I’m outside walking diesel (18 lb bichon #1) and he’s taking his sweet time to find a spot to shit. Normally, he’s got no problem backing up to the living room rug and releasing his meatball. Anywhere, anytime. And that’s when he’s inside and no one’s looking.
When he’s outside and it’s ass cold, and I’m holding his leash, he has to be more discriminating. He paces and stops and turns and inspects, and sniffs the ground like he works for homeland security.
“Just take a shit already, you little turd,” I say.
I’ve almost lost feeling in my extremities due to the cold.
Nope. Got to find the perfect spot. Anything less will simply not do. Not exactly sure why, but there is something in the fickle nature of canine bowels that mandates a militarily precise landing zone when the dog is on leash. Must be a control thing.
Whatever it is, it’s more than a little annoying.
As cold as I am, I can’t just slam shut the window of opportunity. Here’s why: Earlier in the day we were walking past the event hall. They were having a BBQ and I started flapping my jaw with the cook. We got so into it that she burned the sausage beyond legal human consumption.
Diesel, as if on queue, opened his puppy dog eyes wide and it was a short trip to a plate of blackened sausage. He ate 6 inches of sausage and that’s got to hurt folks.
So I knew that it wouldn’t be long before we saw that mass one way or another. Meanwhile, what can I do but yell at him to hurry up.
Because I’m cold…
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
I thought old people were nice...
I thought old people were nice??
Today at Panera in The Villages (Disney World for golfcart driving retirees) , I was working on my laptop. For the record, I ordered a breakfast sandwich, decaf and a muffin. By old people’s standards, that’s a friggin voluminous meal. Anyway, when my computer battery started to die a few hours later, I looked under all the old people’s legs for an outlet (ok I’ll admit it was a bit creepy) and spying one, relocated to within 6 feet of it. Couple empty tables here and there. The place was starting to thin out. The time was 11:15. Wasn’t long before I figured out that the outlet was dead and that my writing session was coming to a mandatory end. The national chain offers free wifi but no way to recharge you battery. Brilliant tactic to discourage non paying barnacles like me…(except I am a pig and eat almost my entire body weight in any given 8 hour session).
As I’m packing up, an old turtle of a man wags his bony finger at me and without saying a word, calls me over. I though he needed help getting up or was choking on a tooth or something. Instead of being grateful that I’ve come to help (I am also a licensed EMT in NY state), he barks at me, “Sign says you can’t use them things in here from 11-3. People can’t get a seat.” His wife shrinks a little lower. He’s got the fire in his eyes. Looking for a fight. I remember the look from my bar crawling days.
I was a little taken aback. For starters, there was no sign.
“Am I not a person? Do I not deserve a seat?”
“Not allowed to use those things in here. Read the sign.”
“But there’s no sign.”
“Well, there was one yesterday. Must be fixing it.”
“Do you work here sir?
“No but I read signs and obey the law. And you should too.”
Ouch.
Well I wasn’t going to scrap with grandpa in Paneras. He had lots of people on his side and though they may be arthritic, en masse they could put some hurt on me. I took the high road and ambled outside mumbling something about mandatory institutionalization for those suffering from senile dementia. Outside it was fresh and thus completely uncrowded. I plugged into a working outlet and started recharging. A fellow with a collared shirt on was pushing tables around, arranging things and muttering to himself . He looked to have some authority.
I asked if he was a manager, or at least employee. He was. I asked for clarification on the corporate policy that some twisted old maverick fruitcake felt empowered to enforce. “Was I not allowed to use my computer in Panera from 11-3?”
The manager chuckled and reassured me that the only thing that was changing nationwide was that Panera as a chain was cutting off the free wifi for those busy hours to discourage non consumers to make it their office. I was most certainly allowed to have my laptop and use it anytime I wanted, for as long as I wanted.
Well I went back in to find grandpa and give him a piece of my mind but he’d moved on.
Chicken.
Today at Panera in The Villages (Disney World for golfcart driving retirees) , I was working on my laptop. For the record, I ordered a breakfast sandwich, decaf and a muffin. By old people’s standards, that’s a friggin voluminous meal. Anyway, when my computer battery started to die a few hours later, I looked under all the old people’s legs for an outlet (ok I’ll admit it was a bit creepy) and spying one, relocated to within 6 feet of it. Couple empty tables here and there. The place was starting to thin out. The time was 11:15. Wasn’t long before I figured out that the outlet was dead and that my writing session was coming to a mandatory end. The national chain offers free wifi but no way to recharge you battery. Brilliant tactic to discourage non paying barnacles like me…(except I am a pig and eat almost my entire body weight in any given 8 hour session).
As I’m packing up, an old turtle of a man wags his bony finger at me and without saying a word, calls me over. I though he needed help getting up or was choking on a tooth or something. Instead of being grateful that I’ve come to help (I am also a licensed EMT in NY state), he barks at me, “Sign says you can’t use them things in here from 11-3. People can’t get a seat.” His wife shrinks a little lower. He’s got the fire in his eyes. Looking for a fight. I remember the look from my bar crawling days.
I was a little taken aback. For starters, there was no sign.
“Am I not a person? Do I not deserve a seat?”
“Not allowed to use those things in here. Read the sign.”
“But there’s no sign.”
“Well, there was one yesterday. Must be fixing it.”
“Do you work here sir?
“No but I read signs and obey the law. And you should too.”
Ouch.
Well I wasn’t going to scrap with grandpa in Paneras. He had lots of people on his side and though they may be arthritic, en masse they could put some hurt on me. I took the high road and ambled outside mumbling something about mandatory institutionalization for those suffering from senile dementia. Outside it was fresh and thus completely uncrowded. I plugged into a working outlet and started recharging. A fellow with a collared shirt on was pushing tables around, arranging things and muttering to himself . He looked to have some authority.
I asked if he was a manager, or at least employee. He was. I asked for clarification on the corporate policy that some twisted old maverick fruitcake felt empowered to enforce. “Was I not allowed to use my computer in Panera from 11-3?”
The manager chuckled and reassured me that the only thing that was changing nationwide was that Panera as a chain was cutting off the free wifi for those busy hours to discourage non consumers to make it their office. I was most certainly allowed to have my laptop and use it anytime I wanted, for as long as I wanted.
Well I went back in to find grandpa and give him a piece of my mind but he’d moved on.
Chicken.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Geek Squad
Dear Wally:
My computer just died. Help!
-Distraught
Dear Distraught:
Let me share a recent personal diary entry that might help:
Dear Geek Squad: I’ll never make fun of you again if you can get my computer to turn on. Last night while I was working, it died on me. Bam. Gone. Black screen. No warnings, no apologies. I tried smacking, rebooting, yelling, and then I tried beer. I went through Kubler-Ross’s five stages of death and now I’m at acceptance. Except I’m not really because I cling to a sliver of hope: You.
Today I’m at your formica counter, hat in hand. I am biting my tongue for all the snotty, mean things I could easily say about your skinny black tie and greasy hair (and thick glasses held together by electrical tape, tucked in shirt, shiny shoes, Sears ‘toughskin’ black slacks and knowing smug smile) --the way you ride the back of the consumer electronics giant BestBuy like a sycophantic, scrap-nibbling remora—things I usually say behind your back.
I will say none of these things because right now, I am your bee-atch. But I’ll go one further: If you retrieve my data (some of which includes an essay making fun of you), I’ll never ever again make fun of ANYONE in the tech customer support business, no matter how homely they are, no matter how much they look like they are guiding Apollo 13 to the moon from Houston 50 years too late.
Make this deal with me now, and your cousins at Verizon who delight in flummoxing me and your cable TV brethren who revel in tardiness (and who never have the right part in their truck) will all be safe from my invective from hereon in. So long as you hook up your gizmo and breath life back into my computer, I’ll do you that solid and you will know that at least one voice in a mocking sea of gazillions has been silenced. OK? Be a hero to your people.
Take my computer and caress it with your magic hands on that static-proof bench over there while I fidget nervously. Admire its ram or gigs. Have your way with it. My life is in your hands. My entire past and my entire future.
You behind that counter. Me at your mercy. It’s a dynamic I do not enjoy. I damn everyone in your profession under my breath. I nervously look at the clock and then the rate card ($95/hr) and then the clock again. You decide that it’s sloth time and that revenge, while best served cold, is also a dish best served slowly (at $95/ hr). On the clock, you admire the bag I brought the laptop in- the same bag the BestBuy ‘hostess’ thinks I’m gonna use to steal small consumer electronics. I shift my weight uneasily , trying to tell you with body language that the ‘fix,’ if there is one, is not with my leather bag.
I feel my life savings run through the sieve of your skinny, Darwinian-advanced, capacitor-gripping fingers. There goes this month’s rent! We sail past the unspoken initial, free 10 minute rule, wherein, if you Geek Squaders can fix it, there’s no charge. No sir, that won’t be my fate.
I’m doomed.
Soon I’ll own a useless $450 laptop that cost me $5000 to not fix.
“No boot device, you say?” My words sound hollow. “What’s that mean? Is that good or bad?”
“Wait… either very good or very bad? I think I need to throw up.”
You point over your shoulder at the black curtain that shields the secret room and tell me you are going to have to ‘take it in the back.’
“Well that makes two of us,” I joke.
No Smiles.
You, wizard, step slowly ($95/hr) backwards and disappear, mumbling the words “I’ll be right back.” The black curtain swallows you up. A loved one off to the operating room. I pace the cold tiles.
I have time.
I find myself drifting towards the beeping, clanging lure of new equipment that flanks me in the enormous store. Somehow I arrive, unawares, at the new laptop section. Is this chance? Infidelity? I doubt I’m anything other than pawn in this heady game. I’ve follow the carpeted path that the plump statisticians and marketing cerebrums have conjured.
And then I hear your voice float over the store. You hold my laptop open, splayed casually yet firmly (like the unfortunate frog that we dissected in 6th grade that was pinned to a wax bed) in one arm. I see the familiar cerulean blue desktop. My palm tree, escapism screensaver sways. I see my past, my future. It’s so beautiful I could cry.
Come to poppa!
“How much am I in for?” I ask, garishly trolling the commercial. I need to immediately buoy the bad with the good.
“No charge.”
“What? No charge? Mock me not SuperGeek or I’ll set a Level 7 Gorgon on you…”
“It was an easy fix. Just needed to relocate the hard drive. You got lucky, pal.”
“I …I love you. No, I’m serious. I LOVE YOU. And I will never make fun of Geek Squaders again. Never!
So he says, “Well, make sure next time you remember to back up.”
And I get one last one in, because I can’t help it: “You mean back up in my dorky little black and white VW bug mobile-service-pod?” (Hee hee).
So Distraught—Get to Bestbuy and find the Geek Squad in the back. (They have the skinny black ties and thick glasses). And keep your fingers crossed!
-AllyWa (PigLatin code for me, in case I ever need to use GeekSquad again!)
(Need a question answered or someone to take your laptop to Geek Squad? Email our advice columnist at cwn4@aol.com or visit his blog at blogger.com)
My computer just died. Help!
-Distraught
Dear Distraught:
Let me share a recent personal diary entry that might help:
Dear Geek Squad: I’ll never make fun of you again if you can get my computer to turn on. Last night while I was working, it died on me. Bam. Gone. Black screen. No warnings, no apologies. I tried smacking, rebooting, yelling, and then I tried beer. I went through Kubler-Ross’s five stages of death and now I’m at acceptance. Except I’m not really because I cling to a sliver of hope: You.
Today I’m at your formica counter, hat in hand. I am biting my tongue for all the snotty, mean things I could easily say about your skinny black tie and greasy hair (and thick glasses held together by electrical tape, tucked in shirt, shiny shoes, Sears ‘toughskin’ black slacks and knowing smug smile) --the way you ride the back of the consumer electronics giant BestBuy like a sycophantic, scrap-nibbling remora—things I usually say behind your back.
I will say none of these things because right now, I am your bee-atch. But I’ll go one further: If you retrieve my data (some of which includes an essay making fun of you), I’ll never ever again make fun of ANYONE in the tech customer support business, no matter how homely they are, no matter how much they look like they are guiding Apollo 13 to the moon from Houston 50 years too late.
Make this deal with me now, and your cousins at Verizon who delight in flummoxing me and your cable TV brethren who revel in tardiness (and who never have the right part in their truck) will all be safe from my invective from hereon in. So long as you hook up your gizmo and breath life back into my computer, I’ll do you that solid and you will know that at least one voice in a mocking sea of gazillions has been silenced. OK? Be a hero to your people.
Take my computer and caress it with your magic hands on that static-proof bench over there while I fidget nervously. Admire its ram or gigs. Have your way with it. My life is in your hands. My entire past and my entire future.
You behind that counter. Me at your mercy. It’s a dynamic I do not enjoy. I damn everyone in your profession under my breath. I nervously look at the clock and then the rate card ($95/hr) and then the clock again. You decide that it’s sloth time and that revenge, while best served cold, is also a dish best served slowly (at $95/ hr). On the clock, you admire the bag I brought the laptop in- the same bag the BestBuy ‘hostess’ thinks I’m gonna use to steal small consumer electronics. I shift my weight uneasily , trying to tell you with body language that the ‘fix,’ if there is one, is not with my leather bag.
I feel my life savings run through the sieve of your skinny, Darwinian-advanced, capacitor-gripping fingers. There goes this month’s rent! We sail past the unspoken initial, free 10 minute rule, wherein, if you Geek Squaders can fix it, there’s no charge. No sir, that won’t be my fate.
I’m doomed.
Soon I’ll own a useless $450 laptop that cost me $5000 to not fix.
“No boot device, you say?” My words sound hollow. “What’s that mean? Is that good or bad?”
“Wait… either very good or very bad? I think I need to throw up.”
You point over your shoulder at the black curtain that shields the secret room and tell me you are going to have to ‘take it in the back.’
“Well that makes two of us,” I joke.
No Smiles.
You, wizard, step slowly ($95/hr) backwards and disappear, mumbling the words “I’ll be right back.” The black curtain swallows you up. A loved one off to the operating room. I pace the cold tiles.
I have time.
I find myself drifting towards the beeping, clanging lure of new equipment that flanks me in the enormous store. Somehow I arrive, unawares, at the new laptop section. Is this chance? Infidelity? I doubt I’m anything other than pawn in this heady game. I’ve follow the carpeted path that the plump statisticians and marketing cerebrums have conjured.
And then I hear your voice float over the store. You hold my laptop open, splayed casually yet firmly (like the unfortunate frog that we dissected in 6th grade that was pinned to a wax bed) in one arm. I see the familiar cerulean blue desktop. My palm tree, escapism screensaver sways. I see my past, my future. It’s so beautiful I could cry.
Come to poppa!
“How much am I in for?” I ask, garishly trolling the commercial. I need to immediately buoy the bad with the good.
“No charge.”
“What? No charge? Mock me not SuperGeek or I’ll set a Level 7 Gorgon on you…”
“It was an easy fix. Just needed to relocate the hard drive. You got lucky, pal.”
“I …I love you. No, I’m serious. I LOVE YOU. And I will never make fun of Geek Squaders again. Never!
So he says, “Well, make sure next time you remember to back up.”
And I get one last one in, because I can’t help it: “You mean back up in my dorky little black and white VW bug mobile-service-pod?” (Hee hee).
So Distraught—Get to Bestbuy and find the Geek Squad in the back. (They have the skinny black ties and thick glasses). And keep your fingers crossed!
-AllyWa (PigLatin code for me, in case I ever need to use GeekSquad again!)
(Need a question answered or someone to take your laptop to Geek Squad? Email our advice columnist at cwn4@aol.com or visit his blog at blogger.com)
Friday, January 16, 2009
Bush and Cheney in Stripes?
Bush and Cheney in Stripes?
Dear Cori:
I wonder why Bush and Cheney are not in jail for their lies and illegal acts. With the 10 year anniversary of Clinton's impeachment, I would like to know when these criminals will be punished…
-Vexed in the Valley
Dear Vexed-
You sound like one of those pain-in-the-arse liberal agitators--maybe a bloodthirsty, vengeful Scorpio to boot? (Wait, that’s me!). Ever since Pres. Clinton’s starring role in ‘Crouching Intern, Hidden Cigar’, and his subsequent congressional ka-bobbing, you folks have been gunning for a retaliatory hairline fracture in the Bush Administration to exploit. This 3 trillion dollar Iraq war is the one , if I’m reading you right, you believe to have a whiff of illegality about it?
Here’s the feel-good answer: No one is above the law. Thus, gross manipulation, distortion and indeed cold-forged fabrication of ‘facts’ (think Nigerian yellow cake) and threats (WMD) used to justify war WILL ALWAYS result in a legitimate trial, conviction and subsequent impeachment of our country’s highest executives. (It’s not illegal to be stupid, but it is illegal to lie. At least I think it is). And Americans who don’t enjoy being lied to, or having their intelligence insulted, will wipe their hands on their pant legs at this trial of leadership and say, “OK. Let’s now wish the Iraqis good luck with the civil war we left them, cut our losses and re-calibrate our national objectives to once again focus on the needs of all Americans.” This trial will happen on Nov 23, 2008. (I’m making this date up only so you will feel happy about the imminent meting out of justice).
On Nov 24th, however, you will hunt me down for my lies. And that, alas, takes us to the other answer. In reality there will be no Presidential perp walk, no trial, no conviction, no contrition, no humility, and no introspection at the executive level by those who may or may not have acted illegally. There will be no public regret, nor will there be any punishment for squandering the once overflowing good will of a powerful, unified global community horrified with a dastardly, soulless attack on innocent Americans. There will also be no collective apology by the State Dept for strong arming reluctant ‘allies’ into bucking the UN’s will and joining the US-led fighting ‘coalition’, with their 23 troops and 2 jeeps or else suffer the crippling hammer blow of US economic sanctions and tariffs. (This little power play has just surfaced, to the embarrassment of the Administration).
There will, instead, be trumpeted declarations that this country is safer than it was before 9/11. But to think all the vast resources spent overseas in the name of (revenge? rooting out terrorism? Securing oil? Handing democracy to the undemocratic on a platter? Catching and hanging one tyrant by his skinny neck, chasing another through the Afghan caves, etc) has yielded a commensurate payoff of any sort is folly, excepting for pinching the Taliban in Afghanistan and moving them down the road. (Ironically, Afghan opium production is up 45% this year alone! Oil is over $100 a barrel, almost 1 million Iraqis have died so far, there’s a new generation of Middle Eastern American haters, thank you, it turns out Sadam had no WMD nor anything to do with Al Queda other than Iraq, Sadam and Al Queda all share the letter “A” in their spelling and the poor sots at TSA have to suffer the indignity of sniffing my shoes when I travel, which at least by air is admittedly is safer now unless you are the one sniffing the shoes). Iraq under Sadam was a deep fried basket of hell. With him gone, the basket has exploded and now there’s hell everywhere, stuck to the walls and dripping from the chandeliers.
But what of the 4,000 brave folks who have died in uniform and the countless others who will live these last 5 years over and over again in their heads? (They will get 1 free 45 minute PTSD session at the VA hospital—which should help) These heroes--the moms, dads, sons, daughters (and their limbs) (and their serenity) can’t be replaced…And if it turns out this war was based on unprosecuted lies and shouldn’t have been…What do we then tell their families?
This administration will slip into the cold night late January 2009 rubbing their palms on their pant legs and congratulating themselves for a job well done and a mission accomplished.
Wish I had better news for you…
Look, it’s not all bad. We just discovered that Alaska’s coastline is 100 feet further out in the sea than we thought. If we start feeling depressed we can always just pave it and slam up a Wendy’s or something. Get some comfort food in us…
But here’s my final thought: It’s easy to be a presidential or policy critic. All we have to do is sit on the sidelines and take pot shots at leaders who have incredibly tough decisions to make, who have access to far greater info than we have and who, at the end of the day, are only human. I’m as guilty of that as anyone (and everyone). Maybe in time, we’ll see that the best course has been taken. Maybe not. But no one should misconstrue shades of criticism for anything other than shades of frustration for things not going better, cheaper, less deadly and more democratically than they are (starting with our own darn outdated and questionable election process). Bush in jail? Cheney in stripes? What’s the point, Vexed? Let’s just elect officials who will never make us haul them off to trial in the first place…
-Cori
PS Cheney in stripes would be a fashion DISASTER!
Dear Cori:
I wonder why Bush and Cheney are not in jail for their lies and illegal acts. With the 10 year anniversary of Clinton's impeachment, I would like to know when these criminals will be punished…
-Vexed in the Valley
Dear Vexed-
You sound like one of those pain-in-the-arse liberal agitators--maybe a bloodthirsty, vengeful Scorpio to boot? (Wait, that’s me!). Ever since Pres. Clinton’s starring role in ‘Crouching Intern, Hidden Cigar’, and his subsequent congressional ka-bobbing, you folks have been gunning for a retaliatory hairline fracture in the Bush Administration to exploit. This 3 trillion dollar Iraq war is the one , if I’m reading you right, you believe to have a whiff of illegality about it?
Here’s the feel-good answer: No one is above the law. Thus, gross manipulation, distortion and indeed cold-forged fabrication of ‘facts’ (think Nigerian yellow cake) and threats (WMD) used to justify war WILL ALWAYS result in a legitimate trial, conviction and subsequent impeachment of our country’s highest executives. (It’s not illegal to be stupid, but it is illegal to lie. At least I think it is). And Americans who don’t enjoy being lied to, or having their intelligence insulted, will wipe their hands on their pant legs at this trial of leadership and say, “OK. Let’s now wish the Iraqis good luck with the civil war we left them, cut our losses and re-calibrate our national objectives to once again focus on the needs of all Americans.” This trial will happen on Nov 23, 2008. (I’m making this date up only so you will feel happy about the imminent meting out of justice).
On Nov 24th, however, you will hunt me down for my lies. And that, alas, takes us to the other answer. In reality there will be no Presidential perp walk, no trial, no conviction, no contrition, no humility, and no introspection at the executive level by those who may or may not have acted illegally. There will be no public regret, nor will there be any punishment for squandering the once overflowing good will of a powerful, unified global community horrified with a dastardly, soulless attack on innocent Americans. There will also be no collective apology by the State Dept for strong arming reluctant ‘allies’ into bucking the UN’s will and joining the US-led fighting ‘coalition’, with their 23 troops and 2 jeeps or else suffer the crippling hammer blow of US economic sanctions and tariffs. (This little power play has just surfaced, to the embarrassment of the Administration).
There will, instead, be trumpeted declarations that this country is safer than it was before 9/11. But to think all the vast resources spent overseas in the name of (revenge? rooting out terrorism? Securing oil? Handing democracy to the undemocratic on a platter? Catching and hanging one tyrant by his skinny neck, chasing another through the Afghan caves, etc) has yielded a commensurate payoff of any sort is folly, excepting for pinching the Taliban in Afghanistan and moving them down the road. (Ironically, Afghan opium production is up 45% this year alone! Oil is over $100 a barrel, almost 1 million Iraqis have died so far, there’s a new generation of Middle Eastern American haters, thank you, it turns out Sadam had no WMD nor anything to do with Al Queda other than Iraq, Sadam and Al Queda all share the letter “A” in their spelling and the poor sots at TSA have to suffer the indignity of sniffing my shoes when I travel, which at least by air is admittedly is safer now unless you are the one sniffing the shoes). Iraq under Sadam was a deep fried basket of hell. With him gone, the basket has exploded and now there’s hell everywhere, stuck to the walls and dripping from the chandeliers.
But what of the 4,000 brave folks who have died in uniform and the countless others who will live these last 5 years over and over again in their heads? (They will get 1 free 45 minute PTSD session at the VA hospital—which should help) These heroes--the moms, dads, sons, daughters (and their limbs) (and their serenity) can’t be replaced…And if it turns out this war was based on unprosecuted lies and shouldn’t have been…What do we then tell their families?
This administration will slip into the cold night late January 2009 rubbing their palms on their pant legs and congratulating themselves for a job well done and a mission accomplished.
Wish I had better news for you…
Look, it’s not all bad. We just discovered that Alaska’s coastline is 100 feet further out in the sea than we thought. If we start feeling depressed we can always just pave it and slam up a Wendy’s or something. Get some comfort food in us…
But here’s my final thought: It’s easy to be a presidential or policy critic. All we have to do is sit on the sidelines and take pot shots at leaders who have incredibly tough decisions to make, who have access to far greater info than we have and who, at the end of the day, are only human. I’m as guilty of that as anyone (and everyone). Maybe in time, we’ll see that the best course has been taken. Maybe not. But no one should misconstrue shades of criticism for anything other than shades of frustration for things not going better, cheaper, less deadly and more democratically than they are (starting with our own darn outdated and questionable election process). Bush in jail? Cheney in stripes? What’s the point, Vexed? Let’s just elect officials who will never make us haul them off to trial in the first place…
-Cori
PS Cheney in stripes would be a fashion DISASTER!
Father's perspective on Doula-ing
A Father’s Perspective on 'The Doula'…
By Wally Nichols
(cwn4@aol.com)
The birthing experience can assume an entirely different hue from the father’s perspective than it can from the mother’s. We guys rarely dare to openly own the pain or suffering, or confusion or fear or other identifiable (and unidentifiable) emotions that women lay legitimate claim to on the big day, or even during the 9 months prior. Some things are best left unsaid, correct? Which isn’t to say we don’t feel all these things, but we feel them in a thinly comparative way to our partners who are about to push 8 pounds through an orifice.
Modern times have given us many resources to combat the variables of childbirth; birthing classes, drugs, monitors, doctors and technicians, even ‘birthing centers’ which are designed to handle soon to be parents’ every need (and want). If you chose to avail yourself of it, as we did, there’s a dizzying array of compositional resources and people on the team…
Still, we fathers are usually lowest on the totem pole, wandering around in a confused haze before, during and after the birth, which is fine. Above us, and below the doctor, on this totem pole, can sometimes be found a doula. If we squint hard enough and think about definition long enough, those of us with business orientations can rightly consider the doula a consultant to, or advocate for, the laboring mother. And a godsend for the panicky father. She knows the drill and speaks the language. She’s seen it all before. There’s huge relief in that.
But the doula is much more than just a knowledgeable birthing facilitator. At least ours was. A doula can massage the parents’ bodies and minds back into compliance and agreement with the natural order in the weeks before birth as well as at the actual moment. She can translate the kinetics of childbirth back into English. She can arrange a birth plan that dovetails with the couple’s beliefs on pain management, transportation logistics, birth location, post birth responsibilities, etc.
She can also hold the hands of the mother while she’s holding the hands of the father. She can work with the doctors and or the midwives and compliment the team very nicely. Get one who is experienced and calm, and one with long arms, and it’s a beautiful thing…
Gentlemen, get out your wallets for this to the tune of $500-$1000. She’s your ace-in-the-hole and you wont soon regret treating yourself to this peace of mind luxury. Oh, and treating your partner who is actually doing all the work.
Our doula (whom we nicknamed Paula Abdoula behind her back) was one cool customer. We met at the birthing class she led. She is a sturdy Irish woman with 25 years of doulage(?) under her belt. Her sagacious prebirth advice, tendered early on one night at class was, “pack yourself a snack for the birth, dads! Don’t forget that you are in there too and need to take care of and treat yourself.” I took a quick shine to this Mary O’Riley lady!
On hearing this important command, I immediately went out and bought a container of Cheddar Goldfish out of deference to her vast experience. The snacks , however, didn’t make it to the exit of the Stop and Shop Supermarket parking lot. (That was two months before Hattie was actually born yet, curiously, it happened repeatedly each and every time I tried to think ahead to the burdens of being next to someone actually giving birth and get myself a replacement snack. Finally, I gave up thinking about myself).
Mary’s advice for mom? When labor starts, drink a beer. Preferably Guinness, which as hill lore has it, simultaneously activates the calming reflex while poking the milk production button.
A beer?
Seriously?
Now my wife Cori really liked this lady too!
Labor started in the night on Feb 13. The car was packed and ready to go. (It had been packed and ready to go for every bit of the preceding 4 weeks.) I went out in the subzero temperature to get the heat on, literally the only thing this double left footed monkey could do between the fits of labor that appeared to be ripping my wife apart. Then we called Mary and told her the news. I rattled off all the hard stats I had gathered about duration and frequency and amplitude of pain.
“Stay in bed. Get a few more hours of sleep,” advised a calm doula over the phone lines. “You’re not ready yet.”
“But…?”
“Call me in the morning. Trust me. She needs to get her rest. Now back to bed with you both.”
I felt like a scolded kid being sent back up the stairs Christmas morning after having awoken too early. But sure enough, Mary was right. The contractions subsided and a relatively normal day unfolded before us. We avoided a long trip to the birthing center that would have resulted in being sent home anyway.
I knew there was more to the picture, so I was on the phone with Mary throughout the day giving regular updates while my wife insisted on attending to her mares in the barn and getting them a hot bran mash—perhaps a harbinger of good mothering habits to come.
Around noon, I called the doctor’s office to give them a courtesy call about our imminent parenthood (alert the press!!) and left a message with the receptionist describing the landscape.
The flabbergasted nurse from the practice called the farm back and asked where Cori was. “She’s mucking stalls,” I admitted. “I can’t stop her.” I couldn’t lie. It was true. “She’s of German descent,” I offered meekly. “It’s what they do.”
We live on a 20 horse boarding/ lesson facility in New York’s Hudson Valley and the work clock stops for no one or anything we’ve come to learn…
“Get her up here right now,” the nurse demanded.
“You try,” I said and handed the phone to Cori who had come up for some breakfast. She had a big smile on her face and but for the gait-impeding belly, betrayed no signs of distress or discomfort or even pregnancy.
Wishing to avoid a scene similar to that in Monty Python where the overworked farm woman gives birth while sweeping a dirt floor and doesn’t even know it until she looks down, we consulted with Mary and compromised by heading to the hospital in the late afternoon.
The contractions were now regular and intense at this point. Cori took the doula’s advice to heart and popped a beer for the 30 minute (now extremely and regularly painful) drive. There was only one ‘position of comfort’ for Cori in that pickup truck and that was facing backwards, cold Budweiser in hand, rear end against the windshield, no seatbelt (I know this sounds like a line from a country song, but it was our reality at the moment…).
We were a sight. Dee Lite’s ‘Groove is in the Heart’ pumping on the stereo, Cori telling me to step on it, me trying to not hit any deer on the way and unsuccessfully looking for a last minute snack shop because my reserves, alas, were all gone.
We pulled into the hospital parking lot after a stop to the doctor, where her water broke, then Home Depot to pick up some lumber I needed, and then a brief stop to check out our friend Kate’s new kitchen remodel (just kidding on those last two). I opened the passenger door and an empty beer bottle rolled out onto the birthing center’s parking lot!
Nice.
So much for first impressions…
“Don’t prejudge us!” I yelled to the horrified nurses who had gathered at the center's entrance Nosy security cameras tracked us from every angle. I seriously thought we were going to get arrested for endangering a minor before we even officially had one. “What??? Mary said it was ok,” I scolded them back.
The birth turned out to be a bit complicated. The fetal monitor indicated severely reduced cardiac output during contractions.
"Mary," I whispered urgently, "What's that mean???"
Many repositioning attempts were made to reduce the stress but finally we were left with no choice but to do a C section. The doctor was quite jovial and had a long history of working with Mary. He offered us a choice. “Option 1,” he whistled while scrubbing down, “You can have a C section in 15 minutes.”
“What’s option 2?” I cautiously asked.
“Option 2,” he said, “Is you can have a C section in 10 minutes. But hey, your choice!”
Mary chucked a pair of hospital scrubs at me and said, “Get dressed, pal.”
“But…”
With a knowing wink from an experienced doula, off we went, all three of us, hand in hand.
Hattie was born on Feb 14th (without a single snack!) and has stolen our hearts every day since.
We can’t wait to have another baby just so we get to hang out with our doula again!
By Wally Nichols
(cwn4@aol.com)
The birthing experience can assume an entirely different hue from the father’s perspective than it can from the mother’s. We guys rarely dare to openly own the pain or suffering, or confusion or fear or other identifiable (and unidentifiable) emotions that women lay legitimate claim to on the big day, or even during the 9 months prior. Some things are best left unsaid, correct? Which isn’t to say we don’t feel all these things, but we feel them in a thinly comparative way to our partners who are about to push 8 pounds through an orifice.
Modern times have given us many resources to combat the variables of childbirth; birthing classes, drugs, monitors, doctors and technicians, even ‘birthing centers’ which are designed to handle soon to be parents’ every need (and want). If you chose to avail yourself of it, as we did, there’s a dizzying array of compositional resources and people on the team…
Still, we fathers are usually lowest on the totem pole, wandering around in a confused haze before, during and after the birth, which is fine. Above us, and below the doctor, on this totem pole, can sometimes be found a doula. If we squint hard enough and think about definition long enough, those of us with business orientations can rightly consider the doula a consultant to, or advocate for, the laboring mother. And a godsend for the panicky father. She knows the drill and speaks the language. She’s seen it all before. There’s huge relief in that.
But the doula is much more than just a knowledgeable birthing facilitator. At least ours was. A doula can massage the parents’ bodies and minds back into compliance and agreement with the natural order in the weeks before birth as well as at the actual moment. She can translate the kinetics of childbirth back into English. She can arrange a birth plan that dovetails with the couple’s beliefs on pain management, transportation logistics, birth location, post birth responsibilities, etc.
She can also hold the hands of the mother while she’s holding the hands of the father. She can work with the doctors and or the midwives and compliment the team very nicely. Get one who is experienced and calm, and one with long arms, and it’s a beautiful thing…
Gentlemen, get out your wallets for this to the tune of $500-$1000. She’s your ace-in-the-hole and you wont soon regret treating yourself to this peace of mind luxury. Oh, and treating your partner who is actually doing all the work.
Our doula (whom we nicknamed Paula Abdoula behind her back) was one cool customer. We met at the birthing class she led. She is a sturdy Irish woman with 25 years of doulage(?) under her belt. Her sagacious prebirth advice, tendered early on one night at class was, “pack yourself a snack for the birth, dads! Don’t forget that you are in there too and need to take care of and treat yourself.” I took a quick shine to this Mary O’Riley lady!
On hearing this important command, I immediately went out and bought a container of Cheddar Goldfish out of deference to her vast experience. The snacks , however, didn’t make it to the exit of the Stop and Shop Supermarket parking lot. (That was two months before Hattie was actually born yet, curiously, it happened repeatedly each and every time I tried to think ahead to the burdens of being next to someone actually giving birth and get myself a replacement snack. Finally, I gave up thinking about myself).
Mary’s advice for mom? When labor starts, drink a beer. Preferably Guinness, which as hill lore has it, simultaneously activates the calming reflex while poking the milk production button.
A beer?
Seriously?
Now my wife Cori really liked this lady too!
Labor started in the night on Feb 13. The car was packed and ready to go. (It had been packed and ready to go for every bit of the preceding 4 weeks.) I went out in the subzero temperature to get the heat on, literally the only thing this double left footed monkey could do between the fits of labor that appeared to be ripping my wife apart. Then we called Mary and told her the news. I rattled off all the hard stats I had gathered about duration and frequency and amplitude of pain.
“Stay in bed. Get a few more hours of sleep,” advised a calm doula over the phone lines. “You’re not ready yet.”
“But…?”
“Call me in the morning. Trust me. She needs to get her rest. Now back to bed with you both.”
I felt like a scolded kid being sent back up the stairs Christmas morning after having awoken too early. But sure enough, Mary was right. The contractions subsided and a relatively normal day unfolded before us. We avoided a long trip to the birthing center that would have resulted in being sent home anyway.
I knew there was more to the picture, so I was on the phone with Mary throughout the day giving regular updates while my wife insisted on attending to her mares in the barn and getting them a hot bran mash—perhaps a harbinger of good mothering habits to come.
Around noon, I called the doctor’s office to give them a courtesy call about our imminent parenthood (alert the press!!) and left a message with the receptionist describing the landscape.
The flabbergasted nurse from the practice called the farm back and asked where Cori was. “She’s mucking stalls,” I admitted. “I can’t stop her.” I couldn’t lie. It was true. “She’s of German descent,” I offered meekly. “It’s what they do.”
We live on a 20 horse boarding/ lesson facility in New York’s Hudson Valley and the work clock stops for no one or anything we’ve come to learn…
“Get her up here right now,” the nurse demanded.
“You try,” I said and handed the phone to Cori who had come up for some breakfast. She had a big smile on her face and but for the gait-impeding belly, betrayed no signs of distress or discomfort or even pregnancy.
Wishing to avoid a scene similar to that in Monty Python where the overworked farm woman gives birth while sweeping a dirt floor and doesn’t even know it until she looks down, we consulted with Mary and compromised by heading to the hospital in the late afternoon.
The contractions were now regular and intense at this point. Cori took the doula’s advice to heart and popped a beer for the 30 minute (now extremely and regularly painful) drive. There was only one ‘position of comfort’ for Cori in that pickup truck and that was facing backwards, cold Budweiser in hand, rear end against the windshield, no seatbelt (I know this sounds like a line from a country song, but it was our reality at the moment…).
We were a sight. Dee Lite’s ‘Groove is in the Heart’ pumping on the stereo, Cori telling me to step on it, me trying to not hit any deer on the way and unsuccessfully looking for a last minute snack shop because my reserves, alas, were all gone.
We pulled into the hospital parking lot after a stop to the doctor, where her water broke, then Home Depot to pick up some lumber I needed, and then a brief stop to check out our friend Kate’s new kitchen remodel (just kidding on those last two). I opened the passenger door and an empty beer bottle rolled out onto the birthing center’s parking lot!
Nice.
So much for first impressions…
“Don’t prejudge us!” I yelled to the horrified nurses who had gathered at the center's entrance Nosy security cameras tracked us from every angle. I seriously thought we were going to get arrested for endangering a minor before we even officially had one. “What??? Mary said it was ok,” I scolded them back.
The birth turned out to be a bit complicated. The fetal monitor indicated severely reduced cardiac output during contractions.
"Mary," I whispered urgently, "What's that mean???"
Many repositioning attempts were made to reduce the stress but finally we were left with no choice but to do a C section. The doctor was quite jovial and had a long history of working with Mary. He offered us a choice. “Option 1,” he whistled while scrubbing down, “You can have a C section in 15 minutes.”
“What’s option 2?” I cautiously asked.
“Option 2,” he said, “Is you can have a C section in 10 minutes. But hey, your choice!”
Mary chucked a pair of hospital scrubs at me and said, “Get dressed, pal.”
“But…”
With a knowing wink from an experienced doula, off we went, all three of us, hand in hand.
Hattie was born on Feb 14th (without a single snack!) and has stolen our hearts every day since.
We can’t wait to have another baby just so we get to hang out with our doula again!
To The guy at the GYM
To the guy at the gym…
…who left the bar of soap on the shower floor:
Well, thanks, I guess. I was the next person in and was just wondering at that exact moment we passed in the locker room what I was going to do for soap (didn’t want to use the soap in the dispenser on the shower wall, a sentiment you obviously feel, too) To my sheer amazement, there was your used bar of mealy soap in the corner on the floor. Now granted it had some hair on it, but hey, isn’t soap, by definition, clean?? Exactly! THANK YOU!
So my heartfelt thanks as I soap up my privates and bring whatever diseases you have picked up over the years of your creepy, promiscuous, glory-holin' back to my precious family.
I’m just kidding, I never even touched it.
Seriously, did you think someone else was going to use the nasty soap after you turned it into your own private Ass Chia Pet? I can’t imagine all the dark alleys you sent that poor thing down to get mugged before discarding it for the custodian to pick up in his rubber gloves and hazmat suit.
Proving once again, but for the suit and ties we occasionally wear, it’s a razor thin film between us and the monkey cage…
Next time can you leave some used dental floss for us too?
One site keeps you connected to all your email: AOL Mail, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail. Try it now.
…who left the bar of soap on the shower floor:
Well, thanks, I guess. I was the next person in and was just wondering at that exact moment we passed in the locker room what I was going to do for soap (didn’t want to use the soap in the dispenser on the shower wall, a sentiment you obviously feel, too) To my sheer amazement, there was your used bar of mealy soap in the corner on the floor. Now granted it had some hair on it, but hey, isn’t soap, by definition, clean?? Exactly! THANK YOU!
So my heartfelt thanks as I soap up my privates and bring whatever diseases you have picked up over the years of your creepy, promiscuous, glory-holin' back to my precious family.
I’m just kidding, I never even touched it.
Seriously, did you think someone else was going to use the nasty soap after you turned it into your own private Ass Chia Pet? I can’t imagine all the dark alleys you sent that poor thing down to get mugged before discarding it for the custodian to pick up in his rubber gloves and hazmat suit.
Proving once again, but for the suit and ties we occasionally wear, it’s a razor thin film between us and the monkey cage…
Next time can you leave some used dental floss for us too?
One site keeps you connected to all your email: AOL Mail, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail. Try it now.
The Exchange
The Exchange
By: Wally Nichols (203) 858 3634
“You wont not get this tractor running. Won’t nobody,” he said proudly, “…Like a dried up old snatch. No gas in there a-tall.”
Behind them a coop glazed with tenacious lead paint chips incarcerated two dozen tired hens.
“Look, not a Goddamn drop making it through. Good spark though.”
He held out the miniature engine part in question for approval, a cubish thing with no character that Tim presumed to be a carburetor by function and circumstance, but not necessarily by looks.
“Must be a clog,” the old man declared.
He lowered his nose to the device and inspected it closely. Bloodhound on a fugitive’s tube sock.
“The crap gas them A-Rab sand-niggers sell us is filled with twigs. Probably an Iraqi bird nestin’ in that fuel line by nows...”
He jammed the carburetor out chest height, then yanked it back to wipe the sweat from his brow with the tattered shirtsleeve on his cocked, sinewy forearm.
“They don’t teach you that in fancy medical school do they? Die-ag-nose-ing.”
His lips savored the word .
“You start with the problem, like she won’t run, then you work backwards. Check the fuel, check the spark. Not much else to it. Don’t waste your time with the other stuff.
“All you doctors do is bend someone over the pickle barrel, shove a finger or somethin’ up where it don’t belong and tell them bad news. Even if they just have a cough. Is why I don’t go... Don’t know why you wasted your money Timmy boy. I ain’t even sure you are a good doctor, truth be told. Didn’t I teach you better? I thought you had a head for this stuff,” he said gripping the steering wheel. “My mistake at the end of the day, I guess. You used to be good at engines. Don’t know what happened…”
“Abe, how ya feeling?”
“I reckon just about how anyone 300 years old feels. Sometimes like shit, sometimes like more shit.”
“Did you call the clinic back?” Tim steadied himself against the tractor as he often had and studied the man who busied himself with the distraction of a fractious engine part. “I’ve been away for a week. On business in Atlanta.”
With its hood up, the tractor looked sickly, anemic.
“I know you have. Haven’t been around pesterin’ me. It’s been quiet here. Nice and quiet.”
“Abe?”
“You got somethin’ you want me to fix? Is that why you’re here all up in my face?” The old man scrunched his brow towards the noon sun and then refocused on his visitor. “I ain’t got lots of time.”
Tim cleared his throat, a nervous habit he’d had since childhood. He fought the urge to say anything and waited for the old man to speak. He tugged at the knot of his necktie to let some of the tin breeze in around his collarbone.
The old man confessed to the 5/8th inch box end wrench like it was a cherished doll and no one else was around.
“You know I didn’t call. So why you bother askin’?”
“Abe, I spoke to the clinic.”
“Well, there you go all tricky. You ain’t allowed to go snoopin’ around my files. Against the law. You ain’t family.”
“That’s really not fair, Abe. Nor is it very nice.”
“ And plus they don’t know shit.” The old man steamrolled over Tim.
“You don’t even know what I’m about to say. How can you say that?”
“Because I know that’s how you sheisters make your money: You tell people they got the cancer or somethin’, then squeeze ‘em dry like this fuel hose until they’re cracked, or got no soul or got no money left. Don’t need something fixed? leave me alone. I’m killing chickens today.”
A free ranging rooster crowed and Abe flinched involuntarily, thumping his fingers on the tractor’s hood impatiently.
“It’s like I always say. When my time is up, my time is up. Don’t do nobody no earthly good trying to fake the Maker out. We ain’t carburators. We just ain’t.”
“Well your time doesn’t need to be up, necessarily.”
“You God? You making promises? Promises you can’t keep, son? Always good at talking, Timmy, always.”
“Lot’s of people do very well with Chemotherapy.”
“And lots of people die dead too.”
“Isn’t it worth trying? What do you have to lose?”
“My hair. And my good looks.”
They both laughed out loud. Abe’s bald head shone with a film of sweat.
“And the good time I have left.”
“You don’t have that much time, Abe.” The words sounded acidic to Tim.
“And there’s all that throwing up and people coming over with shitpies and such to see what you look like bald and how fast you dying. Wondering if that’s what they gonna look like when you doctors tell them they have the cancer.”
“How do you know that? You don’t even have a TV!”
“Well I hear things.”
Tim chuckled, happy to be allowed to smile.
“ You’re really something, you know. I wish I could take you around in a cage to the circuses as a freak show and display you to the world. No one would believe such a grumpy old fuck ever existed.”
“And you’d charge a nickel a peek, on my back.”
“To see you, I’d charge them all a dime. Nickel’s not worth my time.”
Tim tugged the knot looser and pressed his palms flat on his shirt front. The humidity was undoing his morning ironing job.
The old man grinned. “Feels like the jungles of fucking Coo Chi out today, don’t it? You don’t impress me with an ironed shirt. I know you from when you were just a wink in your daddy’s eye. I've knowed you before you even wored a shirt.”
“Well, anyway people comin’ over with a shitpie is better than people comin’ over to look in your casket, aint it?” Tim straightened up to his full 6 feet. “Damn it, listen to me talk. You’re making me forget I know how to speak English, old man.”
“I dunno.”
“Yes you do. Might be hard, but you got some fight in you yet , right?”
“Punk. I got more fight in the left half of my prick than you got in your entire body. And then some.”
“I guess you answered my question just fine.”
Tim took they wrench from Abe’s strangely willing hand and set it down gently on the tractor’s fender.
“They told me because I am family.”
“They told you because you sweet talked it out if them. Like you always do with everything you’ve ever wanted.”
“So.”
“So back at you.”
“So. I’ll pick you up tomorrow at 9, after chores, ok?”
“You can go to hell, young Timmy.”
“Hell starts at 9, and I’m not going alone. I’ll be here to get you after your chores.”
“Who’s gonna pay? I’m not paying to throw up.”
“It’s all settled.”
“Well if you’re done imposin’, I got me chickens to kill today.”
“Ok, I’ll see ya at 9.”
“Maybe. Maybe my maker sees me at 8. Beats you by an hour.”
“Have a good day Abe. Enjoy this sunshine.”
“Blah Blah Blah.”
“You gonna need my help cleaning that carburetor too, old man?”
“Blah Blah Blah.”
By: Wally Nichols (203) 858 3634
“You wont not get this tractor running. Won’t nobody,” he said proudly, “…Like a dried up old snatch. No gas in there a-tall.”
Behind them a coop glazed with tenacious lead paint chips incarcerated two dozen tired hens.
“Look, not a Goddamn drop making it through. Good spark though.”
He held out the miniature engine part in question for approval, a cubish thing with no character that Tim presumed to be a carburetor by function and circumstance, but not necessarily by looks.
“Must be a clog,” the old man declared.
He lowered his nose to the device and inspected it closely. Bloodhound on a fugitive’s tube sock.
“The crap gas them A-Rab sand-niggers sell us is filled with twigs. Probably an Iraqi bird nestin’ in that fuel line by nows...”
He jammed the carburetor out chest height, then yanked it back to wipe the sweat from his brow with the tattered shirtsleeve on his cocked, sinewy forearm.
“They don’t teach you that in fancy medical school do they? Die-ag-nose-ing.”
His lips savored the word .
“You start with the problem, like she won’t run, then you work backwards. Check the fuel, check the spark. Not much else to it. Don’t waste your time with the other stuff.
“All you doctors do is bend someone over the pickle barrel, shove a finger or somethin’ up where it don’t belong and tell them bad news. Even if they just have a cough. Is why I don’t go... Don’t know why you wasted your money Timmy boy. I ain’t even sure you are a good doctor, truth be told. Didn’t I teach you better? I thought you had a head for this stuff,” he said gripping the steering wheel. “My mistake at the end of the day, I guess. You used to be good at engines. Don’t know what happened…”
“Abe, how ya feeling?”
“I reckon just about how anyone 300 years old feels. Sometimes like shit, sometimes like more shit.”
“Did you call the clinic back?” Tim steadied himself against the tractor as he often had and studied the man who busied himself with the distraction of a fractious engine part. “I’ve been away for a week. On business in Atlanta.”
With its hood up, the tractor looked sickly, anemic.
“I know you have. Haven’t been around pesterin’ me. It’s been quiet here. Nice and quiet.”
“Abe?”
“You got somethin’ you want me to fix? Is that why you’re here all up in my face?” The old man scrunched his brow towards the noon sun and then refocused on his visitor. “I ain’t got lots of time.”
Tim cleared his throat, a nervous habit he’d had since childhood. He fought the urge to say anything and waited for the old man to speak. He tugged at the knot of his necktie to let some of the tin breeze in around his collarbone.
The old man confessed to the 5/8th inch box end wrench like it was a cherished doll and no one else was around.
“You know I didn’t call. So why you bother askin’?”
“Abe, I spoke to the clinic.”
“Well, there you go all tricky. You ain’t allowed to go snoopin’ around my files. Against the law. You ain’t family.”
“That’s really not fair, Abe. Nor is it very nice.”
“ And plus they don’t know shit.” The old man steamrolled over Tim.
“You don’t even know what I’m about to say. How can you say that?”
“Because I know that’s how you sheisters make your money: You tell people they got the cancer or somethin’, then squeeze ‘em dry like this fuel hose until they’re cracked, or got no soul or got no money left. Don’t need something fixed? leave me alone. I’m killing chickens today.”
A free ranging rooster crowed and Abe flinched involuntarily, thumping his fingers on the tractor’s hood impatiently.
“It’s like I always say. When my time is up, my time is up. Don’t do nobody no earthly good trying to fake the Maker out. We ain’t carburators. We just ain’t.”
“Well your time doesn’t need to be up, necessarily.”
“You God? You making promises? Promises you can’t keep, son? Always good at talking, Timmy, always.”
“Lot’s of people do very well with Chemotherapy.”
“And lots of people die dead too.”
“Isn’t it worth trying? What do you have to lose?”
“My hair. And my good looks.”
They both laughed out loud. Abe’s bald head shone with a film of sweat.
“And the good time I have left.”
“You don’t have that much time, Abe.” The words sounded acidic to Tim.
“And there’s all that throwing up and people coming over with shitpies and such to see what you look like bald and how fast you dying. Wondering if that’s what they gonna look like when you doctors tell them they have the cancer.”
“How do you know that? You don’t even have a TV!”
“Well I hear things.”
Tim chuckled, happy to be allowed to smile.
“ You’re really something, you know. I wish I could take you around in a cage to the circuses as a freak show and display you to the world. No one would believe such a grumpy old fuck ever existed.”
“And you’d charge a nickel a peek, on my back.”
“To see you, I’d charge them all a dime. Nickel’s not worth my time.”
Tim tugged the knot looser and pressed his palms flat on his shirt front. The humidity was undoing his morning ironing job.
The old man grinned. “Feels like the jungles of fucking Coo Chi out today, don’t it? You don’t impress me with an ironed shirt. I know you from when you were just a wink in your daddy’s eye. I've knowed you before you even wored a shirt.”
“Well, anyway people comin’ over with a shitpie is better than people comin’ over to look in your casket, aint it?” Tim straightened up to his full 6 feet. “Damn it, listen to me talk. You’re making me forget I know how to speak English, old man.”
“I dunno.”
“Yes you do. Might be hard, but you got some fight in you yet , right?”
“Punk. I got more fight in the left half of my prick than you got in your entire body. And then some.”
“I guess you answered my question just fine.”
Tim took they wrench from Abe’s strangely willing hand and set it down gently on the tractor’s fender.
“They told me because I am family.”
“They told you because you sweet talked it out if them. Like you always do with everything you’ve ever wanted.”
“So.”
“So back at you.”
“So. I’ll pick you up tomorrow at 9, after chores, ok?”
“You can go to hell, young Timmy.”
“Hell starts at 9, and I’m not going alone. I’ll be here to get you after your chores.”
“Who’s gonna pay? I’m not paying to throw up.”
“It’s all settled.”
“Well if you’re done imposin’, I got me chickens to kill today.”
“Ok, I’ll see ya at 9.”
“Maybe. Maybe my maker sees me at 8. Beats you by an hour.”
“Have a good day Abe. Enjoy this sunshine.”
“Blah Blah Blah.”
“You gonna need my help cleaning that carburetor too, old man?”
“Blah Blah Blah.”
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
mr cheapie
Mr. Cheapie?
Dear Wally,
Am I married to the cheapest man alive or what? His thriftiness has reached stratospheric heights. He makes ‘free’ tomato soup at the deli by using the catsup packs, complimentary hot water, and a few packets of salt and pepper ‘for flavoring’. (He says it tastes just like Campbells. It doesn’t. It tastes like hot, nasty, overly peppered, watered down catsup). He wont buy long pants because he insists they cost more than shorts. He reuses shampoo because he thinks ‘rinse and repeat’ doesn’t have to happen on the same day and if he only rinses once and collects the stuff that runs off his head into a container, he can use it again a couple of days later and save money (never mind that all the shampoo bottles in the house say ‘Hilton’ somewhere on them and came to us free in the first place). He says peanut butter is too expensive so instead he just eats peanut and jelly sandwiches.
He snipped up those free Tyvek Priority Mail envelopes from the Post Office to vapor barrier our house (in 2 foot patches!). Our unfinished house now looks like it’s an enormous Priority mail package. He never actually buys milk or sugar. Instead he detours to the Starbucks’ ‘fixin bar’ and fills up empty soda bottles. I think it’s illegal.
He just returned his shoes to LL Bean after 30 years because they ‘broke.’ He thinks Chapstick costs too much so instead he uses hot candle wax and then runs around the house screaming.
He thinks the clothes-softening dryer balls cost too much (at a staggering $1 each) so he uses lemons (5/$1) instead. (We now smell like we all work at a citrus processing plant). He doesn’t wear socks or underwear because he says it costs too much to wash them. He’s been known to drive over tubes of toothpaste in the driveway with his car to squeeze the last bit out.
When the tread on his car tires gets low, he ‘retreads’ them in duct tape and excitedly claims he can get another 20,000 miles. Not so good in the snow.
He takes grapes off the stems at the supermarket because he doesn’t want to get charged for the extra weight of the inedible stem. Same with taking the pits out of peaches before he gets to the register. He loads up on beer in Florida where there is no bottle law and drives back to NY with a car load of returnables. One time he spent 4 hours driving around (and wasting my time too) to find a muffler that was $5 cheaper than the first shop’s quote.
He has been known to take ‘free’ air from gas stations that offer it and store it in big inner tubes just to have it. We dry our clothes out the window of the car to save electricity.
Help!
So, am I married to the cheapest guy alive, or what?
-Mr. Cheapie’s Wife
(Wally replies)
Cori? Honey? Is that you?
Got a question that needs answering? Or have a cheap husband that needs outtin’ ? Email our advice columnist at cwn4@aol.com or visit his blog at www.wallynichols.com
Dear Wally,
Am I married to the cheapest man alive or what? His thriftiness has reached stratospheric heights. He makes ‘free’ tomato soup at the deli by using the catsup packs, complimentary hot water, and a few packets of salt and pepper ‘for flavoring’. (He says it tastes just like Campbells. It doesn’t. It tastes like hot, nasty, overly peppered, watered down catsup). He wont buy long pants because he insists they cost more than shorts. He reuses shampoo because he thinks ‘rinse and repeat’ doesn’t have to happen on the same day and if he only rinses once and collects the stuff that runs off his head into a container, he can use it again a couple of days later and save money (never mind that all the shampoo bottles in the house say ‘Hilton’ somewhere on them and came to us free in the first place). He says peanut butter is too expensive so instead he just eats peanut and jelly sandwiches.
He snipped up those free Tyvek Priority Mail envelopes from the Post Office to vapor barrier our house (in 2 foot patches!). Our unfinished house now looks like it’s an enormous Priority mail package. He never actually buys milk or sugar. Instead he detours to the Starbucks’ ‘fixin bar’ and fills up empty soda bottles. I think it’s illegal.
He just returned his shoes to LL Bean after 30 years because they ‘broke.’ He thinks Chapstick costs too much so instead he uses hot candle wax and then runs around the house screaming.
He thinks the clothes-softening dryer balls cost too much (at a staggering $1 each) so he uses lemons (5/$1) instead. (We now smell like we all work at a citrus processing plant). He doesn’t wear socks or underwear because he says it costs too much to wash them. He’s been known to drive over tubes of toothpaste in the driveway with his car to squeeze the last bit out.
When the tread on his car tires gets low, he ‘retreads’ them in duct tape and excitedly claims he can get another 20,000 miles. Not so good in the snow.
He takes grapes off the stems at the supermarket because he doesn’t want to get charged for the extra weight of the inedible stem. Same with taking the pits out of peaches before he gets to the register. He loads up on beer in Florida where there is no bottle law and drives back to NY with a car load of returnables. One time he spent 4 hours driving around (and wasting my time too) to find a muffler that was $5 cheaper than the first shop’s quote.
He has been known to take ‘free’ air from gas stations that offer it and store it in big inner tubes just to have it. We dry our clothes out the window of the car to save electricity.
Help!
So, am I married to the cheapest guy alive, or what?
-Mr. Cheapie’s Wife
(Wally replies)
Cori? Honey? Is that you?
Got a question that needs answering? Or have a cheap husband that needs outtin’ ? Email our advice columnist at cwn4@aol.com or visit his blog at www.wallynichols.com
Xmas '08
Farm life ’08
Dear friends, family and collection agencies:
This time last year we were VERY pregnant. Hattie (now 10 months old ) was cookin’ up in a pot and only needed some additional Christmas cookies and the entire month of January to be done. The doula (whom we nicknamed Paula Abdoula behind her back) was one cool customer—a sturdy Irish woman with 25 years of doulage(?) under her belt. Her sagacious prebirth advice, tendered one night at birthing class was, “pack yourself a snack for the birth, dads! Don’t forget that you are in there too and need to take care of and treat yourself.” I took a quick shine to this Mary O’Riley lady!
On hearing this important command, I immediately went out and bought a container of Cheddar Goldfish out of deference to her vast experience. The goldfish ,however, didn’t make it to the exit of the Stop and Shop. That was two months before Hattie was actually born yet, curiously, it happened repeatedly each and every time I tried to think ahead to the burdens of being next to someone actually giving birth and get myself a replacement snack. Finally, I gave up thinking about myself. Mary’s advice for mom? When labor starts, drink a beer. Serious. Now Cori really liked this lady too!
Labor started Feb 13. The nurse called the farm and asked where Cori was. “She’s mucking stalls,” I admitted. “I can’t stop her.” I couldn’t lie. It was true. “She’s of German descent,” I offered meekly. “It’s what they do.”
Wishing to avoid a scene similar to that in Monty Python where the overworked farm woman gives birth while sweeping a dirt floor and doesn’t even know it until she looks down, we headed to the hospital. Cori took the doula’s advice to heart and popped a beer for the 30 minute (now extremely and regularly painful) drive out of The Honky (errr, what we call Kerhonkson behind its back). There was only one ‘position of comfort’ for Cori in that pickup truck and that was facing backwards, cold Budweiser in hand, no seatbelt (I know this sounds like a line from a country song…). We were a sight. Dee Lite’s ‘Groove is in the Heart’ pumping on the stereo, Cori telling me to step on it, me trying to not hit any deer on the way and unsuccessfully looking for a last minute snack shop (but alas, to no avail).
We pulled into the hospital parking lot after a stop to the doctor, then Home Depot and then a brief stop to check out our friend Kate’s new kitchen remodel (just kidding), opened the passenger door and an empty beer bottle rolled out onto the birthing center’s parking lot!
Nice.
So much for first impressions…
“Don’t prejudge us!” I yelled to the horrified nurses and their security cameras. I seriously thought we were going to get arrested for endangering a minor before we even officially had one. “What??? Mary said it was ok,” I scolded them back.
Hattie was born on Feb 14th (without a single snack!) and has stolen our hearts every day since. She’s been the lead story of ’08. I do not mean to downplay the actual birth- Cori was a champ and in serious pain. We’ll focus instead, at her request, on the glorious aftermath!
Life on the farm has changed in the expected ways with a baby- which is to say, not that much for the decently prepared farmers. There’s been the scheduling particulars, naps, feeding and exploring. She a curious little kid and she laughs all the time--except when she’s crying . (Or sleeping or just babbling). She’s recently taken to putting the back of her fist against her open mouth and making a whooping Indian sound in public, which she learned in utero, I think, from her mother on that hurried Feb 14th trip to birthing center. She whoops it up in public with such gusto and cause that we are forced to choke back our own guffaws. Her first words were (and I’m very proud of this because we’ve been practicing the phrase for some time now), “No dad, I want mom to change my diaper at 3am.”
Ok, I’ll stop that annoying parental gush that OTHER people do! I know you’d rather eat cooked carrots and mop your floor than hear about how cute our baby’s actions are!
The horses are intrigued with this little bundle that one of us carries around. Hattie’s favorite is Taz- an oafish young pony (think teenage boy in human years) who allows her to scratch his muzzle. It’s very cute but makes me think it’s never too early to start working on the “Application To Date My Daughter” which requires 18 years for processing…
Cori’s lesson business has grown in a nicely managed way with some fun clients who are learning a lot and growing under her careful care. The kids love her, too. We’ve been able to avail ourselves of a few working students—kids work around the farm and in exchange get riding lessons. As part of the deal, they tip us off to the cool new slang like (“like OMG that is mad OD!) ( ‘like’ : superfluous waste of breath and/or ink). ‘OMG’ (expletive) abbreviation meaning ‘Shit’ by way of ‘Oh My God!’ ‘mad’ (adverb, incredibly) meaning ‘incredibly.’ Typically used to qualify any word anywhere. Origins, young white kids trying to sound more ‘gangsta-bitch.’ Application is extremely unenforced. Note: has nothing to do with anger. OD –(Adj) ‘incredible’. Archaic -From ye olde American slang, circa 1990, ‘Overdose’ --typically referring to an enjoyable excess of something that shouldn’t be enjoyed to excess.) In short, we can’t really understand a word these kids today say…making us, well, parents.
This year we started haying our neighbor’s fields, taking me back to the Katonah farm days of using rusty old fickle machinery, some of which I actually salvaged from the family farm. The manuals got lost somewhere unfortunately. It took some creative problem solving and more than a few well placed whacks with a hammer but that equipment became compliant (damn it) and we got a lot of hay up (the preferred dangling preposition in the farm biz around these parts).
We had on average 17 horses this year. That’s a lot of hay, as they say on Wallstreet. That’s also a lot of crap, as they say on Wallstreet.
Despite the stern family warnings to the contrary, we’re going back to Florida this winter with the horses. Only this time we’re driving a 38’ RV down there, which means if, like last time, we are chased by a killer tornado, at least we can try to drive away, versus having to grab our underwear and run across a field in the dark for our lives. Some of you are rolling your eyes, I know. (“Wait, they’re going BACK?!??!) The resort (ok not actually a resort, per se, but neither is it a trailer park as my sisters insist) has slipped a line into the contract this year, we noticed. In a long delineation of do’s and don’ts, they have now insisted that people (read: Wally) wear shirts at all times when on the property. This, I assure you, has never been a concern of management before we showed up 2 years ago and classed up the joint.
The bichons are coming. Because many have cautiously and politely asked how they are doing playing second fiddle to Hattie, I’ll answer honestly. They dig her. They have been very respectful of her space and now that she’s eating food, they have been loyally standing guard, like a Presidential security detail I’m guessing, waiting for the mush she either drops or projectile pukes on the floor. It’s hard to tell if they are being protective or whether they are considering her to be the ultimate squeaky toy with special General Tsao’s flavored diaper. That window is closing because she is now bigger than they are and she can crawl as fast as they move. She can run them down with her white, plastic, wheelie, flying-saucer-car thingy, which bears more than a passing resemblance to our downstairs guest toilet, but with wheels and a seatbelt (hmmm, there might be invention in there somewhere…).
Our friend Cal Patch will be watching the farm, right after she watches the popular Netflix films “So you’ve suckered into leaving Brooklyn and farm-sitting for 3 months in a house with no heat, now what??” (rated pg) and “The bridal goes on the other end of the horse, and other useful horsemanship tips to avoid lawsuits.” (Actually, Cal knows what’s she’s doing).
Happy to say that siblings and parents are all well on both sides. We’ve had many nice overlaps with grandparents PU Helga and Heidi, great grandma Nichols, cousins and uncles , aunts Blair, Sandy and Hopie. Nephews and nieces are growing likes weeds, stepping past us to fawn over Hattie. That the oldest, Levi, is now a teenager still leaves me scratching my head wondering where the time went. I’ve given him my private line in case he gets in trouble…
My ‘Dear Wally’ advice column in the local paper continues to greatly amuse at least one reader, me. I actually received one piece of hate mail that came over unibomber style from some twisted fruitcake- a single-spaced manifesto of boiling-over contempt, contesting my liberal political leanings and tearing down my character point by point. Well, I fought my primal, vengeful (Scorpio?) urge to ‘shock and awe’ him back with a good written scorching and instead defused the situation the mature way--with a polite request to not take anything I write too seriously, because I myself don’t. That seemed to do the trick and we’re now great friends. (ok not exactly great friends but at least I don’t have to grope under my car seat for a pipe bomb every time I get in).
We still have the boat (many continue to wonder). It is rented out as we try to convince someone that, au contraire, this economy is the PERFECT time to acquire an outdated gas slurping luxury item. And ‘luxury’ it will be with just a can or two of Pledge and some elbow grease! (or a paid up insurance policy and a shoulder-held rocket launcher.)
This year I’ve been doing a lot of work for NPR in the form of interviews. This includes everyone from saw mill workers to crop dusters to the head New Yorker cartoonist. As it’s carried on radio stations across the country, if you hear the authorial tagline, scratch your head and wonder, yes it is me.
So that’s about it friends, family and collection agencies. If you are in the first two groups and want to drop us a line, or visit us in Florida near Orlando, you know where to find us. If you are in the last group, apparently you already know where to find us!
Happy ’09- Love, Cori, Wally, Hattie, Dr Funk, Diesel and the RV that gets 5 miles to the gallon. Gulp. So much for that carbon footprint!! Look , the more gas we use, the quicker it will be gone and the quicker we’ll have to all be green. So we’re doing our part!
Dear friends, family and collection agencies:
This time last year we were VERY pregnant. Hattie (now 10 months old ) was cookin’ up in a pot and only needed some additional Christmas cookies and the entire month of January to be done. The doula (whom we nicknamed Paula Abdoula behind her back) was one cool customer—a sturdy Irish woman with 25 years of doulage(?) under her belt. Her sagacious prebirth advice, tendered one night at birthing class was, “pack yourself a snack for the birth, dads! Don’t forget that you are in there too and need to take care of and treat yourself.” I took a quick shine to this Mary O’Riley lady!
On hearing this important command, I immediately went out and bought a container of Cheddar Goldfish out of deference to her vast experience. The goldfish ,however, didn’t make it to the exit of the Stop and Shop. That was two months before Hattie was actually born yet, curiously, it happened repeatedly each and every time I tried to think ahead to the burdens of being next to someone actually giving birth and get myself a replacement snack. Finally, I gave up thinking about myself. Mary’s advice for mom? When labor starts, drink a beer. Serious. Now Cori really liked this lady too!
Labor started Feb 13. The nurse called the farm and asked where Cori was. “She’s mucking stalls,” I admitted. “I can’t stop her.” I couldn’t lie. It was true. “She’s of German descent,” I offered meekly. “It’s what they do.”
Wishing to avoid a scene similar to that in Monty Python where the overworked farm woman gives birth while sweeping a dirt floor and doesn’t even know it until she looks down, we headed to the hospital. Cori took the doula’s advice to heart and popped a beer for the 30 minute (now extremely and regularly painful) drive out of The Honky (errr, what we call Kerhonkson behind its back). There was only one ‘position of comfort’ for Cori in that pickup truck and that was facing backwards, cold Budweiser in hand, no seatbelt (I know this sounds like a line from a country song…). We were a sight. Dee Lite’s ‘Groove is in the Heart’ pumping on the stereo, Cori telling me to step on it, me trying to not hit any deer on the way and unsuccessfully looking for a last minute snack shop (but alas, to no avail).
We pulled into the hospital parking lot after a stop to the doctor, then Home Depot and then a brief stop to check out our friend Kate’s new kitchen remodel (just kidding), opened the passenger door and an empty beer bottle rolled out onto the birthing center’s parking lot!
Nice.
So much for first impressions…
“Don’t prejudge us!” I yelled to the horrified nurses and their security cameras. I seriously thought we were going to get arrested for endangering a minor before we even officially had one. “What??? Mary said it was ok,” I scolded them back.
Hattie was born on Feb 14th (without a single snack!) and has stolen our hearts every day since. She’s been the lead story of ’08. I do not mean to downplay the actual birth- Cori was a champ and in serious pain. We’ll focus instead, at her request, on the glorious aftermath!
Life on the farm has changed in the expected ways with a baby- which is to say, not that much for the decently prepared farmers. There’s been the scheduling particulars, naps, feeding and exploring. She a curious little kid and she laughs all the time--except when she’s crying . (Or sleeping or just babbling). She’s recently taken to putting the back of her fist against her open mouth and making a whooping Indian sound in public, which she learned in utero, I think, from her mother on that hurried Feb 14th trip to birthing center. She whoops it up in public with such gusto and cause that we are forced to choke back our own guffaws. Her first words were (and I’m very proud of this because we’ve been practicing the phrase for some time now), “No dad, I want mom to change my diaper at 3am.”
Ok, I’ll stop that annoying parental gush that OTHER people do! I know you’d rather eat cooked carrots and mop your floor than hear about how cute our baby’s actions are!
The horses are intrigued with this little bundle that one of us carries around. Hattie’s favorite is Taz- an oafish young pony (think teenage boy in human years) who allows her to scratch his muzzle. It’s very cute but makes me think it’s never too early to start working on the “Application To Date My Daughter” which requires 18 years for processing…
Cori’s lesson business has grown in a nicely managed way with some fun clients who are learning a lot and growing under her careful care. The kids love her, too. We’ve been able to avail ourselves of a few working students—kids work around the farm and in exchange get riding lessons. As part of the deal, they tip us off to the cool new slang like (“like OMG that is mad OD!) ( ‘like’ : superfluous waste of breath and/or ink). ‘OMG’ (expletive) abbreviation meaning ‘Shit’ by way of ‘Oh My God!’ ‘mad’ (adverb, incredibly) meaning ‘incredibly.’ Typically used to qualify any word anywhere. Origins, young white kids trying to sound more ‘gangsta-bitch.’ Application is extremely unenforced. Note: has nothing to do with anger. OD –(Adj) ‘incredible’. Archaic -From ye olde American slang, circa 1990, ‘Overdose’ --typically referring to an enjoyable excess of something that shouldn’t be enjoyed to excess.) In short, we can’t really understand a word these kids today say…making us, well, parents.
This year we started haying our neighbor’s fields, taking me back to the Katonah farm days of using rusty old fickle machinery, some of which I actually salvaged from the family farm. The manuals got lost somewhere unfortunately. It took some creative problem solving and more than a few well placed whacks with a hammer but that equipment became compliant (damn it) and we got a lot of hay up (the preferred dangling preposition in the farm biz around these parts).
We had on average 17 horses this year. That’s a lot of hay, as they say on Wallstreet. That’s also a lot of crap, as they say on Wallstreet.
Despite the stern family warnings to the contrary, we’re going back to Florida this winter with the horses. Only this time we’re driving a 38’ RV down there, which means if, like last time, we are chased by a killer tornado, at least we can try to drive away, versus having to grab our underwear and run across a field in the dark for our lives. Some of you are rolling your eyes, I know. (“Wait, they’re going BACK?!??!) The resort (ok not actually a resort, per se, but neither is it a trailer park as my sisters insist) has slipped a line into the contract this year, we noticed. In a long delineation of do’s and don’ts, they have now insisted that people (read: Wally) wear shirts at all times when on the property. This, I assure you, has never been a concern of management before we showed up 2 years ago and classed up the joint.
The bichons are coming. Because many have cautiously and politely asked how they are doing playing second fiddle to Hattie, I’ll answer honestly. They dig her. They have been very respectful of her space and now that she’s eating food, they have been loyally standing guard, like a Presidential security detail I’m guessing, waiting for the mush she either drops or projectile pukes on the floor. It’s hard to tell if they are being protective or whether they are considering her to be the ultimate squeaky toy with special General Tsao’s flavored diaper. That window is closing because she is now bigger than they are and she can crawl as fast as they move. She can run them down with her white, plastic, wheelie, flying-saucer-car thingy, which bears more than a passing resemblance to our downstairs guest toilet, but with wheels and a seatbelt (hmmm, there might be invention in there somewhere…).
Our friend Cal Patch will be watching the farm, right after she watches the popular Netflix films “So you’ve suckered into leaving Brooklyn and farm-sitting for 3 months in a house with no heat, now what??” (rated pg) and “The bridal goes on the other end of the horse, and other useful horsemanship tips to avoid lawsuits.” (Actually, Cal knows what’s she’s doing).
Happy to say that siblings and parents are all well on both sides. We’ve had many nice overlaps with grandparents PU Helga and Heidi, great grandma Nichols, cousins and uncles , aunts Blair, Sandy and Hopie. Nephews and nieces are growing likes weeds, stepping past us to fawn over Hattie. That the oldest, Levi, is now a teenager still leaves me scratching my head wondering where the time went. I’ve given him my private line in case he gets in trouble…
My ‘Dear Wally’ advice column in the local paper continues to greatly amuse at least one reader, me. I actually received one piece of hate mail that came over unibomber style from some twisted fruitcake- a single-spaced manifesto of boiling-over contempt, contesting my liberal political leanings and tearing down my character point by point. Well, I fought my primal, vengeful (Scorpio?) urge to ‘shock and awe’ him back with a good written scorching and instead defused the situation the mature way--with a polite request to not take anything I write too seriously, because I myself don’t. That seemed to do the trick and we’re now great friends. (ok not exactly great friends but at least I don’t have to grope under my car seat for a pipe bomb every time I get in).
We still have the boat (many continue to wonder). It is rented out as we try to convince someone that, au contraire, this economy is the PERFECT time to acquire an outdated gas slurping luxury item. And ‘luxury’ it will be with just a can or two of Pledge and some elbow grease! (or a paid up insurance policy and a shoulder-held rocket launcher.)
This year I’ve been doing a lot of work for NPR in the form of interviews. This includes everyone from saw mill workers to crop dusters to the head New Yorker cartoonist. As it’s carried on radio stations across the country, if you hear the authorial tagline, scratch your head and wonder, yes it is me.
So that’s about it friends, family and collection agencies. If you are in the first two groups and want to drop us a line, or visit us in Florida near Orlando, you know where to find us. If you are in the last group, apparently you already know where to find us!
Happy ’09- Love, Cori, Wally, Hattie, Dr Funk, Diesel and the RV that gets 5 miles to the gallon. Gulp. So much for that carbon footprint!! Look , the more gas we use, the quicker it will be gone and the quicker we’ll have to all be green. So we’re doing our part!
Colbert Report "The Word- Exec Compensation"
…Which brings us to tonite’s WORD.
‘Executive Compensation’. (two words, actually, Mr. MBA)
Executive compensation is a thoroughly American institution correctly designed to reward key corporate executives for their company’s past year’s performance. (Bankruptcy). Far beyond their lofty salaries, these CEOs need fair year end compensation for the performance of the stock they have been overseeing (how about a ‘fair year end’ flogging??). The weight on their backs is enormous (daily hot stone message, silicon breast implants). Thousands of employees depend on their sound fiscal judgment everyday (Baristas and limo drivers). They also support many outside their immediate profession (criminal defense lawyers and white collar prison guards).
A corporate Exec’s lifestyle may seem glamorous on the outside (actually, it is on the inside too) but it’s more than just fancy private jets (and retreats to the Caribbean, and $1000 cigars). These titans of industry actually drive the US economy (Drive? Sorry, the auto industry is dead).
Unfortunately, their high compensation has become a lightning rod for public criticism as stockholders watch their shares devalue (freefall into Hell’s gaping maw). Many say CEOs should not be allowed to earn bonuses if the company stock doesn’t perform well. (Many who are not CEOs).
But there is a flipside. In good times, it’s true, the money flows up to them in the form of bonuses. In bad times, they are on the hot seat (the money still flows up to them in the form of bonuses).
Nation, let’s be grown up about this. If you don’t like the company’s executive compensation policy, sell your shares (for $.01) and take your business elsewhere to where there is no executive compensation, (cable TV ‘news’ stations). Or, reward those at the top for figuring out how to make money for you in this economy (on line porn). But don’t sit at home on your sofa and whine about it (They are coming to repossess your sofa tomorrow).
‘Executive Compensation’. (two words, actually, Mr. MBA)
Executive compensation is a thoroughly American institution correctly designed to reward key corporate executives for their company’s past year’s performance. (Bankruptcy). Far beyond their lofty salaries, these CEOs need fair year end compensation for the performance of the stock they have been overseeing (how about a ‘fair year end’ flogging??). The weight on their backs is enormous (daily hot stone message, silicon breast implants). Thousands of employees depend on their sound fiscal judgment everyday (Baristas and limo drivers). They also support many outside their immediate profession (criminal defense lawyers and white collar prison guards).
A corporate Exec’s lifestyle may seem glamorous on the outside (actually, it is on the inside too) but it’s more than just fancy private jets (and retreats to the Caribbean, and $1000 cigars). These titans of industry actually drive the US economy (Drive? Sorry, the auto industry is dead).
Unfortunately, their high compensation has become a lightning rod for public criticism as stockholders watch their shares devalue (freefall into Hell’s gaping maw). Many say CEOs should not be allowed to earn bonuses if the company stock doesn’t perform well. (Many who are not CEOs).
But there is a flipside. In good times, it’s true, the money flows up to them in the form of bonuses. In bad times, they are on the hot seat (the money still flows up to them in the form of bonuses).
Nation, let’s be grown up about this. If you don’t like the company’s executive compensation policy, sell your shares (for $.01) and take your business elsewhere to where there is no executive compensation, (cable TV ‘news’ stations). Or, reward those at the top for figuring out how to make money for you in this economy (on line porn). But don’t sit at home on your sofa and whine about it (They are coming to repossess your sofa tomorrow).
Thursday, January 1, 2009
On Doulas Jan 09
A Father’s Perspective on 'The Doula'…
By Wally Nichols
(cwn4@aol.com)
The birthing experience can assume an entirely different hue from the father’s perspective than it can from the mother’s. We guys rarely dare to openly own the pain or suffering, or confusion or fear or other identifiable (and unidentifiable) emotions that women lay legitimate claim to on the big day, or even during the 9 months prior. Some things are best left unsaid, correct? Which isn’t to say we don’t feel all these things, but we feel them in a thinly comparative way to our partners who are about to push 8 pounds through an orifice.
Modern times have given us many resources to combat the variables of childbirth; birthing classes, drugs, monitors, doctors and technicians, even ‘birthing centers’ which are designed to handle soon to be parents’ every need (and want). If you chose to avail yourself of it, as we did, there’s a dizzying array of compositional resources and people on the team…
Still, we fathers are usually lowest on the totem pole, wandering around in a confused haze before, during and after the birth, which is fine. Above us, and below the doctor, on this totem pole, can sometimes be found a doula. If we squint hard enough and think about definition long enough, those of us with business orientations can rightly consider the doula a consultant to, or advocate for, the laboring mother. And a godsend for the panicky father. She knows the drill and speaks the language. She’s seen it all before. There’s huge relief in that.
But the doula is much more than just a knowledgeable birthing facilitator. At least ours was. A doula can massage the parents’ bodies and minds back into compliance and agreement with the natural order in the weeks before birth as well as at the actual moment. She can translate the kinetics of childbirth back into English. She can arrange a birth plan that dovetails with the couple’s beliefs on pain management, transportation logistics, birth location, post birth responsibilities, etc.
She can also hold the hands of the mother while she’s holding the hands of the father. She can work with the doctors and or the midwives and compliment the team very nicely. Get one who is experienced and calm, and one with long arms, and it’s a beautiful thing…
Gentlemen, get out your wallets for this to the tune of $500-$1000. She’s your ace-in-the-hole and you wont soon regret treating yourself to this peace of mind luxury. Oh, and treating your partner who is actually doing all the work.
Our doula (whom we nicknamed Paula Abdoula behind her back) was one cool customer. We met at the birthing class she led. She is a sturdy Irish woman with 25 years of doulage(?) under her belt. Her sagacious prebirth advice, tendered early on one night at class was, “pack yourself a snack for the birth, dads! Don’t forget that you are in there too and need to take care of and treat yourself.” I took a quick shine to this Mary O’Riley lady!
On hearing this important command, I immediately went out and bought a container of Cheddar Goldfish out of deference to her vast experience. The snacks , however, didn’t make it to the exit of the Stop and Shop Supermarket parking lot. (That was two months before Hattie was actually born yet, curiously, it happened repeatedly each and every time I tried to think ahead to the burdens of being next to someone actually giving birth and get myself a replacement snack. Finally, I gave up thinking about myself).
Mary’s advice for mom? When labor starts, drink a beer. Preferably Guinness, which as hill lore has it, simultaneously activates the calming reflex while poking the milk production button.
A beer?
Seriously?
Now my wife Cori really liked this lady too!
Labor started in the night on Feb 13. The car was packed and ready to go. (It had been packed and ready to go for every bit of the preceding 4 weeks.) I went out in the subzero temperature to get the heat on, literally the only thing this double left footed monkey could do between the fits of labor that appeared to be ripping my wife apart. Then we called Mary and told her the news. I rattled off all the hard stats I had gathered about duration and frequency and amplitude of pain.
“Stay in bed. Get a few more hours of sleep,” advised a calm doula over the phone lines. “You’re not ready yet.”
“But…?”
“Call me in the morning. Trust me. She needs to get her rest. Now back to bed with you both.”
I felt like a scolded kid being sent back up the stairs Christmas morning after having awoken too early. But sure enough, Mary was right. The contractions subsided and a relatively normal day unfolded before us. We avoided a long trip to the birthing center that would have resulted in being sent home anyway.
I knew there was more to the picture, so I was on the phone with Mary throughout the day giving regular updates while my wife insisted on attending to her mares in the barn and getting them a hot bran mash—perhaps a harbinger of good mothering habits to come.
Around noon, I called the doctor’s office to give them a courtesy call about our imminent parenthood (alert the press!!) and left a message with the receptionist describing the landscape.
The flabbergasted nurse from the practice called the farm back and asked where Cori was. “She’s mucking stalls,” I admitted. “I can’t stop her.” I couldn’t lie. It was true. “She’s of German descent,” I offered meekly. “It’s what they do.”
We live on a 20 horse boarding/ lesson facility in New York’s Hudson Valley and the work clock stops for no one or anything we’ve come to learn…
“Get her up here right now,” the nurse demanded.
“You try,” I said and handed the phone to Cori who had come up for some breakfast. She had a big smile on her face and but for the gait-impeding belly, betrayed no signs of distress or discomfort or even pregnancy.
Wishing to avoid a scene similar to that in Monty Python where the overworked farm woman gives birth while sweeping a dirt floor and doesn’t even know it until she looks down, we consulted with Mary and compromised by heading to the hospital in the late afternoon.
The contractions were now regular and intense at this point. Cori took the doula’s advice to heart and popped a beer for the 30 minute (now extremely and regularly painful) drive. There was only one ‘position of comfort’ for Cori in that pickup truck and that was facing backwards, cold Budweiser in hand, rear end against the windshield, no seatbelt (I know this sounds like a line from a country song, but it was our reality at the moment…).
We were a sight. Dee Lite’s ‘Groove is in the Heart’ pumping on the stereo, Cori telling me to step on it, me trying to not hit any deer on the way and unsuccessfully looking for a last minute snack shop because my reserves, alas, were all gone.
We pulled into the hospital parking lot after a stop to the doctor, where her water broke, then Home Depot to pick up some lumber I needed, and then a brief stop to check out our friend Kate’s new kitchen remodel (just kidding on those last two). I opened the passenger door and an empty beer bottle rolled out onto the birthing center’s parking lot!
Nice.
So much for first impressions…
“Don’t prejudge us!” I yelled to the horrified nurses who had gathered at the center's entrance Nosy security cameras tracked us from every angle. I seriously thought we were going to get arrested for endangering a minor before we even officially had one. “What??? Mary said it was ok,” I scolded them back.
The birth turned out to be a bit complicated. The fetal monitor indicated severely reduced cardiac output during contractions.
"Mary," I whispered urgently, "What's that mean???"
Many repositioning attempts were made to reduce the stress but finally we were left with no choice but to do a C section. The doctor was quite jovial and had an long history of working with Mary. He offered us a choice. “Option 1,” he whistled while scrubbing down. “You can have a C section in 15 minutes.”
“What’s option 2?” I asked.
“Option 2,” he said, “Is you can have a C section in 10 minutes. But hey, your choice!”
Mary chucked a pair of hospital scrubs at me and said, “Get dressed pal.”
“But…”
With a knowing wink from an experienced doula, off we went, all three of us, hand in hand.
Hattie was born on Feb 14th (without a single snack!) and has stolen our hearts every day since.
We can’t wait to have another baby just so we get to hang out with our doula again!
By Wally Nichols
(cwn4@aol.com)
The birthing experience can assume an entirely different hue from the father’s perspective than it can from the mother’s. We guys rarely dare to openly own the pain or suffering, or confusion or fear or other identifiable (and unidentifiable) emotions that women lay legitimate claim to on the big day, or even during the 9 months prior. Some things are best left unsaid, correct? Which isn’t to say we don’t feel all these things, but we feel them in a thinly comparative way to our partners who are about to push 8 pounds through an orifice.
Modern times have given us many resources to combat the variables of childbirth; birthing classes, drugs, monitors, doctors and technicians, even ‘birthing centers’ which are designed to handle soon to be parents’ every need (and want). If you chose to avail yourself of it, as we did, there’s a dizzying array of compositional resources and people on the team…
Still, we fathers are usually lowest on the totem pole, wandering around in a confused haze before, during and after the birth, which is fine. Above us, and below the doctor, on this totem pole, can sometimes be found a doula. If we squint hard enough and think about definition long enough, those of us with business orientations can rightly consider the doula a consultant to, or advocate for, the laboring mother. And a godsend for the panicky father. She knows the drill and speaks the language. She’s seen it all before. There’s huge relief in that.
But the doula is much more than just a knowledgeable birthing facilitator. At least ours was. A doula can massage the parents’ bodies and minds back into compliance and agreement with the natural order in the weeks before birth as well as at the actual moment. She can translate the kinetics of childbirth back into English. She can arrange a birth plan that dovetails with the couple’s beliefs on pain management, transportation logistics, birth location, post birth responsibilities, etc.
She can also hold the hands of the mother while she’s holding the hands of the father. She can work with the doctors and or the midwives and compliment the team very nicely. Get one who is experienced and calm, and one with long arms, and it’s a beautiful thing…
Gentlemen, get out your wallets for this to the tune of $500-$1000. She’s your ace-in-the-hole and you wont soon regret treating yourself to this peace of mind luxury. Oh, and treating your partner who is actually doing all the work.
Our doula (whom we nicknamed Paula Abdoula behind her back) was one cool customer. We met at the birthing class she led. She is a sturdy Irish woman with 25 years of doulage(?) under her belt. Her sagacious prebirth advice, tendered early on one night at class was, “pack yourself a snack for the birth, dads! Don’t forget that you are in there too and need to take care of and treat yourself.” I took a quick shine to this Mary O’Riley lady!
On hearing this important command, I immediately went out and bought a container of Cheddar Goldfish out of deference to her vast experience. The snacks , however, didn’t make it to the exit of the Stop and Shop Supermarket parking lot. (That was two months before Hattie was actually born yet, curiously, it happened repeatedly each and every time I tried to think ahead to the burdens of being next to someone actually giving birth and get myself a replacement snack. Finally, I gave up thinking about myself).
Mary’s advice for mom? When labor starts, drink a beer. Preferably Guinness, which as hill lore has it, simultaneously activates the calming reflex while poking the milk production button.
A beer?
Seriously?
Now my wife Cori really liked this lady too!
Labor started in the night on Feb 13. The car was packed and ready to go. (It had been packed and ready to go for every bit of the preceding 4 weeks.) I went out in the subzero temperature to get the heat on, literally the only thing this double left footed monkey could do between the fits of labor that appeared to be ripping my wife apart. Then we called Mary and told her the news. I rattled off all the hard stats I had gathered about duration and frequency and amplitude of pain.
“Stay in bed. Get a few more hours of sleep,” advised a calm doula over the phone lines. “You’re not ready yet.”
“But…?”
“Call me in the morning. Trust me. She needs to get her rest. Now back to bed with you both.”
I felt like a scolded kid being sent back up the stairs Christmas morning after having awoken too early. But sure enough, Mary was right. The contractions subsided and a relatively normal day unfolded before us. We avoided a long trip to the birthing center that would have resulted in being sent home anyway.
I knew there was more to the picture, so I was on the phone with Mary throughout the day giving regular updates while my wife insisted on attending to her mares in the barn and getting them a hot bran mash—perhaps a harbinger of good mothering habits to come.
Around noon, I called the doctor’s office to give them a courtesy call about our imminent parenthood (alert the press!!) and left a message with the receptionist describing the landscape.
The flabbergasted nurse from the practice called the farm back and asked where Cori was. “She’s mucking stalls,” I admitted. “I can’t stop her.” I couldn’t lie. It was true. “She’s of German descent,” I offered meekly. “It’s what they do.”
We live on a 20 horse boarding/ lesson facility in New York’s Hudson Valley and the work clock stops for no one or anything we’ve come to learn…
“Get her up here right now,” the nurse demanded.
“You try,” I said and handed the phone to Cori who had come up for some breakfast. She had a big smile on her face and but for the gait-impeding belly, betrayed no signs of distress or discomfort or even pregnancy.
Wishing to avoid a scene similar to that in Monty Python where the overworked farm woman gives birth while sweeping a dirt floor and doesn’t even know it until she looks down, we consulted with Mary and compromised by heading to the hospital in the late afternoon.
The contractions were now regular and intense at this point. Cori took the doula’s advice to heart and popped a beer for the 30 minute (now extremely and regularly painful) drive. There was only one ‘position of comfort’ for Cori in that pickup truck and that was facing backwards, cold Budweiser in hand, rear end against the windshield, no seatbelt (I know this sounds like a line from a country song, but it was our reality at the moment…).
We were a sight. Dee Lite’s ‘Groove is in the Heart’ pumping on the stereo, Cori telling me to step on it, me trying to not hit any deer on the way and unsuccessfully looking for a last minute snack shop because my reserves, alas, were all gone.
We pulled into the hospital parking lot after a stop to the doctor, where her water broke, then Home Depot to pick up some lumber I needed, and then a brief stop to check out our friend Kate’s new kitchen remodel (just kidding on those last two). I opened the passenger door and an empty beer bottle rolled out onto the birthing center’s parking lot!
Nice.
So much for first impressions…
“Don’t prejudge us!” I yelled to the horrified nurses who had gathered at the center's entrance Nosy security cameras tracked us from every angle. I seriously thought we were going to get arrested for endangering a minor before we even officially had one. “What??? Mary said it was ok,” I scolded them back.
The birth turned out to be a bit complicated. The fetal monitor indicated severely reduced cardiac output during contractions.
"Mary," I whispered urgently, "What's that mean???"
Many repositioning attempts were made to reduce the stress but finally we were left with no choice but to do a C section. The doctor was quite jovial and had an long history of working with Mary. He offered us a choice. “Option 1,” he whistled while scrubbing down. “You can have a C section in 15 minutes.”
“What’s option 2?” I asked.
“Option 2,” he said, “Is you can have a C section in 10 minutes. But hey, your choice!”
Mary chucked a pair of hospital scrubs at me and said, “Get dressed pal.”
“But…”
With a knowing wink from an experienced doula, off we went, all three of us, hand in hand.
Hattie was born on Feb 14th (without a single snack!) and has stolen our hearts every day since.
We can’t wait to have another baby just so we get to hang out with our doula again!
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