24 Hour Potty People

WARNING: This post contains language and subject matter that may be unsuitable for adults or anyone with refined sensibilities. Just watch:



Yes, poop is the theme of the day. Why? Because as the parents of two toddlers, and the owner of a cat and a dog, it's perhaps the defining feature of our lives right now.


We'll begin with "The Tale of the Blue Bucket" in which Nancy established herself as the Goddess of Jobs Too Revolting For Me To Do. As the title suggests, the latest job involved an old plastic blue pail
with a cover that served as the depository for all the plastic bags of dog poop from Peanut's daily walks. Well, we sort of forgot about the pail at one point. And then it started to rain. And it rained, and it rained, and it rained. In the meantime, the cover of the little plastic blue pail had fallen off. It rained some more. And then we remembered the little plastic blue pail full of dog poop. "What are we going to do about that?" asked Nancy. "I'll take care of it," was my non-committal reply. Finally, Nancy could stand the thought of it no longer. She went outside with a pair of latex gloves, a thick green garbage bag, and the hose.

When she finished the job she returned to the house, visibly shaken. "That was worse that cleaning the decomposed possum off the car port." And yet she ate lunch not long afterward.

I think her sturdy constitution comes -- at least in part -- from an early experience on her parents' dairy farm in Alaska. Apparently, she was riding her tricycle inside the barn where they housed the cows during the winter months when one of the back wheels caught the edge of the trough into which the cows' excrement flowed. Down she went in her little snowsuit: a little ray of sunshine in a small sea of shit. Luckily, her parents were in the barn at the time and fished her out. Her mother hosed her off and that was that.

I've had nothing so traumatic in my life, and so I am a little bit of a wimp when it comes to the dirty little realities of the human experience. But I soldier on.

Every couple of days, I go into the upstairs bathroom and begin the process of changing the bag in the diaper pail. It's a dirty job, one that requires me to breath through my mouth as I tie the opening of the old garbage bag up and replace it with a fresh one. I keep breathing through my mouth all the way down the stairs and out to the driveway where I deposit said bag into our nice new 90-something gallon Republic-issued trash can (complete with rain-proof cover).

I can't wait for the diaper days to be over and done with.

We're getting there. Thanks to a new comfy Dora the Explorer toddler toilet seat and a tasteful dish
filled with M&Ms (2 for pee, 4 for poop, 1 for the old college try), both Dave and Trin are well on their way to being diaper-free.

Of course, they are often diaper-free if left alone for more than a few seconds in the back yard. The new trend is for both kids to whip their clothes and diapers off and immediately pee on the plants. It's lovely. Really. Even better, on two occasions, Dave has come running into the house to tell us that Trin has pooped. Sure enough, on both occasions, Nancy and I were reduced to picking up after Trin in the same way that we might for Peanut.

Basically, we're living like animals at this point. Any hint of respectability is a mirage when dealing with toddlers.

And yet others seem to manage pretty well. We recently came upon a new (for us) band called Mates of State: a husband and wife combo with two small kids and a growing music career. Check out this video which features their kids (one in costume at the end, the other in utero it seems).



You can find out more about them at their fun blog: Band on the Diaper Run.

They remind me of my former grad school colleague, and all-around impressive guy, Jake Smith who, along with his very talented wife Freda (former drummer for the Blake Babies and Some Girls, among others), fronts Mysteries of Life, leads a successful academic life, and has raised two kids. How do they do it?

Beats the shit out of me.

Finally, I would be remiss were I not to include in a blog entry about poop, a clip of one of my heroes, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. Triumph's existence is made possible by the likes of the great George Carlin, whose passing has left the world without its most accurate bullshit detector. But here's Triumph sniffing out the excrement in the most poop-laden profession in the world: the professional spin doctor.

Enjoy!

Life With Father

The recent storms here in the midwest did a number on the trees in our neighborhood. Everywhere you turned there were large fallen branches, and there were even a few sizable trees that came down all together. One of these -- a big elm in a neighbor's backyard -- took out a power line that served all the houses on our side of the street. When the city trucks rolled through alley to clear the tree and restore the power, they cut down anything and everything in their way and dumped it in our backyards.

And so it was that I fired up my chainsaw yesterday to cut up the large branches in our yard as well as that of our neighbor, Robin.

It made me feel like a real man.

Of course, it did take me two days to get the damn thing started after it had been sitting dormant for at least 8 months in our shed. I followed the directions exactly, but to no avail. I was ready to take it to a repair shop (I'd even called to verify that they were open and could, indeed, fix my brand of chainsaw). But then I just decided, "To hell with the directions. I'm just going to keep pulling that cord until it starts or my arm falls off, whichever comes first." And wouldn't you know it, 10 pulls later and I was off and running. I have no idea about the cause of the initial recalcitrance or why it finally started.

What I haven't told you yet is that before calling the repair shop, I had seriously considered calling my father, freshly returned from a two-week trip to Scandinavia with Mom. But we had just talked the day before, and I imagined they were tired still. Plus, I reasoned that the possible solutions to the problem were not within my powers as a mechanic. So I decided to spare him the call.

The point is that I am 41 years-old and I still think to call my father first when something goes wrong or if I have a "what's causing this phenomenon" sort of question. And it doesn't really matter what the category -- automotive, electrical, mechanical, nuclear, land-based, or on the water -- the dude knows his stuff. Want to know how to change the oil in your car, bleed the brakes, repair a distributor? Call Dad. Want to know how to solder, why your pipes are leaking, how to re-wire your house? Call Dad. Want to know how turbines work, what kinds of gears are best suited for different types of jobs, the physics and mechanics of a pulley system? Call Dad. Want to know how to remodel the basement, pour a concrete foundation, build a brick patio, repair a hold in the wall, hang a door properly? Call Dad. How it works, why it works, what it's for? Call Dad. Do you need to know about torque? Trouble with sine and cosine? Got a question about why a cup plunged upside down in water does not fill up with water? You know where to go.

And it's not just handyman stuff. There's a depth to his knowledge that goes beyond mere physical ability or experiential knowledge. We're talking theory and history here. For example, do you know what a "Hemi" is? After seeing enough Dodge commercials to convince me that this was an important thing to have, Dad told me that this was simply a term for a Hemispherical Combustion Chamber and that it's neither new nor necessarily desirable, and why. He knows more about a range of subjects that interest him than I do about the thing I do for a living. And I have a Ph.D.

He's a master sailor, plays piano, knows how to smoke a pipe, and can paint, too. He grills a mean steak. And he can win a Pinewood Derby.

I have managed to get something, though. While cutting through branch after branch of fallen timber, and feeling so Totally Useful, one phrase kept going through my head: "It's good to be a little afraid of power tools." Wisdom to live by. Thanks, Dad, for the continued existence of all my digits. And while we're at it: thanks for the entrance to the staircase that can now handle a box spring; thanks for the new plumbing all through the house; thanks for the new wiring; thanks for the garbage disposal; thanks for the new bathroom floor upstairs; thanks for liking Nancy and the kids; thanks for coaching my baseball teams; thanks for hanging a basketball hoop in our driveway in Chula Vista; thanks for worrying about when and how I was getting home; thanks for having such a fondness for little things, like a good bottle of cola, or the "goop" that you put on your hamburgers; thanks for sticking up for Peanut when I threaten to take her tags off and leave the gate open; thanks for being interested in all sorts of things.

Thanks most of all for just being a damn fine example of a father.

On The Town

We had our first real adventure in babysitting last night. We've been meaning to try it out for a while now, but until our hand was forced we always found an excuse to stay home. Last night, however, was an exception. Nancy was awarded the Arts Educator of the Year award at the Bravo Awards, sponsored by Arts Illiana, the major community arts organization in the Wabash Valley. So we went.

We struggled over who should babysit. Fran would be at the ceremony, so she was out. Julio and Sandra were game, but Sandra's back was out and we didn't want to inflict our wild things on her in that condition. Students are, well, students. So we asked the great "Miss Lisa" from daycare and, to our eternal gratefulness, she agreed. Dave and Trin heart Miss Lisa in a big toddler, jump up and down, hug your leg, do a little dance kind of way. Plus, she's a childcare professional. How much better could we get? The kids were so excited to see her when she arrived at 6:00 that they had to show her everything in the house. They were eager to show her everything in their world outside of daycare: Peanut, Eddie, the porch, the playroom. And so we left them in the more than able hands of Miss Lisa and headed off to the awards ceremony. I wore a suit.

Nancy had attended several of these ceremonies in the past and they were all pretty much the same: dinner followed by the quick presentation of awards -- a brief encomium by the executive director, announce recipient, receive award, shake hands, sit down. This year, however, there was no dinner -- just hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar in the lobby of the art gallery. The award ceremony itself took place in the recital hall across from the gallery and all the award recipients had to sit on the stage. Worse still, they were expected to give a brief speech after being introduced and then getting the award. Poor Nancy; she hates public attention in general and public speaking even more. And they hadn't told her about this new devlopment, so she didn't have anything prepared. The good news is that she handled it all with the grace and charm that we've all come to expect from Nancy. Check it out for yourself (thank you Mike Kelsay and his Flip video camera!):



(That's me at the end making the Chad Lowe reference. Unlike Chad, though, I did not cry).

We promised Lisa we would be back by 9:00, and so we were. The kids were still up (we told Lisa not to worry about bedtime) and Very Excited to See Us. Apparently, they were well behaved, save for a bit of impromptu nudity in the backyard. Also, we apparently forgot to tell Lisa that we had a cat, so Eddie's sudden and swift entrance into the kitchen from the porch took her by surprise. We overpaid her and the kids kissed her goodnight. Trin was so tired by now that she simply sobbed all the way through her (very short) bath and the lotion-diaper-pajama process. She was asleep within seconds of putting her in bed. Even David went to bed relatively quickly.

But now it's one day later. It's 9:50 and Nancy is still trying to coax Trin to sleep. David went off early, but awoke at about 8:45, saw that it was light-ish out, and decided it was morning (a prospect about which he was none too happy). Nancy finally convinced him that he could go back to sleep. And now Trinity has decided that she must have Mommy tonight. Maybe it's the increased humidity that's keeping her up, or the bubble bath that may have made her oh-so-sensitive skin itchy.

Or maybe it's because she's been caught unwittingly in the glow of Nancy's greatness and radiant charm. I know it keeps me up at night. I'm just glad other people are starting to see it, too.

All About My Mother

Another Mother's Day is here and it's another year that I have failed to get a card. I always call, of course, and Mom says it's OK -- it's better to hear in person, etc. -- but, still. It's not that I haven't been thinking about getting a card for the last couple of weeks ("This is the year," I say) but then, like getting a haircut, it just doesn't happen quite in time. And then Sunday arrives...

So, thanks, Mom, for understanding that I'm forgetful and a bit of a procrastinator, for always treating me like what I had to say was important, for telling me I have a nice singing voice, for being a good storyteller, for always having treats of one kind or another on the counter, for not being overly concerned about things like watching television, for telling me to look words up in the dictionary, for having an excellent sense of humor, for being concerned instead of mad when I did something really wrong, for loving Nancy and Trinity and David even though I have a habit of not introducing you to future family members until the deal is done, for riding with me on the go-karts when I was too small to go alone, for letting me listen to all that loud music when I was a kid, for recognizing that the trumpet was not my instrument, for recognizing that the drums were, for singing "Happy Birthday" on the phone every year, for sandwiches in brown paper bags, for Easter baskets in semi-hidden places, for a trip across the country in a station wagon, for putting up with absolute goofiness, for being devout (and being understanding about the fact that I am not), for being consistent, for being a little goofy yourself, for liking a good stiff drink every now and then, for modeling moderation, for being complex, for being good, for being kind, and for being unconditionally devoted to your family.

There's a lot more things I could say, of course, but I have to save something for that card I'm going to get you next year.

Happy Mother's Day from the gang in Terre Haute: