Nothing to Read Here – Page 14

The crying game

May8

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My lovely wife and I make a great team, if I do say so myself. When we came home from the hospital with our tiny twins, we talked with some professionals about how to divide our time to care for the kids. Everyone agreed that if we both tried to do everything, we’d both go crazy. “We’ll make it work, and the two of us can re-connect when they go off to college,” I said jokingly. Ok, maybe half-jokingly.

Not long after, we were fairly set in what almost resembles a routine. I take the latest feeding of the evening (hopefully in the 10s or 11s), my lovely wife takes the middle of the night one, and I take the early a.m. one before work (in the 5s or 6s). That way – in theory – we’re both getting a decent stretch of sleep at some point in the night. Here’s where my question comes in: where is the line in time that shifts from my responsibility to hers?

Let me back up for a second and acknowledge that it’s clearly the responsibility of both of us still at all times. If I’m having a hell of a time and both kids are crying non-stop, I know I can wake my wife up to help tag-team that feeding, etc. I’ll try to explain a typical scenario, and maybe then my question will become clearer:

Let’s say I start feeding our son at 10:30pm. By the time I’m done feeding, changing, re-swaddling, and calming him down enough to put down in his crib, it might be 11. Then I start on our girl (who is known in these parts as the slower eater of the two so far), and the same process might not be done until close to midnight. I then creep out of their room and walk the one step to our bedroom. I put my head down on the pillow and BAM – one of them is making loud sounds. This may be a cry or one of the pre-cry sounds with which I’ve recently become quite accustomed. In any case, this is clearly still my gig because the “putting down” process wasn’t yet successful. We’re all in agreement so far, right? I’ll get up a few times if needed to do a little rocking, so pacifier repositioning, etc., until I’m able to lie down for more than a couple of minutes before the sounds start again.

In a perfect scenario, they’re both down and out for hours, but that’s not always the case. So let’s say a half hour of quiet-time passes after the initial ups and downs, and our boy decides to tell us loudly that he once again got both arms out of his swaddle and is unhappy. Still me, right? Now it gets a little tricky, as I see it. If it’s about 1am now, how do I know if this is the “I’m still not quite settled and come play with me” noise-making instead of the “It’s almost been three hours since I ate and I’d like to be held while you prepare my next meal” line of communication. Because if it’s the latter, I believe that would fall under my lovely wife’s purview. Purview? I don’t use that word…weird.

On one hand, finding that line in the time is important for me because I stay more alert (albeit against my will) when half-listening for cries. When I know that I’m good until 5 or 6 and need to sleep now or forever hold my yawns, I’m able to get into a deeper groove. On the other hand, it’s not terribly important because one of us will usually ask the other, “Want me to get this one?” if we realize that the other has gotten up several times in a short span without any semblance of sleep. (Isn’t my wife great? I sure do look forward to hanging out with her in 2028.)

With any luck, they’ll be sleeping through the night soon and this entire line of questioning will be moot. That said, it’s interesting to me when I have entirely new automatic thoughts. A cry in the middle of the night now makes me think, “Is this one mine?” Before, it just made me think, “Hallie’s chasing squirrels again in her sleep. Silly mutt.” The times have changed, my friends. And with them come invisible – yet magical – lines. I look forward to my next round of discoveries.

p.s. If it were legal to marry coffee, I’d be seriously considering it right now. Holy crap is that stuff amazing. I mean, I’ve known how wonderful coffee is for…15 years or more, but our relationship has grown exponentially over these past five weeks. I’m just sayin’. Yeah but still.

Tags: crying, sleep

Clutch performances

May1

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There were 18 seconds left in the game. The Lakers had the ball, down by one point, and were going to hold it for the final shot of the exciting 6th game of the playoff series…and my son started to cry. “Well that’s a new experience!” I thought. It was time for him to eat; he knew it and I knew it. “Oh, not right now, buddy! Can you wait 30 seconds?” Still unable to comprehend English, he let out another cry. Crap. You see, I was in a special physical position that had helped the Lakers perform well over the last minute of the game, and I didn’t want to move from it yet. (I do too have those powers!) I made some shushing sounds and watched as Kobe’s jumper bounced off the rim right into my homeboy Pau’s hands for a tip-in (and the lead!) with 0.5 seconds on the clock. I leapt up from the couch giddily and scooped my son out of his bouncy seat. I then became his bouncy seat as I jumped up and down in excitement repeatedly with him clutched to my chest and we watched Pau’s shot over and over again on replay during the ensuing timeout.

The little feller hadn’t calmed down yet, so I sang to him a little. This time though, it was more of a chant: “No fouls, good D, no fouls, good D!” It seemed to be working, and I wanted to make sure the Lakers themselves got the message, so I kept bouncing and chatting all the way through the Thunder’s missed shot at the buzzer. Victory was ours – all of ours: The Lakers won the game (with my help), my son “watched” his first series-clinching Laker victory, and it was now food time. I’m pretty sure that makes it a win-win-win situation. Gotta love those. (And if you think I’m not picking him up and chanting the same way the next time the Lakers need a big stop of defense, you clearly don’t know me at all.)

Tags: chant, Lakers

In the wee hours

Apr26

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Five thoughts that occurred to me in the middle of the night while waiting for a bottle to heat up:

My Spam folder for my work email makes me nervous. After I select all of the crappy emails, I need to confirm that I indeed mean to permanently delete them. However, there’s no such confirmation needed if I accidentally hit the button next to “Delete” which reads “This is not junk.” So every single time I go to clear out my spam, I get a little nervous that I might end up mistakenly saying, “Sorry, Spam Filter, but I would love it if you could please send the fake Rolex, university degree, penis enlargement, and debt consolidation emails directly to my inbox from now on.”
I feel like people in movies don’t react properly to lightning and thunder. I’ve never once seen a person say, “Ooh, that was a big one. Did you see that one?” And with particularly large bolts of lightning, I get ready for some large corresponding thunder, but I don’t see anyone doing that on the big screen either. (By the way, I didn’t enjoy typing “thunder” after seeing the team of the same name throttle my hometown Lakers in the last game. The series is still tied, but come on Lakers, it’s time to wake up and put them away. Exert your will, or some other shit that Phil Jackson would say.)
I got a line from the poem “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell in my head somehow in the middle of the night. I used to have it memorized (for a class, of course), and though it’s been over a decade, I think I still have a bunch of it floating around somewhere in there. I should look it up and give it a read. Great poem, and one that with the proper instruction I think could get a lot of high school students into poetry. “So this one’s about a guy who’s trying to convince a chick that they should bone.” You’re telling me that won’t perk up a few students’ ears?
Here’s a thought I never had before becoming a father: “Everything was going great until she shit all over herself just before midnight.” Oh wait, I have had that thought before: Cabo, ’01. Now that was a party!
My friend who is getting married next weekend asked me to choose a song to be played during my introduction to the reception. Just 15-20 seconds, he said. I gave it way too much thought before settling on the opening beat to “You Know My Name, Look Up the Number” by The Beatles (who must’ve been stoned out of their gourds when they recorded that one). I came up with another song in the middle of the night and then quickly discounted it. Alkaline Trio has a song called “My Friend Peter,” which would be cool in theory, but might not fit the setting too well. I’d have liked to pick a part with the titular phrase in it (heh heh, “titular”), but even a ten-second clip would have this to say: “I’d much rather be drinking anyway with my friend Peter who lives so fucking far away.” No way to make that work, so I’ll keep it as it’s set and just get a little strut on to the music of some high British folk.

Have a good day, everyone. May all your bottles warm quickly.

Tags: Beatles, Lakers, poetry

A little late

Apr22

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32 years, 9 months, 3 weeks, and 4 days. That’s how long it took me to realize that “Peter’s Digest” would be a good name for something of mine. I don’t know if I would’ve used it for a blog, the name of a journal I kept for a class back in college, or the title of a collection of gloomy high school poems. Regardless, I can’t say I’m terribly pleased with myself right now for taking so long to think of that. Oh well.

That’s bullshit: News edition

Apr16

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I went to CNN’s website today to make sure that I hadn’t missed any huge news in the past little while. Boy was I wrong! My eye leapt to this majorly important headline: “Study: Materialistic people less liked.” I don’t know what I find more preposterous: the fact that people spent money on a study to tell us something that everyone already knew was true, or that CNN thought that those unimpressive findings were newsworthy. I imagine some CNN staffer had to think, “That’s really fascinating. When people value objects more than personal relationships, it has a negative reaction on the way that they’re viewed by their peers. Who knew? I hope we have room on the front page for this.” Regardless of how it went down, that’s bullshit!

Tags: bullshit, cnn

Itsy bitsy problem

Apr12

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I was in the shower at some point today (time honestly has no meaning for me right now), and a strange thing happened. I was wetting my hair when out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw something on my arm. I looked a little more closely and saw a small brown spider sitting there. I violently shook my arm and made a sound that probably resembled, “Hunnnhhhhh!” With my heart racing a bit, I looked again to make sure it was gone. Nope, it was still there. But this time I saw that it wasn’t actually a spider, but rather my arm hair. Yep, I mistook…myself for a spider. It’s hard to explain, but somehow just a few hairs were wet and pushed up against the grain in a fashion that made them look exactly like a spider and its legs. Well, to me at least. I think I need a nap.

Tags: shower, spider

The sling’s the thing

Apr10

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Ok, I promise that everything I write from this point on will not solely focus on my new kids, but I thought this was funny and wanted to share.

I got up early to watch the babies while my lovely wife got an ENTIRE HOUR OF UNINTERRUPTED SLEEP. (It’s in all caps because it’s rare enough that it deserves some special distinction.) In any case, our daughter seems to be the better sleeper so far and she definitely has a quieter cry/yell, so I was more concerned with keeping our son quiet during that time. I put on a sling thing that our very-helpful postpartum doula showed me how to operate and began bouncing on a ball with him in the kids’ room. He wasn’t super happy, so I started to walk around with him strapped to my chest. This worked better, especially when I was talking to him. What can I say, I’ve got some dulcet tones.
I thought, “Even though it’s an entire hour, if it works, maybe I should just keep doing laps around the house and talking to him. That way I get some cardio in also.” Then I wondered, “But what the hell do I talk about for an hour straight?” I started with my Best Man speech for my friend Jason’s wedding that’s taking place in three weeks. That only lasted about 6 minutes because I didn’t have to stop for uproarious laughter. I’m budgeting about 45 minutes for the actual speech, of course. But I still had a bunch of time. “I know,” I thought, “I’ll sing to him. That’s a constant use of my voice and serves all of my purposes.”

Ah, but what to sing? I wanted something that I could keep doing the whole time, but nothing repetitive that would have me going crazy after only a few minutes. (There are still 93 frickin’ bottles of beer on the ball?) I settled on picking an album that I’d know well enough to keep going from song to song. Naturally, the first one that came to mind was “Dookie” by Green Day.

This was hilarious. I know he doesn’t understand words yet, so I didn’t change any of the lyrics up to make them Rated G. I just went with it. That left me with singing to my week-and-a-day old son about getting high (“Burnout”), someone blowing himself up and taking people with him (“Having a Blast”), and boredom-induced masturbation (“Longview”) before I even got to song number five. I can hear the Father of the Year committee members already knocking.

I think I’ll start with Weezer’s “Blue Album” next time, which is just as melodic to sing but without the same amount of dicey subject matter. Or maybe I should go all the way with this thing and get him started on “Big Lizard in my Backyard” by The Dead Milkmen. The songs are short, so it wouldn’t take me too long to get to “Violent School,” “Takin’ Retards to the Zoo,” “Junkie,” and “Right Wing Pigeons.” Knowledge is power, right?

Tags: best man, green day

New dad thoughts

Apr7

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As you probably know (from knowing me in person), I’m a very recent father of twins. I’m a bit of a planner, so in the last stages of my lovely wife’s pregnancy, I tried to imagine what life would be like and the types of interactions I’d have with people as Daddy P-Dawg. This one never crossed my mind though:

My son had a circumcision on our last day at the hospital. It wasn’t the easiest thing to watch, but I told him that he’d never remember it and that he was now “part of the club.” It’s a shitty initiation to be sure, but whatever. After we left, we realized that the hospital staff forgot to give us the petroleum jelly we’d need to clean his currently-tiny member. So I hopped in my car and took a quick trip to the store to get some (along with my required tortillas and cheese).

I walked up and down a few aisles before I asked an employee where I might find some petroleum jelly. “What?” she asked, with a face that couldn’t have been more confused. “It’s like Vaseline,” I said, hoping that a name brand would help her recall its location in the store. Instead, she said, “Oh” and looked at me like I was a pervert. I briefly thought about explaining the real reason I needed it but figured that might actually make things worse. She told me that aisle 6 would probably be the right place for it because “that’s where those sorts of things are.” I walked over there and quickly saw a grouping of condoms and various sexual lubrications. I kept walking past that section, hoping that my product wouldn’t be stored there. I looked around for a while but didn’t see it, so I asked someone else. “Oh yeah, aisle 6 about halfway down on the right side by the Band-Aids.” I was pleased to hear the “right side” part, since the Trojan and KY products were on the left. I went back and found the little tub I’d been seeking. I paid, came home, and made a quesadilla before attending to my little guy’s little guy.

I certainly didn’t expect anything to play out quite like that in the first few days of fatherhood. I should’ve known better though; you can’t spell “petroleum pervert” without Peter Peter, after all.

p.s. I also never expected to have this thought: “I think I’ll wear that shirt, since spit-up would blend in pretty nicely.”

Tags: circumcision, vaseline

Not my best idea ever

Mar31

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I was doing a little spring cleaning at my office, and I came across a piece of paper with some unrelated notes on it. There was something about a meeting, a phone number with no name attached, and then a little note that made me laugh. I said to my coworker Rob, “You know how you often tell me I’m good with words and generally pretty clever?” He agreed. “Well, take a look at this.” I handed him the paper and pointed to the note, but he understandably couldn’t read all of my handwriting so I had to then read it aloud: “Be Here or Be a Sphere – for a gym campaign.” “That’s not bad,” Rob said. “It’s horrible! What are you talking about? Be a sphere? That’s awful!” “You don’t think some gym somewhere is using that slogan?” “I sure hope not,” I said, “because it’s fucking terrible.”

I don’t know why I ever thought that would be a good idea (especially since I don’t work with gym owners who are looking for slogans), but I even put a little star next to it. It’s not catchy, there’s an extra syllable in there that throws the whole thing off, and…it doesn’t really make sense. “Round” makes sense (but doesn’t rhyme), while “sphere” is too extreme, a bit confusing, and way over-complicated. Kinda like my retelling of this tale, I suppose. Fine, I can take a hint.

What goes a round

Mar28

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My lovely and very large wife will be giving birth within the next five days. Naturally, almost every phone call for the past couple of weeks has involved, “How’s she feeling?” I’ve told a few people, “Pretty good still. I mean, she’s pretty uncomfortable, but that’s par for the course.” Well I finally thought about that phrase that I’ve been saying automatically.

People associate “par” with the status quo. After all, that’s the number of strokes in which a golfer should be able to get it in the cup. It makes sense on that level, sure. Here’s the problem though: par’s really good for almost everyone in the world. My dad is probably the best golfer I know, and if he went out and had 18 pars, it would probably be the best round of his life. Does that sound like “status quo” to you? Hell, if I could get two or three pars, I’d probably be riding my putter Happy Gilmore-style around the green. I don’t go out to a course often at all, and when I do, it’s seldom anything that anyone would refer to as “golf.” I swing the club, the ball sometimes moves, and I eventually meander up to the green and three- or four-putt en route to shooting a score around my weight. When I’m with my friends though, I could shoot Kirstie Alley’s weight and I’d still have fun. Someday years in the future, I hope to actually pick up the game and get a little better at it. Until then, I’m content with my shittiness.
So next time someone asks me how my lovely wife is feeling, if I hear myself use the phrase, “par for the course,” I’ll follow up with, “So considerably better than I’d be doing.”

Tags: golf