Starting Friday, Megan is going away to her childhood summer camp with her childhood summer camp friends for a long weekend of reliving their childhood summer camp memories. I never went away to summer camp as a kid and I’ve always been secretly¹ jealous of Megan’s halcyon summer days spent bunking in a cabin by a lake with oodles of other young people, whiling away the weeks with swimming, arts-and-crafts, and beans for dinner every night. She totally deserves this time away from home and I am very happy that she is taking advantage of this opportunity.

Mixed with that happiness, however, is the nervous dread of being Hazel’s sole caregiver from Friday at 4 p.m. until Sunday afternoon. It’s just going to be me and Hazey for something like 47 hours —plenty of time for ol’ Dad to screw up. I mean, I’ve seen Mr. Mom, okay? I know that, the first second of the 169,200 total seconds Megan will be out of town, the vacuum cleaner is going to explode or Hazel will eat a non-food item and need her stomach pumped or a superheated geyser will erupt in the front garden, totally messing up our hydrangeas. Megan assures me I can handle it, so let’s hope her prediction is spot on.

On her way to the grocery store, she called to ask if I wanted anything special food-wise for the weekend. I told her not to worry, as it is surely time that Hazel learns the dangers of fast food. Have you ever watched that old Donald Duck cartoon where Huey, Dewey, and Louie buy their uncle a box of fine Cuban cigars for his birthday? Donald spies the boys strutting proudly from a cigar store downtown and jumps to the incorrect conclusion that his nephews are planning to smoke the cigars themselves. As punishment, he traps them in their tree house and sadistically makes the boys smoke cigar after cigar until the entire box is empty, thereby making them associate the social evil of smoking with immediate physiological endangerment and severe gastrointestinal distress. If that’s not good parenting, I don’t know what is.

Likewise, to help Hazel dodge the cholesterol-soaked bullet of a poor diet, I owe it to her to feed her nothing but McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, and KFC² all weekend. To be fair, I suppose I’ll have to eat the stuff to. Maybe I can feign food poisoning to really drive the message home. If only we lived near a Sonic Burger; I hear that stuff turns even the hardiest constitutions into goose grease.

¹And by “secretly” I mean “loudly griped every time Pilgrim Lodge or other things pilgrim-y come up in conversation.”
²My more observant readers may note that I did not include Wendy’s in the fast food menu schmörgåsbord for this coming weekend. My reasons are twofold: 1) Wendy’s is slightly above really gross fast food in quality and is our quick road food of choice so any forced aversion pressed on Hazel now will just make family vacations in the future that much more challenging; and 2) the nearest Wendy’s is 28 miles away and high gas prices supersede well-crafted and scientifically sound fatherly life lessons.

Megan and I have moved a lot over the past eight years — seven times by my count. It’s like one of us is in the military or wanted by the authorities (or both á la The A-Team!) and we have to keep stealing away in the midnight hours. I have to seriously wonder if all this relocation has given us an aura of displacement because my workplace, situated in the same Mid-coast town since 1990 and in the same cozy offices therein for the past 12 years, just up and moved last month. The move was only 8 miles down Route One, but still I feel somewhat responsible for our recent need of change of address forms and sturdy brown boxes.

Overall, I love the new office. The building is more modern in both its design and amenities and is only two miles from home, so I can bike to work, thereby combating both high gas prices and my carbon footprint. It has been kind of strange to make the shift from our old “single serve” bathrooms to the large, public affairs we have here. It wasn’t a huge leap back into my memory banks to remember that, even if you see someone you know in the men’s room, anything beyond a polite nod and quickly muttered salutation is sort of taboo. Like when you find yourself in a dicey neighborhood, keep your eyes forward, just keep moving, and for God’s sake don’t point.

We’re located at the topmost floor, the fourth, so this gives me great opportunity to exercise a little bit each day. But whenever I come across people on the stairs, any smile or friendly hello on my part is treated with surprise and even suspicion. Something about the stairs — closed in by cinderblock walls, narrow with lots of blind corners — spooks people. A frighteningly large percentage of the folks I see look fearful of some masher attack. It makes one wonder if something unfortunate happened in this building,  in the very stairs that are meant to connect floors.  But most likely it’s just the insular attitude that many people in Maine have. It’s not unfriendliness, but it certainly isn’t sociability.

Of course, I could always just sell out and take the elevator. I do periodically when something large or unwieldy needs to be moved up from or down to our basement storage area. But then you can be trapped with people in a little box, forced to decide between idle chat or staring resolutely at the floor number display as you ascend. But taking the elevator wouldn’t only betray my marginal fitness goals, it would also seriously slow me up. Several times, people who can clearly walk have gotten on the thing for a ride of just one floor. Trying to get from the basement to the fourth can be confounding enough, but running the gauntlet of one-floorers can be downright enervating.

Maybe it isn’t laziness though. Maybe these people take the elevator because of the Incident that happened in the Stairs. Maybe they know the elevator to be a safe haven, a story-spanning sanctuary. Perhaps that humble lift is this building’s version to the Headless Horseman Bridge: offering secure passage to those who reach it in time.

Some questions in life need to be answered by all people: Where should I live? Whom should I love? Other questions should be considered by all people, but are often overlooked: What’s the meaning of life? Is there a God in the Judaeo-Christian sense? Am I going to leave this planet better than when I arrived? And yes, other questions are never even considered…until now:

A few days ago, this very question started to rattle my mental cage. I have no clue where it came from, but an answer was demanded forthwith. I am often plagued by nonsensical or downright dumb postulates that my mind simply will not ignore. Like a kitten with a ball of yarn, I just can’t resist stupid stuff like this. Typically, I have a mental monologue exploring both sides of the coin, then draw a final conclusion. This conclusion I share with Megan over dinner and she just shakes her head, internally questioning why she ever took that bet to marry me.

But, so as to share my burden, I asked Paul and Jim to consider the same question and answer on their respective blogs.

The common thread between mud flaps and dust jackets is that each protects something of value from dirt and much. This is not a good thing. But, of the two, mud flaps have more fun. They get to travel; I see mud flaps most often on 18-wheelers so these ones actually see more of the country than I do, and I have frequent flyer miles. Plus, they get emblazoned with funny and/or crass images—they’re the life of the party and have the best road trip stories. Whether they have Yosemite Sam threatening motorists to “back off” or a reclining naked lady, it’s all frosting on the awesome cake they call Life As a Mud Flap.

Being a book dust jacket must be terrible. Sure, they may house vast amounts of knowledge, but they can just as likely be wrapped around a John Grisham bloater or an Ann Coulter floater. Just think of what it must be like to exist only as a superficial marketing ploy. Oh the lies they have to tell to the world! Plus, the best view they can hope for is of the off-white ceiling above the coffee table. If they’re shelved, the only part of them open to the scenery is their spine. Lastly, life as a book dust jacket is one of immediate shame, for as we all know, you can’t judge a book by its cover. Talk about a self-esteem cutter.

So I say that it’s a mud flap life for me! Should you have a difference in opinion, I’d love to hear it.

The first Kurt Vonnegut story I ever read was “Harrison Bergeron” in 10^th grade English. If you aren’t familiar (and don’t have time to read the Wiki entry), the story takes place in the far-flung year 2081. In an effort to promote sameness and equality, the U.S. government creates a Handicapper General position. In short, anyone showing exceptional qualities is hindered so as to keep everyone at the same level. Smart people have neural inhibitors in their heads that disrupt their thoughts, attractive people are required to hide their beauty behind homely masks, and folks blessed with grace or athletic fortitude are laden with weights and chains to foist awkwardness and weakness upon them. It’s a bit extreme, but you can’t have a dystopia without a bit of hyperbole.

This story popped in my head because I am very close to seriously considering fitting Hazel with some iron chains so as to keep her lying down in her crib. Up until now, if she was too tired to nap and crankiness ruled the land, we could put her in her crib and let her cry it out. Usually, after only ten minutes of sobs and screams, she would realize that her mattress wasn’t made of white-hot daggers of infinite pain and would nod off, getting some much needed rest. Plus, this freed up Megan and I from grappling with her while steadily pumping the rocking chair back and forth—a real win-win solution!

The party ended last week when Hazel finally figured out that she can hoist her 29.5-inch frame to standing by grabbing onto her crib rails. This helps Hazel really wail from her diaphragm, which increased her volume, intensity, and musicality. Also, once she is standing, she becomes even more upset because she is now trapped that way and cannot lower herself back down in a safe or reliable way. So the shrieks ramp up and don’t subside like they used to. Clearly, we are not keeping pace with Hazel’s learning curve as I am relying on sci-fi stories for parenting advice.

I probably shouldn’t yoke my daughter just to make things easier for Megan and myself. I mean, just because she’s held down to the mattress doesn’t mean she will relax enough to sleep. And I think padlocks are a choking hazard. So on to Plan B (or Plan Z if I want to be extra dorky): I fit her crib with a gravitational augmentation device like Goku used to train while flying to the plan Namek. This would cause a localized increase in the pull of gravity and hold her firmly yet safely to her mattress. But that’s just silly as I might damage the floor of her room or, worse, create a Super Saiyan baby with all the correlated accoutrements. I doubt my home insurance can cover monthly Oozaru rampages.

Megan called me yesterday at work with an exciting announcement: Hazel was cruising around our house. “Why is our little girl motoring around our living room in a tiny convertible, blasting Night Ranger, and looking to score a date for Saturday’s school dance?” I immediately questioned. “Furthermore, what are we paying for insurance on that little Volkswagen Cabrio and where has she been hiding it?” I tend to speak first and process what I heard afterward. Luckily, Megan knows this and tends to not listen to my first (and second) reactions to things. It turns out cruising is when an infant walks around unassisted by human hands. Rather, the tyke grips onto furniture for support. In my head, I call that bouldering, but since we don’t live at the foot of a cliff, in a climbing gym, or in a quarry, we’ll just go with the generally accepted “cruising”.

This is, of course, fantastic news. Hazel has been early for almost every milestone and now it looks like walking will soon be added to her repertoire. I often remark to Megan that, as Hazel learns to do more and more stuff like a “real live person”, it’s kind of like the cat ambled out from the kitchen on its hind legs, bow tie ‘round its neck and a monocle in place, to ask for a spot of Earl Grey tea. I know she’ll do more and more each day, but the fast rate of her ascent toward maturity can sometimes stagger me a bit. Just when I get used to one of her abilities, she supersedes that with further advancement. It’s what every parent wants, but it’s really tiring to boot!

Not to focus on the negative, but this crowning achievement is sullied by the fact that she still has no teeth. I know it’s no big deal, but all of Hazel’s friends have teeth – not a single tooth mind you, but multiple teeth – and Hazel is still the Gummy Joe of her social circle. I know the other babies are accepting, but once they learn to talk, can gossiping be far behind? Like that ninth grader who’s old enough to drive to school, Hazel could suffer ostracism by all these toothy tots.

You might think I’m overreacting, and you’re probably right. In fact, you’re definitely right. But despite my knowledge that I’m being irrational, late at night as I lie in bed listening to Megan’s thunderous snoring, I can’t help but wonder what we’ll do when Hazel is invited to her first Bubble Gum Birthday Bash and we don’t have enough money for baby dentures and that Trap Jaw surgery is still only legal in Mexico, Switzerland, and Eternia.

Hazel’s latest photo session, commemorating her eighth month of life on the outside, did not go over swimmingly. Lately, she has started whining a bit should we take away something she wants; in this case, she really wanted to chew on Megan’s digital SLR and that mean mommy simply wouldn’t give in. Instead, Megan gave our little technophile her cell phone to gaze upon in wonder. And as the warm, glowing, warming glow of the phone’s backlit screen soothed the savage tot, Megan started snapping pics once more.

Of course, you cannot expect a baby with such a treat to just stare at it and simply noodle some buttons. At least, not for long. What started as mere nibbling soon ballooned to outright gnawing. Despite having enough teething rings to hold the toothiest crocodile at bay, Hazel decided at that moment to cut her choppers on Megan’s Nokia. The improvement in her mood could not be resisted and Megan just kept taking pictures. All in all, the photo shoot was rescued from a threatening tantrum and we can have a smiling baby in the Month Eight space of our First Year frame. Oh, and no teeth came out, even after several minutes of mobile munching.

After work, I called Megan to see if she needed me to stop and pick up anything on my way home. Her phone went right to voicemail. Thinking that odd, I called the house phone (which is actually Megan’s office number so I never use it lest I fall into the company of supply houses and sales reps). Megan answers and explains that her phone has stopped working. She recounts for me the tale I just told you – albeit much more succinctly and linearly – and tells me that she’ll be getting a new cell phone the following day. Luckily, that day came and her phone had “dried out” enough to function again to an acceptable degree. No new Moto for Meggo.

Should I ever land my dream job in international espionage, I’ll eschew the fancy technology for a good, old-fashioned baby. Need that microfilm destroyed? Just give it to your government issued baby and it will be a drooly memory in no time. Still need to dispose of those stolen top secret blueprints to the latest Doomsday Machine and enemy agents are hot on your trail? Just hand them over to your diapered sidekick and not even Mike Wazowski will be able to reassemble the torn-up mishmash. Mark my words, in the next James Bond flick, 007 will be sporting a BabyBjörn carrier and crashing Lamborghinis through plate glass windows all in search of a restroom that has a diaper changing station.