And just when you thought it was safe to head back into the swamp. Out of the Everglades comes the most fascinating, horrifying, terror-inducing, and just plain “Holy refried hoppenjohns” story I’ve heard in a long while. From the Associated Press: “Python bursts after trying to eat gator.”
When Lists Attack
I’m a list addict, a list junkie, a list maniac. My office, my desk and my house often look like a ticker tape parade thanks to notes I leave everywhere. So terrified I will forget something (if there was a fire in the kitchen, I would probably make a list), I scribble endlessly, trying in vain to keep myself in line.
New York, the last hurrah
There is no better city in the world than New York, let’s just get that straight. I could get lost there and be happy for the rest of my life. Stick this Southern boy in a hot, airless subway and I could be perfectly content. I’ll pay ridiculous prices, and feel I’m getting a deal. I’ll get slammed hard by someone on the street, and thank them for the experience. I’ve never felt a pulse like New York. It’s as close as I’ve ever come to getting struck by lightning — a rush of energy through my body that makes me think, “I’m alive! … or fried like chicken.” That’s New York. My wife (the pregnant one) and I went to the Big Apple for a last hurrah before the baby comes, and to celebrate her birthday (won’t say how old as the Surgeon General warns against it.) The thing about life I’ve learned is this: Find a partner you can travel well with and you’ll never be unhappy. I’m very lucky, in that respect, and it holds true even when pregnant. Although, when you need a pry-bar getting in and out of a cab, it tends to slow things down a bit. But I’m proud to say she never got stuck in a revolving door or a subway turnstile, as I feared. (She’s done it even when NOT pregnant.) New York is fun with woman-carrying-child because it comes with power. You’re on a crowded subway, buried so deep from […]
That awful scourge known as E-mail
What did we used to do in the days before E-mail, and by golly, can we please go back? Yes, I’m asking you sweet world to take this evil device for conveying messages and flush it down the great mystical commode from whence it came. You heard me correctly. Even a son of technology, a child raised on the microchip, reared on the digital, trained on the mouse, married to the great World Wide Web has said it. Take it away! I’m done with it. I’m carpal tunneled out, my poor hands crippled. Sure, E-mail can be a wonderful thing. But it’s also an undeniable scourge. A creeping virus. An addiction. The equivalent of electronic kudzu, spreading, growing, infecting, overwhelming, suffocating, driving me mad. If my office door is ever closed, it’s because I’m in there working like a fiend, typing like a mad man, trying desperately to reduce my electronic pile to something manageable. “A-Ha!” I emerge triumphantly 18 hours later, my fingers gnarled-up, twisted and twitching. “I’ve reduced my inbox from 32,000 messages to a much more manageable 31,892. I now have a date with 17 martinis.” I return and they’re back. That’s why I’m proposing an E-mail-out Day, a great blackout for E-mail when we all swear an oath — as a nation and a world — to silence the E-mail airwaves for one day. We will all recover and drink beer in harmony, and not a soul will click send. Just a little relief is all […]
Registering for a Baby
It was bound to happen. Inevitable is the word. You can run hard from the inevitable, but it will always track you down, trip you up and laugh at your skinned knees. Why fight it? Instead, embrace it. Enjoy it. It is inevitable. And so it went this past weekend, designated officially on the calendar, in federal offices and schools, as baby registration day. Oh, not for all of you people. Simply for the Thompsons. Time for us to go into the baby stores, stare in awe and say things like, “Holy pickled peanut butter, I’ve never seen a breast pump before!” I love the audacity of some places, giving you handy little lists of things they suggest you register for. Get a day stroller, and a night stroller, and possibly a formal stroller, for when you take baby to the ball in black tie. Stock up on formula, especially if you’re going to breast feed, and buy one pacifier for each day of the baby’s life for the first 15 years, just to be sure. My wife and I are serious shoppers. We marched into stores with notebooks and baby-stuff books, dog-eared and highlighted. She quizzed store employees on merchandise with questions like, “So, you say this stroller is all-terrain, but has it ever been tested on the boulder-strewn trails of Mt. Kilimanjaro?” or “In 25 words or less, explain to me why on July 22, Cindy Shumacher was unable to release the easy-go latch while grocery shopping at […]
Surf’s Up, But I’m Not
Surf’s up and I went down, over and over again. But boy was it fun. I think I’ve found a sport where even taking a spill is enjoyable. (I face-planted so many waves, my nose is crumpled up.)
Mother has a case of eccentricity-itis
Could it be my mother really isn’t faking? That she’s not crazy, but just afflicted with the serious disease known as eccentricity-itis?
Love to Love that Pain
Why is it that guys always wear pain like some fashion statement? It’s a source of pride, a bragging right. “Ouch, yeah. Feels good. I’m cool.”
It’s all about the baby stuff
OK, so I’ve announced I’m going to be a dad. It’s pretty exciting to tell people and hear their reactions. They’ve ranged from joy and excitement to the occasional burst of laughter followed by, “Dude, you are NOT ready for diapers. Can you even change a garbage bag?” Yes, I can. But now that most have found out about my news and I return to the much-less exciting real world, I’m quickly learning that the real world revolves around preparing for Baby T. I’m sure there was a time when pregnancy was easier. Don’t lynch me: I’m not implying childbirth IS or ever WAS easy. (That’s my legal disclaimer to avoid lawsuits.) I know it’s tough, incredibly painful and frankly dangerous. I got an oversized jaw breaker stuck in my mouth once as a kid and it took a lot of heavy breathing, screaming, pushing and finally a crow bar to “birth” it back out the way it went in. I lost three teeth in the process and got a small sampling of what childbirth must be like. So when I say it must have been easier, I’m only referring to the fact that it couldn’t have always involved so much, you know, baby stuff — cribs, bassinets, strollers, car seats, changing tables and “How Your Baby Can Score 1,500 on the SATs” books. It’s not fun stuff like toys. That’s what I’m looking forward to getting. But this is functional and necessary stuff. And there’s a lot to learn. […]
Oh My God, I’m a Dad to Be
I don’t know how else to say it except to come right out and put it down on paper — I’m going to be a dad. Yeah, that’s right. The world shall receive another Thompson, quirks and all. The due date is Dec. 23, and a masterstroke of planning for two people who like to think out everything, but could mis-schedule French toast. This should be one heck of a holiday season. I want to tell you everything, but these writing waters are treacherous. Why? The woman is pregnant, man! You don’t make her mad in a column. I might die. Careful, I must be. So where to begin? Not the beginning, I’ll tell you that. How about this … It all began with a scream. It did. I thought there was a mouse loose in the bathroom, or that she had dropped something important (like the title to our house) in the toilet again. Little did I know the pregnancy test stork, the modern day harbinger of good news, had arrived. I ran into the bathroom, with tongs ready for the fishing expedition, only to find I’m going to be a dad. What a pleasant surprise. The eloquent stick made a proclamation worthy of Shakespeare — “Pregnant,” it said. Glorious! I wish they sold tape recorders that can capture emotions, the feelings of a moment. I want forever that joy, that excitement, the overwhelming sense of pride, the crumb-size bit of fear, the surge of energy through the room […]