Christmas came and went.


Geez, and I thought I was doing a good job savoring it.   Christmas music.  Baking cookies.  Gathering and wrapping presents.  It’s still just one day, though, and the part of the holiday that a lot of people look forward to is over before noon.

There were some very nice seasonal events, too many to list, actually.  I don’t mean to say that I didn’t have a lovely holiday.  It was just fast.  Really fast.

And it reminds me of the truest thing every parent has told me about raising a child.  It flies by!  Charlotte is closer to 21 months old than 20, and she walks and talks and has favorite toys and programs and movies.

I should use one of my favorite Christmas presents (a new camera!) to take pictures of some of my favorite of Charlotte’s presents (is that a sentence?).  She’s got a huge collection of Sesame Street figures (and the accessories) that she calls her “guys” after what I called them.  She sitting there playing with them now.

Now: winter.  And my century-old apartment is so drafty that the heat literally will not turn off.  Instead of the whole shebang turning on and off, the system stays on while the “auxiliary heat” comes on and off.  I shudder to think of our electric bill and environmental impact.  We console ourselves with the fact that we won’t be here next winter.

I take umbrage when…

….I am called a “retard” and “9-year-old” behind my back (but within earshot) by someone with several less degrees than I have, especially when said person makes a big deal out of distinctions.  I mean,  I don’t like to play the “I have three degrees, and you failed first grade” game, but if I’m drawn into it, I’m all too happy to quietly gloat as a friend of mine says, “Wait, he’s got a PhD in philosophy.  They don’t give that shit out.”

I have chronicled only a small portion of a percentage of the shit I have gotten, and still get, for my education.  I don’t like talking about it because one of my worst (and probably unfounded) fears is for people to start believing that I define myself by three letters or — even worse still — that I look down on other people because of it.

But, nonetheless, and in case you were wondering:

Mean-spirited teasing toward too-educated people marks you as resentful, jealous,petty and, well, stupid. Because if you don’t realize how jealous and petty this kind of shit makes you look, you must be stupid.  Or you don’t care.  And everyone I’ve met who cares that little about being an asshole has also been, one and all, stupid.

This includes:

“You [sic] got a PhD, and  you can’t XXX.”

(Actually, I can XXX, and I can do it while reading Kant.  Can you?)

“All that education and XXX.”

(Fuck you. You didn’t pay for it or help me or, if you’re talking like this, support me. Once again: fuck you.)

“Well, I don’t have a PhD, so XXX.”

(Am I supposed to feel badly that I traded my 20s, a large part of my sanity and a student loan debt that could literally buy a house to get a PhD I thought I needed for a career I thought I wanted to pursue forever?  What’s it got to do with anyone else that I need to hear what people feel about it so fucking much?)

“What, are you stuck-up now that you’re a Doctor?”

(No. Are you insecure now?)

“[Perceived shortcoming of mine] And you’re a Doctor?!”

(Well, shit, I was busy studying philosophy and shit, not learning to XXX. Silly me. I guess I got into the wrong fucking program.)

In conclusion, there is nothing magical about a PhD — except it’s magical ability to often turn “Doctors” into assholes and — more often, I’ve found, unexpectedly — to turn everyone around said Doctors into assholes.

And that is all I have to say about that.

P.S. Call me “Doctor” please. : )

Be prepared to be amazed by people.


That said, you might be surprised at how awesome people can be. From my parents driving us to the hospital at one in the morning to birth the baby — and bringing us food at the hospital (Subway!) — to a stranger helping me unload my groceries onto the belt when I was obviously having some trouble with the baby strapped to me, people can be pretty amazing when you’re a new parent.

Along with all the “advice” you don’t want (“My mudder put wissy on ma teef, and Ohm Okay.”)*, you’ll get useful advice and hints from people from whom you expect it (your parents, your friends who are parents) and from people that might surprise you (a guy in line at the grocery store, a blogger). My great-aunt says that there are only two rules to raising a baby: don’t yell at them, and don’t give them booze. When your daughter ignores you and keeps getting into the cabinets and such, you appreciate the first of those rules.

While there are people who will still nearly run you and your yellow (!) stroller over with their SUVs, you’d be surprised by the people who will go out of their way to make way for you. Coming back from a long walk to Belvedere Square last month, a huge pickup truck with a huge trailer backed waywayway up to let us pass, when they really weren’t in a position to have to and were really barely in a position to be able to. For every jerk who doesn’t yield to you in the crosswalk, there’s another who will stop without needing to, nowhere near one.

Okay, so for every ten people who get on your ass and refuse to cut the new parents any slack, there’s one person who will forgive you for anything. But. Still. That’s one person who seems to understand.

Having a kid changes all of your relationships.  I know I have drifted a little from some people and gotten much closer to others.  Being parents can really bond two friends or cousins or siblings together.  We have friends (who are parents) who are incredibly supportive, even when that means just being available for a coffee and a walk.

I don’t get to hang out with my brothers as much as usual, but they don’t seem to hold it against me.  Rather, one is gaga over Charlotte all the time, while the other has often been a comrade to relaxing with some much-needed fresh air and a beer (or two), even two weeks ago when we relaxed over Coronas and did some bitching.

I’m not going to lie and say that my parents (who probably read this blog!) aren’t often a source of frustration, and that I don’t know that I probably frustrate them as well.  This isn’t news to any new parent, and if your parents are automatically used to the idea of you as a parent yourself, well, that’s just bizarre, brother.  But my parents also always there for a trip to the store to get something we really need, to babysit when we have an important obligation, to chat, etc.  For as many times as we want to kill one another (Hi, guys!), we’re still a family.

I’m probably forgetting a lot of stuff and a lot of people.  But this has been a hell of a lot of blogging for one day, and my laptop feels like it’s about to melt.

*(“My mother put whiskey on my gums while I was teething, and I’m not completely stupid, not completely.”  Said by one very Hampdeny Hampdenite.)

[See also here.]

When your baby’s sick.


Charlotte’s been sick before. When she was eight days old, a friend came over with a cold and got her sick. Emergency room to check her breathing, and a lot of very extremely just filthy language out of me toward the person who got her sick (and who has a kid and should have known better). Charlotte got a nasty stomach bug over the holiday break. I picked her up one morning, and the front of her PJs were warm and damp, all over her chest and little belly.

It was poop.

Poor thing.

Charlotte’s had a fever before, but she’s never just had a day where she didn’t feel well without anything visible being wrong (aside from another fever). Yesterday, she wasn’t her playful self. She was too weak to practice walking. Her head was heavy and hot. She wanted to cuddle, to sit on my lap, put her head on my chest and chill.

Now. This child. Unless it’s bedtime or storytime, she doesn’t not like to sit still on a lap for long. This was strange behavior indeed.  Her fever wasn’t high enough to merit medicine or a visit to the doctor. Her stomach seemed fine. It was nothing big.

But there was also little I could do for her to make her feel better. I didn’t necessarily feel helpless so much as just bad. I felt badly for this usually bubbly and happy little kid who just plain felt like poop. All I could do was cuddle her, change her diaper and make sure she had enough to eat.

Her fever is lower today, and she’s interested in playing.  She also got up an hour earlier — in anticipation of changing the clocks this week?  Is my daughter that smart already?

Luckily, a coffeemaker with a timer showed up yesterday and got me out of bed earlier this morning.  It also could be the very thing that woke Charlotte up early.  She’s never heard a coffeemaker before.

The family salute.


This is it.  Charlotte and I at the playground last weekend with her pals Mickey and Jack Jack (to whom she is betrothed).  This is on top of “the big slide” and caused Mama to get super mad at me. In Mama’s defence, Charlotte was upside-down when she hit the bottom. Laughing her ass off though.

On frying the turkey.

My family fried the turkey this year, a good thing for a vegetarian.  Here’s why.

Usually, I’d sleep over at my family’s house the night before Thanksgiving.  Wake up to the smell of turkey.  Pre-2002, I was an eager turkey eater.  The dad in A Christmas Story had nothing on me.  Starting in 2002, I’d smell it, hunger for it, and my mouth would water for it.  This sounds like I’m blaming someone for the heavenly smell.  What I mean is that strict vegetarianism never made me hate the smell of turkey.

This year, this was no smell.  There was a fancy contraption outside the house when I got there with Charlotte and Mommy, full of oil that cooked the turkey.  My brothers needed a third set of hands getting the bird out, and I was glad to help.  Then the smell hit me.  And, for a second, well.  I was tempted.  Then I looked up its bum, saw ribs and spine said outoud (without meaning to), “Woh, you can see….that it used to be alive.”  Temptation over.  I ate a lot of other good yummies and what is most likely the best pie (homemade pecan!) I have ever eaten.  Ever.

And, it turns out, Charlotte doesn’t seem to like green beans.  Much better luck with the carrots today, though.  She got them all over a little frog toy and then ate them off, licking her tiny lips and smiling.

Been having too much fun to blog much.

We had a fantastic end of summer weekend, with swimming (even though the weather was cool), grilling, beer, coffee, movies and fun times with Charlotte.

Also, and this is no insignificant thing, I received a food dehydrator as a birthday gift from my parents. “What the hell would a 31-year-old want with one of those?” you ask?

Well, immediately, I can dry a lot of the chilis and basil I grew/am growing this year. Also, well, holy shit, those babies are awesome! No more trail mix full of crap I hate and also without fruit because the stuff at the market is not great (not enough to spend the cash on anyway). Meals ready to eat? Yes. When we go camping, I take my own food so as not to be a pain the ass, since I’m the only vegetarian. This means that I have to lug it all myself, with a cooler to boot. Not if I learn to make my own dehydrated vegetarian cuisine!

This is not to mention that Charlotte and I can make all sorts of delicious things.  I’m picturing her taking bags of dried fruit all over Baltimore during  the winter, from delicious things I got at the farmers market in the summer.

I was raving to my mother a few weeks ago that I grew too much basil this year and had to freeze a lot of it and even murder a plant.  I said I wanted to diversify next year and get a food dehydrator to keep myself (and family) stocked with home-grown herbs all year.  What I didn’t think of until last night is that the chilis that don’t normally dry well and get frozen instead can be dried this way and used for all kinds of excellent goodness!

My mom listened.  My mom rocks.

Adorable thing our daughter does: Arms up!


During The Big Ultrasound in November (the one wherein we found out Baby’s gender), GE was there selling 3D machines. So we were able to view (but not record) a 3D ultrasound of Charlotte. We could see her cute little face but were having trouble getting a steady shot. Because. She loves to put her hands to her face.

Even in the low-res, 2D versions, you can see her hands up to her face.

As soon as she came into the world, she was putting those arms up.

When she came back from the nursery, right after she was born, her face was red and raw from scratching herself up.

Whether playing, fussing or sleeping, she loves having those hands up on her cheeks and chin.

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!

Using your wisdom?

Okay.  Now I know why my wife called me arrogant.

I think my father called me yesterday to ask about what to do about a situation.  My mother (Hi, Mom!) complimented my people-reading skills last weekend.  I am glad for all of this.  I shudder to think how many times (even recently) I’ve bugged the shit out of my parents, asking for advice, a perspective, an opinion.

My wife and I were talking this morning, and I said, “If people seek you out for practical advice in dealing with people, power-structures, their emotions, etc., does that make you a philosopher?  That is, if you seem to have wisdom that people want to use?”

I think I have excellent judgement.  But I think that I also seldom use it.  I don’t think that personal idiocy precludes being able to help other people.

Maybe I’m just, as I suspect, a good listener.  I think I’m entirely too young and too dumb for people to be coming to me expecting sage advice.  But listening is a good skill, especially with fatherhood on the very near horizon.

I forgot where I was going with this.  It’s raining again, and I need to get to work.

So much shopping.


When people comment that tiny children require mounds of stuff, they’re not fooling you. Grandma and Grandpa insisted on buying the crib and got them into the Escape before we could finish checking out with other stuff at Ikea. This is matched by the car-load of stuff we got for the shower, the car load on its way via online shopping and the car load from Target and Babies “R” Us. Wow.

Just realized something both happy and sad.

Two years ago, when my grandfather died, there became officially only two generations of my family, from which my last name comes: my father and my brothers.  Starting in a few weeks (or possibly even this week), there will, once again, be three, when Baby is born.

When I was born, there were four.  My great-grandfather (“Gramps”) was pretty awesome.

I’m still alive.

Okay.  Defended the dissertation two weeks ago.  Long story.  I got myself so completely high on caffeine that my heart was beating 92 times a minute, sitting still.  Seriously; I checked twice. I don’t think I’ve ever been as nervous about anything in my entire life. At a hospital, car crash, bike crash, social event, you’re not sitting alone thinking all day before your 4:30 event. I probably should have been more social that day, but I had no patience for drama, which seems everywhere these days — even my own.  Anyway, I had all day to think of all the ways I’d screw it up, since I’m not only a terrible public speaker but also intimidated by the idea of a room full of philosophers versus me and me alone.

Went through the defense.  Committee suggested some clarifications, treatments, etc., including fixing my “tone,” which some considered “flippant.”  Upon revising it, I realized they were actually right about that.  Not a big deal.  Everyone has to make some changes after a defense, I’m told.  My director called me “Doctor.”  Some of the changes took me a while because I wanted to make sure they were right on the first try, and some took less because I already had the research.  No one asked any of the questions I thought they would, though.

Nonetheless, the most unpleasant thing about my entire PhD program was over.  But, with Baby on the way and the official electronic submission deadline looming, this meant that I was MIA for a week and half.  My life was:

Wake up.
Work at job.
Dissertation at lunch.
Work at job.
Go to market.
Make dinner.
Work on dissertation.
Bed.
Repeat, and, on weekend, replace job work with housework, laundry, a food drive, etc.
(Also insert people being so disrespectful as to demand my time, knowing full well what was going on.  I’m very generous with my time, I think, but I needed it this week for myself and my family.)

None of this was good for my sanity, though it’s been incredibly beneficial for my work ethic. As in, I have one now. I finished revising the dissertation and making all of the changes Saturday. Since then, I’ve been painting, caulking, cooking, shopping, cleaning and organizing in preparation for Baby.  It’s non-stop, and I haven’t been online much, save a little on Facebook.

Last night, I had to take apart my [cheap] caulking gun because I bent the innards. Damned spring shot me in the freakin eyeball which, as you can imagine, hurts like hell today. Doesn’t look as bad as it did yesterday, though.  Still, it calls to mind certain episodes of “The Simpsons.”

Now I’m working with my director to get it all final and done and gone.  It feels too good to be true, and it hope it works.  Because once Baby is born (any day now, literally), I don’t want to have to work on this ever again.

Mama and Baby updates, sorta.


(Baby G’s little feet, hopefully not as wide and hairy as his/her Dad’s.)
Wow. There’s a lot going on in our little apartment these days, with Baby trying to kick his/her way out of Mama’s belly, while Mama is on bed rest and trying not to have Baby too soon. We hit 30 weeks this week. So even if Baby comes relatively soon, she’ll probably be Okay. Hopefully.

So we went to the OB last week. I think Mama was glad to get out of the apartment and building! The halls (floors, walls and ceiling) are all being replaced in our building, and she hadn’t seen the nice job the painters did on the first floor. I’d forgotten that she hadn’t been through our front door in nearly a week. Anyway, Dr. Jones had said we’d be going weekly to see her for the rest of the pregnancy when we saw her two weeks ago at 28 weeks (it’s “normal” to go every two at this point). But she said that everything had “stabilized” and that we didn’t have to come back for two weeks last Wednesday. After the scary visits we’d had the preceding two weeks, Mama and I were both ecstatic.  But then she remembered that it meant two weeks without going anywhere. Still, good news that Baby will cooperate with cooking for a few more weeks before busting out into the world and his/her parents’ cuddles.

(Yes, I said “cuddles.”)

I still have a ton of work to do on Baby’s room. There are books to find homes for on other bookshelves as much as possible; a bookshelf to move; dozens of books to give away; storage boxes to be sorted through, thinned out and repacked; a big giant closet that needs to be cleaned out; painting the room (!); going to Ikea to get the furniture we picked out; storing the desktop computer (and giving away the desk), since the two netbooks we ordered last week should come this week or next (thanks for the vague timing, Ma and Pa Dell!); probably things I forgot. It’s for Baby; so I can handle it. I’m glad to do it.

I’m waiting for my apartment building to fix my kitchen phone jack (over which they painted) and to fix some water damage to the wall in Baby’s room so that I can paint.  Maybe I can get finished some leaps this week and this weekend, with cleaning, possibly painting.  Like a half dozen people have offered to help, and it’s just one room with three doors (one to the hallway, one the closet, one to the bathrooom) and a big window.

It won’t be hard.

Mama’s on bedrest.


Went to a follow-up with our OB yesterday. Mama’s 50% effaced, which could mean that Baby G wants to come out too soon. We’re just at 28 weeks. From what we’ve read, Baby would have a good chance right now, a very very good chance. And the chances at a normal life increase daily now. But, to be safe, Dr. Jones prescribed complete bed rest. And fetal monitoring and two shots of Betamethasone (one yesterday, the next later today), in addition to the blood sugar test Mama was supposed to undergo yesterday anyway.

So we went up to the maternity ward on the 16th floor once we figured out how to get there, getting pretty freakin terrified. There were no rooms, but a very nice nurse gave Mama the orange jug of stuff to drink for the glucose test ahead of time. She got her blood test in the waiting room after an hour (how long the test requires), after “Dr. Phil.” Mama’s a trooper with the blood tests! Then we went to triage to get Mama hooked up to a machine to monitor possible contractions and other signs of pre-term labor. She wasn’t feeling any contractions of pain, but we were still very very worried.  Having that stuff strapped onto you can’t be fun, and it certainly felt bizarre to see my little wife that way.

Another patient got up to hit the potty with her sensors on, so our nurse had to run to take care of that situation. We sat alone listening to Baby’s heartbeat for over a half hour, hearing her kicking the sensor and moving away from it. Moving away meant that her little heartbeat kept changing on the monitor, dropping off for a few seconds here and there, going up and down. We panicked a little, looking for a way to call the nurse. The damned phone was a real phone, though.  No luck.  But then Nurse Michelle came back and explained that what was on the screen and on the print-out scroll was normal. Very super duper normal.  That they were watching the monitor from somewhere else, too, the whole time. And Baby was very fine. No contractions or signs of distress. “Your baby is as happy as can be!” they told us, much to our relief.Michelle gave Mama the first steroid shot, and we waited through the rest of the test.

Afterward, the results of the blood sugar test came through. Mama’s sugar was high, but not very high. We go back to Dr. Jones this afternoon for the next steroid shot (though I have the vial!) and a follow-up. Starting February 3rd, we were supposed to start going every other week. Now, starting now, we’re going every week. That’s actually good. We’ll feel better knowing everything is being monitored. And it will give Mama the chance to get out of the apartment shortly once a week. She’s upset, and today is her birthday.

So we go to the hospital in the afternoon.  Then I’ll go shopping, get supplies.  Then make Mama whatever she wants for dinner.  So far, it looks like Baby is Okay.  I have to worry about Mama now.