What a very different Christmas from a year ago. What a wonderful Christmas morning. A year ago, my wife was pregnant, awaiting the birth of a moose child who was already two days late. We woke up on Christmas morning, opened presents and started getting ready for people coming over when the little one decided to kick a hole in her cozy confines. That was the beginning of 28 hours of labor, a c-section and six days in the hospital. It was around 10 a.m. when my wife noticed the “trickle” and made a call to her doctor. “How quick can you get here?” the doctor asked. “Now?” my wife replied. “We’re having people over at 11.”
All I Want for Christmas
I don’t ask for much each Christmas. Just a few essentials, a couple luxuries … and a pony! (Still don’t have that last one.) The little kid in me just can’t help but make a list, so here’s a sampling of this year’s: • Stank-O-Matic 3000 Gas Mask and Hazardous Materials Suit — As the father of a little girl who turns 1 on Dec. 26, I can honestly say the first year of dealing with diapers has not been as bad as expected. Sure, it’s never a pleasant experience, but I can’t recall a single Category 5 diaper — the kind with smells that will warp glass or make the threads of your clothes disintegrate. But that said, I know the Dark Lord of the Poops — who can burn nostrils and devastate the land in more ways than one — could pop up at any moment. I need to be prepared and sure could use a Stank-O-Matic, just in case. • Hope — In the coming year I would like to finish at least one project around the house. But the truth is, I have no hope. So I just need a little of it to keep my spirits up. Everyone needs hope, and I need a little extra for my wife, too. (Also, please disregard the large club she has penciled in on her list.) • Sense — I could use a big bag of it. Recently, thanks to my co-worker Mike Horn who had to go […]
The Research Paper that Ate My Column
If this column seems unusually, I don’t know, crappy, I blame the research paper. Yes, the research paper ate my column. I’ve begun a graduate program in media management through the University of Missouri’s Journalism School. It’s all online, designed for working-class stiffs like me who don’t have the time to move up to the frozen tundra of Missouri and who have always preferred going to class in their boxer shorts at all hours of the night. That, in fact, was the marketing ploy that sold me on the program — “midnight in your underwear.” Anyway, I’m really enjoying it, but it takes a bit of adjustment to become a student again. At Flagler College, I’m surrounded by students all the time. But they look up to me as a mentor, a genius and a dashing man of wisdom, which is what the sign on my door reads. I say things to them like, “look here, whippersnapper” or “at what point did you realize your brain had fallen out?” I coach them, and scold them, and they on a weekly basis let the air out of my tires.
In the Ear of the Beholder
My little girl, Amelie, turns 1-year-old this month. Incredible how time flies. It was Dec. 26 of last year that she made her ever-so-slow descent into the world and changed our lives forever. Now, as we close in on that milestone first birthday, it seems incredible how much she has changed. From lump to little girl in less than 12 months. It sounds more like a ready-to-eat stuffing commercial or one of those weight-loss ads. Boy, how the changes do come. Little feet are suddenly big feet. They were tiny, like a bird’s. Now they look like flounders. She’s toddling around the house, not without help from chairs and other supports, but it’s walking in my book. She has dozens of expressions, is gaining height and has more hair than some zip codes. But there’s one category I’m still not sure about: talking. Does she talk or doesn’t she talk? That is the question. To tell you the truth, I’m up in the air on that one. She’s never been a baby talker, uttering those cartoon-esque “goo-goos” or “ga-gas.” Instead, this sweet little angel with honey brown curls and eyes crisp as polished apples has always chosen a much less refined “Heh!” It sounds like what a trucker might give out while wolfing down spicy sausage.
Time to Redesign the Shed
It’s always been a fine shed, capable of holding immense quantities of bolts I’ll never use, bags of solidified concrete that I figure scientists of the future will bring back to life and every piece of odd-shaped wood the world has ever known. My shed is a modern art do-it-yourself kit waiting for assembly. But the last year or so, the old girl has developed some problems, namely that the plywood floor in the back started rotting, collapsing, and swallowing anything in those farthest, deepest, darkest regions of the enclosure.