Winter Holiday

I couldn't remember if I'd gone on a rant about how much I hate Christmas, so here we go.

Fundamentally, I have no problem with Christmas. If you think of it as a religious holiday, it's fine. Let the religious people have it however they like. Midnight mass or consume mass quantities, do as you will. I generally agree with "put Christ back in Christmas" which means that I just won't be involved.

I'm not Christian. I'm not religious in any real sense. I have some pseudo-spiritual beliefs (such as an idea of souls, demons living under Philadelphia, and the wonderment of cosmic coincidences), but I am an atheist. At most, I'm an atheist with a good imagination and healthy skepticism. So I'm open to the supernatural and strange, I would just need some convincing.

So then there's Christmas. All the ritual and tradition and obligation. Since I'm not Christian, the ritual does nothing for me. Since my family history is disjointed, I don't really ascribe to many traditions (we listen to "Alice's Restaurant" on Thanksgiving, we roll down the windows and yell when driving through a tunnel, etc). And because I'm a self-centered shit most of the time, I don't care much for obligations.

In fact, obligations are kind of the wedge between me and every close relationship I've had. There's always some point in a relationship where I point out that I choose to be in the relationship, to take on the responsibilities, etc. And that raises the question of "what if you choose to not?" It creates doubt, limits trust. I get it. But I also have integrity. I'm stubborn. So the things I choose to commit to, I stick to. I have friends I barely see who I promised I would take care of, and there's this rule--if they need something, they ask (in return, if I show up on their doorstep covered in blood [not mine], they give me a towel and don't ask questions). I commit, I keep my commitments.

But the holiday obligations drive me nuts. They generally involve:

1. Spend time with your extended family.
2. Buy presents for everyone you know.
3. Eat their food.
4. Create a bunch of holiday-themed shit (cookies, cards, etc).
5. Listening to that goddamned fucking genre of music.
6. Watch specific movies.
7. Pretend to be nice to strangers for some reason.

And there are more, I'm sure. If you're slightly religious, you've got to go to mass or something similar.

First, as you may know, I don't really like most of my extended family. I mean, they're fine, but I have so goddamned many of them. My father was the 4th of 10 kids, and they all had a heap of kids, so I have something like 40 cousins on that side. And now they all have kids, so there are probably 100 people I have to keep track of just on my father's side of the family (they're starting to die, so maybe only 97 now). I went three years without remembering my cousin Sue's name. I was an adult--I had no excuse. My mother was the first of nine kids, and almost all of those people have a playing card deck of hang-ups, from proper mental problems to just being an asshole. And a lot of them are married to people with the other half of the deck. My granny's house is a crucible of chaos and while usually entertaining, is super stressful. You have to remember that so and so is going through another divorce and that one cousin can't come because his girlfriend (who is here) took out a restraining order. Also, aunt Char thinks the flower planting kit you got her is coffee and now she's mad at you because the coffee sucks. And then you leave that house reeking of cigarette smoke because--although no one is supposed to smoke in the house because Granny had a triple bypass and her doctor said so--everyone smokes on the porch and it just bellows into the house and you can't get away from it.

I have a hard time justifying buying presents for my wife's great aunt who I think I only met once and is probably dead? Also, it's a lot of money. Also, why wait until an arbitrary date to do presents? If you want to get someone something, get it for them because they're awesome and it's a Tuesday. The obligation to buy presents created the gift card industry. "I don't know what to get my sister's boyfriend's kids, so I'll just get them an iTunes gift card." I told a coworker who was stressed about what to get her nieces and nephews to just get them all plain, black, Old Navy socks. A 6-pack of them. Every year. And a five dollar bill. BE THAT AUNT. Because she'll be the best aunt in the world when those kids are in college and all they need are decent fucking socks and five fucking dollars to get a couple of hot dogs at the Sheetz because their student loan money ran out. I just hate having to buy things for people. I'd rather choose to do it because I want to and I think they'll like it.

My mother-in-law makes the same couple of things every time we visit for a holiday: egg casserole and cream cheese danish. Sometimes she makes a version of "creme brulee French toast" which is just french toast covered in liquid sugar and slightly burned, but really just bread and syrup. They're not good. I don't eat eggs in their primary form (with butter and flour and sugar they're fine, but not just eggs with heat and salt), so her egg casserole, which includes onions and peppers and potatoes sometimes, I think, and the potatoes are never cooked--just kind of dense wads--, it's just not appetizing. I can't or won't eat it. The other dishes are just sugar bombs. They're sweet and thick and you can feel your blood rushing through your arms after. It's a wreck. And the other things--green bean casserole (not a thing, it just isn't, it was invented to sell dried onions by the Campbell's soup company), Waldorf salad (not a salad), that sweet potato thing with marshmallows on it, all the weird shit that people's grandparents made that is not good for you and is not good--just because that's the thing they make on Christmas. It's gross and weird and we should reexamine this immediately.

Then everyone under the sun decides they should make holiday cookies. Lucky for most of us, the basic sugar cookie recipe and cookie cutters are easy to come by, but everyone does it. And then they give them to you. And they sit on the table and eventually get thrown away. My wife bangs out a good batch of these almost every year, and her recipe is good--it has enough salt. But you've got to decorate them and accumulate piles of jars of sprinkles and those inedible little silver balls. And I just don't really like sugar cookies or shortbread. I just don't. I think those are leftovers from a time when there was less imagination in baking and things like chocolate or nutmeg were scarce or expensive. We can do better. Let's also talk about the ever-growing tub of Christmas tree ornaments we have in the closet...

Christmas music is the worst. The only thing good about it is the irreverent side, such as "Christmas at Ground Zero" by Weird Al, or "Christmas Sweater" by Brenda Weiler. All these traditional tunes belted out by crooners over the years drive me nuts. Rufus Wainwright's version of "Baby It's Cold Outside" is fun because he sounds totally sloshed, but the song is ultimately about date rape, right?

We do watch holiday movies, but I draw the line when it comes to "It's a Wonderful Life" or "The Santa Clause" or some shit. We watch Gremlins, Krampus, Elf, and we're probably adding Die Hard next year. I just don't care for the movies created by algorithm. I don't even like National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation--it's so trite. I don't need to watch movies to feel good about spending time with my family or wanting to give gifts. I don't get life lessons from people talking to ghosts about how much of a shit they used to be.

And last--and I'm running out of steam here--I kind of hate the crazed "MERRY CHRISTMAS" that strangers shout at me when I'm looking for an end table at IKEA. I'm pretty sure you're not Christian, either, tiny Indian woman who works at IKEA, so don't pander to me.

Back to my Bailey's & coffee and traditional cinnamon roll breakfast.

Goddess of a Thousand Works

A little late on this one, but it's worthwhile.

Minerva Faye Diroll-Black was born on Wednesday, August 23, 2017, at 10:27 P.M. at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland. She was 5 lbs., 9 oz. at birth and about 19.25" long. By all measure, a healthy baby. One hundred-percent human, perfect in every way (although, potentially some werewolf in there). Getting there, as with our first child, wasn't all that easy.

Carly had some signs of early labor around the end of July, at the thirty week mark. She went to the emergency room and six hours later she was released with an order for bed rest. Thirty weeks is very early to have a baby. 32 or 33 weeks is about when the fetus crests a threshold of survivability. At that point, there's about a 90% chance of survival that just creeps up incrementally from there. 35 weeks is 96%, and from then on the newborn would have virtually no complications resulting from being born early. 38 weeks is considered full term. The Wolf was born at 33 weeks and a few days.

Carly did her level best to stay off her feet and worked from home for the better part of the next two months. After three or four good checkups with her OBGYN, she was allowed to go back to work on a limited schedule and did so about two or three days a week, mainly to alleviate boredom and talk with an adult other than me. We half-jokingly hoped she'd go into labor and we could have the baby on the day of the solar eclipse. It would have been early, but no bother, she'd have super powers. Right?

Entertainingly, Carly started having weird contractions the weekend right before the eclipse. They were kind of half-assed contractions in parts of her belly, not painful, and the baby was moving around quite a bit. The feelings weren't painful, so she just rode them out and started logging the movements in some app she had for these things. By Tuesday, things were getting more pronounced, but not alarmingly so.

I had taken a few days off that week because the Wolf's daycare was closed for vacation, but on Tuesday and Wednesday, I had to go in so that I could finish arrangements for the big company picnic, which I help to organize every year. The picnic was on Wednesday afternoon, followed by a happy hour at a bar in D.C. I was settling into my first happy hour drink and bonding with my coworkers when Carly started texting about her contractions being a little more regular. I told her I was only staying for two and would head out before long.

My boss showed up a little late and bought a round as I was getting ready to go, so I stayed for a bit extra. I dutifully texted the wife and sort of joked with my coworkers about how I was being a classic American father--out at a bar while my wife was in labor. Carly assured me it wasn't so severe. Yet.

I got home around 7pm and it was clear that Carly was undergoing something more serious than some half-assed contractions. I was tired and somewhat apprehensive about the timing. My brain was doing all the calculations of what we'd have to do if we had to go to the hospital:

1. Find someone to watch the Wolf; feed him? Pack a bag for him?
2. Let my boss know I probably wouldn't be in to work the next day, which was complicated, because I was supposed to be leading a national conference call on a project I spearheaded;
3. Get to the hospital.

Carly called her doctor, gave her the information about her contractions, etc. Apparently, since I got home (and Carly relaxed a little, knowing that I was there to manage those 3 things, above), she went into proper labor with regular contractions. When I was there, they were about every 6-7 minutes--GO TIME.

Lucky for us, my boss is also a friend and doesn't live too far away. She was already my backup for #1 and #2. I called her and let her know we were on our way to the hospital, and asked if it was OK to bring the Wolf by. My boss has two kids around the Wolf's age and we all thought it was time for a sleepover, so here it went! The Wolf was excited to stay at his friends' house and that was that.

The big work thing I had to do required my boss to learn a script I wrote (in my own voice) and then speak it at hundreds of lawyers and businesspeople over the phone for 45 minutes straight, followed by questions. She'd not done it before, so it also required a rehearsal and a follow-up session that would be recorded. She'd have to basically spend all day talking and sounding professional and at the end of it would probably die of talking too much (I will never die from that).

After we dropped the Wolf off, with hugs and well-wishes, I took Carly to the hospital.

Holy Cross is a Catholic Hospital located conveniently off of Georgia Avenue, near the infamous I-485. That means it's usually accessible and on Wednesday evening, it was. We arrived around 9:10PM and went right up to the neonatal unit. I point out that it is a Catholic hospital because that raises the stereotype that it might be a little more traditional or old school. It is. More on that later.

As you might expect from knowing me for any length of time, my genetics will cause problems. Our baby-to-be was firmly situated as a breech baby, meaning her butt was pointing the wrong direction for birth. Many breech  babies end up as Caesarean-sections, as coming out of the birth canal backwards can lead to head and neck injuries even if the doctors are quite practiced and careful. So we knew, when we got to the hospital, we should be on the fast track. "Breech baby, 3-minute contractions" should set off alarms in the head of any hospital staff who hear it. It means, "get the OR ready, and check this person RIGHT NOW." Our receptionist did not get that memo, and asked us to sit in the waiting room.

We were patient. There were two other couples there when we showed up, and didn't want to presume that our problems were greater than theirs. One left to go to labor and delivery after a few minutes--the other couple was just checking in. They'd actually been turned away twice because the mother's labor wasn't sufficiently developed, but this time, her water had broken and they were only at 35 weeks. Early.

After about 20 minutes, Carly's water broke. The receptionist go her a pad to sit on and went back to her ... staring at a computer screen and giving this other couple an exasperated sigh. After another ten minutes, Carly's contractions were around 2 minutes apart and she was starting to feel the urge to push--full labor. I reaffirmed to the receptionist that we had a BREECH BABY and my wife's WATER HAD BROKEN and that she was FEELING THE URGE TO PUSH. The receptionist stared back blankly. I said, "if you don't go get a doctor or nurse or someone, I will do it myself." She got it. She scurried away and came back a moment later. "A doctor will come get you in five minutes, tops." She seemed to think I would go sit down, I did not. Stood there and stared at her, glancing at the clock. I pulled Carly over (already in a wheelchair, ready to go) and reminded her that she should NOT PUSH and just breathe through the things as much as possible. She was in pain, and I was doing my best impression of a golem.

Right at the five-minute-mark, a couple of nurses showed up and started to cart Carly away. I said "BREECH BABY, WATER BROKE, 2-MINUTE CONTRACTIONS" and they moved faster. As soon as they threw her on a bed in the triage area and started checking Carly out, the Demon Gate opened and out came the most unspeakable substance imaginable... meconium.

So, meconium is basically a baby's first shit. It's all the remnants of whatever they eat while in utero, and it's typically a dense, black goop that resembles crude oil blobs. The first volume of it to come out is a sign that the baby's internal workings are, well, working, and things are on track. Our baby decided to drop that particular bomb while still inside of Carly. And it was epic.

Most meconium drops are relatively small--the size of large garden slug, maybe. Our child apparently ate well in utero and released a tide that would have brought tears to the eyes of the most successful Texas oil men. It was an endless tide of crude oil soft serve, all coming out of my wife to the point where even the nurse was like, "Really?" she flicked her gloved hand to get a mass of the black cake batter off of it, and on second thought, just got new gloves and looked around for a shovel. My brain is stained forever, and I think yours is, now, as well.

The punchline to this is that the baby was coming and was under stress. Feet were poking out (yeah). The nurses were yelling things like "COMPLETE" and "RUPTURE." The consent forms were just one of the nurses yelling "do you consent to a C-section?!" and Carly yelling back "yes, obviously!" They threw scrubs at me and told me to wait in the hallway (old school, remember?), which I did.

Carly and I both missed the birth. Because of the emergency situation, they did not have time to administer an epidural or other anaesthetic, so they had to put her fully under general anaesthesia. Because of that, they don't want extraneous people in the OR, and I was left in the hallway while Carly was knocked out. I kept watch while a long cast of nurses and doctors cycled in and out of the operating room, each of them giving me platitudes and no information. Eventually, one of the nurses told me "she's crying!" and that was the first I knew that the baby was born. It was around 10:40pm.

Eventually, the baby came out in a little plastic box and the nurse told me that she'd have to go to the NICU for a while to monitor her breathing. We'd find out later that she was under some serious stress at the time of the birth (due, apparently, to the prolonged wait in the reception area) and they wanted to make sure she didn't inhale any of that meconium or have other troubles. She also was kind of small for her birth age--about a pound lighter than expected, so they wanted to see what was up with that also. But at least on first look, she seemed to be OK.

I found Carly in the recovery area around midnight. She was mummified in bandages and blankets and very groggy. After a number of injections and some cleaning and forms and talks with the nurses and doctor, she was wheeled down to see Minerva in the NICU.

So after all that, everyone was admitted and drugged and sleeping. Things have been on an upward curve since. We were pained by the reception experience and the potential harms and dangers that could have come from that, but in the end it worked out. There are more details to share about this experience worthy of recording and sharing, and I'll get to those soon. For now, this:

Willendorf Woman

Our Child No. 2 is now fully into the third trimester. She's healthy and huge. So's my wife. She resembles those voluptuous mother goddess statues they dig up all over Europe, trying to puzzle out whether they were representations of some prehistoric matriarchal society or just the first porn ever. She also snores like a lumber mill and has this body pillow that, when I reach over to pat her on the knee or hip to say good night or good morning, I think it's just the pillow.

Things are great on that front. Our little family couldn't be better. Child No. 1 is getting ready to go to a more formal school than he has been in starting this August. Carly's on working groups that solve massive problems in the federalist system, and I've got an interview for a promotion next week. Let's hope that flies.

In the meantime, I'll share this thing, which I don't think I've shared before:

Mother's Day 2017

So a post about my mother.

Those of you who know me know that I'm generally pretty open about my childhood. My life didn't follow an American norm, at least amongst the people who know me now. The first ten years or so of my life, I lived in a trailer park. My sister had some kind of brain disease. My half-brother was a criminal. My best friend was a fire bug. My parents were involved in the drug trade.

I don't remember how old I was, but it was probably when I was nine or ten. That's my age, now--I can't remember when things happen and the older things are getting fuzzy. But the big brush strokes are there, and some finer details. I had to be about ten because it was a school night and my sister was old enough to sleep over at a friend's house. My parents weren't really strict about these things--rules were mostly considered limits of personal liability--but still, she had to be about twelve for that to seem normal to other people, so I was probably nine or ten.

My mother woke me up early in the morning, when morning is really just a formality of the clock. It was one or two in the morning. She said, "Do you want to go for a ride?" I mumbled something from my bunk bed, surrounded by those yellow and black gas pump octane rating stickers, about how I had to sleep and go to school in a few hours. She said she'd call the school and let them know I was sick or something. I didn't get a lot of sick days--I barely ever got sick as a kid--so this seemed like a treat. I rubbed my eyes, climbed down, and got dressed. I was not really awake.

We lurched into the ancient Chevy Caprice wagon with the faded and peeling vinyl wood pattern on the side. The beast was yellow, at one point, kind of a butter color, but now it had all the charm of an abandoned amusement park ride on the sea shore of a post-apocalyptic Lake Erie. Zombie skin in space. The belts on the massive truck engine that propelled the beast wailed to life, calming to a rhythmic whimper once they received some heat and friction. The story was, my parents got this car in trade for an overdue commodities invoice from "some Russians." To translate, a guy who probably had a Polish surname owed them money and rather than pay, he gave them this massive station wagon. It ran, fair trade.

I bunked down in the cargo area of the beast. I found it comfortable to kind of use the spare tire well as a nook and stared out the window until it got light out. I still can't sleep in a moving car. Eventually, I flipped through some comic books I brought. I had cookies, maybe? Now, with my son and road trips, it seems insane that I wouldn't have had some kind of snack, but then again, we were different.

I knew the route, somewhat. It was the way we went to visit the Farm--a place in southern Ohio where my aunt and uncle maintained a farmhouse on a mostly-wooded, hilly plot with a pond we would swim in almost every summer. I don't think they lived there, except maybe a few months here and there in spring and summer. My uncle's father, who I think was named Joe, would rail at us for sliding down the hay bales, ruining their rectangular alignment. So some kind of business was being done at the Farm. I remember cows wandering through now and then. We cut down a cherry tree there one year and burned the wood on the campfire. It was the best smelling fire I've ever had. I sliced my knee open with a filleting knife when I was seven. My father blasted a snake out of the pond with a .22 rifle, once. It leapt three feet out of the water. I killed a bird there.

So down we went, through southern Ohio, toward Marietta. When we crossed into West Virginia, we found my father and his friend, Larry, in a gravel lot somewhere. I don't know where it was, but it felt like we were in sight of the Ohio border. The men looked bad. They looked like they'd been in a bunker for weeks. Unshaven, red-eyed, sweat stains on their shirts. They went about loading bags into the car, somberly, while I was instructed to stay in the back. When Larry finally sat in the back seat, he looked over his shoulder at me with something between annoyance and a sneer. Larry was an asshole. Larry was always an asshole. That was kind of the punchline of the trip.

As I remember the story, my father and Larry had driven Larry's silver Mazda RX-7 down to Florida the week before for business. Specifically, they were going to Miami to buy drugs. Lots of drugs. The image of two kind of rednecky Ohio dudes rolling down to Little Havana to purchase primo product in the height of the drug business is kind of hilarious. I imagine they blended in like an orange construction cone in a Renoir painting. I don't know many details of the trip as it was relayed to me or as I picked up from overhearing conversation (I was trying to read my Spider Man comics, after all), but a few bits of the saga remain.

My father and Larry were set to meet a contact in a restaurant somewhere. They said "Mexican" but I think it was probably Cuban. Either way, nobody spoke English. Larry, already coked to the gills, was bouncy and paranoid. "HOLY SHIT, Tom," said Larry, to my father, who is Tom, "What are we going to do? I don't speak fucking Mexican, how will we order drinks? I wanna fucking beer! How do you say 'beer' in Mexican?"

"Don't worry," replied my father, "I got this." He raised his hand, got the attention of a waiter and extended two fingers. "Yo asshole!" he ordered, "Two!"

Larry: "What the FUCK? Are you trying to get us fucking killed?"

"Shut up, Larry." Two beers arrived. Eventually, so did their contacts.

Later, while driving back north, in the loaded RX-7, Larry decided they needed to eat. Screaming down the highway in the middle of the night, he exclaimed, "I'm fucking hungry, let's get a BURGER." It was late, and they were in West Virginia. Back then, in the late 80's, the culture was still not quite 24/7. Highways in West Virginia were dark, and those signs that said GAS FOOD LODGING mattered. It wasn't so much as to whether they had YOUR gas station as much as whether they had ANY gas station within 20 or 30  miles of the exit.

[Entertainingly, the exit that led to the Farm back in the 80s was barely paved as I remembered it. Last time I drove that stretch of highway, the Woodsfield exit off 77 now has a McDonalds, a Sunoco, a Pilot Travel Plaza, and a hotel. Progress!]

So they're cruising along and Larry wants a burger. He asks my father, "Look in the bag, see if we got any cash." This was kind of a funny request. Larry was driving, my father was in the passenger seat. The rest of the RX-7 was pretty crowded with gym bags full of product. "The bag" as he put it was one of those old-timey physician's medical bags, the leather kind with a handle that open up square, like they'd have in house calls on TV. It's where they kept their cash. I imagine, if you only had 100's and 20's, you could fit a sizeable sum in there. My father fishes out the bag and pulls out a wad of one dollar bills, probably in a strap, so either $100 or $200 in there (in 30 years, the value of the dollar is about half, so it would be worth $200-$400 today). Larry sees the denomination and says, "What the fuck is that?"

Somewhat puzzled, my father replies, "It's about a hundred dollars, Larry."

"That BITCH!" Larry spat. He was referring to his wife, Lynn, who packed the bag. "That bitch! I told her not to put any of that shit in there!" That 'shit' being small bills. "What does she think we are, amateurs?" The idea here being, that if they were seen with a bunch of $1s, their professional counterparts in south Florida would not deal with them because they're small time.

Larry snatches the bills out of my father's hand and flips them up through the slightly ajar sunroof of the RX-7. My father said you could see the bundle explode in the light of the tail lights, like chaff from a military plane. Entertained--my father was also pretty high at this point--he dug around and found another bundle of $1s, and another, and handed them to Larry. Enraged, Larry tossed each bundle up at the sunroof, hard. One bundle twisted off his fingertips and hit the sunroof just... so. The hinge on the sunroof broke and the glass started flapping and banging at high speed (they were driving very fast, and air has certain physical properties...). It was a fearsome racket. Larry blasphemed, my father giggled, eventually coughing into full laughter.

Eventually, they both calmed down enough to realize they'd have to stop and do something about it. After a minute or so of silence, Larry--now tensely collected--says to my father, "Are there any fives in there? If so, we'll pitch those, too."

At some point they lost control of the RX-7 and embedded it in an embankment. It was close enough for them to walk to a payphone and call my mother, far enough out that the various state police agencies didn't find them first. We rumbled down the highway to get them, in the wee hours of the morning.

So that's my mom. She's the one who would wake her kid up and take him out of school to drive all the way across the state to pick up her husband and his idiot friend who got themselves in some shit because they were arrogant and high and dumb and loaded down with a life jail sentence if she didn't go and save them. The way she dealt with my father and Larry was a kind of bored disdain. "This is not cool," said the look on her face, and the men knew better than try to justify themselves.

Somehow, despite the crazy shit that happened through the years, and the insanity of how everything played out, especially after I was old enough to know the truth, she made this all seem normal. We could have been hunkered down during some World War and she'd have the same kind of dismissive eye-roll over whatever hair-brained stuff people did to try to get killed.

The rest of the day was my father and Larry transporting all their shit around, while my mother and I chilled out and watched TV. I think it was Friday, then. My sister called and extended her sleepover at her friend's house (at least that was the story) so she didn't see the men dragging themselves around like castaways all day. I think we ordered pizza.

The end result of all of this is that my parents managed to sock away some cash that helped us get out of the trailer park and ultimately paid to keep my sister alive when she developed that brain disease. It was hard watching them go through withdrawal, setting up phone taps on their friends' houses, shooting guns in the dark. It was hard to watch them fight when they were drunk or stoned. It was hard to come to terms with the fact my parents were doing highly criminal shit that could have sent them to jail forever. Friends of theirs ended up in federal prison, or dead. One of their clients was a county prosecutor and he had a spectacular failure when I was in high school. I saw him on the weekly news and thought, "I know that guy."

Lucky for us, we made it through. Unlike most of my friends growing up, my parents stayed together for the long haul. Everyone else who had normal problems like mortgages and swim lessons, their families split up. My parents, they gave me a different perspective. Stability in the storm, and awareness that there is ALWAYS a storm. Through that, I learned how to calmly deal with pretty much anything. I'm the one you call in to calm those fuckers down when granny is in the hospital and the aunts are all in hysterics. I can also accept almost anyone, no matter how apparently reprehensible their actions or their selves may be. I judge, but don't condemn. I know who you are and I respect it, but I will absolutely tell you if you're fucked up. And I learned to love music.

So thanks, Mom. You did it. You kept me going and taught me that you do things that are necessary, even when it's not cool, and that you order pizza when you're done.

From the archives: Stark Merriweather

About 4 years ago, a friend from college popped up in my Facebook feed and asked if I'd like to join him in playing a role-playing game online. He wanted to use the Roll20.net app to run a game called Lamentations of the Flame Princess. The game was designed by some insane expat living in Scandinavia and is based on very old-school Dungeons & Dragons. The rules are stripped down and have a kind of crazy ineptness built in. They are meant to be loose rules to allow for more robust storytelling.

My friend, Methuselah (actual name), asked us to come up with characters in his world, and I created this:

"I have always had a special relationship with fish," said Stark Merriweather, in response to the question of whether he would like syrup on his flapjacks. Stark, along with his brothers, Drab and Gloom, were the scions of an ancient family of apocalyptic cultists with an unfortunate name. As was tradition, Stark, being the third-born son, was groomed as the vessel for one of the Ggrrbbrrsshhrrnth, beings from the Unknown that would shepherd the world into Blessed Darkness. When Stark was born, the signs foretold that he would be the One to Put the Light Out, and the cycle of Darkness would truly begin.

Stark grew up learning the Sacred Words, drinking the Holy Blood, and eating the Less-Holy Gut-Meats. He knew what the copper axe over the stove was for, and left a plate of cream out for the Things Under the Bed every night, until he was Too Old for That.

When the Foretold Day came, Stark's family performed all the Essential Rites, bathed him in the Correct Oils, and lit the Necessary Fire. They chanted and howled and blasphemed, and when the somewhat gibbous moon was at its apex, they Opened the Door and summoned the Ggrrbbrrsshhrrnth from the Unknown. The Ggrrbbrrsshhrrnth opened its infernal beaks, waved its spiny fronds, and let forth a nasally trumpeting roar, filled the chamber with the smell of durian fruit, and exited this world.

Maybe it was his crooked teeth, or his lazy eye, or maybe just the way that he stood there, awkwardly grinning, but the results were clear: the Blessed Darkness would not come this generation. Stark's parents, Overcast (father) and Tiffany (Overcast's second wife, who went to the same school as Drab and Gloom and is reviled by the older brothers), didn't exactly tell Stark to leave, but made it clear that all of the family's hopes and dreams had rested on him and he had performed quite poorly, indeed. So, they paid for Stark to go to a distant trade school, bought a one-way passage on a ship, nibbled his ears, and wished him bad-bye.

Stark Merriweather, Magic User

Brain Dump 2017.2

Some goals for the year:

• Successfully have second child (a girl)
• Pay off at least three major debts (1 down; stretch goal is 5)
• Actually read some god damn books (way behind on that one)
• Buy another car (probably a Prius V)
• Run two half marathons
• Lose 12 pounds (stretch goal is 20)

Things I've already accomplished:

• Full health assessment and physical at a regular doctor (not urgent care)
• Bought a proper bike
• Painted Wolf's room
• Hung the mantel over the fireplace (real sweet, recycled chestnut barn timber)

I don't like calling wood "reclaimed" if it came out of an old barn or whatever. It's not like it was ours to begin with, so not re-claimed.

I'm part of the way toward some career success. I'm currently serving a stint as the acting chief of my unit, overseeing the building of a full division out of a ragtag team. So far so good. I'm on the list for potential promotion, just have to not fuck it up. I don't specifically call this a "goal" because I'm not really in control of the outcome and I don't want to hang my sense of success on my career. Still, we call it "career success." Fuck me.

I also finally acquired a Colin Christian piece. It's in the mail right now. Can't wait to get it so I can hang it on the wall and freak everyone out (don't worry, it's not one of the creepy ones).

Also, extremely happy my kid likes the Clash. THE ONLY BAND THAT MATTERS.

Outnumbered

It's official! If my dog survives until September (she is 14 or so), then we'll be outnumbered. Outnumbered in the gender war. Me and the Wolf vs. Carly, Sophie (the dog), and... a baby girl.

Yep. We're expecting again, and this time, it is a human child of the fairer sex. "You'll have one of each!" say my coworkers and anyone else who is cursed with multiple children of a single sex only. My friend Katarina, who has three girls, sighs somewhat when she sees pictures of my son. My coworker Christine sighs a little when she considers that my wife will be able to do "girly things" with a daughter.

I'm opposed to all of that. If I have any hand in it, my daughter will be neck deep in Dungeons & Dragons by age six. Actually, I just want her to be like the Deal sisters.

I'm excited. I have been having a lot of fun with my first rotten child. It's time to have another. We've been at it for a little over a year, I think. We pulled the goalie the same time we really knew we were going to buy a house. We had a couple of false starts I guess. Carly's enhanced testing regime gave very precise results, and when it was apparent that a positive test was no longer positive, it caused some unsteady mornings. Still, a few false starts this time are way easier than our false start the first time....

The Wolf has been slowly coming around. We're talking to him about the prospect of a little sister, a new baby, etc. The other day he lifted up my shirt and poked me in the belly. "There's a baby in there?" I think he's figured out that a paunch is the same as being pregnant. I told him there's beer in there.

OK. That's all I have for now. More will inevitably come.

P.S. Oh yeah, today I settled one of the last three debts related to my Ohio properties. Two to go.

Brain dump 2017.1

It has been a busy month.

I turned 39 the day after the inauguration of the 45th President of the United States. There was a Women's March on Washington on my birthday. Hundreds of people sang "Happy Birthday" to me in the Judiciary Square metro station. It was a blast.

The Wolf is fully three and a half, and we have moved him into a big boy bed. It's one of the Ikea models with drawers underneath. He's having trouble adjusting, as anyone does when sleeping in a new place, or under new rules. He doesn't know when to go to bed. It's like we're on vacation. I come to check on him and half expect him to be on the floor, or in one of the drawers. He wouldn't fit in the drawers, but still wouldn't stop him from trying.

My gods, the child is definitely mine. He's got a strong will, independent streak, and is unwilling to compromise on most issues. Most of the time, he's not screaming about things that he wants to accomplish, but rather bargains or makes proclamations. Usually he just does his own thing and we have to follow along for the ride.

I'm acquiring power tools and thinking about crafty projects for the future. I'm mostly done with hanging the new mantel--it's a reclaimed chestnut barn beam that I got from this place in Timonium. It's just lovely. And I've learned how to lag bolts into brick (never did that before), use an angle grinder, and learn that I'm not very good at judging depth (no new news there).

The new President is making America doubt again. His wild pronouncements and nearly transparent, bigoted, kleptocracy-on-the-hoof policies are making it hard to get up in the morning. I'm worried that I'll go into work and they'll have me fitted for jackboots. It's a mess.

I am a dedicated public servant, however. I will hang on as long as I can because someone responsible needs to. I have to try to be the voice of reason in the room when it comes to one of those questions like, "should we just deny all the Iranian applications?" [I printed out copies of the 14th Amendment and 1964 Civil Rights Act in case anyone needs them]. Someone has to be there in 4  years when this silliness is over (or sooner).

On that note, I'll leave you with this: