Tidings of comfort and joy

Happy holidays, everyone! Just had to take time away from our seasonal celebrations to share two quick anecdotes:

1) Being that Ann's family is Jewish, we went to the in-laws' house last weekend for Hanukkah... lunch, to gorge ourselves on latkes and that most Judaic of foods, meatloaf. (Which was delicious, by the way.) Ann's parents also gave us our gifts, and Molly's was a kind of "My First Hanukkah" set for kids. Darn thing is pretty in depth, with a menorah complete with wooden candles and even detachable wooden flames so you can "light" them, as well as a pan and wooden latkes. It's sort of a bizarre hybrid of a child's cooking set and Hebrew school, but whatever, it's pretty cool. Also included with the set were 6 pieces of gelt and a dreidel, so that very night Ann decided to educate this ignorant gentile on the ways of the Jew through an epic dreidel smackdown the likes of which the world has never seen. Things got pretty heated, to be honest; I don't think gangbangers throwing dice in South Central are as aggressive as Ann was when her non-Jewish husband started winning. All I'll say is this: you haven't lived until you've heard the mother of your child yelling "Gimel, mother[bleep]er!"

2) On Christmas Day we fed Molly and then brought her over to the Christmas tree, where I helped her open her present (several Dr. Seuss books and The 12 Days of Christmas in New Jersey... keeping it real, Garden State) while Ann snapped plenty of pictures. What neither of us realized until Ann started uploading the photos to our computer is that my choice of attire would require a little skillful PhotoShopping. Let me explain: back in college a friend of mine went home to India over winter break, and when she returned she brought Christmas presents for a few of her closer friends. I received a t-shirt with a picture of an Arabian-style palace and the words "Via Agra (Man's greatest erection for a woman)." Juvenile, for sure, and not really acceptable for me to wear in public, but it's super comfy and I sleep in it all the time, to the point where I barely remember what it says anymore. However... not necessarily the shirt you want immortalized in cherished family photos that your daughter may well be looking at 5 or 6 years down the line. There are certain questions you just don't want to have to answer unless absolutely necessary, y'know?

A perfectly cromulent word

As an addendum to my last post, I feel obligated to note that a friend of Ann's read it and emailed me to say that she couldn't understand why anyone wouldn't know all three of those words/phrases. She did admit, however, to not knowing whether that was the result of growing up in the same county as Ann, attending the same college, or just hanging around Ann long enough to have absorbed them through osmosis and become subconsciously (though quite erroneously) convinced that they are, in fact, real sayings. Personally my money's on the latter, but it's anyone's guess. Either way, I thank her for embiggening my previous post with her contribution.

On Beyond Zebra

One of the things I love most about my wife is the fact that she makes up new words. Much like Italian director Sergio Leone, who named one of his movies "Duck, You Sucker!" because he somehow got it in his head that this was a common phrase in English and wouldn't be told otherwise; much like this, Ann not only invents words and phrases, but also has learned how to convince herself that they've always existed and you're the weirdo for not knowing them. A small sampling, just to give you an idea of what we're dealing with here:

-"Housing." That's as a verb, not a noun, and it has nothing to do with where you live. To house one's food means to consume it very quickly, as in "Wow, you totally housed that taco!" I have no idea if it's meant to imply that you quickly made a home for the food in your stomach or what.

-"Rammy." To be rammy is to be restless, not satisfied with what you're doing. If we're sitting on the couch watching TV and I keep suggesting that maybe we should go out and run some errands or take a walk, I'm being rammy. I've often wondered if it's a bastardized form of rambunctious, but if Ann knows she isn't telling.

-Then there's my personal favorite. If you asked "What do you want to do for dinner?" and I replied "Let's just pick something up," your reaction would be "Okay, he's saying we should grab a pizza or some Chinese food on the way home, bring it back to the house, and eat it." And that's why it never would have worked between us, baby, because I hate Chinese food. You know that. Nonetheless, that's what any normal person would think, right? Nope. Uh-uh. Because if your wife is Ann and she says "Let's pick up dinner," what she means is let's just eat whatever leftovers or ready-made food we have lying around the house rather than cooking a big main course. The "pick up" dinner is a thing unto chaos, a casual meal wherein one eats whenever and whatever he wants, independent of what or when the other person is eating.

So where did this stuff come from? I honestly have no idea. I know it's not a regional thing, because Ann and I grew up within 30 miles of each other. So unless these are language tropes commonly employed at Penn State, I have no choice but to conclude that she just made them up herself. In which case, major props for the creativity, but whenever Molly starts talking, you'd best believe I'm going to be keeping an ear open for any sign of new words. I'm already the only male in the household, I don't need them developing their own language too.

Potty humor

Hey, everyone. Apologies for the lack of recent updates... beyond Molly keeping us busy, I've been under the weather and exams are coming up next week. More updates to come in the near future, but in the meantime, I thought last night merited a quick mention. Ann and I decided Molly could stand to be cleaned, so Ann got in the tub to administer said bath while I undressed the squirming little demon. Off came the sleeper, off came the diaper, I brought her over to the tub and lifted her up... and that's when I felt the warmth. Yep, our darling little girl had decided to mark her territory on my arm approximately two seconds before entering a place where no one would have even noticed if she peed. Awesome.

Naturally, Ann couldn't stop laughing. Once I passed Molly off to her and cleaned off my arm (and the floor, and the edge of the toilet), we got down to the business of cleaning her royal urinator. Molly actually doesn't mind the warm water as long as we cover her with a washcloth to keep her warm (and also, I hope for my sanity in, say, sixteen years, for modesty's sake), so everything was going fine. Fine, that is, until... yeah. Need I say more? Let's leave it at the fact that suddenly the tables were turned and I was the one laughing uproariously while Ann cried out in disgust. And no, it wasn't pee.

Who says there's no such thing as karma?

Back to school

My high school reunion is taking place this week, the day after Thanksgiving. I know the standard thing to say is that I can't believe it's been 10 years, but actually, high school does feel like a LONG time ago. Now college, that I can't believe was 6 years ago, but then again I enjoyed college a lot more than high school too. Also, had more friends. Also, made jokes and drank more. [Note to self: investigate possible drinking/jokes/friends/enjoyment correlation. Also, check Nobel committee deadline.]

But anyway, I don't really know what to expect going into it. It's a cash bar, so right away we're starting off at a deficit. Plus, to make a personal confession, I was a bit of a nerd in high school. No, no, I know, but suspend your disbelief. Not at all what you'd expect to hear from a 28-year-old who blogs about comics and bad movies, of course, but the world is a strange place sometimes. To give my alma mater credit, there wasn't a ton of bullying or ostracization of smart kids, possibly because it was an academically competitive school where the cool kids were the smart kids, and our football team blew. Nonetheless, there were still nerds, and my specific dilemma was always that most of my friends were nerds, but I spent most of my non-school time doing sports. An outgoing person would have used that unique situation to become Ferris Bueller, but sadly I, sir, am no Ferris Bueller. The long and the short of it all became that while there were plenty of people I was friendly with and who were friendly to me, I didn't stay in touch with any of them past graduation. With the exception of three old classmates I reconnected with last year and met for drinks once, I'm going into this sucker completely cold.

However! That does give me the advantage that I'm actually much the better for wear a decade later. Obviously I don't wish misfortune on anyone, and I hope everyone's just as attractive as they were back then, if not more so. But candidly speaking, you and I both know that some of these people reached their physical peak in 1998 and it's been all downhill from there. Some of the guys are going to be fatter, some of the girls won't be as cute as I remember. Whereas I can honestly say that I've gone nowhere but up since then, and before you roll your eyes at my shameless self-flattery, allow me to clarify: there was a lot of room for improvement. I cannot fault a single one of my female classmates for never having dragged me under the bleachers or gotten lightheaded upon seeing me at swim practice. Acne + no muscles + an inexplicable attachment to long hair was not a good combination. Plus I didn't learn until college that if you say jokes out loud instead of just in your head, other people can enjoy them too. Funny, that.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that in college I gained a few muscles, lost the acne, and finally (finally, finally, finally) in my senior year, ditched the quasi-mullet. THAT was a long time coming. So I'm looking forward to seeing what's what this weekend. I still don't expect any of the women to drag me into the coat closet, but at least now I can pretend that they're stopped from doing so solely by my wedding band and the incredibly cute pictures of my daughter that I'll be showing to everyone within reach. Other than that, we'll just hope no one remembers any embarrassing stories about me that I've managed to block out of my memory.

Oh, and my money's on "Glory Days" getting played within the first hour. Mark it down.

Isn't the preferred term "ladies of the night"?

Tonight, while talking about the baby weight she still has to lose, my wife complained that her bellybutton is "like a hooker's vagina."

God help me, that's why I love her.

The ways of the ninja

First, two quick things. Last night I come home from work, and because the little scream machine has been fraying Ann's nerves all day, I take her upstairs to change her so that Ann can mainline some tequila or something. Anyway, I get the squirt on the changing table and say "You remember Daddy, don't you? Are you happy to see Daddy?"... and no sooner have the words left my mouth when the little angel scrunches up her face and lets out a mighty fart. Yep, she's my daughter.

Second, later that night I was feeding her when she suddenly, with no prompting whatsoever, let loose with a literal geyser of spit-up. Oh, she's puked plenty of times and gotten our carpets and couch more than once, but in the past it's always been (relatively) constrained... a bit of distance, sure, but no world records. But I kid you not that for a brief moment, it looked like Old Faithful. A fountain of spew erupted out of this tiny creature, soaking my shirt and pants but also hitting Ann, who was sitting a good three feet away and probably thought she was in the safe zone. Nope, apparently my daughter is like those dolphin shows at Sea World: first three rows may get wet.

Anyway, I've always been a night owl. As a kid I used to stay up past my bedtime reading books by flashlight (yes, I was a nerd); these days it more often takes the form of playing video games or working on reviews far past the time more sensible people have gone to bed. It's not at all uncommon for 1:00 AM to find me just getting changed and taking out my contacts for bed. This has taught me to be fairly silent over the years, to avoid waking up parents, roommates, and Ann with my nocturnal ways. But I tell you, now that there's a baby in the house, it's an entirely different level of stealth. Creaking floors, bumping into furniture, squeaky hinges... these are my sworn enemies, to be avoided at all costs. I was always quiet, but forget about it- in the old days, the worst that could happen would be I'd awaken Ann crawling into bed and have a slightly grumpy wife to contend with. Now there's a gently slumbering infant ready to awaken and cry her head off at the slightest noise, and unlike Ann, she doesn't roll over and go back to sleep after complaining to me for a minute. It's like living in a library filled with land mines. But I'm learning quickly, and soon I'll be confident in my ability to infiltrate high level government buildings and art galleries with nary a sound. So if you've been looking for someone to enter the home of your rival crime lord and leave him a message while he sleeps, hey... got you covered.