My secret desire to be abducted by aliens

I'm not afraid to say that I want to believe in aliens. Sure, that might make me a freak, but no more so than anything else I've printed on this blog.

But I want to believe all that stuff about government conspiracies to cover up alien landings. I want to believe that our military has long known that aliens are roaming our nation's rural areas, looking for nutjobs that they can abduct and probe to their heart's content. And I want there to be an ultra-secret government agency of guys dressed in black suits (all of whom look like Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones) who respond to alien landings and wipe the memories of all the witnesses.

In my own little fantasy world, Obama is currently on the phone with the leader of the Planet Zarkon, who is providing some advice on jumpstarting the financial markets to get the economy moving again, in exchange for a recipe for homemade peanut butter cookies.

Never mind that none of this makes any sense. Our government is not nearly as good at keeping secrets as people think it is, and it's difficult to imagine that intelligent life forms examining Earth would bypass all those brightly lit, well-populated cities to search for life in the Nevada desert. And it makes even less sense that we don't have good video of a true UFO yet given the sheer number of video cameras floating around -- heck, how many shots did we get of airplanes hitting the World Trade Center? And that was seven full years ago.

(On a typical family trip these days we take as many as four electronic devices with video shooting capability, including our digital camera, our video camera, and both of our cell phones. And we are hardly technophobes. Nor are we particularly video happy. In fact, most of our devices go unused because we forget we have them. It's only on those trips that we forget them that we realize we need them.)

Common sense aside, I still can't help watching old X-Files episodes or the Dr. Who series and think things like "that would be so COOL" just as indestructible alien life forms are about to invade Earth and enslave us all.

Not that enslavement is all that desireable. And I'd rather not be abducted against my will and probed, but only because that would be unpleasant, and it would damage my ego to hear a bunch of aliens scream and then beg to have me thrown out of the flying saucer. But they can feel free to invite me into their ship, where they take me to their distant planet where bacon-wrapped sausage is health food and everybody brushes their teeth with cream-cheese frosting. And where the television isn't dominated by reality programs and MTV actually plays music videos.

I don't know where I'm going with this, other than to provide you with yet further evidence of how weird I am, and to show you what happens when I can't think of a post one day but feel pressured to write one nevertheless.

Another dose of parenting stains

You can always tell the parents in a crowd. True, they are the ones with the kids. And they're probably screaming -- both the parents and the kids. But if for some reason they didn't happen to have the kids at that moment, you'd still be able to pick them out, probably because they're the ones exuding joy and relief.

They're also the ones with the stains.

Having kids, as I've noted probably a few too many times on this blog, involves an insane amount of bodily fluids, which are usually catapulted from the body to some distant piece of fabric, most likely Dad's shirt just before work.

Sometimes this makes life exciting. I've turned diaper changing, for instance, into a game called "Beat the Bladder." (I was going to call it "Beat the Penis," but, well ... yeah.)

Anyway, in Beat the Bladder, my job is to remove the diaper, clean the bottom and install a new diaper before the baby decides to expel some liquid waste from his bladder. It requires speed, agility, and a bomb squad's ability to work under pressure -- qualities I only wish I had. My record in this game is spotty at best, because in my haste to avoid getting pee everywhere (notably on my person), I often drop the new diaper or realize that we've run out of wipes or suddenly discover that my clock radio has a short that has caused a small electrical fire next to my bed.

This game is far more effective with a boy than with a girl, because a boy's hose can shoot anybody within a three-foot radius, making any nearby person or object fair game

(Incidentally, I also play a version of Beat the Bladder myself, usually in my car while I'm traveling long distances and am loathe to stop too often, lest I delay my arrival time by five minutes. In this version my goal is to hold out stopping long enough to get some driving in but not so long that my various family members don't pee on the car seats or use blunt objects to beat me mercilessly. The Wife hates this game.)

The biggest and most annoying stains of parenthood usually come from the other end of the body.

It's a safe bet that the moment I pick up my youngest son (or even sometimes my oldest), he will spit up somewhere on my shirt. It's the safest bet that he'll do this when I pick him up to say goodbye in the morning as I leave for work -- thus forcing me to choose between tardiness and walking around with a white stain on my shoulder that smells like sour milk.

I usually pick walking around with a stain, mostly because all of my other shirts are probably in the wash because they've all been barfed upon and haven't been washed yet. Some days I go through 213 different shirts.

If I'm wearing a shirt I like, or have a big meeting, I avoid the baby like he has smallpox.

Not that this works. My sons aren't anything if not opportunistic, and they take any opportunity they can get to stain my shirt. And they do it with gusto. It doesn't matter if they haven't eaten for five days, they'd still find a way to get some baby barf somewhere on me.

Fortunately, my coworkers and most of my friends know that I'm the parent of an infant, and are thus understanding when they see me coming in wearing a dark sweater with so many white splotches that I look like a two-legged Holstein. Then again, given that on most days my hair looks like I'm the bastard child of Nick Nolte, they probably have low expectations for my appearance.



And they have probably seen humor-blogs.com.

Beware of walking needles

I can't think of anything to blog about today. OK, I can think of something to blog about, I'm just too lazy to write it. Plus my brain is filled with chocolate mousse.

So instead I'll just leave you with this picture of a walking hypodermic needle.



This looks like something out of a drug user's hallucination. Maybe this would be a good anti-drug campaign: Don't use drugs, kids, or you'll see these creepy hypodermic needles walking everywhere!

Man, if my brain wasn't made out of chocolate mousse, I'd make y'all write a caption to this ...

Oh, to be able to pause the world

Back in The Day, TV was a use-it or lose-it thing. You had to watch that episode of Mork & Mindy on the night it was broadcast, otherwise it would be gone for an indeterminate amount of time. And naturally the episode you missed would wind up to be the best show ever made. It would surely come back one day, in the form of a "repeat," but when was fully up to those fat guys who chew cigars and run networks and hate the general population.

I mention Mork & Mindy, because one day I neglected to watch the show one night, and the next morning while listening to the radio I heard the DJ talking about how Raquel Welch guest-starred on the program. And then, just to rub it in, he talked about how awesome she looked. For a kid just about to enter puberty this was a tragedy of epic proportions. I immediately ripped my shirt, fell to my knees, lifted my arms heavenward and questioned my future existence. Why, God? Why?!?

Suffice it to say, we got our VCR a couple years later and all would be well with the world.

Fast-forward to today. I recently discovered the effects on a child who does not have regular contact with good-old live television. Or even recorded television being broadcast on TV.

The Boy watches some television, but since his early days, when we plopped him in front of the tube playing a Wiggles DVD so we could take a shower, it's been all of the recorded variety: recorded episodes of Blue's Clues, DVD movies, recordings of Christmas programs, etc. In essence, he has become a product of his old man's incessant need for control and his personal lack of cable TV.

His knowledge of the TV world does have its negative consequences, especially when we're watching an actual broadcast of something and a commercial comes on, which always ignites a tantrum. TURN IT BACK ON, DAD!!!

And sometimes, when he needs to drain the lizard, he looks to me and shouts "PAUSE IT!!" Never mind that I can't actually pause live TV, as I'm way too cheap for a TiVo.

(That's right: The Boy does know that it is I who owns the household remote, and thus he always looks for me for TV control guidance.)

At least I thought this was the worst of the impact of The Boy's TV habits. Then, on Saturday, we went to a parade.

We love winter so much up here that every January we force a bunch of people to walk down the street, in the cold, dressed in silly outfits while the people watching them are huddled for warmth in enclosed areas that connect buildings above the street called "skyways."

We were in one, watching the parade below. Toward the end, The Boy decided he could no longer hold the liquid he consumed with his lunch, and announced to the crowd his need to use the nearest public restroom. The Wife decided to take him, and so The Boy looked at me.

"PAUSE IT!!"

He ran off before I could even get out the "sorry, kid, no-can-do." When he came back -- in record time, I might add, and he ran the whole way back -- the parade was over. And of course it was my fault.

"YOU DIDN'T PAUSE IT!"

No. I didn't. I'm a jerk like that.

"I WANNA SEE THE PARADE OVER AGAIN!!"

And that's what we heard our entire way home, until we bribed him with some treats so he would shut up.

So let this be a lesson, kids: Teach your kids about unpausable television today. Don't let your kids grow up thinking he can control the world with the push of a button -- despite how nice that would actually be.

And don't let your kids go to humor-blogs.com.

The allure of the girl fight

I'm not a big fan of wrestling or boxing or ultimate fighting, but it's true that fights are interesting, especially those that break out in random situations at school or at work (so long as that fight doesn't involve you, though that said, in school I was never as popular as I was on days after I got into a fight, which usually drew the entire school to observe).

This is especially true if the participants in those fights are women.

I never gave this much thought, to be honest, until this week, when I was flipping through some television channels.

We'd just finished watching a recording of the inauguration and I was hoping to catch my president doing "The Bump."

(I love "The Bump," by the way, which for those of you who don't know is a dance in which you use your hips and butt to bump your partner; thanks to having older sisters who hit their teenage years in the 70s it was the first dance with a name that I learned; I like it because it combines Disco music with hip-checking.)

While searching for our bumping chief executive I had briefly -- briefly -- caught a glimpse of some unknown TV program in which two women were engaging in fisticuffs.

"GO BACK!!!" The Boy said.

What?

"GO BACK! I WANNA WATCH THAT!"

Watch what?

"I WANNA SEE THE GIRL FIGHT!"

That's right: Even to a 4-year-old a girl fight is more interesting than a dancing president. But you probably knew that already.

Advice regarding yellow snow

I took The Boy sledding today, enabling The Wife to take a modest between-meal nap. Sledding, for those of you who for some reason do not know, involves a person hurtling down a lumpy hill at death-defying speed atop a thin, cheap piece of plastic with only your hands for protection -- or brakes.

It's like skiing, only without the danger of impalement.

When we were done, we walked to our car when, at some point, I realized that I was walking alone.

(This is an unfortunately common occurrence in my life. Frequently, when walking with The Wife in a mall, down a neighborhood street or in a park, I'll suddenly realize that I'm alone, that some untold number of minutes ago The Wife quietly slipped off somewhere else, ostensibly to look at something but, more likely, because I'm just not as exciting as a dandelion or a stuffed puppy dog. Apparently, this tendency to sneak off without telling The Dork either runs in the family, or is a true indication of the desire of my closest family to not be associated with me. Maybe I should start bathing more than once a month.)

I quickly located my wanderlust-afflicted 4-year-old and discovered him, not surprisingly, rolling in snow.

Then the surprising part: GASP! The snow was yellow!

GET AWAY FROM THE YELLOW SNOW, KID!!!

I've clearly failed at one of the basic responsibilities in Minnesota parenthood: Instructing your child of the dangers of yellow snow. Yes, the snow was frozen, but it was still yellow. My son has been living in this state for nearly three years now. I have no excuse for failing to preach this rule regularly.

Not that he would listen to me, necessarily -- later on, he decided to rub my dirty, salt-covered car with his glove; then he'd lick his glove. Mmmmm! Salty! In this instance, I have informed him repeatedly that the salt on Dad's car is hardly mmmmmm-worthy and is, in fact, highly disgusting. Alas, that was not the first time he'd ignored that advice. I'm afraid it won't be the last.

It's far easier, however, to get across to a child the dangers of yellow snow, because pee from a dog is far more simple than some unseen dirt and chemicals. And nobody, not even a 4-year-old boy, enjoys rolling around in urine.

I got The Boy away from the yellow snow by grabbing and pulling him away like he was just about to fall off of a 250-foot cliff, then explained the problem. He understood, then went about with an explanation of how pee should go into toilets. Unless you're a dog.

He might have gotten it, but maybe I should start putting him on a leash. Just in case.

And maybe he'll take me to humor-blogs.com.

***
Photo from Kill Ugly Radio.

Breastfeeding: It's not just for breakfast anymore

Over the past two weeks, I've been presented with the following question about 1,413 times: Are you getting any sleep?

Of course I am, I say. I don't have breasts.

There are plenty of reasons I'm thrilled to be a dude -- I can stand when I pee; my friendships are generally easy to maintain and drama-free and I can go out in public shirtless without fear of law enforcement involvement (though the whiteness of my torso may cause blindness among some passersby while those witnesses wearing sunglasses who are able to withstand the glare and thus see the condition of my midsection have it much, much worse). Not having to breastfeed, however, is near the top of the list.

One would think that breastfeeding would be an easy process. We are humans, after all. We have big brains -- so big, in fact, that childbirth is a painful and often deadly process. Our brains are big enough when we are born that something in there should say "go suck on that thing, there's food there." Apparently, however, it doesn't quite work that way.

Instead, getting a newborn to breastfeed is like, um ... well, something terribly difficult that results in lots of swearing and screaming. Like, say, me in high-school calculus; or me trying to decipher ceiling light installation instructions; or the recount process for Minnesota's recent U.S. Senate race.

I don't see this problem with other animals. Kittens can't see when they're born, yet somehow they make it to mom OK and then begin drinking away. And the blind, hairless newborn kangaroo is born less than an inch long and has to climb through his or her mother's fur to reach the pouch and the teat. Human moms, on the other hand, physically place their babies at their breast and it still doesn't work. Huh, what the heck is this thing in my face? Bring back the cord! Bring back the cord!

So babies apparently must spend their first few days on Earth learning how to eat -- which, for mom, can be a fairly painful process.

By now, The Sequel has that eating thing down, but now he's like a 10-pound ball and chain to which my wife is always attached.

I, with my Boy entertainment responsibilities as a convenient excuse, can come and go when I please. The Wife, on the other hand, must schedule her entire day around Sequel's feeding time. She can't leave until he's fed, and she must get back before he gets hungry again, lest she be forced to nurse him in a grungy shopping mall bathroom or, heaven forbid, the changing room of a Victoria's Secret.

And yes, it also means that come nightfall it is she who must get up every couple of hours to feed the kid.

Before The Boy was born, I had vowed to The Wife and anybody within earshot that I would be a good dad and a loving husband who would wake up in solidarity with my wife whenever the kid cried at night. That lasted about two weeks, when I learned the art of pretending to be asleep. Now, with The Sequel, I don't even bother pretending. I just roll over and grumble.

... and go to humor-blogs.com.

This is gonna be a chilly post

Today I'm going to take time out from whining about the presence of a screaming-at-all-hours newborn so I can whine about the weather.

Suffice it to say, it's cold outside. Cold. It's spit-freezes-on-my-lips cold. It's everything-crunches-when-I-move cold. It's spend-two-seconds-outside-and-die-of-frostbite cold. It's write-fricking-freezing-in-italics cold. It's so cold that I'm re-running old graphics because my fingers are, uh, too numb to use my graphics program.

As I've noted a time or two on this blog, I abandoned a warm-weather climate to be here, under the illusion that being near family would provide the warmth to last through the winter months. I now know that no amount of familial warm fuzzies can break through sleep-with-your-car-battery frigidity.

That said, cold weather is better than ultra-hot weather in at least one key respect -- I can bundle myself up to protect me from that cold weather, but when it gets hot various local and state decency laws prevent me from taking off a certain amount of clothing. Yet even without that legal barrier, there is only so naked a person can get.

But as my old friend Steve pointed out, when a heat wave breaks it's nice and warm, but when a cold snap breaks it's still fricking cold. And so, as I sit here while my sons' college education funds are burned in my basement furnace, I'm pondering why exactly people live in a climate like this -- or, God forbid, places even further north.

Perhaps it's a point of pride, so you can tell the world that you survive each year having your car spend each January looking like a four-wheeled version of Lot's wife. Or so you can tell wimpy, warm-climate relatives how you walked to school in the winter months with the frigid breeze hitting your face like somebody is repeatedly stabbing you in the nose with a fork he just got out of the freezer.

Maybe we like having our commutes turn into two-hour nightmares, which is what happened this morning to several of my coworkers who described white-knuckle drives into work (I and my hellish 10-minute morning commute kept my fat mouth shut). Or maybe we just feel bad for power company executives and like giving them huge portions of our monthly earnings each winter.

(That said, am I the only one that gets grumpy when I see the power company advertise? Our local electric and gas companies like giving free crap at parades, which always causes me to yell, "HEY! DON'T GIVE ME A FREE FOAM HAT I'LL NEVER WEAR! USE THE MONEY YOU'RE WASTING ON THIS LANDFILL-FILLING CRAP TO LOWER MY ELECTRIC BILL, YOU MORON!" Or at least I'm thinking it, maybe even whispering it to my wife. Stupid electric company.)

A few of us do actually enjoy the weather, like my friend Rick who takes vacations up north in February, the month when I've usually descended into cabin fever madness. Yet most of us are like me, and spend these months griping in unison.

So maybe that's it. Maybe we all just like to complain, and winter gives us several months of fodder. Then by summer all of that is gone and we're singing the weather's praises. Until it gets too hot, that is.

I now return you to your regular dose of posts about diapers and spit-up.

And lame endings about humor-blogs.com.

Not so Ferris-like

Apparently, somebody upstairs deemed my parenting tasks a bit too easy and therefore afflicted The Boy with some flu-like illness, resulting in temperatures in the triple-digits and an industrial strength level of whining.

(It's a safe bet, by the way, that I'll get the same thing in a couple of days while The Wife will remain perfectly, 100-percent healthy, because that's just the way things are. And if I get sick, that will take the Household Whine Level well into the stratosphere; crap, I'm going to go hook myself to an IV of orange juice, liquefied garlic and echinacea. Even I get sick of my own whining.)

In my own youth, I learned early on that fevers kept me home from school. They also provided me with a full day's access to the refrigerator and the television set. It was a ready-made excuse to sit around the house on my butt and do nothing but eat, drink pop (yes, it was 7-Up, but it was still pop) and be waited on. At least, it enabled me to do those things without fear of being griped at for not doing my homework, not cleaning my room or not engaging in any physical activity whatsoever.

I was good at few things in school, mostly because I hated class and had all the athletic ability of a large rock. But I could get out of actually going to school with the best of them. If they gave out letters for getting out of class and still making it through with passing grades, then I would have had stripes all the way down my letterman jacket.

(NOTE TO MY BOSS: Of course, I don't do this stuff now, only back then; I would never think of slacking off and worming my way out of work in my Responsible Adult Life.)

Staying at home, however, was never as much fun as Ferris Bueller made it out to be. For one thing, I don't have a creepy principal to outmaneuver. And Baby was definitely not my sister. Nor could I think of leaving the house without fear that some cop or random authority figure would take me by the ear and drag me all the way back to school.

Indeed, part of me is still a bit paranoid about being out in the open on a school day for fear of being busted -- never mind that I usually have a perfectly reasonable excuse for being at the casino when I'm supposed to be working. When I was in school, that paranoia put a real damper on any fun to be had on a sick day, so no museums and no fancy lunches as the Sausage King of Chicago.

(It's also safe to say that, unlike Ferris, none of my classmates would consider a Save the Dork campaign; they'd more likely start a Keep the Dork from Returning to School campaign.)

So home I stayed, sitting on my butt and watching bad television, which was really bad back then because we had no cable TV, so I had to survive on game shows and soap operas -- in other words, I grew up on Match Game and General Hospital.

The Boy has no idea how good he'll have it. When he gets sick, he'll have plenty of cable (assuming we get off our cheap butts and get it), various online television options, a DVD player, Netflix, video games, the Internet. He'll be able to stay home and have far more fun than Ferris ever did. Unless the principal comes knocking on the door.



If this post didn't make you sick, then humor-blogs.com will.

The upside-down world of newborn care

For some reason, the world doesn't take a break when a new baby arrives, even for the couple that has the child. So, while I've spent the past week in a cocoon while I aided my baby-having wife then cared for the newbie, the world continued to operate as if this wasn't the world-changing event I think it is. This is also true at work, where for some reason my workload didn't magically disappear.

So I went to work today for a couple of hours to get some stuff done to meet an upcoming deadline. It was a busy two hours, packed with activity and shrouded by a cloud of deadline stress.

It was a nice break.

Indeed, as I left the office, my last words to our receptionist was something along the lines of "Back to work!"

I forgot how, uh ... fun ... it is to have a newborn around. Or maybe I just blocked it out of my mind. (Seriously, it's a good thing that newborns are so cute, at least to their parents, for otherwise the human race would have died out ages ago; if humans considered babies ugly there is no way any woman would let a man anywhere near her.)

Making work seem like a relieving break isn't the only way that newborns turn the world of their parents upside-down. There are many things that we as grown, responsible adults wouldn't even consider doing that we are now doing several times a day, such as:

Routinely smelling another person's butt. I'm always sniffing the kid's behind. If I did this to anybody else, I'd be arrested, thrown into a psychiatric hospital or beaten over the head with a blunt object. And probably all of the above (even if that butt belonged to my wife). It's just not normal.

Hoping that butt smells foul. This isn't normal, either. I want no butt -- no butt -- to smell like an actual butt, except the one belonging to my newborn. That's because pediatricians and various other kid doctors inform you that if your new child isn't steadily gaining weight and eating plenty right off the bat, then you are the WORST PARENT IN THE HISTORY OF PARENTING.

Waking up in the middle of the night to get a peacefully sleeping child. OK, most of the time this is no problem. But if, by some miracle of nature, your newborn sleeps well very early on, you have to wake him up so he gets fed and you are not labeled, as previously mentioned, the WORST PARENT IN THE HISTORY OF PARENTING.

Going to bed early. This might not seem odd to those of you who've been blessed with the ability to go to bed early and be up and fully alert before 10 a.m., but to me the idea of going to bed early is akin to being in front of a huge crowd with no pants on: I have no clue what to do. Yet I'm daily developing strategies for going to bed early, before 10 p.m. even, to maximize my night's sleep. And get this: I even fall asleep.

Speaking in tongues. I watched a lot of home movies this week to record them and store them onto a hard drive, and noticed that the hours and hours of footage we have of The Boy as a baby is almost always accompanied by one or both of us parents talking in baby talk. And we sound really stupid. Some of these videos may be used in the future to embarrass The Boy at his grad party or wedding, but he'll be more embarrassed by US than he will by whatever it is he was doing at the time.

There is more to this list, I'm sure, but the past week has drained my brain of much of its natural function -- which, most of you know, tends to be lacking to begin with. It's so drained that I have no idea how to end this blog post. So I'll just end it now, with this request to go to humor-blogs.com.

Bits and pieces: Name problems and diaper mountains

I was one of four siblings, and the only one with a 'y' chromosome. And my mom could still never get my name right.

Mom would suffer from nameamnesia whenever she needed to get my attention. She went through every one of my sister's names, then their middle names; then she would call out names of the day's top opera performers, followed by several country crooners of both genders and then every member of the defense from the 1974 Denver Broncos before finally getting to my name.

As you can imagine, that's a lot of names, so the process took a while, giving me time to prepare a full meal, call a few friends and finish the next day's homework. If I was in trouble, I could use the time to get away, but only after packing some bags, collecting my emergency cash stash and fully planning my escape route.

I never understood this. Look, Mom, I'm a DUDE. I'm the only one of us her who stands up when he pees and my hair is far shorter than any of my sisters! THERE'S NO EXCUSE!

I think I understand better now.

We've had our second child for five days, and The Sequel has been called by his big brother's name just as much as by his own name, at least by his parents. Apparently, we are still surprised that there is a second child in the house, one with his own, unique name.

But at least I'm not calling him Charley Pride. Or by a bunch of girls' names.

***

I had one of those moments today in which I really wished I had brought my camera along.

Did The Boy do something cute with his little brother? Did The Sequel charm some locals? Did I run across an extraordinary news event? No.

My wife started nodding off.

Now, my wife is notorious for her ability to sleep anywhere, in any position, and at a moment's notice. Sometimes at night we get into bed, she goes off on a long diatribe regarding the treatment of women in sub-Saharan Africa, and by the time I get to the 'nice' in my "That's nice dear" reply, she's started snoring heavily.

But this beat all: She was literally nodding off, repeatedly, in a room filled with screaming, running, jumping preschoolers. I've been behind jets at takeoff that were quieter than that room. And still she could have slept, had she been in a reclining position.

Yup. That's what parenting does to you.

***

Indeed, we are a tired set of parents. I'd say, in fact, that we're far more tired this time around.

We had plenty of sleepless nights when The Boy was born, especially because we were filled with new parent excitement and every single task had to be tag-teamed (except, thankfully, the breastfeeding).

Yet at least those sleepless nights (at least before we returned to work) could be followed up by some restful days. So sure The Boy would wake us up every couple of hours, but at least we could sleep in.

This time? Not a chance. Come around 6:30 a.m. The Boy -- craving a bit of attention, as he hadn't had some all night -- comes bounding into the bedroom, insisting on jumping in with us and The Newbie. (Incidentally, on most normal mornings he is hell to wake up by 8.) And forget the nap during the day.

The point is this: I'm still beat. But at least this will be my last time around the baby-go-round. No more litt-luns for me after this, a thought that helps me get through that mountain of smelly diapers.

... and humor-blogs.com.

Giving birth in a broom closet

In the weeks and months before the birth of your first child, everybody you inform about the impending new life -- and I mean everybody, be they parents or not -- provides the following, free advice: Get some sleep.

To which I always say, "Thank you, Captain Obvious. Since you are the 400th person to tell me this week, you get a free toaster." Actually, I just think that. In reality I just follow that comment with a chuckle and a knowing nod.

But now, after No. 2, I think I now know what everybody means. They don't mean to get sleep because the new child will wake you up at all hours of the night to demand food and new synthetic absorbent underpants. They're talking about the 500 people who will parade through your room throughout your first night on the job, so to speak.

And it almost always, without fail, come in five seconds after the little one dozes off.

In hindsight, I should have taken advantage of the single most boring day of my life -- Thursday -- to get some shut-eye, but somehow the anticipation of an impending child kept my body from allowing me to fall asleep. That, and the "seating" the hospital provide Dad: a rock-hard, vinyl "thing" that went out of style in the 70s and folds out into a "bed" that only a drunk on downers could fall asleep on.

(I will say that the bed in our postpartum room was much better; it was still rock hard, but at least it was an actual bed. Thank God, because otherwise I was going to force my wife to move over so I could share her bed, which would probably get me into heaps of trouble, but it'd be better than sleeping on something less comfortable than a cement block.)

Labor lasted some time. The Wife was induced in the morning, because she could not physically get any larger without violating some law of physics. The baby was born 40 minutes before midnight.

And speaking of breaking the laws of physics, I still can't figure out how the hospital manages to fit a doctor, a couple of nurses, a dad and a birth-giving mom into a room the size of a broom closet -- making it obvious that the hospital uses clown card technology to design its rooms. Most of the time during the pushing part of labor I could stand in one, single position. If I moved one inch in any direction, I would have either fallen over and broken my neck, knocked out my wife's epidural, tripped the cord into some ultra-important piece of equipment or accidentally knocked a hole into the space-time continuum.

My job during that labor, by the way, was part boxing ring manager (between "rounds" I dabbed her face with a cold, wet towel and did some coaching) gopher (I got her a lot of water and anything else she needed), photographer (I had my camera at the ready for about 12 hours) and punching bag (OK, I made that up; please don't kill me, wife).

I once said that the longest time in history was the days between a child's due date and his actual arrival. I now know that I was wrong. The longest time is labor -- unless, that is, you have one of those spouses who can push a baby out in 20 minutes; then, I guess, time speeds up, but that's for you to blog about. I thought that our Thursday would never end, even after it ended. Part of me still thinks he's back in that broom closet, coaching my wife and trying not to crack jokes.

(Yes, once when a malfunctioning alarm went off while my wife was pushing I said, "See? You have a soundtrack." This caused her to laugh, which kept her from pushing and earned me a scolding from the nurse.)

In the end I got my kid, and on the second night in the hospital I got some sleep, and not because I barricaded the doors and employed guard dogs to keep people out. Now we're home, and my work really begins.

Right after I get some sleep.

And visit humor-blogs.com.

The Sequel arrives

I've been in a hospital room for two days, and as you can imagine am a bit tired to post about it -- yet.

In the meantime, The Sequel has indeed made his appearance, weighing in at a cool 10 pounds, 5 ounces -- earning my wife the status of "saint," which many of you would have probably labeled her for the simple act of agreeing to be married to me. He was born late on Thursday night, January 1.

I, along with my wife and our brand new human being, am going to rest. But here is a photo of the guy.