The Ins and Outs of Being a New Dad

Fatherhood: Is there another profession in the world where you’re woken up at 5 in the morning with the question: “So, you want to change the baby’s diaper or clean-up the dog vomit on the living room rug?” Now that’s living! How do you answer that? How do you choose? And obviously the diaper is in “interesting shape” if it’s offered as part of the bargain. This is a deal with the Devil, and there will be no winner. “I’ll take dog vomit,” I answer, and so begins another morning as “New Dad #103562.” Dads get asked questions in the morning like this: “Have you checked in on her yet?” “Yes, I just did,” I say. “And she’s breathing and stuff?” What exactly is the “stuff?” That’s never specified, and I, of course, lie. “She’s breathing and definitely ‘stuff.’”

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Rain Rockets and the Big Florida Drought

Dry! So dry! Someone in this great nation please send us poor Floridians a bottle of Perrier. We’re parched. We’re thirsty. We’re drought-stricken. We’re all going to be on fire soon. And well, this is just ridiculous because five miles that way is the great Atlantic Ocean, and a few miles that way is the Gulf of Mexico, so how in the heck can you be surrounded by water but dying of thirst? How can that be? We shouldn’t be the ones begging for rain. We’re tropical. We have rivers, lakes and even water parks. But here we are, desperate and dry. When we want it to rain, we get nothing. When we don’t want it to rain, a hurricane pulls into town like an unwanted house guest who sleeps on the sofa, eats all our food and then throws such a big, fat party that the power gets knocked out and the yard looks like the Rolling Stones played there.

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So, What’s the Baby Doing Right Now?

“So, what’s the baby doing now?” comes the voice on the phone — my mother’s. She’s calling for her regular update on what’s new with Amelie, my 4-month-old daughter. “Right now, what’s she doing?” she demands. The answer is often disappointing. It falls into one of five categories: 1) She’s sleeping. 2) She’s lying there. 3) She’s getting her diaper changed. 4) She’s eating. 5) She’s spitting up on her mother. Sometimes it’s a combination of two or three. None are terribly exciting or translate well over the phone, so she probes for details. “Well, describe it,” she says when I tell her a diaper change is underway. “You want me describe ‘it’?” I ask her. “I’m not describing ‘it.’ I don’t want to be in the same zip code as ‘it’ and I’m sure not coming up with the words to paint that picture for you. ‘It’ will melt the phone lines.”

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Memories of the dreaded highwaters

Last week it was little kids and a red rubber ball that got me thinking about childhood, and this week it was highwaters. Yes, highwaters. Don’t know what highwaters are? That’s when your pants are a bit too short, rising up on your ankles so a couple inches of sock peek out to the daylight, wave at the world and cause you no end of embarrassment. If you wear highwaters, you can’t walk three inches without someone remarking, “What time you expecting the flood, dorkasaur?” I thought of this one day while wearing an older pair of pants that looked a millimeter too short for my taste. Fine by fashion standards, but you can’t help but be insecure as the memories of schoolyard razzing comes rushing back. “Mom, why’d you hem ‘em so short!” I nearly changed as I’ve worked too hard in this life for one single reason: to never be caught in highwaters again.

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