Snowflakes

Humor me for a few minutes and allow me to deviate from my standard Friday posts. Something interesting happened last night and there’s pretty much no way I couldn’t share it.
When Owen moved from his crib to his toddler bed, we lucked into getting one of those video monitors for Owen’s room for free. There’s something vaguely big brotherish about it but still it’s come in handy when Owen suddenly decides to try cartwheels in the middle of the night (you think I’m joking). And considering that Mia went through a similar phase and our low-tech solution was hooking up our old video camera to a desktop computer with 20 feet of USB cable and broadcasting the picture via WiFi, the video monitor is a hell of a lot simpler.
Last night was a pretty standard night. Mia went off to bed after dinner, working on reading (for realz) some recently acquired books while listening to The Sound of Music soundtrack. Owen put up his usual fight but eventually surrendered around 8:00. Beth and I settled on the couch, caught up on some episodes of Chopped and Survivor, drank a beer or two then surrendered ourselves.
When we go to bed, we usually open Owen’s door which allows me to turn off that video monitor’s sound. It’s a little loud and the hiss drives me crazy. Last night I did just that. I was more than a little surprised, then, when I woke up around 1:00 in the morning to the sound of Owen fussing coming over the monitor. I turned the sound down only to realize that the sound was completely off. Huh. I looked at the monitor and saw a Buzz Lightyear-covered lump, not moving, and since the fussing had stopped I decided that nothing terrible was going on. At 1:30 the same thing happened, sound still off on the monitor, lump still, and the fussing stopped as soon as I contemplated getting out of bed to check. 2:00 found the cycle repeating itself.
At 2:30 I heard the fussing again, gazed into the monitor again. Beth rolled over beside me.
Beth: What’s wrong?
Me: You awake?
Beth: No, I’m comatose. Yeah, I’m awake.
Me: Have you gone in with him at all? He’s been fussing about every half hour.
Beth: Uh. No. He’s been here between us since midnight. He wandered in himself and crawled over you to get in the middle.
I looked and there lying between us was a very asleep Owen.
I did my best to convince myself that the sounds I’d heard, the staring into the monitor, were all part of some elaborate dream. Or that Owen had been making noise from the safety of our bed. Or Mia had been the one fussing. I didn’t believe it but I was tired and went back to sleep anyway. Until 4:00.
At 4:00 in the morning I heard something that sounded remarkably like paper being torn. The sound was unmistakably coming from the monitor beside me. I turned over and counted the people next to me. Beth and Owen were present and accounted for. I could hear Mia snoring in her room. I returned my attention to the monitor and there I saw something flutter in front of the camera. It looked like one solitary snowflake falling in a still forest. It disappeared from view and was followed by another maybe five seconds later. A chill ran down my spine and I wished that I owned a bat. I got out of bed and walked towards Owen’s room, closing our bedroom door behind us, then quietly closing the door to Mia’s room as well. I could hear a rustling of paper which stopped abruptly as I neared the room.
When I crossed the threshold, I saw that those snowflakes were indeed pieces of paper. There were two or three dozen of them, all about the size of a quarter. They were white with what looked like writing on them. I looked around the room, checking under the bed, behind the furniture, in the closet. Then I went to Mia’s room and did the same just to be safe. She kept snoring and nothing was amiss. So I went back to Owen’s room, sat down on the floor and took a closer look. It was clear that something had been written in large letters on a fairly large piece of paper. Then that piece of paper had been torn up. I started reassembling. It was 4:00 in the morning and the process was slow but I eventually made sense of the paper and laid the pieces out in front of me on the carpet. The chill in my spine returned twofold as I heard a small child laughing behind me while I read the message there in front of me…

Circle of Life

I’ve been reveling in my HD TV goodness lately and to take advantage of it I’ve been downloading HD episodes of Planet Earth. It’s an awe-inspiring series to begin with but in high definition it’s jaw-dropping. So much so that when Mia saw a clip of one, she was instantly hooked and wanted to watch more.
And then a giant crocodile dismembered a wildebeest.
Mia watched, eyes glued to the television with a look of profound concern on her face.
Mia: Did that crocodile eat that cow?
Me: Wildebeest. And yes.
Mia: That wasn’t nice.
Mia: You understand that to live some things need to eat other things?
Me: Yes.
Mia: And out in wild animals hunt and kill and eat other animals.
Me: Yes. It still wasn’t nice.
A couple of nights later, we watched another. Ten minutes in I could tell that Mia wasn’t totally engaged. She looked wary.
Me: Do you like this one?
Mia: It’s okay. But is something going to kill something else to eat it soon?
Me: I’m not sure. Why, did that bother you?
Mia: No.
Me: You want to see animals eat each other?
Mia: Yeah! I do!
Me: I’m sure something will get killed and eaten soon.
Mia: Really?
Me: Yeah, I mean, look at that big fish. That’s just a meal waiting to happen.
And then the head of one large fish was bitten off by the head of a gigantic fish, Mia was happy and all was right with the world.
We’re just going to skip a few steps and watch Pulp Fiction tonight.
(No, we won’t.)
(Oh, and who knew wildebeest was spelled that way? I never would have guessed.)

Personal Politics Revisited

Monday’s post generated a fair bit of controversy. And I got called a hypocrite. A lot. Specifically, lots of folks thought that because I’d made a judgment about my incredibly disappearing conservative neighbors based on their bumper stickers, I’d done the same thing that they ended up doing to me. Not true. And because this is my little corner of the universe and I can say whatever the fuck I want, I’d like to defend myself.
Here’s what I said:

A year or so ago while we were pulling into our neighborhood, we found ourselves behind a minivan. Not a remarkable moment aside from the fact that the rear end of the minivan was littered with stickers proclaiming allegiance to the Bush/Cheney ticket, support for our states ultra right-wing governor and his cronies, a love of the NRA and a “Don’t Tread On Me” snake. To top it all off, the license plate was a vanity job with the NRA seal in the middle and a custom plate number that spoke to some of those core NRA values. I turned to Beth and said, “well, there’s someone we’d never get along with.”

I didn’t say oh look, there are bad people or we’ll never let our kids hang out with theirs or let’s avoid them at all costs and try our best to shun them from the neighborhood consciousness. No. I made the judgment – the incorrect assumption – that these were people I wouldn’t get along with. I made a comment. I did not take action. My personal biases didn’t stop me from doing the right thing and recognizing that people are more than their political beliefs.
These neighbors are people who are entitled to their own opinions about anything. So while I might have pre-judged and assumed, my personal beliefs did not prevent me from meeting these folks, liking these people, playing with their children, having them in my home or enjoying their company. Theirs did.
Throughout college and beyond most of my friends seem to be conservative Christians. I don’t share their beliefs but I admire their faith. And I enjoy talking about their beliefs so long as the discussion is founded on the understanding that their job is not to bully me into accepting theirs.
And I am clearly in the minority.
We are reaching a very critical, very scary point in this country. A point at which opinions become labels and labels create outcasts. It is quickly becoming a country of us versus them, right versus wrong, and black versus white in which there are no shades of gray. And I’m sorry but life is one big gray area. People are labeled by their ideologies. Liberal is a bad word. Candidates fail to understand the contents of the Constitution. It is a point at which it becomes much easier to throw up your hands and say fuck it than it is to express yourself in the hope of making some meaningful change merely to get shouted down in the process. And if that mentality is ever adopted by the majority, we’re really and truly screwed.
There’s been a lot of talk about bullying in the media. But everyone seems to be missing the obvious. Sure, the big kid in the school yard who wants your lunch money is a threat but there’s no greater example of institutionalized bullying than the American political process. Candidates, the media and those who tow the party line are all guilty but none more so than the if you’re not for us you’re against us crowd who can’t see the subtle variations of belief and instead see binary, yes or no, black or white, right or wrong, liberal or conservative.
What do you make of the political state in the US?

Dead Man’s Drawers

In addition to sitting here, checking my email and sipping a cup of coffee, I’m wearing a dead man’s underwear.
Wait. I’m not a sick freak. Okay I probably am but not for that reason. Let me explain.
Before he died my uncle enjoyed shopping. A lot. It didn’t hurt that the neighborhood he lived in was literally surrounded by high-end stores like Tiffany and Saks and Neiman Marcus. When he died he left behind a haul from Brooks Brothers – new shirts, a pair of ridiculously expensive shoes and several new pairs of boxers still wrapped up in plastic.
Now, Dick was a little hunched over in his old age but he and I were somewhat the same size. So I took the shirts and boxers (it was obvious that the shoes weren’t going to fit – Dick had tiny feet) with me when we cleared out his place. The shirts were gorgeous, high-end button down shirts. And while the neck size was right, the sleeves made it look as though I’d just thrown on something of Owen’s. Not a good look for me and surprising given Dick’s prowess as a boxer. All was not lost. As it turns out, Dick and I had the same waist size.
Which is how I find myself wearing a dead man’s boxers.
If you knew my family, you’d understand that this is really all par for the course. We’re a little odd, us Cactuses. But we’ve got plenty of underwear.

Personal Politics

A year or so ago while we were pulling into our neighborhood, we found ourselves behind a minivan. Not a remarkable moment aside from the fact that the rear end of the minivan was littered with stickers proclaiming allegiance to the Bush/Cheney ticket, support for our states ultra right-wing governor and his cronies, a love of the NRA and a “Don’t Tread On Me” snake. To top it all off, the license plate was a vanity job with the NRA seal in the middle and a custom plate number that spoke to some of those core NRA values. I turned to Beth and said, “well, there’s someone we’d never get along with.”
Fast forward to the summer. As I mentioned extensively, Mia got involved in our neighborhood swim team. IT was, for many reasons, a fantastic experience. One beneficial side-effect was the fact that we got to meet a lot of our neighbors as did our kids. They instantly fell in love with three sisters and we got to know and like their parents.
And as fate would have it this was the family who drove that minivan.
We never socialized outside of the standard pool activities but we’d all go to the pool and hang out together. The wife was a very strong yet softspoken woman; I always appreciated how she dealt with and spoke to her children. The husband was a big dude, former military yet shy and almost goofy at times. I instantly liked the guy even before I found out he and I graduated from the same high school.
Towards the end of the summer, the whole family came over to our place after Mia’s birthday party. Everyone played and had a great time. And then we never heard from them again. Around August, Mia and I were riding our bikes and ran across the three sisters. We talked to them for a while but something was weird, like they’d been told to stay away. The husband was cleaning out his truck and I talked to him for a while. But as with the sisters, something was off. And that was it.
We don’t hide our politics. My car is adorned with several pro-Obama stickers and there’s an Obama sticker prominently displayed on the inside of our front door. That’s the only thing I can blame for the vanishing of some folks who could have become friends.
I’ve always believed that our politics are only one part of what make us who we are. They don’t totally define us. But if for some reason this whole thing came down to politics – and I honestly suspect it does – its truly heartbreaking. Because it demonstrates to me that people can base their entire perception of me based on who I voted for.
Have you ever felt discriminated against or judged because of your beliefs?

Haiku For Monday #340

Monday, oh Monday
wherefore art thou Monday. Oh
there you are. Fuck off.

The Weeklies #153

The Weekly Medical Crisis. Owen and his ER visit. Two days later and he seems to be rebounding just fine. Thanks for your concern, everyone.
The Weekly Political Party I Could Get Behind. Even if you’re paying attention to the many political races going on in advance of election day, you still might not be aware of the newest political party. In the New York gubernatorial debate, candidate Jimmy McMillan made an appearance representing the The Rent Is Too Damn High Party.
The Weekly Cool Website. Show World is a pretty cool little site that allows you to visually compare almanac-like figures. Okay, that description sucked. Just check it out for yourself.
The Weekly Read. (Part three of my quest to read scary books throughout October) Bentley Little writes two kinds of books – creepy social satire and straight-up horror. And I’ve read almost everything he’s written and, for the most part enjoyed them. Oddly, The Disappearance falls into neither of those categories. It is, instead, more of a thriller that focuses on the disappearance of a girl and the cult behind that disappearance. I was a little let down when I realized how straight Little was going to play this one. But then I found myself enjoying the book and realizing quickly that this is some of his strongest writing in years. Maybe not the strongest book or interesting ideas, but decently written and compelling.
The Weekly Two Minutes and Seven Seconds You’re Not Going To Get Back. You’ve seen the Potter Puppet Pals, right? You should but fair warning – their little song will get stuck in your head for days.
The Weekly Celebrity Deaths. Two TV parents have died. Happy Days’ Mr. C – Tom Bosley – and the iconic sit-com mom herself, Leave it to Beaver’s Barbara Billingsly.
The Weekly Schadenfreude. Christine O’Donnell is an idiot unqualified to hold up her own pants much less political office. Case in point – in a televised debate with her democratic opponent earlier this week, she got into a heated debate over the subject of teaching creationism in public schools. What seemed like a fundamental lack of understanding in the first amendment was clarified when she asked “Where in the Constitution is separation of church and state?” The room literally burst into laughter and so did she, not understanding that the crowd was not laughing with her but at her. It gets worse. When her opponent – Chris Coons – returned to the subject later in the evening O’Donnell had to be told four times that the first amendment addressed separation of church and state.
The Weekly Question. What are you dressing up as for Halloween this year? What’s your best costume ever?

Mrs. MacGyver

We’ve got a drawer in our kitchen that literally came off the rails. And the cabinetry we inherited in this house is, well, not to put too fine a point on it, shitty. Despite the fact that this is the most popular drawer in the house, we need something from it about every 4.3 minutes and accessing the contents of said drawer puts your fingers in mortal jeopardy, neither of us has done a damn thing to fix it. Until last week.
I came home the other day from work and found the drawer fixed. I stared in wonder at this miracle of cabinetry and Beth shot me a look that I read as so there, you silly person with a penis who should have fixed that a month ago. Then she said, out loud this time, you should see how ingenious my solution was. Then we ate dinner and the kids threw things at each other and my wife distracted me with her hotness so I completely lost the thread. But as I was getting something out of the cabinet below the Drawer of Doom yesterday, I saw exactly what she was talking about.

It’s amazing what an old water bottle and duct tape will fix. And let’s face it, Beth is a hell of a lot hotter than MacGyver.

Fragile

Yesterday morning I went to work and drank my coffee and called into conference calls and met with co-workers just like I do every day. Yesterday afternoon I found myself in the emergency room holding my sobbing son, holding him down for x-rays and sonograms, and trying to convince him that the nurses that descended upon his room weren’t going to hurt him (anymore).
During the night on Monday, Owen let out a few shrieks but it wasn’t clear what, if anything, those shrieks would amount to. Tuesday morning, after I’d left for work, they’d turned into full, balls-out screaming. Beth took him to the doctor who strongly encouraged a visit to the emergency room. Beth called me and I couldn’t concentrate so I punted the remainder of my meetings for the day and headed to the hospital.
Over the past six months, I have become Owen’s parent of choice. All bets are off when kids are sick though because invariably they want their mom. But yesterday, I was the one who could make everything alright, who couldn’t leave the room, who had the ability to kiss away the tears and snuggle away the hurt.
I am so grateful for his love and for the trust he puts in me that I can hardly breathe when I think about it. I cannot stand to see him in pain. But I’m glad I’m the one who can make things okay.
Every day – any day – can turn on a dime. You can be sipping your coffee in the morning and sitting in an ER in the afternoon. Life is unpredictable. It is fragile. It is tricky. But when you’re loved, hell, that makes everything alright.
Update: Owen slept at home – primarily on me – last night. Though it was a rough night, he just ate his body-weight in breakfast and, when I left for work, was running around with a huge smile on his face. Me, well, I’m going to crawl under my desk and take a nap.

Pot

I have a confession to make – I have never smoked pot.
See, I’m something of a control freak about certain things, one of which is being in control of my body and mind at all times to whatever degree possible (and it’s not always doable). This is the same thing – along with a history of alcoholism in the family combined with depression and resulting meds – that stopped me from drinking between the ages of 21 and 34. I’m pretty sure this attitude kept me from doing some fun stuff and some good old American experimenting but I don’t really regret my control freakyness.
Keeping all that in mind, my stance on the legalization of pot is kind of surprising. I’m all for it.
The legalization debate has been sparked most recently by a movement to legalize marijuana in California (of course). The arguments for and against are neither conclusive nor new. For every opinion, there is a counter. For every study there is an equal and opposite study. Yet despite my lack of first hand experience, I’m not convinced that pot is any more dangerous or destructive than booze or alcohol. And if drugs with similar strengths and consequences are legal (I’m looking at you Marlboro and Bud Light) I’m not altogether sure why we should deal with pot any differently.
Now we do all pay (literally) for the use and abuse of these so-called luxury items, namely alcohol and tobacco. So we should tax the hell out of them and allow states to recover the cost of their use. And pot should be no different.
Where do you come down in the legalization debate? And should individuals who consume goods that contribute to poor health be taxed for doing so?