Filthiest baby alive

My wife and I recently met friends and their progeny at the Discover Mills mall near our home. Because we live in a suburban Mecca there are actually two malls near us, Discover Mills and Mall of Georgia. I usually take my daughter to Mall of Georgia because it's kids' area has a playhouse complete with slide, comfy benches and a plethora of children's books filed away in mahogany bookshelves. The Discover Mills play area has a few giant concrete bugs to play on and the occasional hypodermic needle.

Just teasing. It was probably just used for knitting.

Anyway, Discover Mills has a Lego store and an As Seen on TV store. Now do you see why we went there? Regardless, it's not the kids' play area I want to talk about; it's the food court surrounding it. Specifically I want to talk about the wonderful parents we saw and compare them to the bad parents we are.

First let me alibi and say I never eat fast food. Never. I gave it up years ago after I found it disgustingly necessary to limit my drive-through meals to only one in a twenty-four hour period. Shouting into the clown once a day is gross enough. Any more than that and a person becomes some weird Isle of Dr. Moreau creature that's half human and half polyunsaturated blubber. That being said, I promptly went up to the fry gal at Burger King and ordered a Double Cheese combo of my own volition. I ate it.

All.

And a Hershey chocolate pie. It had been years and I thought what the hell? What's the worst that can happen? I get cancer? Ha! I laugh in the face of cancer. Ha ha! Ha hahaha cough cough wheeze. Moving on.

I not only ate most of the fries myself, I decided to share some of them along with the burger with my one-year-old daughter. Did my wife get any? No. She was too busy scarfing down Sbarro's pizza. We like to pretend pizza, regardless of its origin, isn't fast food. Same goes for fried chicken.

Quit making fun. You're not the boss of us.

Our daughter was happily sitting in a grungy highchair to which we hadn't even cared to give a precursory wipedown with a moist towelette. Furthermore, while we do own a Baby Easy Clean Shopper, it looks so good up in Meryl's closet that we can't bare to bring it down and use it. When my kid licks the edge of the communal food court table, I just avert my eyes and bury my face in two all-beef patties.

Across from us is this similarly aged couple with their two boys, both of whom are running around the lead-based play area in their bare feet. No big deal. The kids are probably up on their tetnus shots. I'm just telling you so you get an idea of the local color.

Anyway, while my family is all devouring whatever badness is in front of us, this neighboring husband and wife team spend a good five minutes scrubbing everything around them with baby wipes. He cleans the top of the table. She wipes the edges of the table. He cleans the seat of the highchair. She washes the arms of the highchair. They even clean their own chairs, including the backs I didn't see what they all ate, but the youngest member of the family got to snack on YoBaby brand yoghurt.

How do you spell that anyway? I don't feel like looking it up. Is it yoghurt? Yogurt? Yoh Gert! Idunno.

My question is this: If you're such a germphobe, why are you even taking your kids to the food court at a local mall to eat? And then more importantly, when you get out the wipes and hand sanitizer are you really wiping said germs away? Or are you just wiping them around?

That's almost as bad as guys who after using the restroom hold the door handle with a paper towel and then drop the paper towel on the floor. As if the bathroom door handle is the only thing in whatever venue you happen to find yourself that has germs on it. And while I'm on the topic, guys who meticulously wash their hands after taking a leak in a public bathroom are all just giving the rest of us a bad name. Unless you routinely urinate on your hands, this is superfluous washing.

Do you wash your hands after shaking hands with someone else? After picking up an item someone hands you? After you scratch your head do you wash your hand? Why does touching the fifth appendage merit extra hygienic aftermath? I've never understood the logic in that. Frankly, I don't think there is any.

Our table received no scrubdown, and my daughter probably had schmutz on her moosh from the breakfast she ate earlier in the morning. She's still alive. But like I said, we're bad parents that way. Do not replicate.

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Random musings from an equally random guy

Be forewarned that I have no rhyme or reason to what I am about to say. This evening's entry will likely be a list of short blurbs about the life and times of a part-time miscreant. Furthermore what you read from this point forward may or may not be heavily influenced by the forty-dollar sparkling my wife and I are enjoying along with the prescription medicine I am taking to relieve a toothache. The warning label on the latter clearly depicts a full martini glass covered with the international symbol for no-don't-tell-anyone-you're-doing-this.

I know some would rebound from their blog absence with a diatribe about why they haven't posted anything of merit in a while or apologize for not having commented on others' blogs, but guess what?

We don't roll that way around here.

It's good to be the king.

On May 5th though when many of our neighbors south of the American Canadian border were out celebrating their ancestors' defeat of the French army in the Battle of Puebla(which if you think about it is like celebrating kicking a shortbus passenger while he's off his meds) my daughter celebrated her first trip around the sun. One year has come and gone, and while the days have seemed like weeks this first year has flown as though it were only a month.

My baby's not really a baby anymore. Whereas once my wife and I applauded her holding her head up on her own, now we chase after her as she races to the dog bowl, the toilet bowl or the cleaning supplies to find something new to put in her mouth. Thankfully none of the plants in our home are poisonous. How do we know this? Because I think it's safe to say she's sampled them all. The same can be said for the weeds in our front yard.

I subscribe to a list serve for local stay-at-home dads. For the record, I don't like that term. I only use it for lack of a better one. Trapped-at-home dad is more indicative of how you feel when you sign up for the gig, at least at first.

Anyway, most of the information on these list serves is rather blase. One guy bitches about having to be at home while his wife works. Another complains that he isn't being allowed to join any of the local moms' groups. Someone else talks of his kid's recent trip to the doctor. Riveting news, huh? This morning though I got an email from the guy who heads up the Atlanta stay-at-home dads' group saying there was going to be the "World's Largest Playgroup" at a nearby mall.

Well, the mall was about 30 minutes from my house (90 during Atlanta rush hour) but come on. It's the world's largest freakin' playgroup for Falwell's sake. No way I'm gonna miss that.

Meryl and I showed up at Perimeter Mall and followed the music to this babypalooza. Funnily enough it was located right outside of Spencer's Gifts, and their store window features some scantily clad bimbo hawking a flavored body lotion. I'm just glad someone's still looking out for us stay-at-home dads.

A nearby placard announced the day's festivities which included performances by different musicians, storytimes, raffles for stuff you don't really need or want, and car seat demonstrations.

When we sat down Meryl was happy to stay put and watch the Kindermusik instructors for all of about four minutes. After that not even their peekaboo scarves and rattle eggs could keep her occupied. By the time the woman on stage was singing in her soothing slow voice Shakers away! Shakers away! It's time to put the shakers away!, my kid was making a beeline for the adult party games and blacklight posters across the way.

We left with several of the free giveaways like bubbles, a bib, a onesie and some diaper rash cream as well as two Kindermusik egg rattles that were supposed to have been returned. Unfortunately while chasing down my kid, I couldn't find a Kindermusic recipient quickly enough to give back the rattles. I guess that means the egg rattles aren't giveaways so much as they are stealaways.

Oh well. Life goes on.

In other news, my tooth effing hurts! This is the same tooth (I think) that I wrote about many moons ago back in October of 2005 when I was told I might need a root canal. I ended up only getting a filling and have been pain free up until only recently. I can't believe it! Since that appointment I have been flossing three times every ice age. Life is so unfair.

My wife and daughter and I are going out of town in a few days to visit my sister and brother-in-law along with their new bouncing baby girl. I just hope my tooth doesn't choose family vacation as a time to erupt into agonizing abcess.

If I had to pick one issue about which I see eye to eye with my conservative bretren, it would have to be the crippling effects caused by the oral decay of America. Doesn't anyone care about the children?

In other news, this champagne sure is good.

Peace out.

Love,
Kevin

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Cursed (two syllables) email

Have you ever stopped to think about the hefty price we pay for having an email address? I'm not talking about having to sort through the messages relating to Nigerian banking scams or Tijuana-based erectile dysfunction drug companies. Those are certainly a pain to have to weed through, but in my book those annoyances don't measure up to the accountability we are subjected to by electronic mail.

In the past I've had a few potential employers and organizations ask me for my email address only to follow up with the question How often do you check your email? Because I want the position (whatever it is at the time) I always say that i check my email daily, which is usually true, but in doing so I obligate myself, at least to some degree, of being on call 24 hours a day. In other words, it opens up the door for an employer to email me and expect an answer regardless of whether I'm scheduled to appear at work that day.

This is not so much a gripe as it is an observation.

This brings to mind the people who call up and upon getting an answering machine say I know you're there so pick up the phone.

How dare they?

When I was single I would constantly change the message on my answering machine. Once when I was fed up with aforementioned types my message said:

Please leave a message after the beep. Do understand
however that leaving a message does not obligate me to call you back. Also
if I am screening my calls, announcing who you are does not obligate me to pick
up the phone. My phone does not control me; I control my phone.

That message got mixed reviews. Some friends took it as a personal attack which was not my intention. I just couldn't believe the audacity of those who would assume that because they wanted me to answer my phone I should drop whatever i was doing and do their bidding.

Would these same people invite themselves into your living room and ask you to make them a sandwich? Can't you just hear them say Don't forget to cut the crusts off! They probably wouldn't be so bold, but in essence that's basically what they're doing when they make demands of you via the telephone.

Going back to the job application, what if instead of asking how often you check your email, it asked how often you were willing to work for free outside of your scheduled hours? After all, isn't this really what the question is asking when you get right down to it? Otherwise, why wouldn't the sender just wait until you clocked in to ask you whatever they needed?

As cantankerous as I may seem at times, I am not into complaining about things that are within my control. I used to work at a job where coworkers would complain about how little they made, yet they would continue to show up for work every day.

Talk is cheap.

My argument was that we set our own worth every day that we clocked in. Regardless of how "poorly" the employer was rewarding us, we told that employer we were okay with that every day that we showed up for work.

The same is true for responding to someone's email. If I respond during my personal time, I'm telling the sender I am willing to file them into the same category as I do my family and friends. I'm saying I'm just as anxious to receive their news as I am my niece's prom pictures or my friend's latest gossip or my wife's cherished sweet nothings.

If this isn't the case, I have only myself to blame.

I am curious to hear how others have dealt with this dilemma.

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Blessed be the taxman

Blessed be the taxman for he bringeth us our refund. We shout and holler praise for the almighty deductions. Huzzah!

Yes, I know this money is actually nothing more than the piddly remains of what I've already forked out to the government and gotten back in the form of a check, but so what? If we didn't pay our taxes to the United States, who would fund the weapons of mass destruction? And then if there were no weapons of mass destruction, how could we justify the weapons of mass destruction destruction? And then hard working Americans would be out of a job now wouldn't they?

Our checks, both from the state and George W., came and went. No sooner were they in our mitts than they were rushed off to our credit union for deposit. No sooner were they deposited than they were spent. Thanks to a great tax guy and a thousand-dollar procreation credit our family has two more toys to boot.

And there was much rejoicing.

One toy is the notebook computer upon which I am typing to you now. It is a Compaq Presario XYZ-LMNOP or something like that. Does anyone else remember back when we called these things laptops? Remember Y2K compliance? Those were the days, my friend.

This computer replaces the seven-year old doorstop of a laptop I've been working on for the past . . . well . . . seven years. Actually, I won't throw out the old computer. It still works provided I'm willing to sit through the five-minute bootup . It also has writings and other creative endeavors of yours truly dating back to ye olde college days.

I don't know why I keep those papers, but whenever I get a new computer, I always transfer over old documents for which I have absolutely no use. I once wrote an essay comparing a novel by late Senegalese author, Mariama Bâ, to French philosopher Prévost's Manon Lescaut. The long title for the latter is actually Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut.

Does anyone really care about the title, much less to read my sophomoric literary opinions on the subject in pisspoor French? Then why has this oeuvre survived now for six or seven hard drives?

Explain your answer.

My new computer is pretty sweet, especially considering I only spent $480 on it after the $30 rebate. I'll keep you informed, gentle reader, as to whether or not I ever receive the rebate. Oh yes, I will keep you informed. Hopefully Staples will pull through though. Signing up for the rebate on their website couldn't have been easier.

I also am playing on Windows Vista which, for all practical purposes is semi-somewhat better than XP. I guess. I haven't taken the bundled cyber tour of what all new features I can expect from this new operating system, but I'm sure it's chocked full of user-friendly features I will never use.

One annoyance is the pop-up program called the HP Total Care Advisor slash PC Health and Security. I really haven't figured out what all this does that benefits me as a person. I have learned from other innerwebbers that the program actually slows down my system performance considerably and it contains an equally annoying innerweb search window down in the taskbar. Again, I'm not sure what good any of this does me. I'm a big believer in if-it-ain't-broke-don't-eff-with-it, and furthermore why is the program called what it is? It sounds like it was installed by Kaiser Permanente or some other health care provider.

And that's another thing? Have computers and their minions usurped the term health care the same way they did viruses? Are we now going to have to distinguish between human health and computer health?

I also recently purchased a Sharp Notevision projector and let me just tell you that this thing rocks in all caps. Why anyone would spend thousands on a large-screen TV when they could get one of these for under $700 is beyond me. You hook it up to your DVD player, notebook computer or whatever and project whatever you wanna watch up on to your wall. The image quality is stupendous. It's like being at the movies only the drinks are cheaper and you can still here the film when you're in the bathroom.

Even cooler is that we plug up the audio to the wireless speakers so we can easily listen to surround-sound. And since the speakers are wireless, we could easily take the whole thing outside and host a neighborhood movie night up against the garage door.

I know that sounds naughty but it's really not.

Anyway, deductions plus good tax guy plus impulse equals toys. And that's what it's all about.

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Where have all the bloggers gone?

A dear friend of mine begins his blog with the phrase If you haven't got anything to say, then by all means, start a blog.

I'm sorry, but isn't this just the truth? What other medium allows us to so blatantly self-indulge or better yet feign author status when in fact we are contributing little more to the literary universe than Marcia Brady's lost diary (if you don't remember, just google it.)

Early on in my career as a professional freelance pro bono autobiographic blogger, I posted about a lot of the goo you find when you surf through internet blogs: political rants, gratuitous profanity, the usual self-aggrandizement and so on. Since that time I've noticed a common trend among those of us who like to share the nothingness of our lives with anyone who might regularly read our blogs or at least stumble upon them after googling "free panties." The trend I'm referring to is the blogging exodus.

Some of the best blogs I've run across have gone through some sort of cyber restructuring or in some cases, just come to an end. There have been still more that I no longer link to simply because they're not updated with fresh material. And while at first I scoffed at those bloggers who made some final spiel before leaving the world o' blogs, I am the first to feel jilted when a blog just stops dead in its tracks without any explanation being given.

Take for example Soap in My Mouth. It was written by a fellow Atlanta blogger. I don't know her from Adam, but her stuff was funny, hip, and genuinely interesting to read. Her last post dates back to mid-January and it talks about her being ill. And that's it.

Well, did she ever recover?

Did she die?

Has she been incarcerated all this time? Without an update, we'll never know. And on some level, this bothers me.

Fat Asian Baby was one of those bloggers who on March 21, 2006 at least told us why she was leaving. One of the reasons she sited incidentally was the very reason also sited by Blonde Vigilante in one of her pre-exit posts, the fear of someone you know discovering your blog. Fat Asian Baby (whose also Jewish -- go figure) finally came back much to my delight, and Blonde Vigilante (whose not blonde -- go figure) shut down her discovered blog and started anew.

Again much to my delight. Her shit is funny. She starts her blog profile with Circle, circle, dot, dot...welcome to my blogspot. It just gets funnier from there. I don't know who it was who found out about her blog, but I hope they don't find this one. I don't want to have to chase her all around the innerwebs again.

The End is Now author is one of those who gave us notice that he was leaving but has since returned. His blog is currently under some sort of overhaul and a lot of his older stuff I can't find anymore, but he's definitely worth checking out. His funniest bit is one I couldn 't find on his own blog, but someone else out there copied and pasted. Why Lie? I Need A Pie is an absolute must to add to your reading list. The guy stands outside a McDonalds with a sign panhandling so he can get money to buy an apple pie. To this day, if my wife sees me reading his blog, she'll ask, "Is that the Ineedapie guy?"

Blog Antagonist is another one gave ample notice of her departure but then returned. We're glad she did of course. Anyone who titles her blog Blogs Are Stupid has got to rock.

I don't know why I thought this new trend deserved a post unto itself. This is not my own final remark. I don't plan on going anywhere. I just think it's kind of funny that along with this relatively new method of expression comes some emerging protocol for its end.

You know, I'm trying to come up with a somewhat interesting way of ending this entry, but I really just don't have anything further to say. Then again if my friend mentioned at the beginning is correct, having nothing to say is tantamount to having a blog.

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Charter sucks (part deux)

For those who care, I've updated my diatribe on my on-going battle with Charter. Click here if you dare.

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I got a haircut today

I got a haircut today.

Please, no more applause.

This was a bit of a milestone for me, not just because I needed one but also because I took the plunge and finally went to a new hair dresser. In a salon. Like, there were actually plants, decent music and faux-hardwood floors there. I'm used to going to one of those in-and-out ten-dollar jobbies.

I am generally loyal to a hair dresser. I find that they are people with whom it's worth it to build a long-standing professional relationship. Even in the in-and-out ten dollar jobbies I always saw the same stylist. In fact, there was a period when I went to the same stylist for almost ten years. I saw her through two husbands, three lesbian lovers and yet another husband.

Did I mention she also eventually found Jesus?

Yes, she had three husbands, three lesbian lovers and she found Jesus. Though it wasn't necessarily in that order. As I recall Jesus came after the lesbians and before the third husband.

Oh my God, did I just say that? That sounds like a line from a racy South American romance novel doesn't it? I will surely burn in tuna for that.

I kept going to her through all that.

That is until one day . . .

(insert blurring image of present day and slowly steadying wavy image of past event)

(Oh yeh, and the sound of someone strumming on a harp)

When I began chemotherapy a few years ago, I knew my hair was likely to fall out. That's a given that most people know about chemotherapy. Your hair falls out. What many don't realize though is that you don't just wake up one morning bald. Hair loss is a gradual process that starts with a few strands on your pillow, then more in the shower, and after several more rounds of intravenous Drain-O and weedkiller your hair becomes patchy and gross and makes you look like the cancer kid that you are.

Being the cancer cult resistor that I am, I didn't want to let my hair get to the point where it looked like I was trying to elicit sympathy from others, so one day I went to my stylist and told her it was time. She knew about my diagnosis so it was no surprise to her. She even had another customer with the same form of cancer.

Testicular for those not already in the know.

Anyway, she cut and buzzed and cut and buzzed and I watched as clumps of hair fell to the floor. I know it sounds sad but choosing baldness before it chose me was actually quite liberating. The only problem was that even the closest setting on a pair of clippers will leave a minimal amount of hair at each follicle, and I didn't want to leave a trail of mousy brown hair dust in my wake.

You never know when that Grissom and his team are going to be trailing along after you with forceps and a plastic baggie. Can't you just see that muppety assistant of his looking at hair under a microscope saying, "we ran tests on it, and it showed traces of bleomycin and cisplatin. That can only mean one thing." Then Grissom would say some cheesy line like "it looks like the ball's in our court now." If you ask me that program jumped the shark about three metro areas ago.

But back to our regularly scheduled blog entry.

So my stylist got this idea and she went to retrieve the wax they generally reserve for eyebrows. A rather novel idea I thought and I told her to go for it. Unfortunately she didn't have enough wax or large enough strips do do a whole head, so she sent me to the beauty supply store to buy my own.

When I came back twenty dollars poorer, she and another stylist took turns running to heat up wax and ripping the last bit of hair from my head. It wasn't as painful as I thought. The only place it hurt was around my ear and at the nape of my neck. As for the rest of my head, it was bright red from the whole ordeal but at least when they were finished I was truly bald.

Here's the kicker.

When she rang me up, she told me my total was seventy five dollars.

SEVENTY FIVE DOLLARS!

A seven. And a five.

And that didn't account for the twenty I spent at the beauty supply place.

When I asked her if she was joking she explained that had I gone to a more upscale salon and had two stylists working on my hair for that amount of time, they would have charged me $150.

"Would they have asked me to buy my own wax?" I asked.

She crossed out the $75 and instead wrote $55. Remember, this was in one of those in-and-out ten dollar jobbies. With a stylist I had gone to for years. Years, I tell you. When it was busy at times, I'd even be the one the stylists would ask to answer the phone and schedule peoples' appointments for them.

She joked that it was job security because now I wasn't going to be seeing her for several months.

Several months? Do you realize how badly I wanted to shout I got cancer, Lady; I might not be coming back at all. Though, come to think of it, then she probably would have scratched out the $55 and put $95. The money wasn't even the issue; it was the principle of the thing.

Oh well.

That was the last day my hair hit her floor.

Anyway, I got my hair cut today.

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