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.

A few weeks ago I was contacted by TastyBaby.com to represent the Dads of the Blogosphere! by writing some content for their upcoming Father’s Day celebration.  Honored and goony with delight, I took the opportunity to write another sonnet: Eighty-Eight Keys to Overzealous Parenting.

Syllabically speaking, Eight-Eight scans well but don’t count on any reliable amount of iambic pentameter this go around.  But when you write for free, what more do you suspect?

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.

As my darling wife reports, Hazel has been a handful lately. Hazel, once a stationary baby content to sit still and rip the pages from a magazine, has become the crawling equivalent of Speedy Gonzales. And don’t get me wrong, it’s fantastic that she has become such an efficient crawler. But, sometimes you just want her to stay where you plop her down rather than disappear in a cloud of dust, zipping her way toward the wall outlets with a great metal fork. Don’t even ask me where she got the fork; we never even bought the thing.

Luckily, Hazel is still ready for bedtime around seven or eight each night, so Megan and I still have a few wakeful hours to take care of household loose ends.  Not that an evening of dishwasher-loading, laundry-folding, washing the dishes that can’t go in the dishwasher, or bedclothes-changing is a magical night, but at least we can periodically pick up our home and blow the dust out of it like so many Nintendo cartridges.

But in between all the scrubbing and tidying, we still find the time to play some Scrabble, sip some wine, or finish an art project. And more often that not, Megan can find a chance to check on her favorite cupcake blog while I can devote a bit to reading the latest I-Mockery mini mock. In fact, if you’re looking for some reading, HarperCollins is hosting the complete text to Neil Gaiman’s American Gods for the month of March. Now you can read this great book for free (barring the off-chance that you have a library card). I have had gods on the brain lately, so taking the opportunity to read a “Where Are They Now?” take on the deities of yore is a real treat.

Building upon my successful enjoyment of the Word Series this year, I settled into the Superbowl with much interest. As usual, this interest quickly faded as thoughts turned to all the quests I wasn’t completing in the Pirates of the Caribbean Online game. I did manage to check out the halftime show. While musically identical to the studio versions, Tom Petty’s singing voice has taken on an alarming warble akin to a goat’s bleat mixed with the dithering voice of a very old lady. This mixed with his polka-dotted cravat only further confused me. I guess it’s only a matter of time before skinny ties step aside for flowing neckerchiefs.

Anyway, the last half of the game was pretty good. I still don’t know how Eli Manning managed to finagle his way into the NFL. As far as I could tell, his standard modus operandi is to screw around for the first two or three downs of each drive, then let dumb luck spirit the football from his ham hands to the waiting grasp of a Giants receiver. I don’t think anybody thinks he’s actually a good player, but time and again, he bumbles his way forward, this time winning the Superbowl and getting christened MVP to boot!

But enough about Eli “Inspector Clouseau” Manning, what I really want to point out is a new link over in my blogroll. The latest barnstormer is none other than my wife, Megan. Much like me, she used to maintain a personal blog that bit the dust during our pregnancy/move to Maine. Well she’s back with 5/15—a look at our parenting lives from her perspective rather than from this dork’s. So hit her up and enjoy her take on life with Hazel.

In case you were wondering, last week I sold my Taurus and bought another Taurus. This isn’t brand loyalty; it’s just another example of my innate spendthrift. So this morning I dropped off my ride to get an inspection sticker. The garage I use is run by the most honest man in the world, whose name also happens to be John and whose garage is on John Street (how can you ignore the signs?!), so I don’t mind walking the mile or so to my office – even in this morning’s cold New England rain.

As I ambled past a gas station on my way in, I saw a Saab owner gassing up his shiny foreign auto. Glancing at his license plate, which is the vanity variety, I chuckled. Surely promoting his own or his business’s initials, his personalized plate read: PBFT. Much like how “achoo” represents the sound of a sneeze and “ack-ack” stands in for the sound of a machine gun repeat, “pbft” is most assuredly how one represents a fart in print. If this isn’t a comic strip staple, it darn well should be. And so we see how self-promotion can bite one in the butt (no pun intended).

Speaking of self-promotion (and poorly crafted segues), I am once more up for Blogger’s Choice Award in the Hottest Daddy Blogger category. Somehow I lost the 2007 competition, but I am sure we can alleviate this in ‘08. Now let’s not get hung up on the semantics of “hottest” or anything; they could be referring to swarthiness for all we know. I lay myself bare before you and submit the voting link. Look in your heart and do what’s best for everyone (but mostly me).