Saturday, June 23, 2007

Vacation

I have to remind myself that now we go on "vacation", not "holiday". Whatever you call it, that's what we're doing shortly (and can I just say that I love that we have a flight in about 5 hours and haven't packed yet?).

That's right, we're off to...my lovely wife's home state of Wisconsin. We'll spend a few days outside of Milwaukee with Gretchen's sister's family, then up to the cabin in Three Lakes for some relaxation. Unfortunately I can only stay for about a week since I have a family to support, but Gretchen (being a hausfrau) and Baby are staying for almost three weeks. Tough life! It's actually our first vacation together since our ill-fated trip to Munich in March, so we're overdue (and yes, I realize how spoiled that makes us sound).

For some reason, ever since Baby arrived some primal instinct has kicked in where I translate everything we do to a song. Sure enough, the other day as I was telling Baby about our impending trip, all of a sudden I started channeling LL Cool J ("Going Back to Cali") and found this catchy little verse coming out of my mouth:

I'm going to Wisconsin, 'Sconsin, 'Sconsin
I'm going to Wisconsin...hmm, I don't think so
Milk, sold
Lakes, cold
She says, she likes, the cheese curds

(((Thank you, thank you very much.)))

Anyway, we'll be sure to enjoy plenty of bratwurst, frozen custard, fried cheese curds, beer, and other healthy Wisconsin delicacies. If we don't start blogging again in a couple of weeks, it probably means we couldn't fit through our front door and have to camp outside until we shed the weight that always accrues on these trips...

Birthday girl

[Posting this early since we'll be incommunicado next week...]

A year ago this Tuesday, after many long (especially for Gretchen) hours in a delivery room in Basel, Switzerland, Baby was born. What a year it's been! Between learning how to be parents, traveling all over Europe with her, and making a big move back to the States, it's been quite memorable. I can't say it's always been easy (she's been strong-willed from the day she was born...I'm already afraid of the teen years), but the blessings have far outweighed the stresses. And we're thrilled that this little peanut...



...who was for so long always serious and touchy, has become a much more happy, active, giggling, mischievous little girl! (Incidentally, not 30 seconds after typing that last sentence, Gretchen just came upstairs and said "do you know that our little girl is becoming quite mischievous?") Happy (early) birthday!

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Reason #473 why I'm an idiot

This is a gate:



As you can probably tell from the picture, it sits at the bottom of our stairs. The gate's sole purpose is to keep Grady downstairs, primarily because of my allergies (yes, I'm allergic to my own dog) and so that he doesn't wake Baby up with his various and sundry dog noises.

Since our bedrooms are upstairs, we are constantly coming and going, meaning the gate not only obstructs Grady, but it obstructs us as well. The way I see it, there are two ways to deal with the gate: (1) move it aside, walk past, then move it back; or (2) just hop over the damn thing. I don't claim that it's remotely logical, but for some reason unless I'm carrying Baby I almost always opt for option (2).

For most people this wouldn't necessarily be a problem. But since I have a longstanding tendency toward clumsiness, it should come as no surprise that this sometimes gets me in trouble. Usually it just means I do stupid things like kick the baseboards with my bare feet upon landing because I'm trying to avoid Grady (who likes to curl up on the rug in front of the gate). But today I really outdid myself (I had to stay home to do battle with the DMV over things like license plates, new drivers license, etc). As I was going over, I caught the gate with one of my feet. Somehow this resulted in the gate scraping down my trailing leg (I've been trying to recreate it in my mind and I still don't understand the physics of it).

Suffice it to say this hurt. A lot. Still, I was prepared to just laugh it off until I looked at my shin:



All of which is to explain why I spent the afternoon googling "tetanus shot" and "urgent care" (in the end, I decided against both). And best of all, every time after that when I came downstairs...I still hopped the gate instead of moving it (I just tried to do it more carefully).

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Pigs or prigs?

When I read this article about how two networks refused to run an ad for condoms (I'm blushing just typing that naughty word), I figured it must be at least a little risque. I guess we've always been a bit of a puritanical country, but wow. (I especially like that Fox, that paragon of high culture, was one of the networks that refused it.)



UPDATE: This reminded me of the other extreme, which was a sign we saw around Basel promoting condom use that I blogged about when we first got there. I can just imagine a young child asking what it means and fumbling for a good response...

Post-swimming hairdo

This is what an afternoon at the pool will do to Baby's hair. Seriously, I couldn't make it look this good if I tried!

Monday, June 18, 2007

Mixed blessing

When you see this on the bus, it means you ride for free (yeah!), but only because the combination of heat, humidity and pollution (boo!) is such that they're trying to induce people not to drive...

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Division of labor

This week we had a situation that beautifully illustrated how things often get done around our house. Early in the week, Gretchen found a dead mouse on our back patio. Her natural response, since that was a Very Icky Thing, was to cover it with a flower pot and wait until I got home to deal with it.

I don't mind so much having to deal with Very Icky Things like that, but the problem is that I'm (a) lazy (as has already been well-established), and perhaps more importantly, (b) forgetful. I would consistently remember that there was a deceased mouse awaiting me on the patio around meal times, which was not exactly when I wanted to deal with it, and then promptly forget immediately afterward. By the end of the week it was a bit of a running joke where Gretchen would ask as politely as possible when I might get off my ass find the time to deal with our little friend in the backyard, and I would reassure her that I was planning to do it posthaste (I even had "dead mouse" written on my to-do list).

Naturally, it wasn't until today that I finally got around to peeking under the flower pot. I'll spare the gruesome details, but let's just say that what could have been an unpleasant but easy chore five days ago was downright nasty, and I'll just leave it at that.

Upon further reflection, I realized that you could substitute just about any household chore for "dead mouse", and that would pretty much describe our different approaches to getting things done around here. It's really a wonder sometimes that she doesn't throttle me...

You know your wife is from Wisconsin when...

...you swallow your masculine pride and accept that she is, based on growing up in a family that grilled outdoors even in the deepest snows of winter, the unquestioned Grill Master of the house.



Lest you think we ate all of that sausage, rest assured we had friends over last weekend, in part to celebrate our friend Dave's birthday, to help us eat the good grilled food on an unseasonably comfortable and mosquito-free summer evening.

Baby news

A few recent developments:

--The days of The Boob are now finished! As Baby began eating more solid food she started to seem less and less interested in nursing, and then finally about a week ago Baby and Gretchen reached a mutual decision that it was time. It was that simple (which is easy for a dad to say).

--Baby has really struggled with bad eczema over her entire body for a long time. And that's not just a cosmetic thing--the itching is horrible, to the point that she routinely scratches herself until she bleeds. As parents, it's just awful to watch your Baby suffering, even if she gives you big smiles at the same time she's tearing at her skin. Gretchen has spent countless hours reading and posting to bulletin boards trying to find solutions, and we've taken her to multiple doctors with few answers. In the past week or so, however, the current combination of cleaner, steroids and moisturizer (NOT fat cream) seems to have her skin looking and feeling better, plus we had a great appointment with an allergist who has given us some hope, at least for the worst of her flare-ups (knock on wood!). Here she was about a month ago, then a week ago:





--She's already showing an interest in American football:



--And she was nice enough to take me hiking on Roosevelt Island to enjoy the views across the Potomac River for Father's Day:

To Mac or not to Mac

Our desktop computer is about four years old and starting to get pretty slow (which pretty much defeats the whole purpose of having a fast fiber optic connection. It's not urgent, but I'm at least starting to contemplate our next computer purchase, which raises the big question: Windows or Mac?

I've pretty much used Windows forever, and it's what I use at work, but everyone raves about the quality of Macs. Are they worth the extra money? Is it easy to switch back and forth between the two? Thoughts?

If the stiletto fits

There is never a shortage of stories about gang-related violence in the local newspapers, but I have to say this was definitely a different angle than you usually read about: "He told investigators that he was attacked by six members of the rival gang, including a woman who allegedly stabbed him four times and another person who hit him in the head with a stiletto heel. Metro officials said the fight was between two gay and lesbian gangs that operate in Maryland."

Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Monday, June 11, 2007

Bada-bing

*** SPOILER ALERT: If you're waiting to see the finale of The Sopranos, you might want to avert your eyes ***

I had almost forgotten how much The Sopranos meant to us when we were in Basel. One of our few major complaints about the past few years was the lack of English-language TV (this was as much a function of our landlords, who had a German satellite instead of cable, which would have at least given us more options than just CNN). It's not that we would have spent that much time watching TV (that would kind of defeat the purpose of living in a foreign country), but there were times on a rainy Sunday afternoon, or when Gretchen was home all day with Baby, or when you just wanted something familiar, that we would have killed for some crappy American television fare.

So, in the absence of TV, we made do with DVDs. And while Gretchen almost wore out the DVD player with Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives, the show we most often watched together was The Sopranos. Before moving to Switzerland we had been too cheap to get HBO so we had never seen it, even though everything I had read about it made me think I would love it. Once it became apparent how bleak our TV situation was, I ordered the first four seasons and later picked up the fifth. With travel and other time constraints we were only able to watch it in fits and starts (since each episode is a full hour with no commercials and could often be intense, it wasn't necessarily an every-night affair), but we were always glad when we did. And we were saddened when we finally finished the fifth season before Baby was born. It's kind of strange, but one of the things I'll always associate with my time in Basel is a drama/comedy about mobsters in New Jersey.

We were still overseas until midway through the sixth and final season (which actually spread out over two years), and we didn't want to start watching again when we got back because of all the episodes we missed. So that made for a tough decision regarding last night's finale--should we watch it even though we've missed two years of things leading up to it, or should we wait until it comes out on DVD and hope in the meantime that we somehow don't find out how it ended despite widespread media coverage. In the end we decided to watch, and I'm glad we did (even if we couldn't figure who half the characters were since a number of regulars had obviously been killed in the intervening years).

The big story this morning was about how pissed off a lot of people were that it didn't provide any closure. But I liked that, and thought the last 5 minutes or so were absolutely brilliant--possibly the most tense non-event I can remember seeing. Anything that would have me singing Journey's execrable "Don't Stop Believing" to myself the next day had to be doing something right. Besides, since the whole show dealt with ambiguities and shades of gray, why should there necessarily be a black-and-white ending where everything is tied up with a neat little bow?

Friday, June 08, 2007

Happy Friday

Among the things you don't like to see are this on your intranet: "Heat advisory in effect; Tips for preventing heat-related illness", and this warning on the Weather Channel:
...HEAT ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 2 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 8 PM EDT THIS EVENING...

SOUTHWEST WINDS AHEAD OF A COLD FRONT WILL BRING HOT AND HUMID AIR INTO THE MID ATLANTIC REGION TODAY. HIGH TEMPERATURES ARE EXPECTED TO RISE INTO THE MID 90S BY LATE AFTERNOON. THIS COMBINED WITH HIGH HUMIDITY WILL RESULT IN HEAT INDEX VALUES UP TO 100 DEGREES.

RELIEF FROM THE HEAT IS EXPECTED ON SATURDAY AS COOLER AND LESS HUMID AIR MOVES INTO THE REGION WITH THE PASSAGE OF A COLD FRONT.

A HEAT ADVISORY MEANS THAT A PERIOD OF HOT TEMPERATURES IS EXPECTED. THE COMBINATION OF HOT TEMPERATURES AND HIGH HUMIDITY WILL COMBINE TO CREATE A SITUATION IN WHICH HEAT ILLNESSES ARE POSSIBLE. DRINK PLENTY OF FLUIDS... STAY IN AN AIR-CONDITIONED ROOM...STAY OUT OF THE SUN...AND CHECK UP ON RELATIVES AND NEIGHBORS.
I'm lucky enough to work in an air-conditioned office, but after about 2:00pm the sun directly hits my window and the air conditioning is no match for it. Meanwhile, at home our air conditioning does a great job of keeping our downstairs feeling like a meat locker, but the upstairs still feels like a sauna (our neighbors all say the same thing...old houses like ours just weren't built with air conditioning in mind). I understand now why you see so many moms and babies walking around malls on days like this.

Things I wouldn't have envisioned 18 months ago

At one point yesterday afternoon I found myself dancing around the living room with Baby and singing along to Jack Johnson's "The 3 R's" (Reduce, Re-use and Recycle, in case you were wondering) while a very sick Gretchen laid on the couch waving a Swiss flag at us.

Come to think of it, I guess you had to be there...

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Keeping busy with Baby

I suppose I could be feeling very woe-is-me, considering my recent rejection from a playgroup. Somehow Kirk managed to get much more worked up about it than I did! Don't get me wrong, I am desperate to find friends and activities for the two of us (Baby and me). And I do think it's totally ridiculous that we are not allowed to join a playgroup just because of geographical boundaries. But I'm trying to just laugh the whole thing off. If nothing else, this has finally motivated me to get active in some other activities. So this is what we've been doing.

We're having a good time exploring some of the local parks. There are two playgrounds within a 5 minute walk of our house. If nothing else, Baby loves the people (and dog) watching!



We just joined a really awesome local public pool (that I never even knew existed until a couple weeks ago). They have a great baby pool with a sloping entry like a beach (minus the sand).



I just discovered a neighborhood playgroup that meets on Friday mornings (yes! right here in our neighborhood!) and we hope to go for our first time later this week.

We are now registered for a "Music Together" class starting in July that is offered by the county for babies and their parents to enjoy music together (hence the name).

Also starting in July, we will be in a "Wobblers" tumbling/movement class at JW Tumbles. I've heard great things about this place, and I'm just thrilled we were able to get in because I've heard that the classes fill up quickly and usually have a wait list!

Most mornings, when I hear Baby's first awake noises of the day, I think to myself: "How am I going to entertain this girl all day today?" But somehow the days go very quickly, and although I'm exhausted by the time we put her to bed at night, I love spending my days with her. How can you not have fun with this precious little girl?

Monday, June 04, 2007

Lost in translation

Today we received in the mail (courtesy of the Swiss Post, who forwarded it to our US address) a summer brochure for the hotel we loved so much in the Alpine town of Arosa. Of course it all looked fantastic, but what really caught my eye was this quote in the introductory letter: "To fire people with enthusiasm gives us satisfaction." Sure sounds like a fun place to work...

Addenda

Three follow-ups to my earlier rant:

(1) Gretchen reminded me later that the playgroup that was advertised was looking specifically for girls born during the same month as Baby, which only made the "sorry, try your own part of town" that much more pathetic.

(2) Not long after moving back, I was driving around and it hit me that we live in the equivalent of Kleinbasel. That's the part of Basel that's on the other side of the Rhine. To many locals it's considered undesirable and unsafe, in part because there's a large immigrant population. We always thought it got a bad rap--many of the little neighborhoods could be quite charming, and while it may be unsafe by Basel standards, as an American I felt perfectly safe there any time of day or night. So here we are--in our version of Kleinbasel (with an admittedly higher crime rate, although much less than in DC).

(3) One of the things we were concerned about coming back to was the sort of über-parenting that's so prevalent in areas like ours. It's hard to put my finger on exactly what that means, but it's almost like competitive parenting: parents trying to outdo each other, having the most over-the-top parties, needing to get your child into the very best preschools, etc. For some reason this whole thing with the playgroup just smacks of the kind of attitude I was really hoping to avoid as a parent here...

Wrong side of the tracks

With the exception of occasional frustration when I'm trying to assemble or fix things around the house or yard, I'm extremely slow to anger. Introspective and angst-ridden, sure...but angry? Almost never.

Today, however, I'm feeling mighty pissed off, but on Gretchen's behalf rather than my own.

First, a little background: we live on the wrong side of the tracks, to the extent that such a thing actually exists in our community. A major road splits our area in two. To the north are the swankier residential areas, the subway, fancier restaurants, etc. To the south is more affordable housing (to the extent that $500,000 for a basic starter home is affordable), buses, and ethnic restaurants. Not to mention ethnic people...driving down the biggest street near our home you'll see as many signs in Spanish as in English, as many women in headscarves as in miniskirts, as many Africans as African-Americans, etc. We live to the south, and we love it--we're in a great neighborhood, we like the diversity, the bus is actually a more convenient commuting option for me than the subway, and when we bought our house eight years ago we could actually afford it (we're only seven blocks south of the dividing line, but if you picked our house up and moved it north of the line it would probably be worth an extra $100,000 just for having "North" in the address). This is all important background information--it will make sense in a minute.

Anyway, as much as things have gone well since coming home, one of the biggest frustrations has been that Gretchen has not been able to find a playgroup to meet other moms and to have Baby socialize. Longtime readers will recall that Gretchen had "her Moms" back in Basel, who were not only a great resource but also great friends. For now she's continuing as a stay-home mom here, but it's much harder to find other stay-home moms than it was in Basel since a much higher proportion of women here seem to return to work (to be clear, this is NOT a veiled criticism of mothers returning to work, and we're not holier-than-thou about Gretchen staying home...besides, I don't know how long we can afford it!). She's much too positive a person to make a big deal about it, but I'm sure both she and Baby would benefit from more interaction, and at the same time she could certainly be a resource to other moms in light of some of the issues Baby has had.

By now you may be wondering what playgroups, the north/south dividing line, and my anger have to do with each other. Well, it turns out that there's a local support group for stay-home moms that everyone keeps recommending. It sounds perfect, except for one small problem--you're literally not allowed to join if you live south of the dividing line. I suppose there could be valid reasons for that, but the fact is Gretchen doesn't have access to what could be a great resource for the simple reason that we live seven blocks in the wrong direction.

We've had a sympathetic friend sending Gretchen information from their bulletin boards about issues we're having with Baby, and we were excited to see that one of the messages was about a new playgroup that was forming. Surely, we thought, they wouldn't keep her from joining a playgroup FOR BABIES FOR CHRISSAKE based on where we don't live, but sure enough Gretchen asked if it would be possible to join and got a reply that, sorry, if you don't live in the proper zip codes you can't join. Are they afraid we're going to bring Third World diseases, use improper language, or not be sufficiently well-versed in proper childrearing etiquette? Is it a mitigating factor that most of our friends live north of the line and would assuredly vouch that we're well-behaved and bathe regularly?

I don't know why, but for some reason I'm as pissed off about this kind of elitist BS as I've been about anything in recent memory. I think I need to go have a glass of red wine and chill out...

Sunday, June 03, 2007

If I had a million dollars

Sometimes you see things in the paper that make you say "only in America". Today it was this full-page advertisement:
LARRY FLYNT AND HUSTLER MAGAZINE ANNOUCE A CASH OFFER OF UP TO $1 MILLION

Have you had a sexual encounter with a current member of the United States Congress or a high-ranking government official?

Can you provide documented evidence of illicit sexual or intimate relations with a Congressperson, Senator or other prominent officeholder?

Larry Flynt and HUSTLER Magazine will pay you up to $1 million if we choose to publish your verified story and use your material.


Yep, God bless America...

(Speaking of which, for some good only-in-America kitsch, be sure to check out the photos from Jul's recent visit to the South.)

Bad news

After reading the newspaper yesterday, Gretchen announced that she wasn't sure she should keep reading the Post's Metro section (which has local news) because it was too depressing. After reading it later that day, I may have to agree--it was chock full o' such inspiring news as:

--A woman was shot in the head at a bus stop in front of an elementary school, with children watching;

--While air quality is better than it used to be, it's still often not healthy to breathe during the summer;

--A woman accidentally ran over members of her family when she hit the accelerator instead of the brake;

--A doctor in the Navy is charged with secretly videotaping U.S. Naval Academy students having sex;

--The police are still trying to figure out how a police chase led to an accident in which 2 people were killed and 15 injured the other day on a busy local freeway;

--A former youth sports coach pleaded guilty to puchasing sadistic child pornography, which he watched on his 10-year-old son's computer; and

--Three pages worth of obituaries.

That's in addition to the usual variety of more mundane murders, assaults, criminal convictions, etc. And it really wasn't an atypical day. At times there's something to be said for blissful ignorance...

Saturday, June 02, 2007

The reality-based community

This is not a short read, but quite interesting if you're concerned about some of the political symbolism of the past six years or so. (And who knew you could actually major in rhetoric in college?)