anyway. you GUYS, have you heard the news? of course you have, because it was such a shock to everyone that they couldn't talk about anything else for weeks. remember?

so. i'm a little stressed about the whole thing. big surprise, i know, but listen. the more we do in preparation for the little guy, the more we get thinking about all that's required to keep him alive and functioning (not to mention, to keep us alive and functioning), and i have to say that a couple times i've had to consciously pull myself back from the verge of a panic attack. i've heard the transition from living baby-free to having a baby described as passing through the event horizon of a black hole. (you may understand why i like this analogy.) when you're on the outside, there's no way of knowing what's going on inside, because there is no way allowed by the laws of physics for the information to reach you. you can speculate and hypothesize and extrapolate, but you really just have no idea. and as your lifeless spaceship hurtles inexorably down the gravity well and space-time is torn apart around you, you only then begin to understand.

it disturbs me how something so physically small can have such a huge set of needs. i thought we were this advanced, capable species with large brains, or something? apparently no? elephants can hold their heads up immediately. horses can run the day they're born. baby cthulhu was inducing madness in entire civilizations in his first star-cycle. what's wrong with us?

i find i'm having to change my mind about a lot of stuff, in addition to changing habits. i've done a disservice over the last few years in my joyful mockery of my friends' tribulations with their own children. i'll tell you where i'm coming from. first of all, they'll repay in kind, because they're awesome. secondly, as a result of my actions they'll surely never give us a minute of free babysitting. but most importantly, and seriously, i've made light of what is basically the grandest struggle there is—turning babies into people—in a way that has probably trivialized it in my own mind, or at least my subconscious. i certainly don't mean i think it is trivial, which it certainly is not and i don't mean to say that at all. i'm saying that within my mind i've reduced it to just a source of humor without ever appreciating it or even really trying to appreciate what the experience meant to them. and i'm not sure how to feel about this, because they were living their lives just as i was, we were just at different stages in our respective lives. their lives involved the raising of a child. mine involved acting out my chosen social role, viz. making fun of that. but as i face the bizarre prospect of imminently having a son of my own, i'm seeing it a bit differently. as you might imagine.

you guys, my son is going to be a challenge. he's going to be a stubborn, slippery little trickster, and worst of all, he's going to be really damned intelligent. he will of course be quietly cerebral, and when for this reason he goes hours or days without willingly talking to us we will panic and feel like he's shutting us out of his life. beginning the day he's born i'm going to begin filling his head with nonsense but before long he will figure out my game and realize just how full of shit i am, and from that day forward my wife will love him more than she loves me. he's going to have a sense of humor unintelligible to everyone except himself; in fact he will have vast worlds in his head to which no outsider will have access, robbing us of the ability to understand the greater part of him. he's going to be a prodigy with the ladies, so all the parents at the pta meetings will always be bitter toward me. chelsey will try to turn him into the quarterback for the denver broncos and because she's his favorite (and also just to spite me; ref. comment about being full of shit) he'll actually do it, and because he's so intelligent he'll be really good at it and become a superstar and move to bermuda or wherever and we'll never see him again except in signed pictures his publicist will send us at christmas.

so of course i'm stressed. the hell of it is, though, it's not altogether justified. sure, it will be work, hard work, and plenty of minimal-sleep nights and full diapers and colic and fevers and spit-up on my new shirt, but taking care of all that is just mechanics and actually pretty straightforward. later comes the frustrating part: the inevitable teenage rebellion crap when he'll think no one understands him and blah blah. but even that is basically predictable, and even a little boring—even amusing?—from the perspective of having gone through it myself. ('oh, you've become a nonconformist, how original.') it will seem to him as though the world and everything in it is unfair, and to him it will be for a while, but he'll survive it just as we all do and he'll get to experience the absurdity of the next generation at that age, thinking they're the first ones ever to feel angst.

so where does this leave me? who knows. i often say to my co-conspirator in this matter that i'm afraid, and i suppose i am in a way, though it's not truly fear that i'm feeling, mostly just unease. at the idea that soon, this powerless monster is going to invade and turn my life on its head and demand that i keep it alive, and inexplicably i will appease it. a dear friend of mine once said, 'the secret to parenting is to remember that your goal is to raise capable adults.' i imagine i'll be repeating that to myself rather often over the next twenty years, especially when it's my turn for the nighttime diaper shift.

1. she claims the covers end up on my side of the bed in the morning because i pull them that way in the night. i claim it's because she rolls exclusively to her left (toward me) all night, converting her own rotational energy into linear motion of the covers. in these last five nights that i've had the bed to myself, the comforter has mysteriously remained perfectly centered, without having to pull the frakking thing four feet back over to her side every morning.
2. by the narrow definition of the word, i have no actual proof that fast food eaten in a girl's presence tastes better than fast food eaten not in a girl's presence, but i have some anecdotal evidence to that effect.
3. sometimes, fast food eaten not in a girl's presence does not taste as good as fast food not eaten.

   by the way. 'froots?' i seem to have a vague memory of these 'froots,' and their odd-sounding cousins the 'vej tubbles.' will you please tell me more?

4. the freedom to leave the seat up is a pretty minor one. i cite the fact it's a well established habit for me to put it down each time, cover and all; leaving it up requires conscious effort and just leaves me acutely aware of the act's underlying emptiness.
5. bulldog kisses are a damn poor substitute for wife kisses.
6. pulling on yesterday's socks is way easier than going downstairs and collecting the clean laundry.
7. cynical schadenfreude is most satisfying when it has the opportunity to annoy someone.
8. measured in terms of wakefulness, appetite, and leg-jumps per hour, the dog is less happy when chelsey is gone.
9. measured in terms of wakefulness, appetite, and leg-jumps per hour, the boy is less happy when chelsey is gone.

girls, you just don't know the power you have over boys. if you do know it then you are evil geniuses. evil, pretty geniuses. we just don't stand a chance.

[aside:
r.i.p.
beardface mk. ii
may 2009 - june 2009
we barely knew ye
]

the world is small only in comparison with such things as the rest of the galaxy, which is itself only small in comparison with such things as the local supercluster. we're to the point in our development as a thinking species where we can observe objects that emitted some bits of light near the beginning of the universe, and the light is only now reaching us. and light is fast, dig? if my calculations are correct it takes light approximately one year to go one light-year; do you know how long it would take you, even taking the entire journey at the fastest speed any human has ever gone? beyond the scope of supercluster one could take two, maybe three meaningful (however gargantuan) steps up, and half a dozen or more on the way down. we live near the bottom, and on the scale to which we are accustomed, the world is pointedly—almost arrogantly—large.

thank you for following so far; it's important you understand where i'm coming from if you're to understand where i'm going. it's a matter of using the appropriate scale. though it's not saying much, the difference between (1) the immensity and permanence of the rock we're all floating on and (2) my own unimportance and brevity is more than the meat between my ears can process. and yet it is precisely this difference that made each bite of greek food, each sight of stacked ancient marble, each step taken on age-worn stone, each smile on the face of the girl i love—all so small when taken individually—so large when viewed through the lens of what i'm used to.

this is what i learned: we're each so small, and each so temporary, but because of this each moment and every inch we have just becomes that much more meaningful. where we are, everything matters except you. you are exactly as self-important as you think you are; it is just your scale that is wrong.

i'm sorry, what was your question? … 'how was greece?'

pretty frakking swell.

but i do have some things to say, and i'll be saying them to you this weekend, and i'll probably be writing them not from my own house because i'm a little scared of my wife right now and she's temporarily kicked me out of the house so she can work on some brainy paper thingy.

i understand very little of it but she promises me once she's done i can retire and we can move some place warm, and all she requires in the meantime is chocolate and beers! i call that a very good investment.

of course, this year's were not so bad, but not so good as to leave no room for improvement.

also! three cheers and a tally-ho for friends' free hot tub! ask him (or his personal financial assistant) how much this 'free' actually costs. go on, i dare you.

though 'decision model' might have been more accurate, her use of 'algorithm' certainly didn't hurt—she's generally so heuristic.

bottom line: two thumbs up, and totally worth the extended bucks for extended cable.

with that in mind: from the top, every girl i've ever loved—at the time. the careful reader will note that this reads like a list of french military victories.

1. age 6-7: emily ashlock.
i swear she was smarter then than i am now. she gave me a note one day saying i was doing well in math class—getting a lot of questions right or something—and drew a rainbow that made my little heart go pitter-pat. i saw her one day recently here in town and tried to strike up a conversation. she didn't remember me. that wasn't awkward or anything.

2. age 7-8: elizabeth burt.
jeremiah's cousin, though i didn't know jeremiah existed at the time. she kissed me on the cheek one early summer twilight. being young, i told a friend about it; she didn't take too well to that and our relationship cooled significantly. she moved away. i tell myself it wasn't because of me. when i was eleven i called her and we talked for about two or three hours. to this day i can't remember how i found her phone number, and it's a little disturbing that i could.

3. age 8: teasha hyer.
she was cute, and she didn't know i existed. the first of many. in the interest of saving space i have suppressed the forty or more who warrant this same description.

4. age 10-11: tina bradshaw.
my first kiss—sort of. truth or dare on the day before some vacation or another, literally underneath some desks. we "went out," which means we sat by each other at lunch and had boring recesses "talking" and boring stuff like that. by the end i was mean to her. when i broke up with her, i actually told her, by proxy, to go to hell. it's not my proudest moment. eventually we were friends again, and i was better for it.

5. age 11: mallory what's-her-face.
we went to summer camp together; someone told me she liked me and so of course i immediately liked her back. i don't remember talking to her—a good thing, otherwise it might not have lasted as long as it did. by which i mean for the remainder of the week.

6. age 11-20, on and off: tristi terrell.
in a plurality of all possible universes, i end up married to tristi. my first and only time "going out" with her lasted less than a month because i ignored her because at that age—some would say and still—i didn't know how to communicate with girls in any meaningful way. my strength was in writing beautiful, flowing, sappy, wretched "will you 'go out' with me" notes, and once that was all over with, i had nothing. she was infinitely more socially competent than i, and it was over before it was properly begun. as with tina, we stayed friends and again i was better for it. she once told someone—after our time was up—that for a very long time, she thought we would end up together, in the marital sense; independently i told this same person the same thing. you can imagine my shock. i never really got over tristi until one summer she found the right guy (or at least one of the many right guys) and never looked back.

7. age 12-13: sara kattenhorn.
against my better judgment. her cuteness devastated me and through it all she was immune to my charms. in retrospect, i'm glad.

8. age 14: naomi mendoza.
the package had a very nice wrapping job but was utterly empty, if you take me. i totally don't want to talk about it. nor, i'd wager, does jeremiah.

9. age 14-16: morgan johnston.
i now think of our relationship back then as very similar to that between tim & dawn or jim & pam, only without the reciprocated romantic interest. perhaps something might have come of it had i mentioned anything to her, or at least shown some depth of character, but no: i instead chose to act silly. so that's all over with. i recently found out she got married to precisely the wrong guy. not that i'm judging you, punk, but you don't deserve her.

10. age 15: malinda hessel.
nearly every male i knew spent at least a week desperately infatuated with malinda, and rightly so. she was probably the sweetest girl in my life at the time—and she spoke to me on occasion.

11. age 17: heather kellogg.
my first proper, official, healthy, publicly acknowledged relationship: three months, called on account of graduation. we had conversations that shimmer in my mind like chopin put to words. we could keep up marvelously with each other.

12. age 18: megan lacey.
once she touched my right pinky, and you'll never convince me she didn't mean to do it. she was just outside-the-box enough, and just british enough, to make me fawn, swoon, and otherwise twitterpate. we flirted well. at least she did. i'd give a dollar to find out what she thought of me then.

13. age 18: courtney gravett.
wide-set blue-green eyes, short hair, almost deitific skill with the written word—what more could a romantic idealist hope for? oh, right, steamy kisses in my dorm room. well, there might have been some of that.

14. age 18-20: kara cockrum.
you flirted in oh-such-a-sly way, had that smile, and that hair, and you expect me to be too young for you? (i repeat: i recently found out she got married to precisely the wrong guy. not that i'm judging you, punk, but you don't deserve her.)

15. age 19-20: avril atkinson.
older than i by a significant margin and so far out of my league i might as well have been playing a completely different sport, we still had some good talks. she calmed me. she was working on an advanced psychology degree and i've always liked to be analyzed; we were like two puzzle pieces. unfortunately we were not two adjacent puzzle pieces. i don't know where she ended up.

16. age 20-present: she who must not be named.
i win.

waterfalls and hot springs, and sometimes both. the plop of elderberries on slow, deep water. a tent, a sleeping bag, a pillow, a wife. sunscreen and bug spray and deodorant and biodegradable soap. a perfectly cast line, and the fish!—inches and inches and inches of cutthroat trout, all tauntingly catch and release. tinder, kindling, down-and-dead wood. fire island (no relation). the unabashed horror of the scat can. the love/hate relationship with the inflatable kayak. the shock of cold water on sun-warmed skin. sore muscles. bruised hands. torn feet. pancakes and eggs and horrible little fake-meat turds almost every morning; contrast with well-smoked salmon followed by an abundance of spaghetti. river otters on the opposite bank, for which cutthroat trout are not catch and release. running to catch up with the boat. a long-overdue tan. a long, long night drive in another man's diesel truck pulling another man's trailer whose lights refused to light, attracting the attention of a nice gentleman in a dark blue suit and a black and white car who told us what a good idea it would be for us to drive two hundred-odd miles with the four-way flashers on—the same ones that would begin to make strange scraping noises very late at night. arriving home and the subsequent race for the shower. a long, sad unpacking.

and that was my exciting vacation. holiday. thingy.

my parents just returned from their own vacation holiday thingy to the uk. they mock us with their postcards. 'oh hello, landlocked americans. today we got lost in camden town market, had fish and chips in a pub, and had high tea with h.m. the queen herself! also we got take-away, took the tube, and went to the loo. tomorrow we're going to formally separate from the roman catholic church. cheerio, fatties!'

damned tourists.


i'm only beginning to understand the bbc radio version of douglas adams' hitchhiker series. it's so superlatively different from the book after about the sixth episode that following it becomes a chore (albeit a very enjoyable one, due in part to the fact i am strangely attracted to lintilla's voice) for my book-familiar memory. and why have i not yet seen the movie? the answer to that is unknowable.


dear anyone: we must play risk.