Happy Anniversary!

Here is an e-mail I sent out earlier this evening.... if you attended our wedding and did not get it, apologies... many of my e-mail addresses are outdated!

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Three years ago today, June 28th, 2003, all of us were finishing celebrating my wedding day. To mark the occaision, Linda and I busted out the ol' wedding video and snuggled together with a box of berger cookies and a tall glass of milk.

Everyone on this sizeable, diverse distribution has something in common with each other: All of you were part of our wedding day.

The most powerful thing one can do with happiness and success is share it with as many people as possible. Our wedding day was one of the happiest and most successful days of our lives and those feelings were more vibrant because we were able to share them with you.

Linda and I certainly have our own anniversary. But, every time we watch our video, and see you in it -- dancing, partying, smiling or crying, we remember that part of our joy was in being surrounded by family and friends. And, in that way, it is your anniversary too.

So... Happy Anniversary! Three years ago today we all came together and celebrated.... very young to very old. That doesn't happen nearly enough as it should.

Thank you all; we love you all.

-Ed and Linda (and Lentilina!)

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Who poured me all those shots before the wedding??


Wow. Just... wow.


My life for the past 3 years

Maudlin

We have been doing more industrial-strength cleaning to prepare Lentilina's room. Going through some of the piles of pictures, I found the following photograph:



Who are these young people? It is mind-boggling that this picture was taken five years ago. I can only imagine what these pictures will look like when they have been taken twenty years ago, or forty years ago. Clearly I am staying the same ol' Ed and these inkjet spectres are youthening before my eyes.

This past weekend we were in OC, and Saturday night I took a bottle of port, my i-pod (wrapped in a zip-lok bag), and my maudlin self into the hot tub for a long and private soak. To what end? Pondering these life changes that seem intent on happening to me.

Without question I will always be young at heart -- or at the very least I will complete my insanity (past a certain age I think those two things are intertwined). But I will no longer be young of body.

Impending fatherhood has taught me that however young I am at heart, my childhood is over. Half of the people I see on the boardwalk look like they should be in Kindergarden. My first time driving down Ocean Boulevard was in a convertible corvette at senior week cruisin' for chicks. Last weekend, I took the minivan to the local CVS to pick up some milk and snack mix.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm quite happy with where I am in life. And I wouldn't trade my existence for half of those that I see. But several life phases have been put behind me and it would be improper to not take a moment and observe their passing. Why? I sometimes think that it is a myth that we live single lives. I feel quite confident in the fact that, so far, I have led several lives. When I look back on the person I was as a child, a teenager, a college student, and beyond I see such different, distinct people.

When I look at this picture above, scant five years my junior, I wonder who that person is. Surely, it is not me and, were I to be convinced that it was, I would wonder if I were, instead, some clone of this other person. Regardless, that person is one that I will not again see in my mirror, and that single thought most definitely gives me pause. And then pause further to realize that the image I do see in my mirror will be equally foreign to some other version of me some finite years hence.

And, of course, the pause is momentary, and Linda's office, for so long a nursery only to our youthful archives continues its rehabilitation. And I do, soon after, remember that unless I unpause and start living, my future self will have nothing to reflect upon after those finite years hence.

So, if you will excuse us, Linda and I have yet some rosebuds to gather. 8)

-Ed

A Lentilina By Any Other Name

When Linda and I first discovered we were healthily pregnant the sonogram technician described our budding baby girl as approximating the size of a lentil bean. I'm sure it was the 400th time she had made that comparison that day. Linda and I immediately code-named our baby "Project Lentil". I'm sure it was the 400th time that week that a set of new parents-to-be had applied such a moniker.

What I think may differentiate ourselves from these other parents in the manner in which this nickname has stuck over the months. When we found out that we were having a baby girl, she was quickly renamed "Lentilina". I think it is a fine name. Very unique, and one which may spur a whole new category of legume-inspired labels. Linda, however, is decidedly anti-vegetable when naming our children.

Unfortunately, this nickname, though transient, has made us feel we have already named our child. With three months to go we have not named our child! What is an expecting parent to do? Go out and buy The Big Book of 100,000 Baby Names. We went through them, highlighting promising possibilities, until we had whittled this monstrous list down to a promising 28. It was arduous bathroom-reading work (and I promise not to relate to my baby the circumstances under which her name was first considered).

But... 28... that is still a fairly large number! Fortunately, this book of 100,000 names had a sheet for rating a name. We took it, photocopied it, and got to work:

Each name was rated in a variety of categories: spellability, pronouncability, meaning, impression, nicknames, fit with last name, uniqueness, popularity, look of initials, gender clarity, etc... a veritable smorgasbord for the anally retentive and obsessive compulsive. I was in child-naming heaven.

One thing I found out quickly was how important it was to not give your child a name with nicknames easily mangled on the playground. Howso? Some examples, if you will:

Samantha sounds like a very pretty name, with good connotation and easy spellability. But what if our little girl is not very pretty? Would her playground nickname be mantha? For some reason, this gives me the impression of some raw-meat eating beast, not a beautiful little girl.

Vanessa! A good name in most accounts. But what if our little girl has a weight problem? Do we really want her to be known as van through her educational career? You know this would, eventually, morph to truck

Similarly, would dear, sweet, morbidly obese Isabella be happy to be nicknamed portabello during these formitive years?

And short Sarah has almost no nickname at all. At 11pm last night all we could muster was ah which, when spoken correctly, is horribly insulting.

And thus four names were removed from consideration partly to protect our daughter from playground bullies and partly to protect our daughter from me who, having thought of these names, would no doubt use them despite my best efforts to the contrary.

It is, however, my fervent wish that Lentilina befriends a Vanessa, an Isabella, a Samantha, and a Sarah....

Lentilina Hey dad, can Sam, Vanessa, Isi, and Sarah come over?
Ed: Well, before Mantha comes over again let me go to the store and pick up some red meat. And hide the cats this time, we almost lost Chester.
Lentilina Daddy!
Ed: And you tell Truck and Portabello to stop leaving chew dents in the cutlery.
Lentilina Daddy!!
Ed: Ok. fine. But I'm not picking up "uuhh", she needs to get dropped off.
Lentilina Daddy!!!

-Ed

ps. My deepest apologies to all overweight children. I was no rail growing up* either.




*and by "growing up" I mean until I was 30 years old.

Those People

Linda and I have become... those people.

Last week we attended an "Infant CPR" class at GBMC. The goal of this class was to learn how to save your infants life in a variety of horrible situations. It is serious stuff, and we take it seriously. This is a skill we very much wanted to learn.

It is not our fault if the material was presented in such a ridiculous way that it unleashed our inner, sinister senses of humor. I mean... one of the videos showed a mother putting her baby in a walking toy on wheels, on the edge of a pool, and then going to the bathroom.

I'm already afraid that if I leave Linda on the edge of a pool unattended she will drown. I could only imagine how I would feel about Lentilina. What concoction of drugs cause someone to do this? On relating this to my mother she said, simply, she'd rather pee herself than do that. I believe her.

Equally humorous, but recognizedly important, was the CPR infant we received...



Our Infant CPR Manikin


It is a rubber and plastic doll with a plastic bag over its nose and mouth that extends down the throat into the stomach to simulate lungs. How do I know this? While the video was being shown, I took my baby apart to see how it works... you unpop some buttons, undo a zipper, and then you can see how the baby is constructed (actually, that sequence of events was exactly how our baby was constructed, but that is a different story). Under frowns from the teacher/nurse, I reassembled my baby. No harm.. no foul.

After the video of the mother who tied weights to her baby and threw him into the pool on her way to the grocery store we paused and were asked to demonstrate, one at a time, our CPR skills.

What is the proper order of infant CPR?

Step 1: Try and rouse the baby. You do this by hitting the baby, or hiring a British au pair.

Step 2: Listen for breathing if the baby cannot be woken.

Step 3: Scream aloud for someone to call 911.

Steps 4-7: Do CPR.

So, the nurse came up to me and asked me to demonstrate this technique:

Nurse: Ok, now, what is the first thing that you do?
Ed:I scream for someone to call the police.
Nurse: No, first you try and rouse the baby. Then if there is a problem, you dial 911 not the police.
Ed: Have you seen my baby? Someone shoved a plastic bag down her throat. The first thing I am doing is calling the police to try and find the jerk who shoved a plastic bag down my baby's throat. Oh God.. there's a plastic bag dowen my baby's throat! Can we just pull it out? Who would do this to my baby?
pause pause pause.... crickets.....
Ed: The first thing I do is try to rouse the baby. Then I listen for breath. There is none, so I ask Linda to call 911 and start to perform CPR.

After I demonstrated my CPR technique, the baby was handed to Linda, who had to reiterate it:

Nurse: Ok, now, what is the first thing that you do?
Linda:I try to rouse the baby. The baby is not responding.
Nurse: Good. Now what?
Linda:I call for someone to dial 911.
Nurse: Go ahead...
Linda: Ed! Call 911!
Ed: Why?
Linda Our baby isn't breathing!
Ed: What? That's the second time in 2 minutes. What the hell is wrong with our baby?

Oh yeah.. we are those people

-Ed

And Goodwill To All

This weekend, Linda and I took several bags of stuff to goodwill. (Are you getting the impression that this weekend was a very full weeked? You should! It was...)

There was an enormous line at goodwill and the car in front of us was packed with stuff. While we were waiting "on deck" for this car to unleash its dontation Linda noted, with some surprise, that many of the things being unloaded were baby items.

In fact, many of the things be unloaded were currently on our baby registry! As each thing was taken from the back of this benefactor's car Linda ticked it off from "babies R' Us".... the Graco swing.... the Diaper Champ.... the stairway gate.... even certain toys. At some point, Linda looked at me and said, simply... "Go... get these things for me."

Getting out of the car, I approached this jolly old elf and explained to him my wife's condition, our impending parenthood, and the strange similarity between his junk and our need. I listened patiently as he talked about his two year old... his yard sale... his trip up to the goodwill store. I reiterated my wife's condition, our impending parenthood, and the strange similarity between his junk and our need.

He nodded, took his receipt, and drove off. Just like that, the stuff had been donated... I felt our material victory slip through my fingers. I had failed in my attempts for this Holy Grail. I got back in the car and said, simply... he donated them. We sighed, pulled our car up, and I started unloading.

Linda, however, had other plans. She walked up to the Goodwill guy and said... "Can we just have these items?" and the guy said... "yeah.. I don't care" So she began hunting through the mounds of child items piled by the door. Every time I took something out of the car, she put something in.

In went the Graco swing... in went the diaper champ.. in went the big plastic toy mailbox... the stair gate

We came home with more items than we left with. I will now be taking the next 30 days to sanitize and bleach everything, but we have also been able to remove several things from our gift registry.

So, with all apologies to Mr. White, one man's poison is another man's meat.

-Ed

Sausage Wars

My friend Brian and I have been playing a game of "hide the sausage" for several years now.

Having typed that I recognize, almost immediately, the need to quantify the above. For all of you who have stumbled upon this blog through google searches for "hide the sausage" I wish you well in your searching endeavors but need to firmly assert that your quest for meaty hijinks has not found fulfillment in this place.

Now, on with the story...

Quite some time ago Linda and I were preparing to dispose of a shrink-wrapped smoked sausage made from a company such as Pepperidge Farms or Hillside farms or any one of a number of farms that do that sort of thing. Brian, in a moment that I am sure he has come to rue, noted how funny it would be to serruptitiously hide this pork product in each others houses, much like some friends of his do at their workplace, with a similar smoked meat that appears in cubcilces at random.

It was, then, as they say, "on".

And so one day I slipped my sausage into Brian's abode. Weeks later, he left it hidden behind a picture on my mantle. Back and forth went this sausage until I was finally left holding the thing wondering what could next be done with this thing.

Did I mention that there was a party at Brian's house this weekend? Did I mention that my mother was staying with us this weekend and attended the party? (it was a family friendly party, with a wide age range from 9 months to what may have been 999 months).

Brian has become adept at searching me for sausage when I go to his house. However, he never suspected my mother who smuggled the byproduct in with her purse and, before leaving, hid it with aplomb.

So, have I completely given up the ghost? Was this sortee in vain given my propensity to blab about it?

Absolutely.

But on the off chance that Brian reads this blog, and realizes that my mother smuggled the dreaded sausage into his house and hid it where she did is just too much for my extroverted self to contain. So, to Brian, happy sausage hunting and forgive us if your parents are never allowed inside my home.

-Ed

ps. As one friend put it, this was an excellent example of "reverse frooking".

Making Ones House a Home

This past weekend we had my mother as a house guest. She is always a welcomed visitor and she has a good time when she is here. And since I have been chastized by her for my recent lack of blogging I have forgone sleep and chosen, at one o'clock in this am, to commit some memories from the weekend to electronic posterity.

There were four distinct and memorable things that happened to me over this weekend.

We make our houses

For some time on this blog I had pondered the state of clutter that is our house. Do we make the clutter? Is an unkempt house the sign of a cluttered soul? What kind of people are we that we have boxes of minutae stuffed under our tables?

Answer? Linda and I woke up early on Saturday morning and make pancakes, sausage, toasted bagels and juice for mom. As we always do we were also enjoying some morning banter, some funny stories, and planning out our day together. At some point, mom had woken up and came downstairs with, almost, tears welling in her eyes.

Mid-pancake flip I wondered what had happened... had she stubbed a toe? Was there a cat problem? Did the guest bathroom toilet explode? (Don't get me started on the guest bathroom toilet). Quite simply she said:

You have no idea how nice it is to wake up to the smell of such good food and the sound of your laughter. It fills my heart to hear you interact.

Thank you, mom. Without question, clutter and all, we have a happy home and we do make sure that we stop -- often -- and smell the roses. Cleanliness is what makes a good house. Love, chatter, and a little detritus is what much a good home. I vastly prefer living in a home to living in a house. After all... What point is comfort if we never interrupt our immediacy and enjoy it?

-Ed

As an aside, I was trying out a new pancake mix and used too much. The resulting pancake-zillas were nearly an inch thick. Good. Delicious even with pure maple syrup. But these things were meals in and of themselves.

Hail Caesar

I just learned that a friend of mine has a friend named Caeser. How incredibly cool is that? I know Johns and Mikes and Brians and Joes.... but... a Caesar now that's a name with some power behind it.

Watch out, I've deciced that I need to know someone named Caesar and the quickest way to accomplish that goal is to simply rename one of my existing friends "Caesar". Alternatively, if your name is Caesar, please contact me and we can become fast friends.

-Ed

Cubby

Linda: Ed, I'd like to go out and purchase a small shoe rack for $20 to hold my shoes.
Ed:Maybe I could just build something for you.
Linda: Well, ok, but how long would it take to make?
Ed:Oh... maybe just a weekend or two...

Two months later....

Hey... if the entire earth was created in 7 days then I could build a piece of furniture in a weekend or two...

The stain doesn't show up too well with the bright flash but, without further ado...







-Ed