Less than infinite patience.

I have to say this.  Life has been little else but pure joy since last Friday, when Charlotte was born.  Life would be nothing but pure joy if dingdongs and poopyheads would do a few things for me/us:

1) Keep their issues to themselves.

2) Keep their issues to themselves.

3) Stop demanding things of either of us.  Unless you live under a rock, you know that new parents don’t sleep, don’t have any time and are more than a little consumed with taking care of and admiring their new child.

4) Respect our decisions.

I’ve found that a lot of the same people who make a show of sympathy, empathy and understanding also get pissed when there is no patience and no “consideration” left for them.  My immediate family is not, thankfully, pulling any of this crap.  The opposite, actually.  But my immediate family is pretty small, and the slew of other people that demand attention for themselves in favor of my newborn child is a larger list of people.  Passive-aggressiveness over perceived slights at the lack of returned phone calls, meet-ups, emails, etc.?  Seriously?

Fortunately, we have — or, at least, I have — resolved to just not care about other people’s feelings right now.  Easier said than done, I know.  But on nights like tonight, where the poop’s flying, and Charlotte’s not sleeping, and I find myself with less patience left for her because of some fartpooper who’s being passive-aggressive because our priority has been our child, well, that makes it easier.

I don’t think I’m going to make it to the end of the month without snapping at someone for being a jerk.

While I’m away, tending to the birth of our child.


There are some excellent sites you should check out while I’m gone!

Armand, the founder of Moleskinerie, is back with a re-vamped Notebookism! I, for one, have missed a site devoted to all things stationery and the writing life, as Moleskinerie used to be. Stay tuned for what I’m sure will be one of your favorite blogs.

Joachim is travelling around the world between his 25th and 26th Birthdays and blogging about it all on 360 in 365.  I’m reminded  that all I did then was to worry about a car I didn’t like owning, jump through academic hoops and start a pencil blog.  Instead of regret, however, I’m just enjoying the stories.

And, of course, you should check out North Baltimore Bike Brigade, which I co-run with my good pal Dan.  There’s a blogroll of bike blogs on there of which we’re proud, and a nice community of cyclists, largely from Charm City.

Softening up on angry parenting before Baby gets here.

Okay, so the whole, “You smoke; you can’t hold Baby,” thing might be over.  I think.  Not sure.  But it’s up to Mama.  It’s not up to anyone who feels entitled to hold someone else’s kid.  My brother, for instance, smokes outside only and not often.  Unless he just came in from smoking, he gets to hold Baby, according to Mama and I.  If you smoke in your house or car (especially both), Mama’s foot is still down.  Feel free to try to fight with her if you are crazy enough to try.  I’m not.

I’m still reserving some patience for people who suggest meat for an infant.  Because, well, if someone thinks a six-month old should eat a steak, well, that’s so stupid that I’m not going to lose my patience.  Same with suggesting that meat-based diets are miraculously healthier than non-meat-based diets.  Sure, I know some meat-eaters (many, in fact) who eat healthier than some vegetarians I’ve known.  But that had more to do with dumbass vegetarians than meat being inherently good for you.

I shouldn’t say it, but people have been quiet about the no car thing.  Good.  Now that I’ve said it, this silence is going to stop, and we’ll have to start citing statistics to show that putting a kid into a car is what’s dangerous, if you wanna, you know, get scientific and factual about it and all.

We also picked a bouncy chair in very pink pink pink.  But, in our defense, the others were ugly.  The rest of her room could pretty much work for any human being, regardless of gender.  It’s that awesome.

But, maybe we’re not softening up as much as I think.  I think resoluteness feels more natural now, and I don’t feel like we’re being stern unnecessarily.

Gumption.


I was at a community meeting with a co-worker last month, in a church basement.  Some funny little man mentioned the word “gumption.”  I wrote said word on my meeting agenda, and my co-worker (who’s a community artist and illustrator) drew this sketch of a man puking.  So I wrote a caption:

gumption.  (noun): The state of puking out one’s very soul, eg., “She sold her soul but then got the gumption and had to welch on the deal.”

(Larger image here.)
(More from artist Quentin Gibeau here.)

Baby soon?

OB Apt: Mama’s 80% effaced and 2cm dilated. Blood pressure’s high, but it looks like Baby won’t be late, after all that bed rest!

Making room for Baby.


I’ve discovered, somewhat the hard way, that making room for a child requires much more than buying a crib and diapers.

You have to pull out your furniture and clean under there.   You have to pay attention to your air quality.  You have to put away choking hazards, plug up electric sockets, bolt things to walls and put away matches.  You have to get rid of as much as you can (if you’re a semi-nomadic apartment dweller), think hard about what you bring into your home and measure and have decent abstract thinking abilities regarding space, color and light.  You have to be able to use basic tools, a paintbrush, a vacuum cleaner and a caulk gun.  You have to be good at keeping up on dishes, laundry and shopping.

And you have to clear away ISSUES.  Your issues.  Your [immediate and extended] family’s issues.  Your friends’ and comrades’ issues.  “Society’s” issues.

I’ve probably already beaten this dead horse, but we (and especially I) are (am) cleaning out the belfries of our (my) own minds and hearts to make room for Baby there.  I’m always happy to listen to people’s problems and to help out by sharing a beer/coffee or just taking a walk.  I don’t mean to repeat my, “You have issues?  I have a kid.  I don’t have the time for you anymore.”  I think that’s been said enough to make me sound cold and also has been said more than I really actually mean it.

I’m referring now to the fact that we have to protect our child from screwed-up people.  Not violent people or something extreme like that.  Stubbornness, thoughtlessness, ressentiment, spite, etc.  I mean that we have to protect Baby from what other people’s issues cause.

It’s — relatively – easy to directly protect Baby from some of these issues, certainly.  Take a stubborn and spiteful family member or family friend.  It’s simple.  He or she doesn’t get to hang out with Baby.  It’s not Baby’s fault that an individual is an asshole.  It’s the asshole’s fault.  So, the asshole deserves to suffer for the asshole’s own issues (if someone has to suffer for them), if the alternative is that our Baby suffer.  Simple.  Or maybe I buy into existentialist notions of human freedom too deeply and blame people too much for issues that are the result of their societal milieu or their upbringing — or genuine mental illness.

But the problem is that these kinds of issues have an effect on us, as parents, as a married couple and as individuals.  It’s easy to keep Baby away from spiteful or selfish people, but this spite and selfishness gets brought into our home in the effects it has on Mommy and Daddy.  We might come home in a bad mood.  We might fight with each other.  We might teach Baby about rage or revenge without intending to.  If I am going to blame assholes for being assholes (and I do), I have to blame myself (and Mama) for how I (we) react to assholes.

And this is tricky.  Do I follow my revenge instinct?  Or do I attempt to emulate Jesus or the Buddha or another figure who would counsel peace and love?  Do I lie to Baby about assholes?  (“No, s/he is not a mean person.  S/he just had a bad family life and takes the misery it caused out on everyone in the world.  There are no mean or bad people.”)  I’d certainly like Baby to understand that there are, in fact, terrible people out there.  There are a couple of them on my own side of the family, for sure.  But I’d like her to have an optimism about people that I do not have and wish that I did.  Or is that realistic at all?

I feel like what we have to “make room” for is a balance between forgiveness and protection.  Just enough forgiveness to not hate someone, but protection enough to keep mean people and their issues away from Baby.  Or, since this is probably not possible all of the time, at least to minimize the effect other people’s assholery will have on us.  Or something.

Mama wrote her dissertation on love, and I on hate.  Maybe we’ll strike a balance by accident, almost naturally?

Food for thought.

Is the current health bill really that revolutionary?

Human rights standards do not tolerate the inequities inevitably linked to a reliance on market competition to meet human needs. Yet this legislation also contains some important improvements to health care access for poor people.

More.

Wanna stop killing the planet from eating too much manufactured meat?

In recent years vegetarians and vegans have upped their attack on the consumption of animal flesh, pointing out not only that it’s disgusting (read Jonathan Safran Foer’s new book) but also a major cause of climate change. The numbers range from 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions to—in one recent study that was quickly discredited—51 percent. Whatever the exact figure, suffice it to say it’s high: there’s the carbon that comes from cutting down the forest to start the farm, and from the fertilizer and diesel fuel it takes to grow the corn, there’s the truck exhaust from shipping cows hither and yon, and most of all the methane that emanates from the cows themselves (95 percent of it from the front end, not the hind, and these millions of feedlot cows would prefer if you used the word eructate in place of belch).

More.

And, Mr. Obama decides that the Chesapeake Bay would be better with oil in it — because money is better than not destroying the planet — even to Mr. O.

Maryland’s senators and environmental activists are vowing to oppose President Barack Obama’s move to expand oil and gas exploration off the state’s Atlantic coast, warning that it could hurt tourism in Ocean City, threaten fish and wildlife along relatively unspoiled Assateague Island and foul the Chesapeake Bay.

More.