First a Dog, Now a Baby: My Poop-Filled Life

January 7, 2012 by

I used to have a poop-free life.  Not completely poop-free, of course. I had to deal with my own poop.  Not a whole lot of fun there.  But at least it was only mine. One person’s pool.  Ahh, the good old days.

Then I got a dog, and that was the end of the poop-free life. I had to deal with poop pretty much every day. On a good day, it was a good poop: a poop on the grass, during our daily walks, while I was armed with a baggie. Or a poop on the wee-wee pad in my bathroom, which has become Kozy the Dog’s designated “inside poop zone.”  On a bad day, though, a bad poop: a poop, say, on the living room rug.  But good or bad, there was poop.  Every day.

Now I have a baby, and my life is nothing but poop. Bad poop. People warned me, but I never quite appreciated how babies are basically poop machines.  They’re amazing, these little tiny beautiful creatures, constantly pumping out an astounding flow of truly ghastly poop.

How do they do that? What kind of unholy alchemy is this? This transubstantiation of liquid into solid, or at least something that is partly solid.  You put in a little bit of harmless-looking formula, and you get back a noxious miasma of inhuman sludge.

People ask me what’s the biggest change now that I’ve moved to the suburbs.  That.  That’s the biggest change.

  • City = Poop Free
  • Suburbs = Poop Filled

Now, I know that I can’t blame it on the suburbs.  It’s really more correlation than causation.  I know that. But of the many things that I miss about living in the city, right at the top of what is a pretty long list is this: the loss of my poop-free life.

Filed Under: Best of, Having a Dog in the Suburbs, Humor, My Life in the Suburbs, Parenting in the Suburbs Tagged With: , ,

Advice for People Adopting a Baby: How NOT to Prepare for Your Home Study Interview

December 1, 2011 by

Now that we’re back in the states with our little boy, I can tell this story about the adoption process that I embargoed for reasons I’ll explain at the end.

So when you’re adopting a kid, you have to go through a whole screening process. They do criminal checks, take fingerprints, stuff like that. Makes sense, right?  Also, you have to complete a home study interview, where a social worker comes to your home for like three hours to ask you a bunch of questions about your childhood, your parenting philosophy, whether you’re ready to have a child, etc.

It’s not really an “interview” like a job interview. You already have the “referral” and are pretty far through the adoption process, so it’s really more like a final “red flag” check where the social worker just wants to make sure that you’re not living in filth, that you’re not raising baby-eating snakes, that you don’t have naked pictures of little boys adorning your walls, stuff like that. My guess is that the bar is pretty low — the social worker just wants to make sure that nothing jumps out that indicates that you’d put a child at risk.

I felt pretty confident.  We have a nice home, we’re nice people, we showed a commitment to raising a family by leaving the decadent urban Sodom and Gomorrah to come to the land of picket fences and play groups.  We’re model parents!

Of course, my wife is crazy.  So she treated the interview like it was a “make or break” moment for our adoption, as if we had to be absolutely PERFECT or they might take our baby away.  She was running around the house all week cleaning up and straightening out, basically scouring our condo to eliminate any potential sign that we’d be unsuitable parents.  Kozy the dog?  Groomed and cleaned.  Joe the husband?  Get a haircut!  Dying plant in the hallway?  Out you go!  No way we’re going to let the interviewer think that we can’t take care of a plant, or she might nix the adoption.  She was impossible to live with.

Later that week, we’re sitting down with this very nice woman answering some very predictable questions about us and our personal histories.  Essentially, you really only need to make a simple impression: I have no intention of beating my child.  Other than that, you pretty much can’t go wrong.

So what happens?  We get this question: what is your worst memory as a child? I go first, and I describe how I fell from a tree when I was about eight while I was picking apples with my father, and about how worried and upset he was. I thought it was a pretty good story, all about how much my father cared about me, worried about me, took good care of me, just like — hint! — I’ll take good care of this kid that you’re letting me adopt.

And then my wife starts answering the question, telling us about how her worst memory is about how she was fighting with her sister, and accidentally broke a closet door.  So far so good.  Then she explains how the bad part of the memory is that her mother spanked her.  Ummm, okay, but let’s try to stay away from that whole spanking thing, huh?  And THEN she goes on to say that, well, because she’d been so bad and disobeyed her mother, she probably DESERVED IT.

RED FLAG!  RED FLAG! RED FLAG!

Okay, it wasn’t that bad.  The social worker barely noticed.  It’s just that I was hyper-sensitive after watching my wife make our home a dying-plant-free-zone, telling me how important it was to make the right impression, now expressing the rather unorthodox opinion that you can’t blame parents who spank their kids because, you know, sometimes you JUST HAVE TO SMACK THAT KID AROUND A LITTLE TO KEEP HIM IN LINE!  It was hilarious. My guess is that if it was okay to say that, we probably could have kept the poor plants.

So my lesson for people adopting a child is simple: don’t do that.

P.S. My wife wouldn’t let me tell that story for the past four months until we were safely back in the states with our boy.  To the extent that someone in authority reads this blog, let me state very clearly that we would never, ever, under any circumstances hit a child. So please don’t take my kid away.

Filed Under: Humor, Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs, Parenting in the Suburbs Tagged With: ,

Participating in “Movember” Shows Me Why It’s a Really Bad Idea for Me to Grow a Mustache

November 30, 2011 by

 

 

 

 

 

I really hate cancer.  You probably do too.  So I was delighted to take part in the annual Movember fundraiser to fight prostate cancer, which promotes the cause by encouraging people to grow mustaches (hence, “MO-Vember”) to raise awareness and visibility and all that.

I have not been as involved this year, because most of November involved going to Taiwan to pick up the kid, and I didn’t want to show up there sporting a scary mustache.  I figure he should probably get to know me as I usually look.

So I got started on my mustache late, only around Thansgiving, and I have to say that it doesn’t…..well, it doesn’t look………good.  Some people look great in mustaches, like Keith Hernandez.  Other people, like me, look like someone who drives around in a white, windowless van.

Take a look, if you dare.  And if you want to contribute, go to this link.

 

Filed Under: Humor, Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: , ,

The Day I Met My Son

November 22, 2011 by

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It happened suddenly.  After years of waiting for our baby to be born, never knowing when our turn would finally come. And then, when it finally came, more months of waiting while all the paperwork was completed, torturous months where our only connection to the little boy who would be, already was, our son were the occasional pictures and short videos that we’d play over and over again. And then counting down the days while we took our last vacation in Hawaii, ultimately counting down the hours — 120 hours until we meet him, now 85, now 40, now 12 (tomorrow), now 3 (today!).

After all that waiting, it happened suddenly.

We arrived in Taiwan Sunday night, November 13, meeting up with my father-in-law, who lives right now in China and came to Taipei to meet his first grandson.  A pretty good deal for me, since now I had two Mandarin-speaking family members to help me get around in a country where I don’t speak the language.  Had dinner, tried to get some sleep, and in the morning piled into a car for the three hour drive south to where our son has been living with his foster mother for the past 10 months.

I was strangely calm.  I was expecting to be anxious, nervous about all the things that could go wrong. Maybe he would cry at the sight of us, something we’d been warned to expect. Maybe we’d suddenly realize that we had absolutely no idea what we’re doing when we actually got him back to the hotel and had to bathe him, clean him up, put him to bed.  But I wasn’t.  I was placid, relaxed, almost numb, just breathing in and out and trying to soak up the occasion.

But once we got to the town where he lived, things started to speed up as we went through a bunch of frustrating preliminaries. Go to the agency. Meet some people. Shake some hands. Accept congratulations. Fill out some more forms.  Then, for some reason, they take you out to a store to buy baby stuff.  We’d been told in our orientation meetings that this was the routine, and I guess it makes sense to do all that before you pick up the baby, but it seemed an unnecessary distraction.  I don’t need to go shopping. BRING ME MY BABY.

That’s when the movie started to really go in fast forward.  We finish shopping, and I’m expecting to go back to the car, put away our stuff, get in the car, and drive to wherever it is they are keeping my son.  Instead, we leave the store, walk down half a block, turn into a driveway, and there’s our car.  That’s the house.  We’re there.

We’re there.  This is where he lives.

What now?  I’m not ready. Totally not ready.  Months of waiting, YEARS of waiting, and it’s about to happen.  And I’m not ready.  I can see, out of the corner of my eye, a woman holding a baby about 30 feet from me, in the vestibule of his house.  That’s him. He’s right there. But I’m not ready yet. I have to savor the moment, put it in a box, store it away. And I need the camera!  We need pictures, we need to get the video.  So I don’t look at him. I look away, I focus on putting away the stuff, getting the camera. I turn to my wife. I ask her, “are you ready,” and she says yes, smiling, a nervous smile, a beautiful smile.

And so we turned to the house, and became parents.

 

Filed Under: Best of, My Life in the Suburbs, Parenting in the Suburbs Tagged With: , , , ,

Our Last Real Vacation for a While, our Last Stop on the Way to Parenthood

November 5, 2011 by

Well, this is it.  We’re heading off next week to Taiwan to pick up our little boy, having made it through the last six months of waiting.  The adoption is now final, so we’ve actually finalized the date when we’re going to meet him.  It’s really a big day.  I hear that when you adopt a baby, you get to celebrate not only the birthday, but the day you actually “became” a parent.  So good for him — more presents.

And because we’ve been told that being parents means that you don’t get to have any fun in your life ever again, we’re fitting in a little stayover in Hawaii on the way to Taiwan.  Now, I don’t want you to think we’re putting off picking up our little bundle of joy so we can sit on a beach drinking mai-tais.  I’d go get him today if I could, but the date is set by the court and the adoption agency.  So since we have a few weeks between now and then, we might as well spend it enjoying our last days of childlessness.

And enjoy it we will.  One of the nice things about adopting is that we’re only a few weeks away from becoming parents, but unlike most expectant mothers, my wife can do fun stuff like drink!  And comfortably sit on a beach! And swim! And drink!

So we shall.  See you in a few weeks. We’ll let you know how it goes…..

 

Filed Under: My Life in the Suburbs, Parenting in the Suburbs Tagged With: ,

The Year of the Plagues: Snow on Halloween

November 2, 2011 by

Seriously?  It snowed on Halloween?  Two months ago, we got an earthquake, and then a hurricane, and now everyone’s costume parties got canceled because we got snow in October?  This is really a wierd year.

I’m dreading winter.  The one thing I hate about living in New York is the climate.  And I’ve lived in this climate pretty much my whole life, except for two wonderful years in northern California when I was at Stanford.  People who complain about the weather in San Francisco should just be beaten around the head and face, because it’s just the best.  Never too hot, never too cold, you can pretty much wear a light jacket all year round.  A little fog once in a while? Please.  Shut up.

I hate the climate in the northeast.  People that say they love living where they can enjoy all four seasons are talking about like five days every season. Too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter, you get like five good days of spring between the rain and then the heat, and maybe 20 good days to look at the leaves in the fall.  Otherwise, horrible. Give me one season — Sunny — and I’m fine.

I’m off to go shovel some snow in my vampire costume.

Filed Under: Humor, Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: ,

Earthquakes, Hurricanes, What Else Do You Got?

September 3, 2011 by

My parking garage after the hurricane.

An unmoored boat, not mine for once, beached on the rocks by the Nyack pier.

 

First an earthquake, and now a hurricane.  Been an interesting August.

We rode out the hurricane okay.  I know we weren’t supposed to leave our home and all, but a friend was having a birthday party Saturday, and, well, the hurricane wasn’t expected to really arrive until later that night, so we went.  I mean, after writing a few weeks ago about how tough New Yorkers are, I couldn’t very well blow off a party for a little wind and rain.

I was certainly glad to be out of the city for something like this, though.  That was a little scary, some of the warnings that were being made. I’m thinking that in a natural disaster, you pretty much want to be in a place where you aren’t in a big tall building surrounded by other big tall buildings, and where you have a car that you can use to escape if the disaster turns into the apocalypse.

That said, I don’t have the classic suburban home. I’m up in a condo at the top of a tall building, poised to fall right into the Hudson should anything really bad happen.  Even better, pretty much all my walls are made of glass.  The glass is much better for checking out the river views, but much, much worse for your state of mind when they’re getting rocked by 75 mph winds.  You know what it sounds like when a hurricane hits a wall of glass, 200 feet above the ground?  I do.  Not good.  Not good at all.

But we made it through. No real damage, a little flooding in our garage but we were able to move the cars to higher ground.  The worst part was climbing stairs again, a reminder from my old days in my Manhattan walkup.  No way I was taking an elevator with the risk of the power going out (it eventually did for a day or so), making me one of those light-hearted news features about the schmuck who spent three days trapped drinking his own urine to survive.  So the stairs it is!

Hope everyone is okay.  Keep a watch out for the locusts.  And if you’re a first-born son like me, you might want to keep an eye on your front door. 

Filed Under: Humor, Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs

Thoughts on Yesterday’s Earthquake, and Why New Yorkers are Tougher Than Everyone Else

August 23, 2011 by

I don’t know about you, but I felt the earth move.  Har!

How about that? An earthquake.  In New York. That’s something new for all of us.

Now, I have another reason to be glad that I moved to the suburbs — namely, if we’re going to start having earthquakes in a big, dense city made up of buildings that were never built to withstand earthquakes, then I certainly feel that I made a pretty good trade.  Being able to get good ethnic food is wonderful and all, but not when the walls start trembling.

That said, I’m not particularly safe here in my condo in Nyack, on the eight floor of a building that I’m pretty sure what constructed on landfall.  A couple of good shakes, and I’ll be sleeping with the fishies.  That’s why I was a little freaked out yesterday, and encouraged my wife to get the heck out of the condo and take a walk or something.  I don’t even know that my insurance coverage protects me from earthquakes.  Probably something I should check.

It’s really monstrously unfair to subject New Yorkers to earthquakes, on top of everything else that they (sadly, that used to be “we”) have to deal with. I’ve always thought that New Yorkers are simply tougher than everyone else, by the sheer necessity of dealing with all the daily outrages and irritations that you have to put up with when you live in crowded, noisy city.

New Yorkers just deal.  Summers are too hot.  Winters are too cold.  You take a cab, you sit in traffic, you take the subway, you stand packed together next to someone who could easily be a serial killer. You live in a jail cell. Crazy people everywhere. Everyone in a rush, bumping into each other.  Snow, hail, sleet, hurricanes, blackouts — we get it all, and we just keep going to work.  Assholes dropped two fucking PLANES on our city, and we were all back at our desks two days later.  We DEAL.

No one else has to deal with all that stuff.  People who live in LA, for example, are like veal, sensitive and temperamental.  It’s so beautiful every day, they get freaked out with any change in their routine.  I’ve been in LA on rainy days, it’s like everyone’s afraid to be outside. They can’t drive.

So the fact that people in LA were sneering at our response to the earthquake was a little irritating. Yes, the idea of the buildings gave us a little pause.  Something new and surprising.  So people hurried out of the buildings, and some people got the rest of the day off.  But today?  Back to work.  Like always.

Filed Under: Humor, Living in Manhattan, My Life in the Suburbs Tagged With: , ,

Does Having a Dog Prepare You For Having a Kid?

July 15, 2011 by

I’ve written before how all my parent friends are enjoying themselves right now at the news that we’re going to have a kid. Most of them had kids years ago, and they’re getting a lot of kicks out of the idea of me becoming a father at 44.  “Oh, it’s going to be so hard.”  “What a big change.”  Stuff like that.

So just to mess with them, I keep shrugging it off, telling them that it’s no big deal.  After all, I have a dog.  That’s pretty much the same thing.

Oh, how they hate that.  They start sputtering: “Outrageous!  How can you compare having a dog to having a kid?!?”  Okay, people don’t exclaim “Outrageous!” anymore, but you catch my drift.

And I really am just messing with them.  I don’t think it’s the same thing, but I actually think that having a dog is good preparation for having a kid.  Just hear me out.

  • First, having a dog means that you get used to cleaning up someone’s poop. That’s a big step in a man’s life.  Once you’ve broken the seal on that, a little more poop isn’t going to make a difference.
  • Second, having a dog means that you have to feed something every day if you want to keep it alive. Plants? You can water them once in a while, whenever you remember.  Plants will deal.  You have to remember to feed the dog, just like you’ll have to remember to feed the baby.
  • Third, having a dog means that you’ve already lost your freedom, anyway.  It used to be we could decide to just go away for the weekend, literally at the last minute. Those days are done.  Can’t leave a dog alone at home for the weekend.

You see my point?  Same thing!  Piece of cake.

Okay, yes, I understand that a baby has a much higher degree of difficulty.  But I do think that any couple thinking of having kids should first think about getting a dog.  At the very least, if you find that you actually can’t keep a dog alive — if, for example, you run off to Atlantic City for the weekend and only remember that you have a dog when you smell his rotting carcass upon your return — then you probably should keep practicing good birth control.

Filed Under: Best of, Having a Dog in the Suburbs, Humor, My Life in the Suburbs, Parenting in the Suburbs Tagged With: ,

Does Living in the Suburbs Make You Healthier? Maybe for Some People….

June 20, 2011 by

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that suburbanites are actually healthier than people who live in either the city or in rural areas.

For many urban dwellers, the country conjures up images of clean air, fresh food and physical activities. But these days, Americans residing in major cities live longer, healthier lives overall than their country cousins—a reversal from decades past.

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To be sure, city dwellers live with more air pollution and violent crime. They also have higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases and low-birth-weight babies and are more likely to drink excessively. But overall, urbanites tend to rate their own health more highly and are less likely to die prematurely than rural Americans, according to the county rankings report.

In many measures, residents of suburban areas are the best off. They generally rate their own health the highest and have the fewest premature deaths than either their urban or rural counterparts. Suburbanites also have the fewest low-birth-weight babies, homicides and sexually transmitted diseases.

The emphasis is mine, gloriously mine!  How about that?  Live in the city, and you’re more likely to drink excessively (very true, in my experience), and you’re less healthy from all the air pollution.

Move to the suburbs, though and you reduce your chances, according to the article,  having low-weight babies, getting murdered, and getting the pox.  That’s a pretty good tradeoff off for lousy Thai food, amirite???

Not that moving the suburbs has helped me at all, frankly.  That is, I have not gotten a sexually transmitted disease or been murdered or had a low-weight baby, so that’s good.  But it’s not like I’m exercising more than I did when I lived in the city, which is to say that I did virtually no exercise back then and I’ve continued that rigorous campaign now in the suburbs.  The only change is that I haven’t joined a gym yet, so my lack of exercising is free, a nice change from the city, where not-exercising at my local Crunch cost me like $75 a month.  I’ve put that $75 savings into more cigarettes and booze.

But just from reading that article, I feel healthier already….

Filed Under: Humor, Living in the Suburbs, My Life in the Suburbs, News, Suburbs versus Cities Tagged With: , ,
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