An Open Letter to the "Upcoming" Season

Dear Spring:

Let's just come right out and say this: We love you. You are our favorite season. You melt the snow. You green our lawn and our trees and allow us to remove the heavy layers of clothing we'd worn for the previous few months. You let us go outside and frolic and fish and play baseball and go on bike rides. And then you give us flowers.

But let's face it: The only thing for which you are reliable is your unreliability. You're like the pretty girl who is always late for a date, leaving us with her cold, miserable, snow-capped cousin that we hate. Sometimes you tease us for a while and then leave us unannounced with that frozen cousin again. Then you come back and all is forgotten. In the glow of your warmth and the new life you bring we ignore the fact that you'd just spent the previous few weeks pretty much treating us like dirt.

Last year you kept abandoning us right through June. In a month that we should be wearing shorts and drinking iced tea we were at a parade in parkas drinking coffee.

So this year, as we head into March, we have a request: Show up early. We could really use you this year, after the winter we've had. We deserve it, frankly.

At the very least, treat us with respect and show up for our scheduled date. Don't tease us for months. Don't leave us with winter storms in April, snowfalls in May or windchill in June. Let us have our spring, for crying out loud. Get here on time, for bleeping once.

YOU OWE US, SPRING! YOU OWE US!

Signed:

All of us (Except for snowmobilers, skiers and all those other freaks of nature.)

No, you can't avoid the science fair

Many of you may not believe this, but my day job involves writing. That's right: Somebody out there is willing to pay me money to write for them. Yet, in high school -- and this probably won't come as a surprise -- English was perhaps my worst subject. And that's saying something. I had a lot of bad subjects in school. It's difficult to have a good subject when you spend your classroom periods sleeping on the desk.

Math, on the other hand, was my best. It was simple. Logical. And I could do my homework during English class during those brief interludes when I wasn't sleeping.

Still, despite this seemingly obvious placement of talent, I decided to avoid the sciences like the plague. And it all has to do with my horrible performance in the one science fair in which I participated.

Now let me make this one thing clear: I think experimenting is cool, especially if that experiment ends up with a fascinating conclusion or something getting blown to smithereens -- preferably the latter. Yet in school I had one trait that stood in the way of scientific research: An extraordinary ability to procrastinate. Because scientific experiments take weeks or months or years or decades and often fail and thus you have to start over, procrastination generally works against it. I can B.S. my way through an English paper (but apparently not well enough), but I cannot B.S. my way through a science experiment.

I knew this, but I could not escape the dreaded science fair because my stupid teacher made me do it, lest I fail the class. And so I did. And I enthusiastically picked as my experiment a comparison of bacterial cultures found in different parts of the school -- drinking fountain, urinal, my locker, places like that. And so I swabbed the different spots, rubbed the swab on a culture and waited.

Weeks later: Nothing.

My teacher informed me that I got a bit too overeager sterilizing the swab and probably killed all the bacteria. So I had to do it over again.

And so I did it again, this time warming the swab less. I got some nice samples that I wish I could recall. I recorded my findings, then tossed out the samples. Oops. Without my samples, I could only rely on my brilliant presentation. But then in the few days I had before the fair I did everything but make my presentation. By the time I got around to it, the project was due the next day, and the stores were closed. So instead of making my presentation on a nice, white sheet of poster board, I crafted it out of a used piece of cardboard I found next to the dumpster. At least I don't think there was a stain on it.

The next day, at the fair, I heard this from a pair of fellow students:

STUDENT 1: Low budget project.

STUDENT 2: NO-budget project!

(Chuckles all around.)

Needless to say, I got a bad grade (D-minus). And I so dreaded that whole process that I made it my mission in life to avoid them. So I blew off science classes. I avoided making science my career, lest I be asked to be part of a science fair or some other public display of scientific experimentation. And then I was done with school and, supposedly, done with the science fair for life. I was relaxed. Happy.

Until now.

A couple of weeks ago my eldest was asked to be part of a science fair, and in a fit of absolute stupidity I said "sure," apparently having grown complacent because it had been years since I thought I was in danger of having to participate in one of these things. Yet, having "my son" participate in a science fair generally means "me," because it will be my responsibility for "helping" him finish the project.

He's in kindergarten! Man, I thought I at least had a few more years before I had to encounter something like this! Cripes. When I was in kindergarten I was eating paste and pulling on pigtails. I surely wasn't concerned with hypotheses or conclusions or scientific theory. I just wanted to make it through a day without soiling my drawers.

I had him pick the experiment, and he picked one involving moldy bread. So that's what we did. And after 10 days the mold didn't show up, which figures -- when I actually want moldy bread it doesn't show up. Stupid mold. I hate you.

But thanks to the Internet I found a quick experiment that could be done in the evening and now, thanks to my "son's" experiment I know that round boats are far better at floating than other shapes, which makes sense because none of us sail round boats.

The conclusion: Celibacy is the only way to avoid science fairs.

My newfound appreciation for Mondays

Tomorrow is Monday. I work tomorrow. This should come as little surprise, assuming you've recovered from the shock that there are people out there, alive and sane, who would pay me money to work for their company.

But tomorrow is also President's Day, and I have a spouse who is a public employee. Ergo, she has the day "off."

The "off" is in quotation marks, because our eldest has the day off, too, and The Wife has chosen to keep The Sequel home, too. In other words, she doesn't have the day off at all. Any day in which you will be outnumbered by young children does not count as a day off. (My apologies to those of you with three or more kids ...)

Come to think of it, any day with any kids does not count as a day off. For one thing, there is no such thing as sleeping in; my youngest got us up at 5:30 a.m. today. 5:30 a.m.! That's not fair. That's not right. It's a weekend, kid, you're not supposed to get up that early on a weekend! Alas, he did, and as someone who is such an extreme night person that I'm practically vampire, I was offended.

In addition, there is a strong element of stress in caring for kids all day. On multiple occasions this weekend I found myself surrounded by crying children, meaning I had screaming in stereo. I found myself trying to stab my own ear drums.

The fact is that taking care of kids is a lot more work than working. In the old days, when I didn't have kids and had something called "money," we looked forward to weekends, because we could do stuff like leave town or go on vacations or stay up all night watching bad TV and filling our faces with junk food. And we slept in. Well, I did. My wife usually woke up and did stuff, because after we married The Wife decided to become a morning person. (Bait and switch; she did the same thing with coffee. When we dated, she loved coffee. When we got married, she suddenly hated it. I still can't figure it out.)

These days I find myself looking forward to Mondays because, frankly, it's a lot more peaceful. Of course, it helps that my coworkers rarely scream. And I usually don't have to change them out of foul-smelling diapers and most of the time they're not trying to break anything or write on the walls or run outside naked because it would be fun.

Indeed, I'm thankful I have a job, not simply because I'm being paid and because lots of people don't have one right now and because it enables me to ship enormous quantities of cash to day care and Babies R Us, but because it provides me with an eight-hour break every day. Sure, it's an eight-hour break that is filled with work. But it's a break, nevertheless.

I suppose it helps that I like my work and my job, and it would be a lot different if I worked for a jerk at, say, a company that cleans out septic tanks or port-a-potties. Or if my job was to diffuse bombs or be Jennifer Lopez's personal assistant. Maybe.

Yes, yes, yes. I love the kids, I miss them when I'm not around them, they're rewarding and fun and provide me with lots of great storytelling and blog fodder. But my point is this: I work tomorrow. My wife has the day off, with kids. Who are you more likely to envy.

Get Ready For The Nasty

In the days and weeks leading up to the birth of a child, soon-to-be-parents are bombarded by advice both solicited and unsolicited. Most of it is total crap.

The crap comes from one of four sources:

1. People who hate your guts and want you to fail and give you bad advice on purpose.

2. Existing parents whose brains are so fried by a combination of baby powder fumes and vomit that they have no cognitive abilities enabling decent advice (such people usually say simply to "Get some sleep," which is what I say).

3. Relatives, usually your parents, who really, really want grandchildren (or nieces and nephews) and are afraid that any real advice may reveal frightening details of just how hair-pullingly frustrating and nasty that parenting can be.

4. Relatives, usually siblings, who don't want to be alone in their misery and provide bad advice because they're afraid any good advice may reveal frightening details just how hair-pullingly frustrating and nasty parenting can be.

I got one piece of good advice from my eldest sister who told me not to worry about being a perfect parent, "because you won't be." I may have heard other good advice but my brain is fully in "Forget Everything" mode. (And I'm not counting the advice from some friends and relatives urging me "not to reproduce" because that came before we got pregnant and I don't think they were talking about parenting.)

I bring all this up because the one thing I do remember is that nobody, and I mean nobody, informed me of this little fact: Parenting is the single most disgusting job on the planet. The birth itself is disgusting. And then everything afterward is disgusting. It's a given that every single day I will find myself covered in some combination of bodily fluids. I just have to pick my poison: Snot, saliva, vomit, "spit-up" (which is just "cute" baby vomit), blood, urine, poop and several other bodily fluids I had no idea existed.

I'm to the point that I just don't care. Small stain on my shirt at work? BAH! That's nothing. You should have seen what got upchucked on my person last week.

(This is where I tell you that I am, despite appearances, notoriously paranoid about appearing in public with an imperfection on my clothing, worn holes in my jeans and my typical ratty t-shirts and pathetic hairdo notwithstanding; not that long ago, if I had discovered a stain on my shirt on my way to work I would have screeched to a halt, turned around my vehicle like I'm Bruce Willis in Die Hard 3 and then broke several traffic laws speeding back to my closet at home; I might have even driven straight through to the closet. I would also have been screaming in horror the entire time. Parenting, thankfully, has cured me of this, and now I'm a full-blown slob.)

We adapt to the nastiness early, too, with lengthy talks of poop consistency and chuckling about baby boy urine fountains. And everybody talks about diapers, how diapers are nasty and how dreaded the thought is of changing diapers, but diapers are NOTHING. Diapers are only the tip of a very large iceberg, one that includes childhood stomach ailments, respiratory ailments and, of course, potty training. And the potty training doesn't stop when they start using it on their own. The nastiness just keeps right on coming.

(Then, I'm sure, there's adolescence, which is just another category in and of itself.)

So if you're reading this and you have yet to be blessed with a little one, take my advice: In addition to the cute baby booties and the piles of diapers and the overpriced nursery furniture, buy yourself an oxygen tank and a couple of hazmat suits and then install a decon shower system in your basement. You'll be glad you did.