I'll Sleep When I'm Dead...

A lot of famous poets had a good deal to say about sleep:

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep. 

 -Robert Frost

Death, so call'd, is a thing which makes men weep,
And yet a third of life is pass'd in sleep. 

-Lord Byron 

But I subscribe to the wisdom of the late Warren William Zevron.  Who wrote this song, just so you have some basis for his amazingness:

Apparently you have to watch "Werewolves of London" directly on YouTube, but I assure you, it is well worth the 3 minutes and 17 seconds it will cost you.  Because the song might be the most perfect song ever created by mankind.

Zevron said, "I'll sleep when I'm dead."

Why such morose subject matter this posting, you ask?  I'll tell you. 

Three random encounters with peripheral neighbors, acquaintences and a random person at the grocery store, all offered up the same advice:

Enjoy your sleep now.  Enjoy.  Your.  Sleep.

It's a strange piece of advice to offer up to a couple.  Don't get me wrong -- I fully understand that babies will keep you up and don't abide by our schedules.  But I can think of so many other things I'd rather do than sleep.

Here is a list of just some of them:

• Bake a cake.
• Eat a cake.
• Play video games.
• Watch a scary movie.
• Watch a lot of scary movies.
• Read a book.
• Write a book.
• Draw.
• Paint.
• Hike a mountain.
• Swim in a lake.
• Run a race.
• Go on a date.
• Go on multiple dates.
• Go on multiple dates where cake might be consumed.
• Eat a cake.

See?  Plenty of variety here.  Why then are we so obsessed with catching our REMs?  Not to be confused with the following:

Because, frankly, Michael Stipe doesn't look that fast.

Of all the things to long for once the baby is here, is sleep really the number 1 priority?  All the things you could miss and sleep is what you tell others to make sure they go out and attain?

In full disclosure -- I've never been much of one for sleep.  While I'm sure most family will remember me as a late sleeper, it's mostly because I'd stay up into the wee hours of the morning reading or writing or playing video games.

When one doesn't actually fall asleep until close to 3 or 4 in the morning, 9 or 10 o'clock can hardly be seen as "sleeping in." 

At one point it got so bad that I only really saw a few hours of sunlight in the winter.  I'd fall asleep just before dawn and wake up in the afternoon.  

Furthermore, I don't fully believe that whole "you'll never sleep again" mantra.  There's some evidence to the contrary:

1. Not every parent I know looks like this:

Babies!  Babies have made us this way...

2. If it was as bad as people describe it, no one would have multiple children:

The Duggars.  Yes, those are all siblings.

3.  Okay.  There is no 3.  But 1 and 2 should illustrate the point.

I'm grateful for the advice.  Don't get me wrong.  Well wishes with a tacked-on heads-up is much appreciated.  I just don't get why that's the solitary piece of advice people deem the most important.

I'm thankful that my years of being a night owl are finally going to pay off.  The past 30ish years of my existence have just been training for the weeks, months and years ahead.   As luck would have it, I married an early bird.  So while she and the baby catch the worm, I can catch my ZZZs.  Or, at least, what little I need.  As long as I am not busy baking a cake.

Because that is the advice I will impart on the fathers that come after me.  

"Bake your cakes now!  Bake all the ones you can.  You won't have time for that stuff once the baby gets here."

Totally unsolicited baking advice from a stranger.  It's a good thing.

Happy Birthday, Mom-Mom

My grandmother (affectionately known as "Mom-Mom") turns 91 today.

Ninety-one years ago, the following events occurred:

• The Yankees bought the land in the Bronx where they'd eventually build Yankee Stadium.
• The Brits were occupying Dublin.
• Einstein was lecturing about this new-fangled Relativity thing.
• Babe Ruth became the home run champ.
• China founded its Communist Party.
• Hoover became Asst. Director of the FBI.
• The first Miss America Pageant was held in Atlantic City.
• Mary Donohoe was born to a grocer and a hairdresser in Philadelphia.

Eighteen years later, WWII would break out, but not before this could happen:

Ed & Mary

I -- like most children -- assumed my grandmother came into existence when she was 60 or so, looking like this:

Just off camera is a newborn demanding Vienna Fingers.

 But all those years ago, she happened to fall in love with a tall guy with a goofy last name.  As a result of that, a bunch of children came into the world.

In descending height order: Ed, Mary, Mary Lou, Eileen, Sue

In the picture above, my dad wasn't born yet.  My grandparents are standing with my Aunts Mary Lou, Eileen and Sue.  My dad -- Edward (like my grandfather) -- and Uncle Joe would enter the brood a few years later.  It would seem, that having a girl first, I'm following a bit in their footsteps.

A lot of crazy and significant things happened in 1921 -- but if my great-grandparents hadn't brought their baby Mary into the world, there are 18 grandchildren who wouldn't have existed.  And at this point, I've lost count of how many great-grandchildren my grandmother has.  Suffice it to say, there's a lot of us about.  Being Catholic seems to have that influence on a family.

But she could tell you all of our names and birthdays.  I still get a card on time every year.  Each one of us is inked into her bible.  But she still recites them off the top of her head.

I have more anecdotes about the woman than time to record them all.  Some of my favorites:

Growing up through the Great Depression, she has a certain penchant for being a spendthrift.  She always bought two of something, even if she didn't need the first one, because she could get a good deal on it.  Her pantry was always full of two unopened versions of every foodstuff you could imagine.

My avid love of fishsticks is a result of her microwaving them for me every Friday night I spent at her house in Drexel Hill.

Despite my weight issues as a kid, she never failed to indulge me.  Even as my father would be telling her how important it was to keep me away from sweets, she'd be handing me two cookies behind her back and telling me to go watch television in the living room.

She never bothered with getting her license until she was in her 50s.  When she took the test, she meant to switch on the turn signal, but accidentally turned on the windshield wipers.  She couldn't figure out how to turn them off during the whole road test.  When she finished the exam, there were tears in her eyes because she thought she had failed.  The instructor asked her what she was so upset about and handed her the slip to get her picture taken for her license photo.

And before you get upset with the Department of Motor Vehicles, my grandmother only drove 5 times in her entire life.  Once was to take me to a swim lesson at the YMCA.  So, in 91 years, she never had a car accident.

Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop used to take me to church when I'd stay at their house on weekends.  I was restless and agitated, but Mom-Mom kept me in check with doling out a seemingly endless supply of Tic Tacs.  When she'd stand to take Communion, I didn't understand why I couldn't get a cracker with everyone else.  So she'd appease me with a Certs.  I may not have taken to catechism, but I have a devotion to fresh breath which will last me a lifetime.

She came to all of my plays, musicals and concerts (choir and saxophone) from elementary school through college.  That's a lot of crap performances to sit through out of the love for a child.  She still has the playbills with my name underlined in each.

Mary, with Joe Cool Ed (left) and
her brother, Buddy (right)

Growing up around Mom-Mom was one of the best things about my childhood.  If you could distill everything that is good and hopeful and kind and altruistic about me (sure...you'd have to distill for a really long time) you'd probably find that the majority of that was instilled in me by this woman.

Here she is, pictured cutting her 90th birthday cake.  I hope that I can show our baby girl how to approach the world with just some of your grace, joy, and endless supply of tic-tacs.

Love ya, love ya.

A Brave New World

Given the content of last night's debates I've been thinking about all the things that will have changed in the world between the course of my childhood and when my daughter will be born.

Namely, I was thinking about Big Bird getting the boot from PBS if Romney wins the election..

But there's already so many things that at one time were novel for me, but for her -- they'll just have always been in existence.  Like how grandparents have always been at least in their 50's.

There's an excellent list put out every year by Beloit College that captures a bit of the mindset of each incoming freshman class.  The kids how entered college this year won't graduate until 2016.  Which sounds like a date out of a Bradbury novel.

For our little girl there are all sorts of things that will be perfectly normal:

• Obama will have been president and it won't have been a big deal that he got elected in the first place.
• Blue M&Ms will always have been in the bag.  And there will never have been tan ones.
• You can always fast-forward through commercials when you use your DVR.
• She'll never have to be kind and rewind.
• Her parents will have always been on Facebook.
• So will at least 1 Billion other people.
• Televisions will have always been available in a flat format.
• No one will have been able to smoke at the mall or in local bars.
• You'll never have to dial up into the internet.
• Encyclopedias on a shelf will be a relic.
• When Marty McFly shows up on his hoverboard, she'll be three years old.
• Video games will have always been rendered in 128 bits.
• People always will have carried cellular phones.
• No one will use the term "cellular phones."
• "Web Logs" will have always been blogs and "Electronic Mail" will have always been just email.
• That funny floppy disk icon you click to save your document will always just be a funny looking blue square and not something she ever saved a term paper on.
• Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston and Dick Clark will have always been dead.
• Vampires will have always sparkled.
• Hot Pockets will not be a novel concept.  But will still be like ingesting molten lava because the bright minds at Hot Pockets, LLC have not come up with a way to help us figure out when the middle isn't a block of ice and yet not so hot to scorch a hole in your tongue.
• Everyone will always know whether Severus Snape was really good or evil.
• "i"s will always be associated with phones, pads and pods.
•  You won't have to memorize anything with Google at your fingertips at all times.
• Scrunchies, slap bracelets, and Zubaz pants will be something she never wore, let alone sees in her lifetime.
• Pogs will just be funny, ridiculously small coasters.
• There will always have been 649 total Pokemon, as opposed to the original 151.
• The story of how Darth Vader became evil will always have preceded how his son came to deny the Dark Side.
• Her dad will have always been a geek.

The Home Stretch

It's hard to believe that the 7th month is already upon us.

In the first trimester it was like we were continually headed uphill -- 12 weeks seemed like it would never come and we were continually itching to tell everyone that we were pregnant.  But time moved like molasses in winter and we were constantly finding creative ways to explain Em's continual aversion to foods.  She was sick non-stop.  I had to stop wearing cologne altogether and switch to the blandest deodorant that I could find.  She slept somewhat like a house cat and we would see each other for about an hour every day.  I would grill outside (weather permitting) and then eat by myself.

I had more than my fair share of hotdogs and baked beans for those three months.

Almost like a switch got flipped in her insides, the second trimester started and I got my wife back.  She was hungry without as much nausea, so I could cook in the house again.  She could stay awake past 8:30, so we could actually hang out when we got home from work.  We started actually doing stuff on weekends again and got to get out of the house and see friends again for more than an hour or two at a time.

Now we're in the home stretch and it's like an all new ball game.

If you've never experienced "nesting" firsthand or as a partner or spouse, let me describe it like this.

Everything you always ignored as being slightly annoying around the house becomes the most obnoxious and nagging thing ever.  Some women, apparently, only experience nesting in the last days or weeks before delivery.  Some have it plague them continuously throughout the pregnancy.  For us, it's been the most intense since we came into the last trimester.

And I say "us," because I have the same twitchy feeling whenever I'm being idle.  It hasn't been sympathy pains or hunger -- but this nesting thing makes me neurotic and feel the need to make sure everything is ready for this baby to come home.

Now, I know babies won't notice all the niceties around the house when they get home.  They want a warm, soft bed, plenty of eats, and a clean diaper.

I think it's possibly one of the more awesome aspects of biological design that one gets so ecstatic and eager for the child to get here.  I feel like I'm ready for her to show up tomorrow (but totally don't -- because your bookcase isn't built yet) and I'm ready to start the next phase of our life together as a motley trio.

It's going to be strange being the only guy in a house of all female creatures.

...

So, this was not my funniest post.  Given the circumstances, I'd like to leave you with a moment of zen:

I could watch that all day.

A Drunk Baby is a Happy Baby

Everyone knows that there is nothing funnier in this world than a drunk baby.

If you don't believe me, please refer to Exhibits A-C.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Exhibit C

See?  Hilarious.

But apparently, not tremendously effective at curbing binge drinking later in life.  An article recently published on parenting.com indicated the belief that by demystifying alcohol for our children, we enable them to have a more healthy approach to drinking is dead wrong.

At least one in five of the parents of third-graders said they believed that children who sip alcohol will be better at resisting peer pressure to drink, and less likely to try risky drinking, the study's authors wrote in Monday's issue of the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine."This finding indicates that many parents mistakenly expect that the way children drink at home, under parental supervision, will be replicated when children are with peers," they wrote.

"This expectation is refuted by recent studies that link adolescent brain development with adolescents' propensity to disregard home drinking norms when they are with peers."

Previous studies suggested that fifth graders whose parents allowed them to drink alcohol were twice as likely to report drinking in seventh grade, the researchers said.

So, despite our best intentions, drunk baby above may still turn into this fellow:

FRANK THE TANK, FRANK THE TANK

I have two distinct early memories of drinking.

The first happened at a 76ers game sometime when Charles Barkley and Dr. J were both still playing -- so this had to be sometime between '84 (when Barkley was drafted to the 76ers) and '87 (when Dr. J retired).  So, I was somewhere between the ages of 3 and 6.

I was choking on a pretzel, or popcorn or something or other and when I finally got it down, I needed something to drink.  Being at the Spectrum and landlocked somewhere in the nosebleed section, my mom gave me a sip of the only thing available -- a red solo cup with beer in it.

It was the most revolting, vile, disgusting thing I had ever tasted, ever.  Now, I got over this aversion in college, but it was a long and difficult struggle to overcome this travesty.  But I'm a trooper.

My second encounter came at Christmastime.  I remember that I loved eggnog (I'm sure you can see where this one is going).  Being a fat kid, there were few substances on the face of this planet more delectable than eggnog at Christmas.  The stuff tasted like liquefied vanilla ice cream -- what's not to love?

When I was really young, being the child of divorcees, my holidays were split.  As my Grandparents lived between my mother's home and where my dad lived, my mom would drop me at my Grandparents' house after we finished breakfast and unwrapping presents.

What you have to know about my father is that he's never on time.  Never.  Family has actually taken to telling him that events begin up to two hours before the actual start time, just to make sure that he gets there before all the food gets cold.

As my dad was yet to arrive with my stepmom, I was left to my own devices while my aunts and uncles and grandparents milled about and my older cousins played something or other I was probably too slow or uncoordinated to participate in.  Or, equally likely, there was food, so I was lingering around the kitchen.

I had just polished off a plate of chips, dip, cookies and shrimp cocktail (like you do) and needed a libation to wash it all down with -- out of the corner of my eye, I saw the nectar of the Gods: Turkey Hill Eggnog.

Nectar of the Gods

The ladle was in it already and I helped myself to a fancy punch bowl glass full.  Now, being a fat kid, I considered myself (and still do) a bit of a connoisseur of eggnog and this did not taste as it should.

But, as young as I was, I did not yet trust my already advanced palate and so I proceeded to continue to attempt to identify what was off about the drink.  Undaunted, I got through half of it before I walked over to my aunt and told her that it didn't taste right.

She asked which punch bowl I had gotten my drink out of -- and I gestured to the one in the kitchen as opposed to the one in the dining room.

The look of terror that crossed her face didn't register with me at the time, but I'm pretty sure she thought she had a drunk toddler on her hands.  Little did she know, my little Buddha-esque figure was so stuffed to the gills with carbs, I was probably closer to a food coma than I was to a drunken stupor.

But, knowing my dad was probably hours behind, my aunts and grandmother set on a quest to sober me up before he got to the house.  They set me up in front of the TV with my own plate of cookies and pastries and told me to finish it up before my dad got there and watch some television.

Best.  Christmas.  Ever.

I don't fully recall if my dad was informed of the situation that day or if the secret was kept until I was much older.  Either way, I still like eggnog.  Especially with rum.  Enough rum to blind a pirate, preferably.

So, parenting.com -- let this be a lesson to you.  Beer is gross to kids, but mixed drinks are like sleepy-time-magic-ice-cream-milkshakes.  So if you are trying to foster a healthy relationship for your child with alcohol, don't give them anything that is that damn delicious.

The Barbie Conundrum

For her birthday my stepmom got one of these.

Le Halloween Barbie

Now, what you need to understand is that my stepmom is not one of these:

I hope they swabbed down the boardwalk after this shot...

Which begs the question -- what does she want with a Barbie in the first place?  Now, in full disclosure, the Barbie was a gift from a childhood friend who remembered how much my stepmom loved the Barbies that they used to play with together.  

Clearly, having avoided Real-Housewife-itis, my stepmom seems to have turned out okay.  But there are so many things for girls to get hung up on as they grow up and mature.  I can only imagine what you might feel like if the model of womanhood you targeted during your formative years was a six-foot-tall blonde bombshell.

Now, given genetics, our daughter has more than a fighting chance at being tall, and she could always get blonde from a bottle, but why induct a child into that line of thinking so soon?

I remember, probably 16 years ago now, I was sitting on the couch watching television with my grandfather and Arnold Schwarzenegger came on the screen.  My grandfather turned to me and said, "you know, if you put some time in, you could look like that too."

I AM GOING TO GOVERN CALIFORNIA.
I AM GOING TO GOVERN IT SO HARD.

Yup.  Totally attainable.  And I, at that age, thought this guy was getting ripped without the aid of HGH and other nefarious substances.

So why put a toy in the hand of a little girl that might make her feel compelled to look like this:

Yikes.

Yes.  The girl in the picture above is real(ish).  Whether there's Photoshop involved and/or vast amounts of plastic (LULZ) surgery is neither confirmed nor denied.  But in the entire world, how many people look like the girl above?  According to the local news affiliates, most people look like this:

Generic below-the-neck obese people shot.

I remember a year ago there was a story about a young woman who took the Barbie mythos and turned it on its head.  She took the proportions of a Barbie and  made them into a real life representation.  The results, besides being funny were pretty telling:

Get Real Barbie 

The young artist (pictured above with her monstrosity creation) suffered from body dysmorphia and a year-long bout with anorexia.  The doll, whose measurements come in at 6' tall, sporting a 39" bust and an 18" waist is clearly cartoonish and grotesque.  For basis of comparison, this lady -- 

Norma Jeane Mortenson
Marilyn Monroe

was 5'5", and 36-23-37.  

Now, before the nerds/contrarians in my readership come out with the "correlation is not causation" argument, I'll apply it first.

Barbie does not cause body dysmorphia or create eating disorders firsthand.  

But she doesn't exactly help.

I know I'm overthinking this.  I get it.  Just because a little girl plays with a plastic Barbie doll doesn't mean she's going to grow up with low self-esteem and dissatisfied with how she looks.

But it does make you wonder about how impressionable a child is.  Something my grandfather said to me in passing when I was barely a teen stuck with me into my thirties.  

I'd probably feel better about the whole thing if I knew for a fact that this lady had played with Barbie:

While this one

She's 26 years old, people.  Think about it.

did not.

But I'm pretty certain that's not the case.

Science, Math and Biology! Oh, my!

Disclaimer: I do not profess to be a statistician, mathematician nor a biologist.  I did, however, do really well in 9th grade biology, so everything that follows is probably pretty sound.  Just saying.

My dad said something that's been looping around in my head like the Mexican Hat Dance on repeat.

If you want to know what that experience is like, click the following link.  But don't say I didn't warn you:

Mariachi Mexican Hat Dance

Why suffer alone when you can take others down with you?

Anyway (You watched it, didn't you?  Despite my warnings.  I see how it's going to be between us.  *Sigh*) my dad said, "You know, you can't control how your kids are going to turn out."

My first and immediate response was something like this:

What a versatile visual.

I mean.  If everyone could control how their children turned out, we'd all be doctors and lawyers and other assorted well-compensated adults.  Rather than a bunch of hooligans.

Hooligans

But I digress.

I remember from Mr. Fetterman's 9th grade biology class, doing diagrams where you would show dominant and recessive genes from both the parents -- Punnett Squares was what they were called (and no -- before you laud me for my amazing memory, I just Googled "gene diagram for dominant and recessive" and it was my first search result.  I swear, we're going to be the first generation with worse memory functions than our parents) and they were a good pictorial representation of how genes play out and what the chances are of certain attributes showing up in the child.

I've got all sorts of things I can't stand about myself -- my inability to play Tchaikovsky as he intended, my struggle to break the four minute mile, the fact that I find it a physical impossibility to get my hand to the bottom of a Pringles container -- stuff like that.

There's also stuff I like about myself.  I'm far too humble and good looking to go into detail, but you get my drift.

My wife is the same way.  Sure -- 99.9% of her is practically perfect in every way

Despite popular opinion, I am not, in fact, married to Mary Poppins.

but even she (I'm sure) has a thing or two she wouldn't mind seeing skipping a generation.

So, being the science-minded academic that I am, I put together the following Punnett Square:

 Figure 1.1

The thing about a Punnett Square is that every quadrant has an equal chance of occurring.  So it's a 1 in 4 chance we'll have the most cherubic baby ever and it's just as likely that we could give Rosemary's baby a run for his money.

Child A is like winning the lottery.  She's well behaved and intelligent and smart and kind and pretty and self-motivated and all the things you would hope for your child to be.  Child D is the child your parents wished on you when you were bad.  "I hope you have one just like you" is actually an old Italian curse.

Odds are we're going to have one that's some mash-up of our best and worse qualities.  And, seeing as the both of us seem to have turned out relatively competent and self-sufficient, the odds are our child has more than a fighting chance at being a decent human being.

But this begs the question which I posed in a previous entry:

Where do a$$hole children come from?

And I think I've found my answer:

When demonspawns have babies with a normal person, the chart begins to look like this:

Figure 1.2

The chances of having a normal child remain constant, but the odds of a demonspawn are now 50%!  It's a flip of the coin, people!  This is why dads are so freaked out about their daughters dating hooligans!  It's a biological imperative to protect the species from self-destruction.

But even with the visual, if my exploits on SEPTA are any indicator, the tide is quickly turning, and more and more demonspawn are being born...thus, we must turn to science for the answer"

Figure 1.3

And this is why people should need a license to breed.  It's not my opinion.  It's science and math.  Just saying.

TV and the Families We Meet There

As a kid, I loved television.

...

Correction: I love television.  Currently.  Have loved it.  Will continue to love it.

I watch a lot of crap TV.  This volume of less-than-stellar television viewing hit a hell of a spike when Em was in her first trimester.  When asked what it was like from my perspective, I described it as being rather similar to living with a cat:

• She wanted to sleep.  Constantly.  Like 15 hours a day.  And then another 10 at night.  So 25 hours a day.  Which was difficult.
• She was hungry.  But nauseous too.  So if the food I made wasn't exactly what she was looking for, she pushed it around with her nose and then walked away.  (Not entirely true.  She probably used her fork.  But my memory is a bit foggy.)
• She occasionally wanted to hang out.  But it was usually short-lived and if I didn't pay attention, I'd probably miss it.

Altogether, during those first 3 months, I pretty much had to make my own fun.  Thankfully, with over 100 channels and a less-than-discerning television palate, I was easily entertained.

Recently, I found out that Netflix has released the series "Dinosaurs" in its entirety on streaming.

For those of you who don't remember and/or were born sometime after 1994, here's a reminder:

Lacking more than 60,000,000 years of evolution. and
still, more civilized than Jersey Shore.

And for those of you playing along at home, here's a mind blowing factoid:

She really has aged quite gracefully.

Okay...so the last two are pretty obvious, but that first one threw me for a loop.

Point being (I really do have one, folks.  Hang in there.  I'm getting to it.)

Growing up, I watched a bunch of these TV families and felt very weird about being in the situation that I was:

Look at the way they both eye Marsha.  It's like the other 5 don't exist.

Try not to think about Jello, RIGHT NOW.

The redhead in the lower right makes two appearances in this blog.

T.G.I.F. gave you a reason to stay home on a Friday night in 1989.

Not pictured here: Pamela Anderson as the
reoccurring character of the "tool girl."
Yes, sometimes the jokes just write themselves.

I could have been Pugsley's stunt double growing up.

Not gonna lie.  If there was ever a TV family who I
wanted to adopt me, ti was the Munsters. If only
to live on Mockingbird Lane and have a dragon
who lived under the staircase.

Okay...I know what you're thinking...I'm too young to have watched many of these shows the first time they were on the air.  But syndication is a marvelous thing.  And I loved me some old TV shows.

But I felt weird about one thing...all these kids lived with their mom and their dad.  At the same time.  There was one show I watched where that wasn't the case:

Yes.  Mom-mom's stunt double makes her second appearance
in the blog.

But Opie's mom was dead.  So that didn't count.  

Even this insane house was intact:

Like nails on a chalkboard, people. Angry, screetchy, nails.

And they made me want to take up drinking at the ripe old age of 7.  Seriously.  Have you tried watching an episode of Roseanne sober?  It's painful.

So who, might you ask, was my beacon of hope?  My analogue for normalcy?  My, "hey -- my life is kind of like that"?

Whoa!

Yup.  Blossom.  And I had to wait until 1990 for something to watch that even began to resemble my existence.  Her mom was still alive but didn't live in the same house as her. Also, this may have laid the groundwork for my affinity for ill-fitted hats.  But that seems to be a bit unrelated.  Also, also -- my dad still rocks Mr. Russo's haircut to this day.

Don't be jealous, ladies.

But Blossom was still removed from what I knew growing up.  I was the eldest of 2 at that point (my youngest 2 siblings didn't even exist yet) and I had no idea what it was like to live with a sister.  And I would never know what it was like to be a younger sibling.

But we look for commonalities in our stories.  Some kind of truth that compels us to feel for that character.

Which is why HBO's Oz ran for 7 seasons.

But you get what I'm driving at (hopefully.  Unless you are just here for the pictures.  In which case I'm going to disappoint for the rest of the post) and the point remains, that sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name and where they're always glad you came.  You want to be where you can see, troubles are all the same.  You want to go where...

Damnit.  I'm thinking of

NORM!

Anyway.  I guess there is no show to make you feel normal.  Or that other people are going through the same stuff you are.  At least not in the exact same way.  All of our individual childhoods are unique -- even in the same household.

I just hope our daughter grows up to think of me as one of these:

Always dapper and on time for dinner.

And not so much as one of these:

What the man lacks in class, he makes up for in personality.

Despite my blog about killing your television to save your child's brain, I'm sure our daughter will discover TV soon enough and start looking for characters and situations common to her life.  Which is great, because it gives me every opportunity to start breaking out all my Cosby sweaters.  And possibly a Blossom-esque bucket hat or two.

When we last left our heroes...

I suppose to appreciate the continuation of Tuesday's post, you need a bit of back story.

Em has wanted a glider chair (it's like a rocker and a la-z-boy had a baby) ever since finding out she was pregnant.  They are amazingly comfortable and there are an unbelievable number of variations on the theme.  She's sat in more than she can probably count and finally found the perfect one at the big box store.

Sadly, the color was heinous, so she continued the search.  

After several weeks of hunting, she still liked the one at the original store.  It was not too big and not too small, not too hard and not too soft and there were no bears sitting in it.

Anyone else notice how dapper Papa Bear dresses?

So, when we registered we figured we could ask about different fabric options.  Unfortunately, when we got to the furniture desk and found it unmanned, we figured it wasn't worth the extra headache of trying to sit down with someone to hash it out after having wandered around the store for so long.  

If you have never been around a pregnant woman for an extended period of time, here's a pro-tip: Don't keep them waiting.  Think about how unpleasant it would be if, at random, someone continually kicked you in the bladder.  And punched you in the stomach.  From the inside.  While you were always hungry, but your stomach is upset and you are slightly nauseous.

Yes, doesn't the joy of pregnancy just seem all the more magical?

Add to this fact that it is summer, horrifically hot and humid, we're back in the same store we spent the better part of two and a half hours in the day before, and you can begin to get a sense of the frame of mind we were in returning to the furniture department.  To register for a single item.  One.  Lousy.  Chair.  

Like heaven for your butt.

When we got home after the first excursion, we were under the impression, based on the info from Geoff, that the chair pictured above could be custom ordered online.  When we got online, the only version of the chair you could find online was the ugly one already in the store.

Not wanting to take the trip and risk another Geoff encounter, I tried calling another location of the same store.  Maybe the help would be a bit more competent at this one, or at the very least, not make me want to run screaming into oncoming traffic.

But no -- this location didn't have any fabric swatches.  If you wanted to see fabric swatches, you had to go to another location.

And the only other location local to us was...yes, you guessed it...the one where Geoff works.

Geoff 2: When Gliders Attack

We approached the furniture counter and were hanging around looking for help when Geoff began to approach.  I was beginning to think that Geoff was the only employee who worked at the location.  As I prepared myself for the inevitable onslaught of misinformation, a small miracle occurred!  Geoff was intercepted by another couple and we would have to find another person to help us.

When I pressed the buzzer for help, you can imagine my surprise was when another employee came over to help.  And this guy was the manager!  Sweet!  At last, someone who knew what he was talking about and would not make us feel like idiots for failing to have every aspect of our unborn child's next 18 years fully mapped out.

The manager was an older gentleman, with white hair and a nice smile.  He was exceptionally pleasant and kind of reminded me of this guy:

Bleep Van Bleep

And really, who could be mad at Dick Van Dyke?

You'd be surprised.  Especially when Dick Van Dyke's doppelganger has the patience of a member of the Spanish Inquisition.

Bet you weren't expecting that.

Every version of the chair Em pointed at would be keyed into the computer by evil-Dick-Van-Dyke and then he'd turn to us and say, "sorry, but that version has been discontinued."  This happened 12 times.  Out of 24 fabric swatches.  I then offered up that it might be a good idea if he could tell us which swatches were in stock and we could just pick from them.

But he didn't think that was terribly efficient.  So we played the swatch game for a few more minutes.  We'd pick it out and he'd tell us it was unavailable.

I was about to go play in traffic when Em noticed that the image of the chair above the swatches we were looking at didn't match the chair she had pointed to in the first place.  Please keep in mind, this is 45 minutes after sitting down with evil-Dick-Van-Dyke.

And then Evil-D.-V.-D. realized we were looking at the wrong chair altogether.

Finally, after much gnashing of teeth and beating of chest, it was done.  The chair was on the registry.  And our registry was complete.  Mission accomplished.

Geoff didn't even say goodbye as we passed him on the way out.

Oh, and from the "you can't make this s#!t up department"-- 

When I went to the store's website just now to get the picture of the chair that caused this much agita , they actually have all the different versions of the chair on their website: ALL THE NEWCO GLIDERS

Amazing.