The cast of characters here at From Here to Paternity just keeps growing and growing. No, Megan isn’t pregnant again and no, we haven’t gotten a third cat or a first dog. I’d like to introduce the Internet to my dear friend Super Orange the Sock Monkey¹. And my word, what doth Super Orange wear upon his head? Why it’s his new hat, one from a set of four made by my wife Megan and available for purchase at our ABChickadee Etsy shop. Even if you don’t have a baby, you never know when a leprechaun, guinea pig, or small alien will need adequate cranial warming. Mention this ad and receive a FREE BONUS – a 5”x7” drawing of Super Orange and the 1980s copyrighted cartoon character of your choice high-fiving²!

Why wait? Place your order today³!

¹Super Orange’s mom is none other than Jody “Sunshine Soul” Pratt. He was born in the late 1990s in the Connecticut hills.
²We reserve the right to substitute all My Little Ponies requests, as they are lame and I refuse to draw them. Plus, being ungulates, they can’t really high-five. Though, technically, most ‘80s cartoon characters can’t either since the ”five” in high-five connotes having five fingers, but it’s my FREE BONUS offer and I’ll make the rules around here, missie!
³And by today, I mean whenever you read this post rather than the actual date of the timestamp. I’m not saying you should put it off forever, but I don’t want to be too pushy.

I realize that I have been remiss in reporting funny Hazel anecdotes, illustrated by unbelievably cute photos of our little girl. Just so you know, this post won’t really have much to say about Hazel, but with her First Birthday coming up in just two weeks(!), she’ll have much attention lavished upon her. For now, let’s focus on two occurrences that happened this week to pull Ragozzine optimism into a pin-wheeling nosedive.

First off, let’s turn the clock back a few nights. Hazel was slumbering peacefully in her crib, affording Megan and I the chance to sit back and watch some good old fashion network television. With upwards of four static-snowed channels provided FOR FREE by our rabbit ears antennae, a veritable world of entertainment waited for us in our living room. One of us was already sitting on the right-side of the futon when the other came in and sat down on the left-side of the futon, and with a KER-THUMP! the left-side of the futon frame collapsed to the ground, leaving us askew and laughing. That futon has been through a lot, including holding up the heft of O³Paul (One Ounce Overweight) on several occasions with nary a crack nor a sag. But its time has obviously come, so we resolved ourselves to buying a new couch with our well-timed economic stimulus check.

We settled on a sofa from IKEA’s Ektorp series. Not only will this match our Ektorp loveseat, but now we have twice the reasons to randomly bark out “Ektorp!” in a nigh passable German accent. Ektorp! And yes, we realize that IKEA is a Swedish company. But just like Paul, Ektorp has a distinct German connotation to it. However, unlike Paul, our soon-to-arrive Ektorp sofa won’t set off any “too much weight” elevator alarms.

I suppose now would be the best time to wish Paul a happy birthday. We hope to be making fat jokes about you for decades to come, so here’s to your long and joyous life!

The second ill-fated happenstance bubbled to the surface yesterday morning. In addition to May flowers, April showers brought us another flooded basement. We just got too much precipitation in too short a time earlier this week and the excessive water found its way inside again. Since we already have everything of value off the floor following the last flooding episode, nothing of great importance was lost except for some tag sale stuff, a few more cardboard boxes left over from our move, and all of our surplus stock of toilet paper. If you know me, you know that the latter actually may impact us fairly hard, but I’m trying to be positive.

After 5 hours of work with our utility pump and wet/dry vac, the tides seemed to have turned, so Megan and I went downtown for some lunch (Hazel having been magically whisked away to Grammie house). When we returned to the basement after about an hour or so, all the water had come back. Clearly our methods were not keeping up with the rate of ingress. Lucky for us, though, a new Lowe’s store opened up just 4 minutes from home and were offering 10% off on all purchases to celebrate their opening. So we were able to buy a larger, better pump with an electronic on/off sensor along with a few other things necessary to get our affairs in order. After just three more hours of work, the pump could now keep up with the water’s continual entry and we could take the rest of the night off from mopping and such.

All told, I wound up moving about 300 gallons of water by bucket and vacuum container up our bulkhead steps. In a moment of desperation, we also tried moving the many bags of tube sand off the floor drain (covered over by me based on a theory that it is not so much a drain as a forever-on faucet for groundwater) to see if it would do what it was designed to do. After hoisting 540 lbs of sand up the stairs to the backyard, we discovered that the drain is definitely where the water comes in; when I lifted up the last bag, water began gushing in like a leak in a submarine. So back down came 420 lbs worth of tube sand (the two last bags were just too many) and we picked up where we left off with water removal. If we can agree that one gallon of water weighs about 8 lbs, then I moved about 3400 lbs worth of water and sand yesterday up and/or down a half dozen cellar stairs. That’s close to 1-3/4 tons of stuff that I personally relocated, which ain’t half bad for a guy who hasn’t been to a gym in five years!

I’m happy to report that no new water has gotten inside, so things are looking up once more. In closing, I think this week can be most adequately summarized thusly: EKTORP!

Greetings from sunny Chattanooga, Teneessee! The last time I was in this state, Jim, his Cherokee Territory wife (Christina), and me were ascending its highpoint, Clingmans Dome, along a snow-strewn access road under a bright midnight moon. Following this summit, Jim got really, really sick from gas station Cheetos and we hunkered down at a truck stop just outside of Pigeon Forge (home to Dollywood and all things super classy) and I had the pleasure of using a truck stop pay-by-the-hour shower stall. Over vending machine peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, while Jim might have been dying in the back of the van, Christina and I spent the evening watching Top Gun on a ridiculously huge television in the trucker rumpus room. The year was 1998 and it was the first time I saw that movie. I was a deprived child.

Speaking of deprived children, Hazel should not be counted among their swarthy lot. She spent Saturday Running Errands With Daddy and had a hoot, as did I. We went to the post office and the grocery store and still had enough time (and baby energy) left over for a quick trip to buy Mommy a brand new Red Sox hat. Hazel bought it with her allowance, which I bestowed upon her as we waited in line at the register and summarily suspended before we had crossed the parking lot to our car. While Hazel is very sensitive to the fact of our taking away tangible things (toys she insists on banging against each other, our cell phones she likes to chew upon, nigh swallowed cat food) intangibles like the concept of allowance can be turned on and off like a faucet without any tantrumic repercussions. Until she figures out that money is special paper, things should be just fine.

After Hazel was put to bed and the rain delay was lifted, Megan and I settled in for a nice night of televised Major League baseball. I am no august sports fan by far, but seeing as how I own a Red Sox hat, and had bought a second one for my wife (Hazel somehow has the king’s share of Red Sox paraphernalia in our house with two hats and one outgrown onesie), I make the effort to watch a game when it is on a channel our rabbit ears antenna picks up (ABC, PBS, or FOX - CBS should the atmosphere by particularly benevolent). Saturday’s game was pretty tense; both the Sox and their dread rivals the Yankees played excellently in the field and kept the score low and close. After a second rain delay, we arrived at the top of the 9th with 2 outs, Papelbon on the mound. Just as he was to throw what could have been a game ending strike, FOX cut the feed and switched to stupid NASCAR. With a pox cast on Bill France, Sr., I shook my fist angrily toward the heavens before realizing that I could just check the live feed of the game online. Technology fixes everything.

Since watching car racing on television is tantamount to torture in our house, we turned the channel to PBS out of desperation and the Saturday evening movie was just starting: Penny Serenade starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. The entire movie is couched as a series of tedious flashbacks sparked by different songs being played on the phonograph in deliberate succession by Dunne’s character. I can’t remember her name, as another character’s fictional moniker far outshone her, that of the “aw shucks” best friend of Grant, Applejack Carney. I’m not officially calling dibs on that name should we have a boy next, but consider this a penciled in dibs. Beyond his name, Applejack is a fantastic guy, capable of fixing printing presses with his fist (à la the Fonz), bathtubs using no tools, and marriages with adopted babies. All in all, the movie features loads of chauvinism, a miscarriage, purchased Japanese children, and that great clomping around sound effect made famous by the Three Stooges. You can watch Penny Serenade in its entirety online — consider it for your next rainy day distraction or betting device.

Anyway, by the length of this post, can you tell that I’ve been cooped up on three separate plane flights today? I’m off to see what Chattanooga has in store for a simple Mainer. If I make it to Rock City or a Lookouts game, I’ll let you know.

If Nutt equals Nut, ‘N equals And, and But equals Butt, then:

a) Valentine’s Day equals Very One-sided.
b) Boston’s Best Marketing Personnel equal Larry Flint and Ron Jeremy.
c) Cup o’ Joe equals Whole New Euphemism.
d) Yours Truly equals Massive Perv.

Hazel’s two biggest passions at the moment are music and walking. The former she appreciates fully; she bounces and bops the same to a Bob Marley song, the theme music for Elmo’s World, or a snazzy jingle for dishwashing detergent. The latter she cannot do without assistance from a person or piece of furniture. While Megan and I are more than happy to help her amble along, her hands in ours, it does bother the back a bit to walk around with your torso parallel to the floor. Lucky for us someone (I think my parents though Christmas is kind of a blur) bought us the Stride-to-Ride Lion. The idea is that a toddler still getting used to self-ambulation can use the wheeled cat as support and, when old enough to walk on their own, can fold the handle into the lion’s back which doubles as a seat. Then it’s all the fun of pushing yourself around on a plastic king of the jungle. This handy little thing combines Hazel’s two passions.

By gripping the purple handle, Hazel can stroll around fairly unassisted. The lion also plays a handful of poppy songs when it is pushed especially forcefully or when its nose is pressed. We still have to stand guard since she sometimes forgets to keep stepping forward while pushing the lion ahead. More than once she’s wound up flat on her face like a bowler who forgot to let go of the ball. Thankfully she only has a short way to fall and we usually catch her in time. Usually. And while this is fun and all, Hazel likes it even more when we fold the handle down and place her on the lion’s back. She’ll just sit there, happy as a clam to be on her mount. Typically, she’ll lean forward, press his nose to start the music, and just dance away. The song ends, her dancing subsides, and she leans forward again to smack the nose and bring on the next instrumental. Oh, and the lion also occasionally “roars” before or after songs. I use quotes because it sounds more like Charles Nelson Reilly after last call.

My mental blueprint for this post is threatening to spin out towards a larger discussion about music, so I think I’ll end here and post that separately. Let’s just say that I love Hazel’s innate interest in music. I know odds are I will dislike whatever bands/artists she fanatically follows as a teenager, at least for now, we can both agree that the theme song for Super Why! saves our day every time.

Here in Maine we’ve decided to follow one of the snowiest Decembers on record with one of the warmest Januarys on record. The past few days have been in the 50s and nearly all that 2007 snow has melted away, leaving behind piles of dirty, icy slush and revealing surprisingly green lawns beneath.

Luckily, before Nature turned up the heat to MED-LOW, the fam went snowshoeing at Merryspring Nature Center in nearby Rockport. This gave me the chance to field test one of my best Christmas gifts: a pair of Coleman Exponent 8250 snowshoes. I tried to find a link for these, but Coleman has rebranded the product line and now disavows any knowledge of said product. That’s fine by me though, as they are great gear and a collector’s item to boot!

As I said, these snowshoes performed excellently in both packed down deep snow and mid-meadow snow drifts. I was able to maneuver down steep trails without slipping and could turn 180° effortlessly. They’re rated up to 200 lbs so it is a good thing I dropped down from my holiday 180 mark; I was carrying Hazel in our Deuter Kangakid baby backpack the whole time. I felt like Luke training with Yoda through the swamps of Dagobah.

Sadly, Megan’s snowshoes fell way below the acceptable line. Last year, she received a pair of L.L. Bean Winter Walker 21s, but barely used them save around the yard once because, you know, she was pregnant at the time. She was very jonesed to get on some real terrain this
winter, but these snowshoes failed miserably. The main problem is the binding. While my Colemans have bindings in the front, across the top, and behind the foot, Megan’s only had a heel strap and a binding clip across the bridge of her foot. This lack of a front strap caused much slipping. By the end of the day (we were only on trail for about an hour and a half), her right boot toe kept popping out of the binding entirely. Not only did this slow us up, but to compensate Megan had to arch her foot very awkwardly to keep the snowshoe on at all. If we were further away from our stopping point, she could have really messed up her foot, ankle, or both.

So the next time we’re in Freeport, we’ll be returning these to L.L. Bean in the hopes that they will have a worthwhile replacement model. It’s too bad, as living in Maine means a view of Beans that borders on idolatry. It’s like the golden calf just gave us sour milk and then
peed down our galoshes.

Still, we had a great time being outside with Hazel. Save for a handful of cross country skiers and one woman walking a terrier, we had the whole 66-acre landscape all to ourselves. Check out the whole photo gallery here and keep your de-mittened fingers firmly crossed that we get a little more snow this winter. We’re definitely not done playing yet and Hazel is still so darn hungry!