Springtime for dang gophers

The grass in Minnesota is a lot like Minnesotans: It springs to life the second the weather gets sunny and slightly warm. As a result, I had to mow my grass yesterday, even though it was just a few days ago that I was wearing my winter jacket.

And as soon as I began mowing, I quickly wished the snow would come back, because I saw, repeatedly, evidence of something dreaded:

Gophers!

And not just gophers, because they invited their friends, a bucketload of bleeping moles, to hang out just underneath my lawn, decorating it with brown streaks -- which look just as good on my lawn as they do on underpants. They probably conspired with their friends, the rabbits, who've been taking care of everything above ground.

Gophers are rather prevalent in these parts -- so much so that the gopher is the state mascot, and the mascot of the University of Minnesota and its sports teams. But that results in another problem: When you tell people around here that, "I have a gopher problem," most people think you have an infestation of athletes. "Just quit having keg parties and they'll go away," they say.

I already knew I had a gopher/mole/rabbit/any-other-burrowing-animal problem for some time -- yet in previous years they basically limited themselves to an area of the lawn I cared not about. They left my good grass alone, and I didn't carpet bomb them with pesticides or dynamite, letting them hang out in their tunnels, listening to Kenny Loggins music. Now they've moved up front, where everybody on the face of the planet can now see that I have gophers.

I now know how Carl Spackler felt.

I've already dismissed the use of poison, because I have little attention for detail -- which would certainly result in me running over a dead gopher I failed to see. That and I'm not sure it would work. The buggers already like Kenny Loggins. They may very well enjoy Poison, though I can't for the life of me see how.

And traps give me the creeps, because I'm convinced that I'd end up trapping something I didn't want, like a neighborhood cat or a neighbor -- though I suppose if a neighbor was tunneling underneath my grass he'd probably deserve what he got.

Caddyshack is no help, because Carl ultimately failed to oust his gopher. So I consulted with friends for advice on my gopher problem. Here are some of the solutions they came up with:
Get a dog/cat. Hmmm ... spend money to feed, and lots of time to clean up after, an animal that destroys my property so it can, possibly, get rid of another animal--which requires no care whatsoever--that is destroying my property. Sounds tempting.
"Mark your territory" by peeing all over the yard. Excellent. I'd LOVE to do this. And I could recruit The Boy. I just somehow think that my neighbors might object to me waving Mr. Happy around my front yard. Dang nosy neighbors. What kind of country do we live in where a man can't pee in his own front yard to rid it of gophers?

Use your slinky. This requires some background -- I have an old-fashioned slinky at work that I use to drive my coworkers nuts by playing with it at those moments when I require some time to think. (I personally like to keep my fellow employees on edge. You know, so they work harder.) I'm pretty certain that, by suggesting I use the slinky, they mean that I should insert the slinky into the gopher hole and hope that the bugger gets trapped. But they might mean that I should choke myself with the slinky, which would also keep me free from gopher problems.
Quit whining. I seem to get this advice a lot. Unfortunately, it NEVER works. No matter how much I don't whine, my problem never seems to get solved.

Distance is infinite when a baby is on board

I'm sure most of you would probably think that a certain distance is a finite thing. A foot is only a foot (or, for you Canadians, a metre is only a metre, or however you spell it), a mile is but a mile and a light year is only a light year.

That is completely wrong. True distance is fully dependent upon your desire to arrive at a certain destination.

To wit: If you're late for an interview for your dream job, the 10-mile trip to company headquarters is more like 20 miles or 30 miles, depending on pay level and whether you have a job at the moment. But that same 10 miles is more like 5 miles if you're driving to prison or 1 mile if you're going to visit the in-laws.

If you have a small bladder and just consumed 48 ounces of heavily caffeinated Diet Coke, the next rest area might as well not show up at all.

I used to think that my sister was about a 20-mile drive from my house. I now know that this is totally wrong. That's only the length on a normal day. Today, that drive was more like 200 light years, because my car was toting a screaming baby.

The Wife was attending a work function this evening, leaving yours truly to play the role of Mr. One-Night Bachelor Dad. No problem, I thought, so long as I have a bottle.

That was fine until it came time to feed the little one. Yet my breast-fed baby took one look at me, then at the bottle, and said, in his little baby way, "Um, no father. I would rather not take day-old food from an artificial nipple held by your decidedly ungentle hands."

But this is how that sentence sounded: "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!" PTU!

And so, as I was attending a church group -- for which my niece was watching the big one -- I then began playing a game of "Keep the Bawling Infant From Disturbing the Proceedings." I used every play in my book -- holding him in different positions, swinging him like a yo-yo, making various faces, shoving a pacifier in his mouth, shoving toys in his mouth, shoving kitchen utensils in his mouth, holding him towards me, holding him outward, getting on my knees and begging him to calm down, etc., etc. (The only thing that worked, I might add, is me sitting him on a couch and letting him chew on my finger; he might be teething, or he might be punishing me for trying to shove that bottle in his mouth.)

The limited success I had there did not carry over into the car, however, and so my usually calm and quiet son bawled at the top of his lungs first to my sister's to drop off my niece, then to our house 200 light years away. During the trip I alternated between begging The Sequel to calm down, praying for him to calm down, and yelling at nearby cars for not knowing that I have a crying baby in my car and thus failing to part as I approached to give me a clear path. (I'm thinking that I might attach an external bullhorn to my vehicle, then the next time this happens I'll just turn it on, thus amplifying the cries for all the world to hear -- then those bleeping drivers will get out of my way.)

I'm also going to add that it's clear that I had selective amnesia before The Sequel was born, because I totally forgot some elements of how difficult even a generally easy infant can be -- and this was definitely one of them. That amnesia clearly was a species survival mechanism buried deep within my DNA, because otherwise there would be no second children.

Anyway, that trip home was the longest trip home ever. I'd never been so relieved to see the house.

And I shouted "WOOOHOOO!" as I opened the garage door to reveal The Wife's parked Toyota. She greeted us at the door from the house to the garage. I handed her the crying infant, turned the other way and ran as fast as I could.

Helping The Boy deal with a dying pet

WARNING: This post is kind-of a downer.

I don't know which was worse: Putting our second cat to sleep this evening or telling The Boy about it.

We certainly knew the moment we became parents that we'd have to deal with this at some point, especially since one of the two cats we had when The Boy was born was quite elderly. Cats die, just like everything else, and their deaths come quickly. When that death comes with a small child in the house, an explanation must follow.

But that explanation is never easy, nor is the result.

The first cat's death, about six months ago, was easier on The Boy, mostly because the large, yet timid animal treated The Boy like a leper and avoided him at all costs -- bolting whenever he came into the room. Yet his death still hit hard, and in subsequent days after we told The Boy that the cat, Ike, went to "cat heaven" he had begun asking all sorts of questions about death and dying, tough questions for a 4-year-old and introducing the fear of mortality.

We knew that the second cat, Mamie, would be tougher for him to take. He loved that cat, and for good reason: She more or less allowed him to treat her like a human bean bag for the past three years.

Mamie has always been a bit off, mentally. As a kitten she'd cuddle up next to my substantial head of hair in the middle of the night and knead it with her razor-sharp claws. We'd routinely call her our "bimbo," because she was very cute but had the IQ of a box of bricks.

Yet she was exceedingly sweet, and never more so than in how she handled The Boy. He'd always been drawn to her, from the moment he could crawl in her direction to grab her fur. As he grew into a toddler, and a serial cat hugger, she sat still while he pinned her to the floor in one of those toddler love hugs. She continued to put up with him as he got older -- though he never hurt her.

So when she was diagnosed as a diabetic, and then developed other problems despite treatment, we'd begun preparing The Boy for the moment when we'd have to take her in. We routinely reminded him that she's sick, and won't be with us for long. We said it earlier this week when we decided that it was time to do the deed.

Yet as I prepared to leave the house this evening, to do my fatherly have-the-household-pet-euthanized duty, he began crying and making efforts to make her "feel better."

As I left with the cat he began crying much harder, realizing that this was it. He was still crying an hour later when I returned, as he took a bath, as he drew pictures of his cat, and as he listened to his mom read a story. I did what I could to comfort him, but to be honest I also said that it's good to cry, and it's OK to be sad at the loss of a friend. What I didn't tell him is that he has a lifetime of this, because death is a reality.

Beware the baby bomb

I learn something about being a parent every day. For instance, today I learned that it's generally not advisable to lift a baby playfully into the air shortly after he'd been fed.

My job in this house is to have fun with the kids. It's a tough task, but one for which I'm well suited given my juvenile sense of humor and a face that can contort into more shapes than Stretch Armstrong.

The Sequel is easy, because he's a baby, and all you usually need to do is make some odd faces, which makes you look like a complete fool but which gets him to smile. To go the extra mile and earn that coveted baby laugh, however, the best strategy is to lift the baby up above your head, which will get him to squeal with delight. And sometimes you can get a friend of relative to yell "BARF!" by going this.

Earlier today, my friend got his wish.

I lifted the baby up. He squealed -- you know, because digestive problems or not, getting hoisted into the air is still a total blast -- and finished up by releasing a nice dose of partially digested breast milk.

Fortunately, I've been a parent long enough to have developed a sixth sense that detects oncoming bodily fluids. My sixth sense having informed me of the oncoming liquid bomb, I shifted my head an inch to my right, thus keeping the bomb from hitting The Sequel's intended target: my face.

Lesson learned. Or maybe it wasn't, because not long afterward I was lifting the kid again.

The perils of Picture Day

'Twas Picture Day at preschool today, meaning I spent a desperate morning treating my boys like they were both loaded with nitroglycerin that would ignite at the touch of a piece of dirt or a spot of food.

The Boy is 4, and an especially wiggly and active 4 at that. His typical clean-clothes time -- the amount of time his outfit is spotless -- is about 3.2 seconds. And that's on a day when we don't care what he looks like. If we're going somewhere, or it's Picture Day, you could probably cut that time by about two-thirds.

And The Sequel does little more than barf up breakfast and poop out dinner. And frequently, the fluids from both ends mess up his outfit.

My work was cut out for me to ensure that their nicer-than-usual outfits remained nicer-than-usual by the time they arrived at school for their pictures. So I employed every tactic I could think of -- most of them involved heavy prayer, religious rituals, a lot of strong rope and plastic wrap.

I don't recall Picture Day being this stressful in my youth. Then again, I don't think I cared a whole lot how I looked in my youth. My hair was usually a mess, my shirts were almost always hideous and I spent one year wearing these giant nerd glasses that were only a shade smaller than those bright, neon sunglasses that clowns wear and that young, drunk college women buy at kiosks selling knickknacks at carnivals.

And when I got older and did care about how I looked, I'd invariably get a giant zit right on my forehead that screamed, 'HELLO! LOOK AT ME! I'M A BIG, GIANT ZIT! THIS PICTURE NOW INFORMS YOU THAT ITS SUBJECT DOES NOT SPEND ENOUGH MONEY ON CLEARASIL! THIS PICTURE IS NOW RUINED!! BAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

(Few of these pictures exist, by the way; they're rarer than an original Van Gogh; in fact, there are only two known pictures of a young, Dorky Dad, and both of them confirm that his dorkishness began at an early age.)

I do recall that the guys who took the pictures always had the strangest sense of humor. He'd always get you to laugh by creatively getting you to say something other than "cheese." "OK, now, say 'MONEY!'" And you'd laugh and say "MONEY!" and he'd snap your picture just at that very nanosecond when your left eyelid was down slightly so it looked as if you had Lazy Eye, or at that moment when you looked like you were about to swallow an elephant.

For the younger set, apparently, the words include phrases like "Dinosaur Boogers," which I admit would get me to laugh. (Chuckle)

I've come to know a few photographers since then and I've come to realize that they all have that left-of-center sense of humor. I LOVE them. Perhaps the profession draws people like that, but I choose to think that they teach this stuff in photography school. Photography 204: Words and Phrases. When "Cheese" just won't do.

We don't take many formal photos of ourselves these days, because I don't want to spend a ton of money for a photo of myself. That's what mirrors are for, and besides, I have a perfectly operable digital camera and people in the house with working index fingers. (And, I HATE wearing ties and if I'm coughing up a billion dollars to have my photo taken in front of a fancy blue velvet background I'll feel obligated to wear one. But I don't want to. I hate ties. Hate. HATE HATE HATE. Got that?)

But the boys are something different, because they're far cuter than I am and I feel it's in my best interest to preserve what they look like now, before they become teenagers and I forget why I kept them around.

So it was not an insignificant victory when I arrived at day care with a pair of spotless children, one of whom -- the one with hair -- managed to keep his typically untidy mane in good working order. And while the baby's outfit would not last the day, it would last long enough to have a picture of him taken in it. Hot dog! I win.

Do I really have the balls for this?

Here's how far I've descended since becoming a parent: I was so desperate for a day off to myself that I was actually looking forward to having some strange guy slice into my family jewels and burn away some of my innards.

I had The Operation. Actually, I had it about two weeks ago, but was so weirded out by the situation it's taken me this long to work up the nerve to bring it up.

(I know what some of you are thinking: Hey, aren't you the guy that posted a photo of yourself taken in your wife's undergarments? Well, yes. But that's way different for reasons I can't think of off the top of my head.)

It was time, of course. We'd completed work creating the second child and had no real need for my reproductive juices any longer. On top of that, I'm nearing 40. As it is, by the time The Sequel graduates from high school he'll be changing MY diapers. I want at least some of my faculties remaining by the time I become an empty-nester.

Still, it wasn't an easy decision. Guy Rule No. 1 is: Don't let any strange guy come anywhere near your genitals with a sharp object, no matter how long he went to school to use said object. And that is one rule I'm not keen on breaking. So I wrestled with the decision for a while (Which is worse, raising your third child from your nursing home room or have some dude slice open your testicles?) But then came the real selling point:

Getting this operation will enable you to spend two full days sitting on your butt watching TV with a bag of frozen peas on your genitals, followed by several weeks of consistent action in the bedroom.*

* That is, after several days of pain so annoying that you walk like a cro-magnon man. You know you're ready for the bedroom once you're walking upright again, and talking in your normal, baritone voice.

With two kids and an annoying cat, sit-on-butt time in the house is at a premium. There is always something that needs to be done. And none of it, by the way, involves exciting stuff like defending my home from a group of ninjas using only a broken broom stick and the lid of a dutch oven. Why can't I just spend one evening fighting off deadly Japanese warriors with only household items?

So, upon hearing that I'd get to sit around for a while, I agreed to be neutered. Then I spend a couple of weeks nicely blocking from my mind the idea that this guy was going to cut me open and destroy my reproductive capabilities.

Then I got to the doctor's office, was told to remove my pants, saw the doctor coming toward me with the scalpel and let out a blood-curdling scream.

No I didn't. I actually spent the entire time talking with him about the oddities of the American health care system. But part of me really wanted to scream -- especially when I saw smoke coming from my genital area as he was telling me about the health benefits of grass-fed beef.

(By the way, it may be better for both me and the environment, but I'll never be able to look at grass-fed beef without thinking for smoke rising from my balls. Therefore, I shall not have grass-fed beef any longer.)

Twenty minutes later, the doc put down his scalpel. "OK, that's it. Just make sure you get plenty of rest today and call if you have any questions or if you start peeing odd-colored liquid. I'll call YOU if I realize that I left my scalpel in there."

I was neutered in 20 minutes. I spent twice that much time yesterday just trying to find my way out of the zoo. He needed less time than most people's morning commute to end my reproductive days forever.

I slowly limped out of the office and left the building and couldn't find my car. I was so pathetic that even the drunk guy who walked out of the building alongside me was laughing at me. Or maybe he was laughing at my monkey-like walk and the look of fear on my face.

I went home, got my bag of peas and lots of liquid and proceeded to geek myself out by watching all three Lord of the Rings movies, back to back. I didn't worry about anything, not even work -- though, it seems, I probably should have worried about work.

Apparently, as I was watching happy hobbits and ass-kicking elves, my coworkers were wondering where I was. See, I had done what I usually do before taking a day off -- I told my boss. But my boss was gone, too. I hadn't told anybody else because, for some reason, it wasn't something I was keen on advertising.

So they kept wondering aloud where I was. But, strangely, none of them actually thought to call me. They just worried. Gee, glad I wasn't dead on the side of the road or kidnapped by a group of crazed pirate ninjas.

And so, on the following Monday, I got this question -- "Where WERE you?" -- over and over. And so I had to announce, in the middle of the office, "I HAD SURGERY ON MY BALLS."

Well, I didn't really say that. But I might as well have, because any time a middle-age male who just had his second child mentions that he had surgery, everybody knows which surgery he had. You did.

The great sundae search

Target was giving out free tickets to the Twins season opener last weekend. I love baseball, and I especially love free baseball. So I was willing to break one of my cardinal rules to get my free tickets.

That rule is this: Few things are worth wasting precious life standing in line. That's why you'll never see me outside a Wal-Mart at 3 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving or camping out to get concert tickets. (It's also why you'll hear me grumbling loudly the entire time I'm forced to stand in line.) But free tickets to the season opener is one of the exceptions (so is a lifetime supply of cream cheese frosting, but as of yet Target hasn't given that away; I'm still waiting).

Free tickets also cause me to lose all notions of common sense. So when the tickets came in a set of four, I had no trouble with the idea of bringing not just The Boy but the rest of the family, too -- including my breastfeeding, 3-month-old sequel. Of course it won't be a problem bringing a young, breastfeeding infant into a sold-out game in one of the noisiest stadiums on the planet, I thought.

Ugh.

Determining the perfect arrival time to the game was a balancing act. The tickets were general admission, so to get decent seats we had to get there early. But arriving early to a three-hour event with an infant and a child who is borderline hyperactive is virtual suicide. We picked a good time, but didn't get great seats. Our row was so high each seat came with oxygen masks. I think I passed a mountain goat and a few yodelers on the way up. But at least we weren't so early that The Boy was bugging to go to the bathroom before the ceremonial opening pitch.

But he was yearning for a hot dog.

Now I'm cheap. I don't like spending money on ball park food, because one meal at a typical ball park could feed my family for a month. So we usually bring food, and The Boy ate heartily and drank both containers of juice we brought for him. But he was still hungry, and I had no problem getting him a hot dog. In fact, I'm pretty sure that he goes to the game not to see home runs or strikeouts but so he can get a hot dog. So when he asked for a hot dog I, being the generous, caring father I am, demanded that he wait until at least the end of the first inning before bugging me for food.

And so, when that inning ended, I took my son by the hand, asked the rest of the row to stand up, and descended the long stairs down to the concourse.

Our first stop was the restroom, where we had to stand in line in a crowd filled with drunk men with potty mouths. (As we stood in line, The Boy noticed a picture of Joe Mauer, the Twins catcher who is not playing because of a sore back; The Boy asked me whether somebody hit him in the back with a bat, which caused one of my fellow urinating males to laugh and say, loudly, "TELL HIM HIS VA-JAY-JAY HURTS! HUH HUH HUH HUH HUH!" Thankfully, The Boy has yet to repeat the comment, but it could be any day now ...)

After we finished, we went and stood in Line 2, this one for a hot dog. We got through it relatively quick. The Boy got his hot dog, and then I got an idea.

I needed a sundae. Bad.

I love ice cream. Some days I'm having intense cravings for a malt. On other days I'm yearning for a sundae with whipped cream. This was one of those days.

So we began a search of the Metrodump concourse for a place that sells sundaes. We walked, and walked, carefully navigating the crowds. The Boy behaved like a saint, holding my hand with his left hand, and that precious hot dog with his right.

Eventually, after nearly circumnavigating the entire stadium, we found the ice cream. Naturally, it had a huge line. Common sense told me to turn around, we'd already missed a good chunk of the second inning and The Boy would not tolerate that line. Plus, as I said, I hate lines. But I wanted that sundae, and we'd come too far to turn back now.

So I stood. Time passed. The game passed. I aged. The Wife filed a missing persons report. My boy waited patiently the entire time, his hand still clutching that hot dog. Finally, after what seemed like years (but was really just more than a full inning), I got my sundae.

And then we began our trek back to the game. I had little time. My ice cream was soft serve, and it was melting. The Boy's hot dog was getting cold. So we hurried. The Boy followed along as I weaved in and out of people standing in line and smoothly passed irritatingly slow walkers before my ice cream turned to liquid and my boy's surprising patience ended.

We got to our section, then began the treacherous climb to our seats. Two full innings later, we reached our row, which kindly stood up for us. We both sat down. I took my spoon, dipped it into my ice cream and was about to take a bite when my son piped up:

"DAD! I'M THIRSTY!!!"

(INSERT LOUD, BLOOD-CURDLING SCREAM HERE.)

But just as the security guys were ready to call the guys in white coats, I noticed an angel, who looked strangely like a greasy-haired stadium concessionaire, selling pop. Yes, it was ridiculously expensive pop, but it was better than making another death-defying descent into long line hell. And so I got him a pop, sat down and enjoyed the game. And my delicious, delicious sundae.

Oh, so how was The Sequel? Great. As it happened, the Twins stunk up the joint, so the stadium sounded more like a library. He fell asleep.

Doomsday cometh: The Boy's birthday

The Boy's fifth birthday is in three months and 10 days, meaning I have exactly 101 days before I meet my doom.

I won't have any choice. He'll need his own birthday party. I could try putting it off, as I've successfully done so far. But holding off a birthday party this year would be like trying to set up a roadblock to stop a freight train -- I won't be able to do it.

That's because The Boy is at the Birthday Party Age. All of his friends are getting one -- and he's already talking about where he wants his to be. We're regularly given invitations to parties at random facilities to watch a bunch of over-sugared, hyperactive kids run, jump, climb, mess around with things and run again. Somewhere in there the kids are herded into a single room with the promise of pizza and cake and some cheap knickknacks with which they'll play intensely for about five minutes.

(According to food historians, pizza was allegedly invented by Italian peasants in the 1800s as a way to get rid of leftovers, which goes to show that food historians have no idea what they were talking about. Clearly, those peasants needed a meal that would suddenly and completely quiet down a room full of screaming kids.)

Pizza is a requirement of birthday parties, because nothing on earth works better to get kids to shut up. Here's a travel tip for you: Bring pizza with you the next time you fly on an airplane. That way, if you find yourself in front of, or next to, or on the same plane with, a screaming, kicking child, just give him the pizza. He'll shut right up -- until he's done with the pizza, that is. But it'll be a glorious 10, peaceful minutes.

Birthday parties can be held just about anywhere. Back in the day, they were held at these strange places called "houses," where grown-ups known as "parents" would decorate, serve some cake and force the children to play strange games like "pin the tail on the Dad." (Sure, it's really called "Pin the Tail on the Donkey," but we all know that the person who invented this game had hopes of reducing the population; how else can you explain a game in which you blindfold a child who is usually no taller than a grown person's waste, give him a sharp object and tell him to stick it somewhere? I thought so.)

Nowadays, birthday parties are held just about anywhere but the person's home, and for good reason: Parents got smart. I can barely handle one kid running around damaging stuff. Multiply that by 20? Are you nuts?

This weekend we went to a party at, of all places, a fitness center. In the past we've gone to a firetruck museum, an indoor playground and a center devoted to the study of carnivorous birds (which at least provided me with some fodder for idle threats, such as "I hear that, in addition to mice, owls also love feasting on preschool boys, so if you don't behave ...").

In truth, I fear these parties. I don't fear being locked in a room full of screaming kids -- I'm rather immune by now, so long as it's not my stuff everybody is breaking. I'm afraid because, in my family, birthday parties are a foreign concept.

Most families use birthdays to celebrate the life of a loved one. In mine, you're fortunate if anybody actually remembers you exist. I have no idea what I'm going to do with myself when it comes my turn to actually host one of these.

As father of a participant, I know exactly what I'm supposed to do: Stand there, next to the other dads, making random humorous comments about the various actions of my children in between discussions of the upcoming school year, and finishing The Boy's uneaten cake. I might, if called upon, be forced to say something in a stern tone, mostly as a demonstration of my fatherhood skills to the other members of the pack, and I might have to hold some toy. But it's pretty easy.

Hosting is another thing altogether. There are plans to be made, invitations to be written, heaps of money to be spent securing a location, decorations to be hung, pizza to be ordered. It's a ton of work!

Oh well. It's a part of childhood and he'll be happy, I suppose. Plus, I'll be the hero. At least for about 30 seconds, which in preschooler time is like an eternity.