Ander, Kalix and Tusk

So its thursday, which means it My Gym day....

I know- this is old news --I blogged about it a few weeks back.

At the beginning of the hour at My Gym you have to introduce your kid...so today the following kids were at the class:

Ander
Kalix
Tusk

Yes, Tusk.

Ander and Kalix? Are these children or pharmaceutical companies?

And Tusk...I even asked Tusk's mother how to spell it. I thought there had to be an x in there. Tuxk- or even Tukx - that's how I imagined it.

Since when it did become cool to name your kid an inanimate object. Where do you go from Tusk?

Antler? Hoof? How do you move away from the animal theme once it begins?

"This is Tusk and his brother Jeff," see how that just doesn't sound right?

Did they even think about what the name Tusk sounds like in the possessive?

Tusk'ssssss- the s's go on forever.

Tusk's mother wears a lot of gaze, so theres that...I'm not passing judgement on gaze wearing-I'm just saying there might be a correlation.

Tamales and Tres Leches Cake

Tamales and Tres Leches cake really piss me off.

First of all, I hate both. I hate the taste, the texture, the flavor, the smell...I hate tamales and I hate tres leche cake, but what I hate more than the actual substances is the fact that what seems to be the majority of the population is completely in LOVE with tamales and tres leche cake.

Granted, I'm not that into food, so theres that..yet still, the way people react to tamales, especially at Christmas, is objectively mind boggling.

And what is this Christmas tamale connection anyway?

My in laws make Nacatamales, which are Nicaraguan tamales- these are a thousand times worse than the average tamale.

Everyone here at 2107 goes ape shit over this stuff.

Really?

Its a bunch of mysterious ingredients (which don't go together) wrapped in dry corn meal.

Is something wrong with my tongue? Am I not tasting this correctly?

On more than one occasion I found myself at the dinning room table with everyone eating away- they just can't get enough- they eat three or four, and I'm not even able to shove 1/3 down my pie hole.

At first I thought maybe they were just being nice to Gioconda's mother, but its sincere...and then they all talk about it...

Nacatamales. Nacatamales. Nactamales....by the end of Christmas day I want to punch out the nacatamales.

How is it possible I hate something so much that everyone else loves?

Tres leches cake is like eating a sponge-its not good-end of discussion.

Its the same phenomenon- when its around everyone has to talk about the fucking tres leches cake...

A dry soggy cake- its like snot in my mouth.

Maybe I'm just too white...

Barbara Parish

After I passed the bar exam in 1992 and before I got my first job I worked for a variety of applicant firms sitting in on depositions.

The applicant attorney gets paid for their time, so I was getting paid $25.00 an hour to sit and listen, and maybe make a few objections. Most of the time I spent writing a note to whoever I was dating.

Typically the depos were pretty freindly, but every once in a while there would be an aggressive defense attorney - and those depos were really no fun at all.

I was doing a lot of work for a attorney who was very nice, but had some really hinky cases. Although I was techincally representing her clients in the depos I thought the majority were malingering exaggerators.

So- I get a depo of this guy and while I'm prepping him for his testimony I'm thinking about how much I hate working with these loosers, and how although a loose association- its still an association with this hinky firm...and I was feeling sort of bad about being an attorney in general...and then in walks this lady who is all buttoned up - she's the defense attorney and she is wearing this red button that says STAMP OUT WORK COMP FRAUD.

And so I think- great - no note writing today this lady is going to be kicking my ass all afternoon.

But she was actually very nice.

I walked away thinking she was the type of attorney I would like to be-professional, unemotional, yet committed. She knew what to ask and how to ask it ...

So I get lucky and get a job with in house counsel for Liberty Mutual, and I meet my supervisor- STAMP OUT WORK COMP FRAUD- Barbara Parish.

The first seven years of practicing law I worked under her.

She taught me how to be an attorney- how to conduct myself in a manner which was not intimidating, yet from the position of strength, she taught me to pay attention to details- to look at a problem from many perspectives.

She was smart and funny and kind...

Last week after a long struggle with a terrible disease my friend and mentor passed away last week at the age of 61.

I saw her in court last year, and I knew at the time she was not well, yet still her death took me by surprise somehow.

I never told her the role she played in my life- I never thanked her for her time and effort- I never thanked her for her loyal and compassionate friendship.

So I will thank her now-

Thank you Barbara Parish, you will be missed more than you could ever know.

Blanket Jackson

So P Diddy bought a $400,000.00 car for his kids 16th birthday, and then was upset when questioned about this decision.

I got a stereo for my 16th birthday.

I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how amazing it would be to be born into wealth. What it would be like to have a ton of dough and have done nothing but be the winner of a genetic lotto.

I will say I am actually so consumed by this I'm actually curious to know if other people think of it as much, but feel too embarrassed to ask.

Gioconda knows about the preoccupation and gives me shit about it all the time.

"If you spent as much time working as you spent thinking about how you could get money with no effort, you would have a lot more money," she says.

This is actually untrue. I work as much as I can, and I can only make thousands, I want millions.

I know this seems shallow, I don't care. I know money can't buy happiness, but it makes everything really fucking easier.

I'm looking for easier.

The thought of entering this world with a Trust Fund waiting is appealing to everyone, I know, but for me it plays like a loop in my head.

So.. I'm thinking about it this morning I decided if I was one of Michael Jackson's children I would be Blanket, not just because he was the one Michael Jackson hung over the balcony- he does have that...

If I was Blanket I would start dance lessons yesterday.

Although I don't really believe Michael Jackson is the biological father of any of his children, and thus Blanket may not have the "Jackson DNA", with enough practice anythings possible.

Fast forward 10 years and Blanket Jackson is the winner of the new artist of the year at the Grammy's...

Editors Note: In reading over this the name Blanket Jackson seems sort of lame, so if I was Blanket Jackson I would change my name to something more mature, maybe Turbo- Turbo Jackson- I'm still working this through....

I understand if I was Blanket Jackson I would basically be an orphan, and I 'm certain the death of his father was difficult for him- but lets be honest...maybe little Blanket is better off.

Ignoring the obvious dangling him over cement many many many floors up, when your parent takes you out of the house with a mardi gras feather mask over your face more than seven times maybe he's not the BEST parent.

Still...even if I was Blanket Jackson I wouldn't need a $400,000.00 car, I would just ride around in my helicopter.

A Fantastic Love

Last June after my Grandmothers memorial service my aunts and mother complied a book of family history for all the cousins.

Although my mom had told me about the book, today was the first time I actually saw it.

There were pictures from the late 1800's, men with what appears to be fur protruding from the sides their faces in odd patterns, women with blank stark stares.

"This guy had five wives, a widower five times" my mother said about a photo of a particularly unattractive man.

Ok, or a murder.

"Maybe they died to get away from him," I suggested.

Then there were the letters, most of which were from my Great Great Grandfather, Henry Milner and then after his untimely death my Great Great Grandmother, Jessie Milner.

A year after Henry died Jessie followed resulting in my Great Grandmother and her five siblings, including an 18 month old, becoming orphaned.

On the prompting of my Henry's parents the family moved away from the homestead in Nebraska to try and farm in Kansas.

Apparently, it didn't go so well.

Henry's letters are all business, the cost of seed, a calf he had to sell for $3.00.

At some point the family decided to move back to Nebraska, it was on this trip Henry became ill and died.

"Dear Mother and Family-It is with grief that I write you the sad news of Henry's death. Oh my God, how can I ever live through this trouble..." she writes.

And it only gets worse.

She couldn't afford to feed her horses so she allowed a man to work them for food.

"I will have to take my horses away from that man...I will live on corn bread and water before I will let anyone work my horses to death."

Great.

Her husband died leaving with with 6 children "alone among strangers". In turn, she died leaving her six children orphaned among those same strangers, including Bessie the mother of my maternal Grandfather.

Bessie married my Great Grandfather, Bert Adams, a difficult and harsh man, and had three sons she adored.

Her oldest Paul was killed in World War II, and my Grandfather, Dwight, died of renal failure at age 44, so life didn't really get any easier for Grandma Bessie.

Yet she wasn't angry or bitter, she was kind and hopeful, at least that is the way I remember her.

I have vivid memory of my Great Grandmother and stories of her childhood on the Kansas Prairie.

She died in 1983 at the age of 96.

At the end of the book was a photograph of my Grandparents, Dwight and Margaret, engaged in a passionate kiss. He is holding her tight against his body, his lips planted squarely on her mouth, her hand on his face.

"They were so in love. They loved each other that way until the day he died," my mother said.

A fantastic love is what it was.

I put it on my desk so I can see it everyday.

Sometime life hands you something and it makes you rethink who you are- the two people in the romantic embrace are my Grandparents- of this I am heir.

My Gym

On Thursday afternoons between 3:30-4:30 we take the girls to a class My Gym.

My Gym is essentially an indoor playground. At the beginning of the class we sit in a circle and do what I think is intended to be exercises, buts its really just moving your arms around.

Gioconda typically takes Sadie, who is absolutely compliant, and I typically take Camille who is absolutely non-compliant.

There are usually about eight kids in the class, and of those eight I would have to say that Camille is not the only kid who doesn't want to participate, but she is the most obvious about it.

The circle time at the beginning is the worse time of My Gym for me.

I actually understand it, there are a ton of really cool things to climb on - who really wants to find your nose when you could be on a slide.

So after about 14 attempts of walking away from the excise circle I finally allow it on the 15th attempt, and thus giving in to her bad behavior.

A few weeks back Gioconda took Camille and I took Sadie.

Disappointingly Sadie decided on this particular day she didn't want to participate in the exercise circle, more disappointingly it was on this particular day Camille decided she did want to participate.

This gave the idea to certain people that perhaps it was not the bad behavior on the part of the baby, but an inability to control the baby on the part of the Mommy.

Guilty confession- its true. I don't come close to controlling the girls like Gioconda does. They won't even eat for me.

"You goof around all the time with them so they don't take you seriously," Gioconda says.

She's right, and although I know this is a failure of my parenting, it hasn't mattered to me, at least not yet.

"So you get to be the fun parent, and I have to be the heavy," Gioconda said.

Exactly.

Diapers

Tonight while lifting Camille up to smell her butt, it occurred to me...how did this happen?

With twins when you smell something- and the very strange part of this is that I can decipher actual poop from just gas-you can't be sure which butt needs attention.

I remember watching my sister sniff the hind end of her first baby.

"You're smelling his ass?" I asked.

"It's better than sticking your finger in it," she replied.

Apparently those were the two options, stick your nose in it, or put your hand in it.

In theory I thought it would be better to risk it on my hand, than to risk taking a big whiff of baby shit.

In practice I've found my sister was right. The smell test is easier, although I've found that most of the time if there is a suspicion of poop- there is poop.

Last summer we went to dinner with a friend who has a daughter, Sophia, who is just a month younger than the girls. Sophia's diaper needed changing and although forewarned it could be bad, I volunteered to do the task.

I mean, at the time I had changed hundreds of diapers, it was just another one of the many I thought.

I thought wrong. I am literally still haunted by it, I dry heaved for over a week. Of the disgusting moments in my life, this was in the top five.

Later Gioconda told me she couldn't believe I was willing to do it.

"You should never volunteer to change the diaper of a baby that is not yours," she said.

It's one of those things I wish she would have revealed to me earlier.

Hey Nanny Nanny

I once worked with a woman who while in Thailand saw a show in which a woman shot a dart from her vag and popped a balloon. She also shot ping pong balls out of this same location making the balls bounce into a cup.

So there is some velocity going on.

Although I find nothing remotely sexually interesting about this particular form of entertainment I have actually considered traveling to Thailand for the mere purpose of seeing this spectacle.

Are there family's who do this -like the the flying Wallendas. Is it passed down from one generation to another?

Although I can't imagine any mother wanting to her daughter to follow this particular path, how else could anyone ever discover this as a talent? I understand there are ways to strengthen this part of the anatomy, however, I'm not sure I could throw a dart with my arm hard enough to break a balloon.

I mean this seems to be a unique ability-maybe its just one women who can do it, one woman with a super strong hey nanny...

Felony Boring

Considering what to blog about this morning I contemplated my current situation- what am I doing or what have I done that would be interesting to read about.

I gaze to my left and see the ball pit which clearly needs to be pumped up with more air, I look out the window and contemplate the statical probability that all of the baby rabbits are female which would eliminate the potential rabbit population explosion I have been obsessing about.

Then there are my obsessions, which appear to be also taking a turn toward Dull Ville USA.

The pool cover is off the track and won't open, and the guy who was supposed to come fix it from the pool cover company didn't show up yesterday and I can't get ahold of anyone...and so I start thinking no body is working because no body is getting paid- so if they are out of business who the fuck is going to fix the pool cover.

So, the ball pit, the rabbits and the pool cover, that about sums up my Saturday morning.

On reflection it was in 2005 I began my journey into the depths of becoming uninteresting.

I'm not saying people didn't find me boring prior to 2005, I am saying it was around this time I began to find myself uninteresting. I would be talking and then just zone out because I didn't even care what I was talking about. I wasn't able to pay attention to myself.

Gioconda and I once had dinner with a couple who talked about their appliances all night. Perhaps if I were in the market for a dishwasher this would have held my interest, but I wasn't. By the end of the evening I was ready to tear off my own head and throw it.

A few weeks back we were invited to a birthday dinner with a few other couples, most of whom we didn't know. I had a couple of drinks which is always dangerous for me as then I become chatty.

Sometimes when I have had a few belts I've been insensitive, like the time I asked our good friend if he could imagine sustaining a head injury as a result of a violent attack with a hammer - and he HAD- in fact it almost took his life- yet somehow I was able to forget this fact after one too many cosmos.

So now I am just trying to not be the uninteresting insensitive one.

Even my thoughts are unexciting, when I was in the twenties my thoughts were so much more fun, yesterday I thought about how much more stuff I could fit into the attic.

"You did well, I was afraid you would talk too much about the girls," Gioconda said on the way home.

Since Gioconda is brutally honest I know I will get an objective review.

"Do you think its boring when I talk about the girls, " I asked.

"Yes," she answered without a moments hesitation.

'Wow, that's my main rap right now."

Gioconda just shrugged.

It was a sock to the gut, the only thing I had going....

A little trip

Gioconda has a job in San Jose and since she hasn't been anywhere for a while she decided to visit her son Julien in Berkeley and make a weekend of it.

She is certainly more housebound than I am, and so I was glad she made the decision to go.

It's hard for her to leave the kids, but sometimes a change of scenery is required.

This is the first time I have been alone the girls since they have been so mobile. I suspect they may be using of some sort of performance enhancer as they have become bigger and lighting quick in the matter of weeks, and lets not forget I'm old and slow, so its a lot-for really anyone.

Typically my "change of scenery" is the craps tables at Cesar's, and I'm sort of feeling that pull lately, so strategically it was a good move on my part to be supportive of this little trip.

There is so much that has to be done at my house every single day, a 24 hour reprieve is literally a vacation.

Two pooping toddlers, pooping dogs, cats, birds, rabbits...pig- who are BIG poopers..I bet I clean up ten thousand tons of shit each day....and then what makes the poop...feeding all these mammals ( and birds).

I'll bet if you lined up all the turds that occur at 2107 in any particular day it would reach completely around the world at least once, if you stacked each turd on top of each other it would be a turd ladder to the sun.

Last April my Grandmother died which required me to travel to Iowa for the funeral service, the girls were only eight weeks at the time. Although I did have a bit of guilt about leaving Gioconda with new born twins, with the uninterrupted sleep I felt utterly refreshed and re energized by the time of the service.

Those 72 hours I spent away from home were the most relaxing of my life.

It's not that I don't love my family and enjoy my pets, and I did miss my daughters during that blissful 72 hour period, yet at that point in time I felt as though I hadn't had a decent nights sleep in over three months. I knew Gioconda felt the same way, but she coped with it better.

Now, I feel like I haven't had a decent nights sleep since April of 2009.

Gioconda has been sleep deprived for years now. When I first met her she would fall asleep if she was sitting still for more than 10 minutes. Concerts, movies, a play, within the first few minutes she would be gone.

It seemed so strange to me at the time...how could someone ever be THAT tired...and then I found myself happy to be leaving town to attend a funeral.

Natural Torture Birth

Today I watched a television show in which a woman gave "natural" childbirth.

It looked, really painful, but I say if you are stupid enough to choose to have a baby without pain relief of some sort you are deserving of the torture.

Granted, I hate any type of physical or emotional pain and will do almost anything to avoid either, thus I am certainly not the arbiter of those events in life which are painful- as I am completely repelled by the mere concept of discomfort.

None of my shirts or underwear have tags as I find the feeling of a tag on my back intolerable.

I only own sensible shoes. Shoes are intricate to my comfort. Protection of my feet against any potential injury is nothing short of a absolute requirement.

Gioconda has told me she understands the desire to experience a natural child birth. Really?

I think you have to be bat shit crazy to even attempt to push a bowling bowl through that particular opening in the first place. I can't understand why anyone ever agrees to have a baby even with an epidural.

Luckily for me, my mother and Gioconda didn't feel this way, but if I had to HAVE my babies it would never have happened. I love them more than anything in the world and still there is no possible way I could have endured an hour of pregnancy.

I don't think anything should be taken out or put into my body without an adequate amount of pain killers, and maybe even a margarita chaser.

Sometimes I will take a prophylactic Advil in the morning just to nip any potential head aches in the bud.

1890

I once dated this woman who belonged to this group of people who enjoyed camping as if it was 1890.

1890? Really?

1890 was the Harrison administration, I mean how many people even know a dude named Harrison was ever the president? Putting aside the mistreatment of blacks, women and children during this period it was in this year that the state of Mississippi enacted the first of many limitations of civil rights for African Americans....

It made me hate her.

I have never understood the longing and/or desire to go back in time. The only reason I would ever entertain this concept would be to somehow gain a gambling advantage, which I actually have considered and would be amazing, but aside from that - and becoming business partners with a young Bill Gates- I have no interest in the past.

It seems to be frequent in the conservative moment to look back longingly on the past when things were simpler- you know before seat belts and microwaves. The good ole days of segregation and closets.

But 1890- before Penicillin- is anything before Penicillin really worth revisiting?

I actually feel this way about life in its entirety.

I see no real need for excessive memory, I like to retain the general concept but eliminate the details.

Thus, my memories go like this- we went to Chinese food with Gioconda's sister and niece...whereas others may remember what they actually ate, how they liked it -the color of the shirt they wore, the time of day.

I just pretty much just keep it who we went with and where we went, which may be why I frequently ask myself the same question while eating out- "why did I order this- I hated it last time...".

It doesn't always serve me- this selective memory- somewhere along the way I must have had some good memories- I just can't easily pull those up, it would seem as though I need to be more selective in my purges.

What I do remember is that I really detest camping, even with a tent and a cot, and antibiotic lotion.