetic disorders or autism or anything else that makes it relatively difficult? What if one wife only produced blind offspring, or all her kids had CP? What then? How would the family deal with that kind of stigma?

I have glanced over the internet about the subject of the show and he just doesn't come off, to me, as a genuine guy. He puts on a good show, but I don't buy it. I think his mommy used to put him in dresses and made him dance when he was little, or maybe he was breastfed until he was nine....

Pronounced with the Ump-T

Now is about the midpoint of my spring adventure. I've been on trains, buses, planes, cars, and I walked over a bridge over the Burning River. Now, I'm waiting to access another public transit system and take another train from Cleveland to DC. While I write this, Carly is driving from Jersey to DC. This is by far the most complicated rendezvous I've had with anyone.

This week is the longest we've been apart from each-other since 2008, when I first moved to New Jersey and she stayed in Ohio for the better part of three months. So it's going to be a nice reunion.

And because of the distance and the craziness of the last week, I don't have much to post in regards to the procreation experiments. After all, there hasn't been any activity on that front in almost three weeks, so I'll give you this:

Part of the trip I got to spend observing Tony and Kendra around their daughter, Elise, in their natural environment. Usually, when I come into town, it's kind of a big deal and time is short. We only get to hang out for a night or so, and then off to the next family function. But this time, I had the better part of two days set aside to just hang around and soak up the normal life.

Of course, the main part of this was just to live and interact with these, my closest friends, and their little family, but a strong bit of it was to observe and take notes. As I've mentioned, I don't have a lot of experience with small children and babies, and I'm never quite sure of how the whole system works.

Elise's life is a little different from most kids, these days, or so I think. She's got a stay-at-home dad who actually chose to stay home and take care of the baby, and she is his full-time job. And Tony has gone native in a few funny ways. He and I always had a kind of self-sufficient streak in us, and we like to experiment, build and make things. We both got involved in making wine around the same time--I bought him his first wine barrel and I like to think that I introduced Kendra and him to the "It's Your Winery" place out on West Market (now defunct, due to some politics). He and I started baking homemade bread around the same time, we both have a proficiency with power tools that borders on the savant, and we are constantly striving to find new ways to make things better, simpler, or cheaper. Tony even makes his own laundry detergent now. I get the feeling that he hides a pile of Real Simple magazines in his closet, under the porn.

I can't say that I've made any judgments or had any insights about their lifestyle, as I'm still processing much of what I picked up, but I have to say, they're doing quite well and everyone seems very happy. And that's all that really matters.

Three Days in the Valley

For the last couple of days, I've been staying at my sister-in-law's new apartment in the Valley, in Akron, Ohio. Chelsea and her boyfriend, Jeff, recently moved to Akron to start their lives after Chelsea graduated nursing school. She's going to take her exams soon and then go out and start fixing IVs and sponge-bathing seniors. Jeff is going to work in a maintenance bay at one of the many car dealerships.

I came to Akron this week to update my Ohio Bar admission status and visit some people. Specifically, I wanted to spend some time with my parents, as I never really get the chance to talk to them by themselves. It's always at a funeral or a holiday party or whatever, and I don't get to just have a real conversation with these people who absorbed so much of my life.

My original plan was to sit down and do a StoryCORP-style interview with my father. He's getting older, you see, and his health has not been great the last few years. He's had a couple of strokes and heart attacks, has been a lifelong smoker and drinker, and has consumed enough drugs (prescribed and otherwise) to stop a small army of rhinos. On top of that, Diroll men have a habit of kicking off sometime in their 60's. It's relatively rare for one of my breed to see 70. The only ones I know of who have made it are from a much earlier generation and I have less in common with them, genetically. One of the deciding factors in our limited longevity is that there is a common genetic flaw in our line which results in fucked up arteries around the heart. If you get it fixed early enough, you could live forever. But if you don't, you'll put your boots up by about 67.

So I want to get some time to talk to the old man and get him on the record. The idea is, when my kids tell me that I'm the worst parent who ever lived and how did I become so mean, I will sit them down and make them watch the interview with the old man. I think it's a fair bet to say that when we do have kids, it's quite unlikely that they'll have much memory of their grandfather.

I didn't really get the chance to prepare for the interview, as the time I set aside for that I ended up having to spend here in Akron, traveling, etc. So I didn't do it this time. Probably some time this year, I will make the old man take some time off work and sit down with me and the camera. Should be entertaining.

Forever and Ever

As I am currently on the lam in Ohio, I don't know if I'll be able to update on time as I set out to do, in the beginning. So, I'll put up short updates and other things as I'm able.

This one goes out in honor of my friend Marlene, who posts here as "libmama," who I got to see for the first time in years, yesterday. Marlene said that, in the process of having her second child, she had two miscarriages, along with other complications. After some testing, she found out that the two children who didn't make it would have been girls, and that she will always kind of miss these daughters she never had.

Well, it turns out, those girls are probably part of Marlene, now. Mothers carry around fetal cells from their children in their blood pretty much forever, even from miscarried fetuses. This Radiolab episode tells an interesting story of the research going into these legacy cells...

Fetal Consequences - Radiolab



Give it a listen! And have a good weekend.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand

So, in the process of doing a biological reset, Carly and I haven't been able to fool around for two solid weeks, and the doc said we will have to wait at least two months before we try to hop on the pregnancy boat again. With our upcoming travel schedules, it's probable that Carly and I won't even get a lot of time for the fun stuff.

Which is why I'm simply not allowed to listen to this song:



So you listen to it, instead. And have a good night.

Why Mother's Day Matters

Remember how I went on a bender about how when babies are born, the range of weirdness in anyone's pregnancy falls within a narrow slice of probability, and the chances that things go poorly is really rare? Well, I was one of those. The following is the closest reconstruction of the events of my birth, as far as I can recall from various conversations with my parents over the years.

My folks, circa 1977.

I was born in the blizzard of 1978. I always said that the world knew I was coming and did what it could to stop me.

My parents had recently moved to the white, aluminum-sided mobile home at the northwest corner of the trailer park off of Summit Road, in Ravenna, Ohio, with my sister, who was about two and a half years old. My mother's pregnancy wasn't pleasant. As I grew inside her, she suffered some nasty gallbladder damage, and every time I got the chance, I'd ram my head or elbow or feet into the thing, exacerbating the pain she was already in. The damage caused made her throw up a lot and she had difficulty digesting fatty foods. Additionally, it caused some liver damage and she had difficulty absorbing iron, so she was kind of anemic and had nasty headaches. Her doctor prescribed her to drink buckets of red wine and eat liver to keep her iron levels up.

In the afternoon, on Saturday, January 21, 1978, the snow was pretty heavy, but the storm had not yet reached official blizzard conditions--that would come in a few days. But it was very cold, and a couple of days of snow and ice had packed around the car in the driveway. My mother, being very near her due date, said she wasn't feeling well and waddled down the paneled hallway to the bathroom, past the closet that contained the furnace and water heater. She didn't come out for a while.

After a few minutes, my father got up off the couch and went to check on her. There were drops of blood on the carpet, getting bigger the closer to the bathroom he got. When he opened the door, he found my mother swooning on the toilet--not passed out, but not all there. He made a quick phone call or two and then went out to start the car and cut the ice off of it.

At the hospital, the doctor quickly discovered that I was lodged in, breach, and had stretched out to the point that there was no hope of swinging me around. My feet were firmly planted on her hips and I wasn't moving. My mother's blood pressure had plummeted and all the damage I'd been working was getting worse. After a few hours of observation and attempts to stabilize everyone, they decided to do an emergency C-section and prepped for surgery. A few minutes later, the doctor comes out to give my father the news, and says,

Doc: "There's a chance that we could lose one of them--either your wife or the baby. If it comes down to it--"
Tom: "Save the mother."

Doc: "... what?"

Tom: "Save the mother. I've known her longer."

Approximately 45 minutes later, at 8:01 PM, under the Wolf Moon, I was born, bloody and messy, but well-formed. My father supposedly held me up by my ankle and spun me around, declaring that there wasn't a mark on me (I do not have any discernible birth marks or many freckles or moles). They sewed up my mother and got about the business of stabilizing her.

For the better part of the next month, my paternal grandmother, Minerva June Diroll (nee Lleyshawn), took good care of me in her warm house. My mother was hospitalized for a while and once she recovered from the C-section, they opened her back up and took out her gallbladder. She eventually recovered just fine, but has long-lasting GERD issues, indigestion and so on, which, it turns out, is hereditary and I have it, too.

Knowing that I nearly killed my mother on the way out was a defining characteristic in my life. I was reminded of it constantly, whenever my father would remind me that it is my job to take care of her, or when my mother would comment about what it was like, having to eat liver and onions all the time. The knowledge helped turn me into someone who is fiercely loyal to my friends, always looking for solutions to problems, and ways to help people from slipping over the edge when they're near it. When one of my family or friends are sick, I have been known to stand outside the door like some kind of marble statue, or to prepare massive feasts of recovery food, even things I hate to eat. Though my birthday is my most important holiday, I always celebrate it in honor of the pain my mother went through--it is a celebration of survival, and I call her every year.

I do this because I owe someone something, even if I can't be held to blame for the acts, as I was just a little meatball of twitching instincts, trapped in a rubbery flesh pocket, with no idea of what a gallbladder was, it is my form of Original Sin. So, to pay it back, I take care of my people. I hope you do, too.

Happy Mother's Day, Ma. I'm glad we still haven't killed each other.

What to Expect... Postscript

So, I feel kind of cranky over yesterday's post, and I feel like I should explain it a little.

Due to the way I was raised, I had to learn to not expect too much or get my hopes up about anything. Since my parents were pretty Bohemian-bordering-on-purely-psychotic, I was lucky if anything that was asked for or promised actually came to pass, and it almost never turned out the way you wanted it to. It sounds like a pretty fundamental, run-of-the-mill revelation for a four-year-old, but I mean that it was difficult to predict, sometimes, if anyone was going to make dinner. Or buy toilet paper.

From this, I learned to be self-sufficient from a pretty early age. I learned to cook by age 6, and by 9 or 10 I would walk up to the store (2 miles, along a busy highway with no sidewalks) with change that was dug out of the couch cushions to buy bread. I set my expectations low for other people, so that I could never be disappointed. The flip side was, if anything DID actually work out, I was always super surprised.

With my self-sufficiency, I had to develop the tools to do things that I didn't know how to do. I became an avid reader of instructions. I dug into encyclopedias and how-to books, I memorized lists of things. I watched and observed people around me, doing all the things they did, often uncolored by the need for social interactions. I was a bit moody and awkward, so I didn't have to justify my moods to any friends, and those friends that I did have generally gave me plenty of room and made sure I didn't hurt myself or anyone else. Hell, even some of them were my lab rats.

As an adult, when I decide to get into something, I research it pretty extensively. I don't just jump into anything. I'm patient and cautious about things, and I try very hard to control any of my impulses. I deliberate over major changes and only decide when I'm very sure that I want whatever it is, and that I have the tools to achieve it. The last big one was moving to New York. It's worked out beautifully, and partly because Carly and I did so much thinking and discussing beforehand.

My observation is that most people, when they find out they're going to have a baby, walk around with a bewildered, half-frightened smile plastered on their faces, and while they seem excited and happy about it all, there's a whole lot of "OH SHIT OH SHIT OHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT!!!!" going through their minds. I argue that there's no reason for this. Smart people should be better prepared, even if they weren't expecting to have a kid.

I mean, the whole process, from the time you find out, gives you between 5 and 9 months to get your shit together. I'm not implying that it is that easy, but it shouldn't be a big surprise when certain things come to pass, like the lack of sleep. My friend's comment about "now I know why all those people were smirking at me," tells me that he didn't really listen to them, didn't believe them or didn't pay attention.

I tell you: listen and observe and learn everything you can. Some of it is bullshit, some of it isn't. You should have the time to figure out why they were warning you about it... find out exactly how long it takes to get a kid to sleep through the night. In the book, Bringing Up Bebe, the writer points out that the French manage to get even fussy children on a sleep schedule in less than four months. So, get to work!

Carly and I have been researching pretty extensively since we first saw the signs of her being knocked up. I admit--for the first time in a long time, we forgot ourselves a little and started getting our hopes up about it--but as soon as the light started blinking, we were off to the library. I recommend everyone do the same, whether it is a baby, a car, a vacation, or even a new brand of socks. A little research goes a long way.

I don't want you all to think that I'm judging you in particular, or your parenting style is wrong, or that you're stupid or naive. I'm just trying to suck the mystery out of this thing, for my own benefit and maybe some of yours. The human species has been popping out babies for millions of years, so there's really nothing new under the sun. Of all the complications and strangeness that you might experience in your baby-making cycle, almost all of it falls within a very narrow slice of possibility. So, even if you get your hopes up, the end results are likely to fall close to the target anyway.

What to Expect...

I'm a little perplexed by all the people I know who have had kids and have just been absolutely flabbergasted by the process. I am going to call out Jon on this one. He recently posted on his Facebook feed,

Well, I guess I truly understand what everyone meant during the pregnancy when they would smirk at me and say enjoy sleep while you can.

Jon and his wife just brought their little girl home and I imagine that they are enjoying the insomnia that comes with the first few months of a child not understanding what a sleep schedule is. I understand what Jon's doing here: he's basically validating all the warnings and advice he got when the shit got real. It's a standard response to reality, smashing your bubble to pieces. Good luck, Jon, and congrats to you and yours!

But!

But I have to give him some grief, here. Jon, really? You had a solid 8 months to get ready for this. You're a smart guy! There really should be no surprises. There's a wealth of really good information out there, and there are tons of people who can give you sober, reliable advice on what the whole process of having a kid will entail. Sure, there's a whole host of nutcakes out there, but I assure you, good, solid advice is to be had.

That's what we've been up to, for ages. Though we haven't really gotten serious about having kids until the last six months or so, it doesn't mean we weren't paying attention. Nearly all of my best friends have had a kid or two in the last few years, and almost none of them are crazy fuckers who think that you should inject a pregnant woman's urine into a rabbit to determine the sex of the baby. I've watched all of them go through the process of having kids at various stages (none of the grody, icky, oozy stuff), and I've observed many useful facts. Packed them away for later use.

So, don't be so surprised by all this, Jon! You should be ready. If you're a little overwhelmed now, that's fine, but once everyone settles into a routine, get some books on brain development and first aid and get some life insurance policies and start dumping money into a college fund. If you and your wife haven't gotten wills written up, make sure you do that. Think ahead a little, get prepared for the next couple of waves, and you can enjoy watching it as it unfolds instead of playing catch-up.

And, enjoy those late nights. You've got three to four months of them at minimum! And, for your entertainment, during one of those long nights:

Sitting Alone in a Small Room, Surrounded by Vaginas

It's a Tuesday and Carly has been showing all the textbook symptoms of being pregnant for about three or four weeks, so we have an appointment with her OBGYN physician in Bayonne. She gets the address wrong and we have to drive around a little bit until we find it, but we make it right on time. The building is a low-slung brick thing that used to be someone's house. In fact, the building still has a lot of vestiges of the former dwelling and it really does feel like you're in someone's dining room when you are filling out forms and waiting for the nurse to call you in. A few minutes later, the doctor comes into the exam room and fires up the ultrasound machine. Just seconds into the exam he says, without any deliberation at all, "You need to go to the bathroom!" Carly chuckles nervously, the doctor steps out. She throws on her jeans and exits the room quickly.

Then I'm left, sitting, alone in a small room, surrounded by vaginas.

OBGYN offices are unabashed about showing off the stuff of their trade. There are big, plastic models, posters with bas-relief displays of all the bounty of a woman's secrets. There was an interactive standing thing on the counter that advertised a new form of IUD (inter-uterine device, a contraceptive thingamajig) that has bouncing ovaries, if you jiggle it a little. The illustrations of women with cutaways, showing how the baby should be lodged in her guts, have fantastic breasts.

Then Carly and the doctor come back in, they reset the exam, and start again. After a little twisting and zooming and drawing of lines much like on an AutoCAD display, the doc steps back and says, "from what I see here, and I'm very confident about this... this is not going to be a viable pregnancy. I'm sorry." He doesn't give us enough time for it to really sink in, but Carly and I exchange meaningful glances. "Ah, shit," my eyeballs say. "Fucking hell!" says the corner of her mouth.

The doc goes on to explain that about one-in-three of all pregnancies--all known pregnancies--end up in what is called an "anembryonic" pregnancy, or a blighted ovum. That means that there was an egg/sperm collision at some point, and the thing lodged into the uterine wall, but that was it. Something wrong with the egg or sperm caused a "chromosomal failure," or some other disaster, so the cell failed to divide and that was that. The egg sac that was implanted was just a dark blob filled with some placental tissue and a few dead cells. We had one of those. Based on the size of everything, Carly was about 7-8 weeks along in the pregnancy, and there should be a little creature in there with a heartbeat and budding arms and legs and a head (no fingers yet). Instead, we got nothin'.

It's a bit of a bummer for us both. We'd gotten our hopes up quite high. Everything was textbook, it was all so damned easy! We should have known better... if it appears to be too good to be true, it probably is. But Carly and I have been lucky to find each other, we've not had to worry about our relationship like I'm sure almost everyone has in their lives, when everything is going well, wondering when the other shoe is going to drop. We were optimistic. We'd forgotten our ingrained cynicism for a little bit. And... our expectations were dashed.

So, the doctor says, we have to do a reset. After this one is done away with, Carly's body will take about two months to go back to normal and we can start "playing Russian roulette" again. That was the doctor's phrase for people who get pregnant without much planning, just firing into the dark. I corrected him by saying that we prefer to think of it as "letting nature take its course."

The good news, however, is that all of our parts appear to be working in proper order. The doc said that, based on our history, Carly got pregnant with the blighted ovum within a couple of days of going off the birth control. He says that the people he worries about are the ones that can't get pregnant at all--blighted ova or not--and that we are going to have no problems getting pregnant again. The anembryonic pregnancy is just pure statistical probability, and if things work out the way he expects, the next time we are ready to get a baby in there, it should be no problem.

So yes, statistical probability may have stopped the coming apocalypse for now, but HA HA HA, fuck you, world! It is inevitable.

One Lonely Beastie I Be

It's been a long week, and it is ending on a mixed note.

For your listening pleasure, in honor of one of our culture's greats, a man from a band that shaped my life in many ways.

RIP MCA.

Doctor Lawyer

This has been a pretty hectic week, and it's going to stay that way for a bit, so tonight, I'm going to keep the post short.

One of the things that is always stressful, especially when you move to a new location, is finding a new doctor. When we moved to NJ, I finally got some decent health insurance and started to go to a new doctor who, after two visits in a calendar year, asked, "Are you a hypochondriac?" Apparently, I was wayyyy too healthy to be going to see him more than once a decade.

Carly hasn't bothered to find a general practitioner for her general health care, as she gets her fill of the medical profession with annual pap smears, her knee surgery, and so on. Nevermind none of those guys managed to check her blood or her liver or anything, she's fine. FINE! FINE, I SAY!

So, the process of finding a proper OBGYN for the eventual babymaking business is it's own kind of adventure. Carly doesn't want to get a particular strain of female doctor because she's concerned that the doctor will be part of the CRAZIES, and will tell her that she can't sit near open doors or look at cats. She wants an old school, grizzled old man doctor who will smoke and drink to steady his hands when he goes for the specula. Kind of like the doctor from Battlestar Galactica.

Going through the lists in our insurance plan, we're just amazed at how many doctors have unfortunate names. For example:

• Doctor Lawyer
• Doctor Fleischhacker
• Doctor Doctor

And it made me wonder, how many doctors have even worse names? I thought of a few potential horrifying Germanic names for OBGYNs, but the only one I saw fit to print is this one:

DOCTOR KUNTZGRABER.

And that should do it for today.