Left of the Dial

Off the Old Block

"Your father threw out his back," Top Management informs the offspring, as though they hadn't noticed the heavily-medicated daze I'd been in for the previous twenty-four hours, or how I'd been hobbling around like Quasimodo. "So you girls are going to need to be his hands and legs for him."

They look at her blankly. She sighs.

"What I mean is, I need you to do whatever it is he'd normally do at this time of night to get the younger ones ready for bed." She pauses. "What's he normally do at this time of night?"

The Bean grins, a wicked gleam in her eye. She turns to the 3-year-old. "Move it, maggot!" she bellows.

The Great Crayon-Pencil War of 1953

So I step on something hard in the middle of the hall and emphatically do not curse (at least for the purposes of this story).

I look down and see half a crayon. I kick it out of the way and notice another half crayon near—but not in—the trash can.  I walk out towards the living room, limping slightly, because crayons are far harder than you'd think and also because I crave sympathy or at least a bit of drama. I notice another half crayon near the front door, and some crayon powder nearby. I look at the 3-year-old happily sitting in the sun on the front stoop. 

"Hey," I say. "Are you breaking crayons in half?"

He looks up at me. "Yes," he says softly. 

This throws me. I'm not used to honesty, other than when people tell me how I look. "Well," I say, thinking quickly. "Don't do that anymore." 

Having thus dispensed my daily Mike Brady-like fatherly wisdom, I look over at the 11-year-old. "Why would he do that?" I ask, shaking my head. "Why would someone break crayons in half? What was he thinking?" 

"Well," the Bean replies. "It goes back to The Great Crayon-Pencil War of 1953. There was a dispute over territory and one thing led to another and when the battle lines were drawn, he felt he simply had no choice but to side with the pencils." 

My mouth drops open. She smiles. "Can I have the leftover cheesecake for lunch?" 

[She later reported the cheesecake was delicious.]

A Good Question

The toddler walks in with his new acquisition.

ME: You have a battleaxe?

He nods grimly with a small satisfied smile. His little fists loosen slightly before tightening up again on the axe handle.

I play along.

ME: Don't chop anybody's head off with it.

He looks down at it, then slowly back up at me. He tilts his head quizzically, a disappointed look on his face.

HIM (sadly): Why?

Perspective

He's got it. But, I'm guessing, at least kind of wishes he didn't. 

I wonder if there's anyone who can watch this without getting at least choked up.

Hoods

The two middle girls return from a long walk. “There’s someone outside who wants to speak with you,” the older one says.

I go out and see a woman standing there. “Hi,” she says. “Your girls were standing at the intersection over there, and they threw something at my car. It hit my window. There’s no damage but I thought you should know.”

I thank her and ask her to wait a moment. I pop back into the house. The girls are standing side by side, perfectly still, on the other side of the room. “Is this true?” I ask.

“Yes,” they both say.

I point towards the door. “Let’s go.”

Without waiting for further instructions, they go outside and apologize quite nicely, the 13-year-old stoic, the 11-year-old’s voice shaking. The woman accepts their apology and tells them they shouldn’t do things like that. I apologize to her again and thank her for being understanding.

I go inside and even though it’s the middle of the afternoon, I send both girls to bed, and tell them they’re not allowed to read or talk, that they just have to lay there. Without a word, they hang up their jackets and go.

I wait nearly an hour before I go in. “I am so sorry, Daddy,” the younger one says, trying and failing not to sob. The older one sits up straight, as though at her arraignment, and says, “It was my idea and I take complete and total responsibility.”

I hold up my hand. “What did you throw?” I ask.

“These little berries that were on the ground.”

I nod grimly, although inside I’m very relieved. That’s it? Just berries?

“Was that the first car you’d thrown them at?”

“No. Just the first one we hit.”

Inside I resolve to step up the number of catches we have in the backyard.

“Why did you do it? What were you thinking?”

The younger one opens her mouth to try to explain but no words will come. She just shakes her head.

The teenager also shakes her head as she says, “It just…it just seemed like a good idea at the time.”

I nod as I stand up. “I’ll be back.”

I wait another hour before returning. The 11-year-old is clearly tormented by her actions and would do just about anything to go back in time and change the past.

I sit down and say, “When your oldest and best uncle was about, I dunno, 12? He and a bunch of the neighborhood kids were playing at someone’s house on the next block. Like a lot of the houses in the New England area we grew up in, it had a gravel driveway. For some reason your uncle and some of the other boys grabbed a handful of rocks and threw them at a passing car. The car screeched to a halt. All the other kids instantly ran away, but not your uncle. He just stood there and waited for the driver. The driver made him give his name and address and then he came and talked to Grandma and Granddad. Your uncle apologized and, as I recall, was given a pretty hefty punishment. But the driver, despite being unhappy about having pebbles thrown at his car, was impressed that your uncle had stood his ground and admitted culpability, and he told your grandparents that. Grandma and Granddad, although probably not admitting it at the time, were impressed too.”

I look at them, and motion for the younger to come sit on my lap. “You guys made a mistake, a big one. But you admitted it and you apologized even without being told to. And I’m guessing you’ve learned from this and won’t be doing it again?”

The older nods seriously while the younger buries her face in my chest as she tries to stop crying.

I tell them they can have dinner in a little while, but that’s it. The rest of the evening and night they’re just going to stay in their beds without talking. And in the morning everything’ll reset.

And I leave and I stop in the hall and I look at what they’d been wearing, the hoodies they’d been wearing, now hung up neatly in the closet.

I think about what might have happened if things had just been a little, and not really all that much different. If they’d been boys instead of girls. If they’d been just a few years older, each. If the hoodies had been grey and black instead of pink and cream. If we’d lived in Florida instead of California. Most of all, of course, I think about what might have happened if they’d had dark skin and hair rather than pale skin and blonde hair. I think about how this is what kids do, they do stupid things—and this dumb little thing they did, throwing something at a passing car, is literally one of the dumbest things they’ve ever done in their entire lives and it wouldn’t have even made the Top 20 dumb things I’d done by their age, not even close.

And if those series of facts, virtually none of which they had anything to do with but which were just the luck of the draw, were each just a tiny bit different, they could very well be lying in the morgue right now and their killer free forever—because, after all, throwing something at a car is without question far more threatening an act than walking down the street with a bag of Skittles. And I think about how insanely lucky I am and how it’s just not fair. 

 

Shock and Aw...

So I’m working in the boys’ room, which doubles as my office. Someone knocks on the door. I can hear little voices peeping, so as I unlock and open the door I'm already looking down.

The Golden Weasel, a bizarrely confident and assured 5-year-old, walks past me without saying anything, her arms full of matchbox cars. The 3-year-old, sometimes called Ham both for his thespian qualities as well as his body shape, trots in behind.

She dumps the cars on the bed as Ham begins trying to climb over the still raised bedrail.

I say, "Are you...coming in to play?"

The Golden Weasel smiles at me beatifically. "Yes."

I laugh. "I'm so sorry, buttercup, but...no. Not right now."

She looks at me, shocked. Without a word, she grabs the cars and leaves. Ham follows her faithfully.

I sit down to type this when there's a knock at the door, a single rap, low down.

I get back up and unlock the door. Ham comes in past me, goes right to a bookshelf and grabs 2 of the 4 cars off it and walks out.

Wondering if I'm going to have to get up yet again to unlock the door, I say to him, "Are you going to need the other cars?"

He turns and looks at me, confused. "No."

Because why on earth would he? 

Not the actual event but merely a remarkable recreation.

Mirrors

It’s about 9 o’clock. Top Management’s still working. The two boys are taken care of, one asleep, the other in his sleeper watching Thomas the Tank Engine. I go in to read to the three youngest girls. The Bean, lying on her bed, sees me and takes off her headphones. As I pick up Return of the King and start flipping through to find where we left off last night, during the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, I say, “so what were you listening to?”

She says, “Brian Eno. The Plateaux of Mirror.”

Even if we hadn’t had her DNA tested, I do believe I’d be pretty confident she’s mine. 

 

Space Oddity

So I stopped Top Management dead in her tracks today. Literally. Well, literally stopped her in her tracks—not so much, fortunately, the dead part.

We were out on our morning walk, pretty much the most sheerly pleasant part of our day. We have about a dozen different routes we cycle through, and this was one of the less strenuous and just plain prettiest. We say hello to distant neighbors walking dogs or watering their flower gardens or hustling their late children off to school. We hold hands until my palm gets too sweaty and Top Management subtly removes her hand and dries it off on her jeans. I retaliate by waiting until we're passing someone—preferably a male—and then casually resting my hand on her ass.

Anyhoo. We're on our walk and somehow talk turns to the recent illegal but amazing adaptation of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" someone did, turning it into a children's board book. It was gorgeous and oh so spot on. "Except for getting the end wrong," I said. "Obviously."

Top Management looks puzzled. She'd only looked at the first few pages as, like me, only even more so, perhaps, she likes to have "her" version of stories and songs, without having someone else's images implanted in her bizarrely retentive memory. Since she had even gotten to the halfway point, she didn't realize that the illustrator had erroneously interpreted the song's ending. In his version, there's a mechanical failure, and Major Tom is stuck up in space, forever.

"Well...yeah," she said. "That is what happens. His ship malfunctions and he's stranded in space. Ground Control to Major Tom, your circuit's dead, there's something wrong."

"No," I said. "No. Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles, I'm feeling very still, and I think my spaceship knows which way to go. The circuit's dead because he turned it off. He looked down at earth from up above there and he decided to stay. And he's okay with that. He feels like he's finally home."

That's when she stopped, right in the middle of the street we were crossing.

"You used to listen to that song every day."

"Yeah."

"Every single day."

"Yeah?"

"As you were getting ready for school."

"Sophomore and junior year of high school, yeah. Ruined the tape, I listened to it so many times."

Her mouth dropped open. "And you listened to that song...and you thought he willingly decided to leave his wife down below on earth so he could die alone in space."

"Uh..." I said, suddenly realizing I was on thin ice. "Well...yeah. I mean, he still loves her and everything..."

She started to laugh as we began walking again. "You listened to that song hundreds, maybe thousands of times. And that's what you got out it. That was the interpretation that resonated with you." She shook her head. "If you had told me that part of the story when we first started dating..."

"...what?"

She shrugged. "Probably nothing." Improbably, unexpectedly, undeservedly, she stands on tiptoe and gives me a kiss. "I like a challenge."

 

I mean, come on! Listen to that! Clearly he decided to stay up there! ...right? How beautiful is that? 

 

Second Thoughts

"I'm DOOOOO-ooooone!" the five-year-old calls from the bathroom. 

I go in and she's cheerily singing a song Nick Jr's Moose sings between shows. I cannot help but clinically observe that she has taken a dump the size of Rhode Island. That kids as a matter of course pop out stool samples which would seem to have come from a professional linebacker never ceases to amaze.

"Oh, wait," she says, smiling up at me beatifically. "Was this the potty you said not to use because it was clogged?" 

Fishing

“Man, there are a lot of little people in this room,” I say, cuddling with the five-year-old on the bed, watching as the two boys, currently ages 2 and 7, bash trucks into each other on the floor.

Top Management walks out shortly thereafter and, without a word, the boys abandon the violence to shadow her like ducklings.

Now it’s just me and the Golden Weasel.

She rolls overs and looks up at me. She smiles.

“Who’s the best little person?” she whispers.

Incomprehensible

“What do doin’s means?”

I look up from my email. The five-year-old, the preternaturally confident Golden Weasel, as I have taken to calling her, takes another bite of mini-wheats as she waits for my reply.

“What…wait, what?”

“What do doin’s means?” she asks again.

I don’t know how to answer this. I suspect a trap.

“What what, sweetie?”

“What do doin’s means?”

“I…I’m sorry, buddy, can you ask me that again?”

“What do doin’s means?”

“What does—“

“No. What do doin’s means?”

“Doin’s?”

“No. What do doin’s means?”

“What do doin’s means.”

“No. What do doin’s means?”

“What do doin’s means?”

“No. What do doin’s means?”

I am at a loss. I haven’t been this unable to understand her in years. Fortunately, just then Top Management walks in.

“Oh, good. Can you ask that again, please?”

“Sure. What do doin’s means?”

I watch Top Management’s face as she tries to process this. It’s delightful.

“What…what does—“

“No. What do doin’s means?”

“What do doin’s mean?”

“No. What do doin’s means?”

“What does—?”

“No. What do doin’s means?”

Through all of this, the Golden Weasel is remarkably calm and unflustered by her parents’ stupiditity, not even the least bit frustrated by their inability to understand basic English.

By now, several sisters have gathered around to try to help decipher.

“What what?

“What do doin’s means?”

“Do doin’s?”

“No. What do doin’s means?”

“Okay, wait. Where did you get this question? Is it something I just said?”

“No.”

“Is it…” Top Management looks at the computer, which is running through the morning’s playlist. “Oh! Is it something you heard in the music? Do-do-do?”

“No.”

We look at each and shake our heads. We’ve been doing the parenting thing a long time, but this one’s new and neither of us can figure out where to go from here.

“What does doin’s mean?” Top Management tries yet again, hoping to somehow force the question into some sort of syntax.

“No. What do doin’s means?”

I start laughing and Top Management just shakes her head helplessly.

Finally, the Golden Weasel realizes she’s dealing with very unbright people and is going to simply have to take matters into her own hands.

“What…do…you…do…in…meetings?” she says slowly, eliminating all contractions from the original sentence. I have the sense she’s wondering if we’re really fit to be in charge of young children.

“Oh!” we all say. “What do doin’s means?”

“That’s what I said.”

I nod. What can I say? When she’s right, she’s right.

“What do you do in meetings? Uh…pretty much just waste time. And money.”

She looks skeptical. "Then why do you go?"

“Well,” I explain. “Back when people first started having meetings, there was no email or phone. So if people wanted to get together to talk about the problem of the new sabre-tooth tigers in the neighborhood, they had to have a meeting. But now that there is email and phones, there’s really not much point in most meetings. But by now it’s just a custom. So.”

“Oh,” she says. She nods, but the look in her eye makes it clear that she’s now wondering if any adults are really fit to be in charge of young children, if they all seem to hold with such foolishness.

“Also,” I add, realizing the best part of meetings. “Sometimes there’s food.”

“Oh!” she says, her eyebrows raising. Then she narrows her eyes as she regards me, clearly wondering why I left the pertinent information for last. I suspect she's thinking about retaining a lawyer in a bid for emancipation, and wondering how much an attorney costs. And if there'll be cookies at each and every meeting.

 

The Blink of an Eye

The five-year-old comes out in just her Little Mermaid panties as I'm finishing up the dishes. "Can't find any pajamas?" I guess.

Any hope I have of her being impressed with my divine divination skills are shattered. "Well, Daddy," she says, and sighs slightly. "I can't find any pajama pants. Or pajama shorts. Either."

I can do nothing but shake my head. "Well, Daddy," she says. As if to say, "you see, it's like this."

When do they suddenly veer from being able to more or less deliver the information they want/express their needs and desires to this sophisticated, I'll-be-here-all-week style of conversation? Why, why, why do they keep growing up? Why do they keep getting older? It's so uncool.

Or would be if it weren't for the fact that, heartbreaking as each and every change is, signifying as it does the leaving behind of something wonderful, each new stage is pretty damn awesome too.

"Well, Daddy," she says, and I can hear the unspoken conclusion: "Enjoy me while you can. Because I'm leaving soon. Oh, it might not be for a dozen years, or maybe even, if you’re very very lucky,  twenty. But to you? It'll be the blink of an eye. So don't blink, or I'll be gone."

 

Sign o' the Times?

So we hop in the car and I'm driving the two middle girls to piano and they haven't stopped chattering once since well before we'd left the house. I've just pulled out of the driveway and as I flip on the radio "Sweet Child o' Mine" is starting up—it's the build-up as the drums kick in, right before Axl starts singing. 

The moment the song comes on, all talk stops instantly. After the first verse and one chorus, the Bean finally speaks. "Dad? What is this? I mean, what's the name of the song and who's singing?" 

I look back as I start to answer and I see the 12-year-old is gently headbanging, an intense look in her eyes.

Should I be worried? 

Fists and Roses

So the 2-year-old comes trotting down the hall. He stops when he sees me and beams. Some sister has carefully arranged a beautiful circlet on his head just so, its flowers half buried in his curly hair, the ribbons hanging down in ever so lovely a manner. 

He stands there a moment so I can admire. Then a gleam comes into his eye and he charges, slamming into me full force, trying as hard as he can to knock me down. Despite his best efforts, he doesn't. Instead, he bounces off and sits down hard and proceeds to belly laugh for half a minute before getting up and trotting off again. 

Boys are different. 

22 minutes and 25 seconds

That's how long it took me to wash the dishes tonight. I know, because it took me exactly as long as the first 5 songs of U2's War album. You see, that's pretty much my relationship to music these days—how long it takes me to wash the dishes or drive somewhere or rock someone to sleep. 

Used to be, back when I was an angry young man / pathetic young whelp, music and I were soul mates. We loved each other truly, madly, deeply. And it was a two-way street, no matter what music might say about me these days. You know how fickle music can be. Oh, it seems faithful, and it might be for a long, long, long time, maybe even forever with some people. And yet with others, suddenly one day, BOOM. It'll turn on you, without warning.

Parked in an orange beanbag chair located precisely between two big Klipsch speakers, seated an ideal 7.34 feet away for maximum stereo separation and sonic clarity, a double LP sleeve designed by Hipgnosis in my lap, I would not so much listen to the music as commune with the msuic, enter into dialogue with the music, become one with the music. Why, I was so hardcore, I didn't just reserve this sort of serious study for Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy or Pink Floyd's Animals or Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or Astral Weeks. Oh, no, not I. No, I was so badass, I once listened to "Daydream Believer"—that's right, by the Monkees and, yes, this may be the first time anyone was ever described as badass for listening to the Monkees and that shows you just how badass I am or was because I love that song and am not afraid to admit it—for two hours straight, putting that one track on repeat, delving into the mysteries I was sure were contained within its saccharine lyrics and intoxicating melody. Okay, fine, so it was after yet another miserable dance sophomore year and I was pretty hammered on peppermint schnapps and I think I actually passed out after about the third spin and woke up around the 37th. BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT. 

The point is...you know, I'm not sure what the point is, 'cuz between the last graf and this one I had to put two kids to bed. But I'm pretty sure there was a point and it was really cogent and insightful and oop, now someone needs help in the bathroom and I gotta run. Sorry, music: you've been replaced. Guess maybe I was the fickle one after all. But maybe someday, if you're willing to wait a while? I'll be back. I promise. Probably.

Expert Opinion

So we're driving home when I realize I've forgotten tortillas. 

"Well...rats," I say. 

"What, Daddy?" asks the senator from the back seat. 

"Oh, nothing, punkin," I say. "Just...well, I kinda screwed up what I bought for dinner." 

She's silent for a few seconds, considering. Then with the sagacity gained during her four and a half years on this planet, she says, "No...no, I like what we bought." 

Well. Okay then.

(And she ate every bite.)

 

I Love Tax Day

So a couple writers have new editorials about taxes. Friend of a friend Steve Almond's is here. And here's one from a writer named JK Rowling. And while I've had my issues with some of her other writings, I have to say, I think she hit a home run with this one. 

Here's a piece I first wrote a few years ago. It's still true, even if the glorious yet oh so dysfunctional state of California did totally sodomize our savings this year—perhaps even more so. Ah, the price we pay. 

I loves me tax day.

Well, okay, not really. I hate it just like everyone else, only even more so because, well, I’m me and I feel things more passionately than anyone else alive.

(Just like everyone else.)

I’m disorganized and hate details (unless they pertain to who played what on which song on this or that precise date). And, of course, I’m poor. But not quite poor enough (and clearly not nearly rich enough) to avoid paying taxes.

But paying taxes is simply how we invest in this great nation of ours. So when I pay my taxes, I feel good(ish) because I know I’m paying for some poor kid somewhere to have a decent breakfast and then maybe I’m the one who bought him the biology book he’s going to be using. And maybe he’ll grow up and cure cancer.

If you’re to the right of me—and there aren’t many who aren’t—be happy: when you pay your taxes today (provided you aren’t too rich to ever actually pay taxes, having your accounts off-shore and all), you’re buying body armor for our brave men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, strike that: no one apparently pays for that except their families. But your taxes are what built our newest aircraft carrier, which keeps these here United States of America safe from them who plot day and night to do ‘em harm. And how cool is that?

I don’t exactly like shelling out a lot of money to buy my kids shoes, as happens every other month it seems. But it needs to be done because, well, it turns out after careful examination, children need to wear things on their feet so’s they can run and jump and be let into stores and it seems socks alone aren’t always quite enough. So you buy the shoes. Because you need to. And because you love your kids enough to want them to do well, and children without shoes, studies have proven conclusively, don’t do as well as children with shoes. Also? After a while? Their feets get kinda bloody and raw. Or so I've heard. And you do it because appropriately shod with a good pair of shoes, who knows where or what those kids’ll be able to do? You do it because you love them and it's the right thing to do. Still not a lot of fun, maybe, but more more than worth it in the end.

So. Thanks to all of you out there for buying my country a pair of shoes today.

(Metaphorically speaking, of course. As far as I know.) 

Like Foul-Mouth, Like Son

So. It will not come as news to anyone who's spent more than a few minutes around me, sans children, that verbally I tend to, well...get a bit carried away. I know, and yet. I've had drunken sailors say to me, "dude, really?" 

So early this morn, before 7am, all the girls are still asleep. Top Management and I are the only ones up, along with The Dudes. We both become gradually aware that The Boy is walking around saying, "Gammid...gammid...gammid..." 

A quick note: since The Boy has hearing loss, the world sorta sounds to him like Charlie Brown's teacher, just a string of vowel sounds rising and falling. So when he speaks, he often takes his best guess at roughly which consonant sound goes where. Hence "gammid." This also makes me, perhaps foolishly, feel a tad freer about how vigilant I need to be around him. Also hence "gammid."

"He's saying it again," Top Management sighs. "You have to stop saying that around him!" 

I say, "I haven't! I mean, not today. And not last night." 

I stop and think for a moment, then walk into the kitchen. Where I see The Baby on his belly. Having ripped open and enthusiastically dissecting a Reese's mini peanut butter cup that's fallen from someone's Halloween stash. 

The Boy walks over and stands next to me and looks down at The Baby, happily covered in chocolate and peanut butter goodness, then looks up and me and shakes his head. "Gammid," he says affectionately, smiling companionably as he reaches over and takes my hand. 

A Little Too Late

So because I am the very epitome of the patriotic American, I took the Rose to Target this President's Day, since nothing expresses my admiration for GeoWash and Honest Abe like handing over many many many pieces of paper plastered with their visages.

(I exaggerate, of course: I am American, so I put it on the credit card.) 

I have one purchase in mind: some jeans for my extraordinarily petite 10-year-old. The only pants she has that fit in the waist are Size 5s which, not surprisingly, only come to about mid-calf. But thanks to the wonders of the adjustable bands they've got inside waists these days, we find some new Size 7s which are only a little too long for her. 

Naturally, having scored sartorially in about ten minutes, we spend another hour stocking up on everything we could possibly imagine needing at some point in the next decade. Including new cucumber and green tea-sented baby wipes. Good try, folks. But if there's one area that you just can't make seem yummy or healthy? Yeah, that's the one. 

Anyhoo, the Rose is unbelievably delightful company on these sorts of trips, chattering along oh so pleasantly, remarking on everything, skipping occasionally, and mainly conveying with every cell in her body how much she truly wishes she were an only child. 

So we get to the checkout just as the person in front of us is pushing her cart away, lucky ducks that we are. I start unloading our copious treasures onto the conveyor belt, and see the cashier sigh heavily and push her hair off her forehead. "Tired?" I smile understandingly.

"No," she says, taking another deep breath and letting it out in our direction. "I just don't feel very good." 

As she says this she grabs the first of my things and starts scanning it. I look at my now mostly but not entirely empty cart, and back at her. She does one of those sorta kinda inside burps and clears her throat, scanning and bagging my goods (although I'm no longer thinking of them in nearly as positive a light as that term would tend to convey) all the while. Too late to grab the stuff and shove it back in the cart and find another lane open, one whose guardian is not infected with the bubonic plague. 

But hey, maybe she's just hung over, says the ever optimistic part of me. So she finishes up and I swipe my card and sign my name (well, sorta: these days I almost always actually draw a little smiley face or, if the occasion seems to call for it, as today's clearly does, a sad face) on the keypad. And then I push my cart past and start grabbing the bags and loading them into the cart. 

And that's when the smell of vomit hits me. 

I look up at her, but she's just leaning against the register, waiting for another hapless victim to show up. I look at the floor, the cart, around. No sign of any regurgitated material. Yet the odor lingers, to put it mildly. Pizza Hut Express is a dozen feet away; perhaps someone has gone insane with the parmesan, a substance which is, in my opinion, identical to your garden-variety spew. 

Who can say? Despite, or perhaps because of, any clear evidence, I rush the Rose out the door, and she's delighted to have to sprint for the car through the pouring rain. Before we're a dozen steps from the cashier, however, I hiss at her that if she so much as gets a fingertip near her eyes, nose or mouth, she's out of the will. She points out that the likelihood of any of my brood inheriting anything is roughly on par with my winning the Nobel prize for physics. I concede the point, and raise the stakes: touch a mucus membrane and I will force her to watch me eat the entire cherry cobbler her mother made this day. She is persuaded. 

We get home and both scrub our hands like we're prepping for surgery. Will it be enough? Only the oracle knows. Lacking a Magic 8-Ball, I turn to the next best thing.

Thanks, George, for helping create a nation where such creatures can serenade us all so sweetly, and to you, Abe, for holding it together. 

Favorite Time of Day

Usually I only get it on Saturday and Sunday, but thanks to the glory of Paternity Leave...

I pick up Senator Smoosh—or, as she demands to be called this day, Ladybug—and we go in search of today's naptime book to read. We choose How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight, which The Bean heard maybe 40 times but Her Ladybugness has not yet (oh, how different the life of a fifth child) but is clearly instantly intrigued by and how could she not be? 

We go back to The Boy's room and shut the door. I ask her what we're going to watch today and she says, "Hmmm...Day'd Bow. Ee?" No, I explain, we finished watching the David Bowie DVD yesterday. I spot my birthday present, The Who at Kilburn: 1977 and spend 90 seconds peeling the rassafrassin' safety tape off it, then pop it in the iMac. 

As it's loading, I put her in my lap so she's facing away and we read the book, and although I'm not generally much of a Jane Yolen fan—the brilliant Owl Moon aside—it's mighty good, and goes over like gangbusters. Book finished, I turn my little coccinellid back around, so now she's facing me. She leans forward and puts her head on my chest and we begin watching The Who. 

It's widescreen, so there are black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. I angle the monitor so her eyes are perfectly centered in the black bar at the bottom. I observe as she takes in "Can't Explain" and then starts to blink heavily during "Substitute." She doesn't even make it through the synthesizer intro to "Baba O'Riley" before they're closed for good. I feel her small body get heavier and heavier as it relaxes completely. I kiss the top of her head softly; her tousled hair smells like Baby Magic and toddler sweat, the combination a result of last night's tubby and this morning's hard work in the garden, which mainly consisted of her chasing birds in a heartfelt yet futile attempt to make friends with her fellow wingéd creatures. 

I wait until the song's over, then turn the volume down and pause. I stand up and take one step forward, then lay her down on the bed. I am not as gentle as her Ladybugship demands, or at least deserves. Her eyes flutter then close again as a small smile forms briefly, then evaporates. "Wha we gun wash?" she murmurs before sinking back deeper. 

I wait a half dozen deep breaths, making sure she's not going to rouse, thinking, "What are we going to watch? You, the inside of your eyelids. Me...you." 

Without You

So Top Management and The Baby spent the night in the hoffel last night. Which, given that she'd, you know, pumped out the equivalent of a small bowling ball a few hours before, made sense. I suppose. But did she stop to think of how that'd effect me? Did she? Did she? Did she? 

She did not. No one ever does. Including me. Because I am the damn epitome of selflessness. 

[Full disclosure: she totally thought about how it would effect me. Because she is revoltingly caring. Even after dropping the equivalent of a large Easter ham.]

Which, of course, leads you to wonder just how this DID effect me. Because, really, I am an endlessly fascinating subject. Why, just ask me. [Yes, how astute of you, you're quite right, I am endlessly fascinating.]

'cuz the thing is, after a half-dozen of these puppies, we've got most of it down pretty well. What's that? Water broke? No biggie. Contractions three minutes apart and we need to get to the hospital twenty minutes away in the middle of the night over dark, snowy, curvy, hilly roads? Whatevs. Baby's going to be born in the car? Not a chance—I brought duct tape for just such an eventuality. 

But when it comes time to say goodnight and leave her in the hospital and go home by myself...well, that I'm still not used to, not at all. Watching an enormous alien—Top Management had been calling him this because of the copious number of chins he's sporting, but tonight pointed out that his skull is shaped more like this and yes she's incredibly sentimental and downright dewey-eyed when it comes to her offspring —emerge from my petite good lady wife I have somehow gotten somewhat sorta kinda inured to. Having to leave her for the night...not so much. That's really...well, it's just wrong. 

Words fail me. I think this says it far better than I ever could. 

H/T to ever-considerate Left o' the Dialian Krissy for this here intense Cyrano o' mine.

New Release

So Top Management did one of the things she does best, and done popped out another kid. Because, as her mother always told her, find what you do best and do your best at it. Some take that sort of advice and become Nobel prize laureates for chemistry, others become Oscar-winning directors, or perhaps long-distance truck drivers. Top Management finds her gift and becomes a brilliant writer...and popper-outer of chillens. In ginormous quantities. 

Hence our newest acquisition, cleverly named The Baby. Weighing in at a hefty damn 9 pounds and 12 ounces, we cannot quite figure out how that was physically possible. The nurses were stunned that my petite good lady wife delivered such a chunk of babby au natural: our main nurse, in fact, had never in her five year on the job assisted in a delivery where drugs weren't involved. (As pertains to the mother, that is: I was totally out of my mind on crack. I don't do well in the delivery room.) 

The kid might have been even heavier, but the very first thing he did upon entering this world was to pee. A truly amazing amount. All over the nurse. In fact, he peed so much that it was agreed he might have tipped 10 pounds had he waited a bit to void. I worry about his impulse control, and cannot imagine where he could have gotten that. Then I recall that I now have six children and the fog begins to clear the teeniest bit.

In answer to one of the first questions (answer to the very first: yes, ten fingers and ten toes), no, he is not adorable. Nor is he gorgeous. Nor is he beautiful. He is a newborn. Newborns are ugly. Ugly ugly ugly. It's not their fault. It's just the fact. Caucasian babies, at least, either look like little pink raisins or little pink frogs, or some unholy combination of the two. 

And although Top Management and I produce kids which are, frankly, undeserving of their parents in terms of appearance—as my brother Ler Pete once said, "Hey, man, no offense, but your kids are way, way better looking than either of you guys"—we do not do so well with the newborns. 

So. Although I assume he'll turn out one day to be as fine-lookin' a specimen as his older siblings: 

for now, he looks more like this, only with less hair.

Welcome to the world, kid.

I'm your dad. 

I am Mangle Blue Palin

Okay, this is pretty groovy—the Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator. 

I am Mangle Blue Palin. 

I find this disturbingly accurate. 

Interestingly, if I only use my first name? 

I am Beretta Hockey Palin.

I feel badass.  

Loudon Wainwright III's "Daughter"

This is a man who has very clearly had female offspring. 

Round about these here parts, we refer to this piece as "Senator Smoosh's Theme Song." 

Plausible Deniability

"Hi, Daddy. You come outside?"

Why, yes, Senator, I did come outside. Have you been playing with dirt?

"No."

The Mighty Zep

I'm channelsurfing just now as The Bean walks through the room. I land upon VH1Classic which happens to be showing Led Zeppelin Live for only the forty-seventh time this month and The Bean is stopped dead in her tracks.

"Whoa," she says, listening to Jimmy Page's wailing slide. "That sounds GOOD."

I am surprised by this. I listen for a moment and have to admit that, despite my reservations about the sloppiness of live Zeppelin, and the accompanying preening, it kinda does.

"Say, 'Is that the mighty Zep, Dad?'" I coach.

She grins. "Is that the mighty Zep, Dad?" she dutifully repeats.

"As a matter of fact, it is!" I reply. "Good ears!"

She beams. I think she has an appreciation for Robert Plant's hair few can understand, seeing as how it's almost exactly hers, only longer and not actually pretty.

I go back to check on The Boy and when I return I find that Senator Smoosh is still in her chair but has reached further than I'd have thought possible to grab the bowl of cereal I'd been feeding her and is now feeding herself, or so the cereal all over her chin and cheeks would indicate. She's not actually feeding herself at this very moment, however; she's banging her spoon on the bottom of the bowl in something remarkably approaching Bonzo's own bizarre sense of time and as she does—I kid you not—she is nodding her head in the unmistakable manner of a headbanger. She looks up at me and smiles, continuing to headbang.

"Oooh, yeah!" Robert croons, and I have to agree.

Another two saved from the abomination that is the showtune.

I Love Tax Day

I loves me tax day.

Well, okay, not really. I hate it just like everyone else, only even more so because, well, I’m me and I feel things more passionately than anyone else alive.

(Just like everyone else.)

I’m disorganized and hate details (unless they pertain to who played what on which song on this or that precise date). And, of course, I’m poor. But not quite poor enough (and clearly not nearly rich enough) to avoid paying taxes.

But paying taxes is simply how we invest in this great nation of ours. So when I pay my taxes, I feel good(ish) because I know I’m paying for some poor kid somewhere to have a decent breakfast and then maybe I’m the one who bought him the biology book he’s going to be using. And maybe he’ll grow up and cure cancer.

If you’re to the right of me—and there aren’t many who aren’t—be happy: when you pay your taxes today (provided you aren’t like our vice president and too rich to ever actually pay taxes, having your accounts off-shore and all), you’re buying body armor for our brave men and women fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, strike that: no one apparently pays for that except their families. But your taxes are what built our newest aircraft carrier, which keeps these here United States of America safe from them who plot day and night to do ‘em harm. And how cool is that?

I don’t exactly like shelling out a lot of money to buy my kids shoes, as happens every other month it seems. But it needs to be done because, well, it turns out after careful examination, children need to wear things on their feet so’s they can run and jump and be let into stores and it seems socks alone aren’t always quite enough. So you buy the shoes. Because you need to. And because you love your kids enough to want them to do well, and children without shoes, studies have proven conclusively, don’t do as well as children with shoes. Also? After a while? Their feets get kinda bloody and raw. Or so I've heard. And you do it because appropriately shod with a good pair of shoes, who knows where or what those kids’ll be able to do? You do it because you love them and it's the right thing to do. Still not a lot of fun, maybe, but more more than worth it in the end.

So. Thanks to all of you out there for buying my country a pair of shoes today.

(Metaphorically speaking, of course. As far as I know.)

Busted

So Max, the Rose and the Boy are all sick, to varying degrees; he’s just got a bit of a cough, but the two oldest both have pretty high fevers, and Max decides to make things inneresting by investing in both a cough and the high fever.

It’s a bit after eight of the clock in the evening, Top Management is off at the brand-spankin’-new piano class she's trying on for size, bein’ all Wynton Kelly and whatnot, and the oldest three girls are sprawled on the couch, Max and the Bean reading, the Rose just staring off into space, still as still can be.

I walk towards the back to check on the Boy, who’d wisely conked out a few minutes earlier, still with his glasses on, of course. As I pass the Blue Room I see, out of the corner of my eye, Senator Smoosh on the floor, playing.

I take a few more steps and stop. I’m not sure what she’s playing with, but there’s a large number of objects, and all the objects are pretty small. And even a quick glance has given my brain enough information to realize that the objects probably weren’t toys. And of course the fact that the Blue Room is currently deserted, its regular occupants all sequestered on the couch in the living room, makes this a most convenient time to raid drawers belonging to big sisters.

All this goes through my peabrain in a matter of milliseconds. I back up and peek in and the good senator’s head shoots up instantly. “No,” she breathes.

Her expression is sincere, plaintive, mayhap a tad guilty, impossibly fetching, the timbre of her voice as she mews her plea irresistible, all the more so because I have no doubt she didn’t mean to say it, she didn’t plan to say it, it came out of her instantly, busted as she was.

By now I’ve seen that what she’s playing with indeed belongs to her big sister and, indeed, are not toys: she has gotten into a small box of hair supplies, rubber bands, barrettes, other follicle-related doodads of which I, as the male of the species, am incapable of learning the names. With the training acquired osmotically from being a parent for 37 years in the aggregate, I can see there’s nothing there obviously life-threatening, unless, of course, the Rose were to find out. But the Rose is incapacitated at present. And besides, she’s putty in the good senator’s hands, like the rest of us.

But just as Senator Smoosh has protested automatically and not of her own volition, so do I assume a reproving facial expression all unwilling. It’s only later that I realize I’ve done it, as her reaction causes my nervous system to run a brief systems analysis. And when it does, I realize that my eyebrows have raised inquiringly and that I’ve got a quite small, somewhat amused smile. I can feel these things. And although I don’t know for sure, I suspect that what I’m doing is unconsciously aping the expression Top Management gets when, for example, I arrive home on a Friday night and tell her that I’m planning on spending 98% of the next 60 hours in a horizontal position, never attaining verticality for more than a few minutes at a time.

At which point Top Management gets that same somewhat amused, distinctly superior but patiently and lovingly so expression on her face. Sometimes it’s accompanied by a “well, that does sound pleasant,” or something along those lines.

Top Management, of course, has every right to assume a superior expression. I have no such right, certainly not with her, and assuredly not with her youngest, given that as a female she’s already automatically my better, and in this precise case, being the Next Step in Human Evolution, considerably more advanced than I.

And yet assume the expression I do. Which I realize only when she follows her mewled demurral with a breathy, heartfelt and heartrendingly tender, “please.”

I steel myself. I nod, smile gently, step away from the door, and melt. Sometime later, Top Management comes home, and as she opens the front door, a brisk winter wind whips in with her, chilling the house as only a San Diego breeze in the low 60s can, reviving me and causing me to regain my status as a solid rather than a liquid.

I test out my resolidified muscles and stand. Poking my head back into the Blue Room, I see that she has cleaned up all her ill-gotten non-toys. The skeptical would say it’s so she wouldn’t get busted by her big sisters.

But I know it’s simply another sign of her advanced nature.

Who, me? Do something I’m not supposed to? The very notion. Why, just one look at the hair falling fetchingly over my eyes should indicate I’m incapable of being less than perfect...

[Editor’s note: this is a recreation for illustrative purposes only and not from the actual event in question.]

Never a Good Start

“Hello?”
“Hi. First of all, don’t freak out: she’s okay.”

We’ve all gotten calls like that. Which doesn’t make them any less alarming.

(She really is okay, by the by, just a bit sad and uncomfortable and the sorry recipient of a very important life lesson.)

But an even worse opening to a conversation?

“Hello?”
“Hi. You need to come home. Right now. The doctor said we’ve got to take Max to the emergency room. Immediately.”

(She’s also okay, by the by, just the genetic beneficiary of her mother’s and maternal grandmother’s low blood pressure which, when combined with a virus, leads to a sudden and most upsetting albeit very temporary lack of consciousness.)

Whatever happened to: “Hi! I just called to say I love you!”

(Oh. That’s right. That sucks too. Just in a very different way.)

Genius!

As though there were any doubt my young chillens are computer savants—idiot computerants?—more proof appears.

You could also argue that this is, indeed, actually proof that their parents should watch said spawn more carefully and/or shut off their computers when not actually in use. You would be quite right and shut up.

Bittersweetness

Yes. Exactly. Just so.

Zombie Apocalypse

35%

35%. Sheesh. I just know it's because I said I'd try to find and help my fambly.

Stoopid fambly. They get you killed by zombies every time.

Mountains

Drove up to the mountains this day. Amazing drive, the same one we took on Top Management’s birthday. Drove through some areas hard hit by the fires in October. Large groves of burned out trees in gorgeous meadows of wild grasses a buttery yellow color the likes of which I’ve never seen is a surprisingly beautiful sight.

Not quite a White Christmas, although we did drive through a small section that had snow on the ground. Not one of the girls could guess what said white stuff was, so out of context was it. “We…we can have snow in southern California?!,” the Rose gasped dramatically. At 4100 feet you can, apparently.

After gazing at one particularly stark and fire-ravaged section, the Bean asked, “What’s a fire’s favorite dance?”

None of us could guess.

“The Hokey Smokey!” she said happily.

I had no idea.

Returned home to find out my uncle Oscar Peterson had passed away. Here’s a quick clip of him warming up. Guy didn’t suck.

Top Management

Our eyes met across a crowded room.

Okay, that’s not actually quite true. The room was extremely crowded and she later claimed she noticed me. I most certainly noticed her. Everybody there did.

It’s a long and entertaining story but not generally fit for public consumption—due to no fault of her own, mind you. No, she was merely bolding standing up for the rights of the oppressed, staring down a very large and quite inebriated gentleman who seemed more than willing to take her on, despite weighing twice as much and being about a foot taller. She just stood there and laughed at him as others pulled him away and hustled him out of the room, hurling threats her way all the while. Though she be but little, she is fierce.

It’s funny. Because I first saw her at a party, I assumed for quite some time that she was a party girl, when in reality, she was just like me: there only because it was a Friday night and that’s where all her friends were going, so it was either that or sit alone in her room.

Well, she wasn’t just like me. She was way smarter and funnier and much more well-read and more talented. And oh so much cuter. And if it turned out she had terrible taste in men, well, all the better for me.

And when our eyes finally did meet, across a table at the first read-through of the play we were later cast in, I had an idea immediately that there was maybe something there. When a few weeks later we both discovered that neither of us liked parties at all, deserting one (in her own room, thrown by her roommates) to instead hang out for five hours talking in the television room of her dorm—completely vacant, of course, because it was a Friday night and who wants to watch TV on a Friday night when you could be at a party?—my idea turned into an unshakeable conviction.

And nearly nineteen years later we’ve now known each other longer than we haven’t known each other. And she’s even cuter now than she was then, and smarter and funnier and more well-read and there’s still nothing in the whole wide world I’d rather do than avoid a party to just sit alone in a room and talk with her.

Happy birthday, love o’ my life. Today may be your day, but every day with you, I’m the one who gets a gift.

Just Outside the Big Tent

So. Some discussions on here last week would seem to indicate that things I think are incredibly obvious are perhaps only obvious if you’ve been so tremendously fortunate as to be reading Left of the Dial for some time. Which means when I unexpectedly get linked to and consequently get a couple hunnert new readers, they don’t realize my blistering snark is just a shield I put up to keep the world from realizing what a scared little boy I am deep down inside.

Or something like that.

Anyhoo, here’s a piece I first posted nearly two years ago, but mayhap it bears repeatedly every now and agin, albeit with minor tweaks because our fambly situation has changed slightly and, hey, I’m theoretically two years better at this bloggity thang.

It can be lonely being me.

I know what you’re thinking. How on earth can I, the idol of millions…thousands…hundreds? Okay, scores. Well, dozens. All right. One. The Boy idolizes me. I’ll take what I can get.

Anyhoo, how can I be lonely when my house is never less than seemingly packed to the rafters? It’s because I don’t fit in anywhere.

Now, I’m used to that. I didn’t fit in with my family much growing up. All four of my siblings were a year apart but then I was the youngest, three and a half years younger than brother John, a mighty big gap at that age. They were into sports. I was into reading and music. They were cool. I was a geek. They worked hard in school. I refused to do homework and, on one memorable occasion, simply refused to take a test.

(That one blew Dad’s mind. Looking back on it now, I can see why. But, I mean, seriously, who the hell cared what Uruguay’s major exports were? Other than Uruguayans and those who wanted to import stuff from Uruguay? At the age of thirteen, I most certainly did not fit into any of those categories.)

Later, my remarkable propensity to avoid doing work actually led the Dean of Students at my college to explain that I wasn’t allowed to come back the next semester, largely owing to the 1.2 GPA I’d achieved—that remarkable number translates to three C’s and two F’s for those keeping score at home. The dean "suggested" I take some time off and decide if I really wanted to be a student. After working two jobs, one of them literally digging ditches, something to which I was very much not physically suited, and taking three classes at a branch of UConn, even knowing the credits wouldn’t transfer, and being cut off from all my high school and college friends, I thought, oh yeah—I really, really want to be a college student.

But I digress. My point being that none of my college friends failed out of college. None of my high school friends failed out of college. And my siblings damn sure didn’t fail out of college.

I’ve never had a friend who liked Shostakovich. Or one who really dug Miles. Or Sonic Youth.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I’m on some desert island friendically. I’ve had friends who loved the Beatles and Bruce Springsteen and U2. I’ve had plenty of friends who love Monty Python and Batman and Scrubs and going for long drives where you try to get lost and then try to find your way back home again.

But I’ve never had a friend who quite clicked totally. Hell, I’ve never even met someone who did, much less liked them. Although, obviously, if I had, they would have liked me. I mean, that goes without saying, right? Right.

Here’s the thing. I’m about as left-wing a liberal as they come. I’m not just pro-environment (polls consistently show that the overwhelming majority of even Republicans are greener than the Democratic party, never mind their own party), I actually used to work for an environmentalist lobbying group; that’s right, I was one of them annoying folks what showed up at your door at dinner time to tell you how polluted your local river was and can I have some money to help fix it? (And I got it too—and, interestingly, the batting average got way higher the less wealthy the neighborhood; you didn’t need to tell these blue-collar joes their river was polluted since they’d been fishing it for fifty years and had seen the difference.)

I’ve never gotten stoned, never even seen the majority of drugs and yet I’m all for the legalization of them, believing our drug policy is unbelievably asinine, does nothing but hurt innocents and enriches the evil and powerful and all stems historically from a big business playing on racism to achieve their own nefarious ends. I’m for incredibly strict gun control. I’m against any kind of censorship.

I believe there’s not one compelling case to be made for the death penalty, ethically, morally, economically or practically, and at least a half-dozen strong cases against it. I’m for affirmative action, believing that the American Dream isn’t achievable if we don’t all start from the same point and that, alas, at this point in our history we’re still not close to all being there yet.

I’m for higher and progressive taxation believing not just that the more you have the more you owe morally but in addition that the more you benefit economically from others also being raised up. I’m in favor of gay rights which, really, just mean making sure they have the same rights as any other American and not special rights as is sometimes erroneously and maliciously claimed. If I’m leaving any major issues out, it’s probably safe to assume I’m with my liberal brethren on that too.

Except for one. I’m pro-life. I’m all about the civil liberties and who’s more in need of protection than those who can’t protect themselves?

And if you think being a fan of Shostakovich and Sonic Youth can get lonely, it’s nothing compared to being a pro-life Democrat.

All of my liberal friends are pro-choice. All my pro-life friends are conservatives. And the thing is, it’s easy to find pro-choice conservatives: the worst of both worlds, as that means they’re wrong about absolutely everything. The one thing—the one damn thing—their party gets right and that’s the issue they depart on. Never fails. People, man.

This means that I know whenever I post anything other than a cute story about the kids, I’m almost guaranteed to bore or piss off a goodly percentage of Left of the Dial’s regular readers. Pal Dave asked me if that ever makes me nervous. It doesn’t exactly make me nervous but it doesn’t make me happy either. I guess maybe it bums me out a little, but hey. There’re worse things. It is what it is and I yam what I yam. What can I say? As Van the Man said, and Paul Westerberg later echoed, it’s too late to turn back now. (Here we go.)

So. If you sometimes wonder why I’m such a curmudgeonly bastard, maybe this is at least part of the reason. It’s because I don’t really fit in anywhere and never have. There are lots of folks with whom I agree on this, that or t’other thang, but no one in this entire world I match up with perfectly.

Well, except, of course for Top Management. We may and do live pretty damn near the poverty line. But at least there’s one person in this whole wide world who gets me, gets how I can be down with most of the Greenpeace agenda and yet against Planned Parenthood, how I’m with Alito on Roe v. Wade yet wish he weren’t such a lying bastard and wish he hadn’t gotten confirmed because, in general, I think our Supreme Court justices shouldn’t be lying bastards who’ll say absolutely anything to get a gig as this jerk clearly is and clearly did. She groks how I’m all for stem cell research but against embryonic stem cell research even though I’ve got two kids who it’s not inconceivable (no pun intended) could benefit from that research. She understands that our pro-life acquaintances are too religious for my tastes and that our liberal friends are so tragically misguided on this one.

So it’s just the two of us. Which means it’s still kinda lonely sometimes. But at least we get to be lonely together. And since there’s nothing else I’d rather do than be with her, even if it means we’re being lonely together, that’s okay.

So if there’s anyone out there who doesn’t have someone to be lonely with, there’s my Christmakwanzakah Wish for you—that you find someone you can be lonely with. Having someone huddling in the bunker with you makes everything bearable. And sometimes a whole, whole lot better’n that.

Now I just gotta work on getting her to appreciate Miles. Or at least Shostakovich. Sonic Youth, I’m thinkin’, is a bridge too far. But one can always hope. After all, what are the odds I’d have found her in the first place? And what are the odds that she’d be so perfect and yet still have this one weird blind spot and fall for me? If that can happen, just about anything can.