Why do I not post more regularly?

The simple answer is because I don't have time.  The real answer is different from that.  I can say that it's because nothing is new, but that's not true either.  I have 2 little boys, and every day is new and different and exciting for us 3.  And for Mommy too, I think, but I can't really speak for her.  It would be pretty cool if I could talk her into keeping a blog also and explaining her side of things.  But I digress.


The truth is that I don't do it because that would require effort and discipline and it would seem too much like work.  I have no intention is adding to my workload, so this will have to remain an on-again-off-again guilty pleasure.  And really, that's the only kind of pleasure worth having.

So it's been a month since I last wrote a post.  It sure doesn't seem as though it's been that long.  What's new?  Monkey #2 has rolled over a few times, but he hasn't done much more than that.  He sits up fairly well, but not well enough to do it alone for long periods of time or to pull himself up to it.  And when he flops down, he flops down hard.

Monkey #1's vocabulary continues to grow.  The phrases have become sentences, and he can carry on a conversation when he feels up to it.  Sure, mostly it's about what the WonderPets have been up to, but it's a conversation anyway.  He's gotten into trains and dinosaurs now, but the big semi's on the road still excite him.  Yes, even though we see them everyday, on every drive no matter what, they still get him all riled up ("Dada!  Dada!  Big truck!  The big truck is red!").  Today he started singing Twinkle Twinkle little star on his own.  That's the first time.  Usually he asks us to sign songs for him, and even when he knows the song he won't join in, but this time he decided it was up to him to liven things up.  He also decided that he wanted a haircut today after watching me get mine cut.  That's not the surprising part, though.  The surprise was that he suffered through it patiently until it was all done.  He still can't read, but he's learning a few words.  He can recognize his name, so we've got a start.  Speaking of starts. . .

I started Monkey #1 on cloth diapers some of the time.  I only bought the equivalent of 4 diapers, so that's only enough for part of one day anyway, but at least it's a start.  It's not as if they're going to save us any money though.  The darn things were so expensive.  Sure, it's a one time purchase, but I could have bought more than 500 good disposables for that much money.  Well, 496 more changes to go and I'll get my money's worth!

There is one thing that I really miss from before the children came into play.  Reading real books.  Now, all I read is Dr. Seuss.  I can't remember what the last book I read was, and the book I'm reading now is taking weeks to finish.  And it's not as if were anything complex, it's not Tolstoy or Kierkegaard (not that I'd read Kierkegaard for fun anyway!)  It's just a run-of-the-mill novel, and I just can't seem to get enough time to read it, other than when I'm brushing my teeth.

Which I should go do right about now.

Introducing the Monkeys!

Sorry for the low-res pics.  I'll post better ones later on.


This guy is Monkey #1.  He's going to be 2 years old soon.











This one is Monkey #2.  He's 5 months old.

Chironautical because . . .

You might wonder "Why does this guy call his blog Chironautical?".  Or, most likely, you really don't care and barely noticed that's these scribblings have an Ubername.

In any case, I shall enlighten you.  Chiron, as you know, was a centaur.  Not just any centaur, though.  Way back then, centaurs were wild critters.  They were strong, fast, drunken, and debaucherous.  Even though debaucherous isn't even a word, they were and they made it work, thank you very much.
Amongst the constant partying, one centaur emerged that decided "screw all this having fun and chasing girl centaurs about.  I'm going to settle down and study science."  Yup, he gave it all up for science.  And not just for a little while.  He knew that once he started on the journey of self-enlightenment he'd be ostracized by his fellow debaucherers (yes, they made that work work too, those centaurs).  No room for a thinking-type in those wild parties.  Imagine the typical approach to a willy centaurette, running all around her, shooting some wild boars with your arrows and presenting her with a feast of raw pork before mounting her lustily, instead of all that, just going up to her and saying "doesn't all this just seem as though we're trying to run away from ourselves?  Loosing our divine essence in this wallowing in wine and raw swine?"

You can see that he wasn't far from being ostracized, and he was never going to get any centaurette anyway, so no big loss to him, but that's not the point.  The point is that he made the leap, to loneliness and better literature.

And he also took up with humans.  Failing to get on with any centaurs, he went off to the next best thing.  He knew that those Greek ladies weren't all that particular, what with all the minotaurs and attractive geese running around.  In order to stay close to ladies he knew would put out, he started tutoring their kids.  And the two most important kids he tutored ( at least in my opinion) were Ajax and his cousin Achilles.  Yes, the two of Trojan war fame.  The two greatest heroes that the Greeks ever produced, as long as you don't count Hercules, and maybe Odysseus.

I should, probably, tell you that my boys are named after these Greek heroes.  Achilles and Ajax, not Hercules and Odysseus.  And now I see my role as comparable to Chiron, having to navigate the sea of parenthood, hence the "-autical" part of the title.

Now, don't start to write me an angry comment telling me how I ruined the kids lives with crazy old names.  They do have a mother that has enough sense to keep me from doing things like that.  Only their middle names are weird.  They have perfectly conventional first names.

You see?  That first part wasn't about me at all.  You thought I was the one giving up social life to study science, and the one who couldn't get any.  Hah!  That's all I have to say to you.  I probably got more after I took up science.

You have to stop and think sometimes. . .

And yet I hardly ever do.  Except to think about how rough I have it, before slapping myself (figuratively) and giving thanks for how easy I have it.  Really.  So we can't afford nice cars, the two we have are paid for.  Sure, they're not new or 100% reliable, but they're ours.  We don't have nice house, it's falling down all around us.  But we have sort of have a house, as long as we can afford the mortgage.  Which is more than a whole bunch of people right now.  We don't have great jobs, but we have jobs and we're not slinging burgers or calling people at dinner time.  We can't afford an awesome day care for the boys, but we can send them to a middle-of-the-road place that the oldest one seems to like.

We have each other, all 4 of us, and that counts for just about everything I can think of.  The boys are growing. . . slowly, but they're growing.  Monkey #1 is still sharp as a tack, but he can't jump and he hates grass.  Well, he hates walking on grass.  Uneven surfaces still throw him off so he won't walk in the grass at all if he can help it.  He's not even two and he's already a city-boy.  One of these days maybe I'll be able to change him a bit and get some dirt under his little nails.  But it won't be any time soon!  Monkey #2 is cooing and babbling and he just managed to roll over from his back to his tummy.  Of course, in that situation he had an assist from gravity, but it still counts.  I already think that Monkey #2 is going to be the physical one, the leap-first sort of kid.  Not Monkey #1, not at all.  He's still an observer first and foremost. I hope that once they're older they'll rub off on each other and even things up.  But I doubt it.  My brother and I have a similar split, except the age portion of it is reversed.  He's the one that likes to work the details out before hand, and I tend to leap in blindly.  When we work together that works out, a man to do the details and one to do big-picture thinking.  Although we never did manage to change one another, I hope that my boys will influence each other more strongly in positive ways.  Yeah, I know, if wishes were fishes and all.

Anyway, the title of the post refers to the passing a a co-worker of mine, today.  He was not an old guy.  He even still had two kids in elementary school.  But he had an accident at home and that was it, he's gone.  I've known him for ten years and it's just not sunken in yet how something like that could happen to me also.  And then what would my family do?  Or what if my wife passed?  What would I do?  Sure, we have a little bit of insurance, but not much at all.  Certainly not enough to pay off the house or hire someone to watch the kids all the time.  We don't even have a will made out.  That's probably step #1 right there.  No point in dwelling on possibilities, I need to focus on what I can do to prepare for eventualities.  But even more immediate in today's world, what if I get canned?

The company I work for us up for sale, and you just can't tell what's going to happen in a situation such as that.  It could be good, but it may be bad.  I actually went through this last year, since the plant I work at was sold, but I got to keep my job and the new employers are good to us all.  Not "here's a great big pile of money and 8 weeks vacation" nice, but we all kept our jobs and they've pretty much left us alone to keep the place running.  The company where my wife works was just purchased by another company and they let go of about 10% of their workforce, but fortunately she wasn't one of the ones they let go.  So, that brings me back to the beginning, giving thanks.

Phil and Ted's Vibe

I have to admit that, between my wife and I, most of the time I'm the cheap one.  The only time that changes is when we're looking at big purchases.  Four bucks for a  "frap" at the coffee shop?  No way, I've got blender at home.  My wife on the other hand, she loves those things but wouldn't dream of making one at home.  So, it should be no surprise that I was the one that ended up pushing for a Phil and Ted's Vibe stroller.  Not just any of their outrageously priced strollers, but their top-of-the-line model.  And so far it's just about the greatest thing ever.  Just about.

Let me start you off with the cons.  The list is looks long but it's minor stuff, and it bears keeping in mind if you're planning on blowing a ton of your hard-earned dough on one these suckers.  First, although it's light for a twin stroller, it's heavy when used for a single child.  It's much wider than our Combi and if you add a cup holder (which was twenty bucks extra!!!) then forget about shopping in cramped stores such as Wal-Mart.  The thing is big, and even folded without the extra seat (which was almost 100 dollars more!!!!) it just about fills up the trunk of my car.  It takes some practice and some patience to fold the thing, although it is mostly, but not entirely, easy to do.  It attracts a lot of attention wherever you go, so that's good and bad depending on your personality type.  The finishing work is not so great, but I guess that's what happens when you outsource your manufacturing to China and fail to supervise it properly.  Our stroller came with scratches, chipped paint, and sharp edges right out of the box.  Nothing other than cosmetic, really, but disappointing when you spend that much on a stroller.  Lastly, their customer service left much to be desired.  They were nice and all, but pretty much said that I was just out of luck and I should be happy that they allowed me to own one of their products.  Sure, I'm paraphrasing a bit, but that was the gist of my exchanges with them.  I did buy it online from a distributor, though, so maybe that was the problem.  The distributor flat out refused to exchange it and Phil and Ted's simply gave me the run-around and kept sending me back to them, even after I sent them copies of all of the emails from the distributor.  So, they lost a lot of points in my book after that.  Would I buy another Phil and Ted's Vibe?  Absolutely.

And now I'll tell you the good parts.  It looks cool!  I know, it's a stroller.  If you don't have kids you wouldn't understand, but if you have kids, you should be getting jealous right about now.  It just looks neat.  People want to stop us and take pictures of the stroller.  Crazy, huh?  Again, that's only impressive if you have kids.  Loaded down, with two kids, a diaper bag, a camera bag, and a full basket it's still easy to push around.  It's even easier to maneuver than our Combi, and that one only seats one kid.  It's probably the lightest and most compact of the twin strollers out there, and the padding on the seats seems pretty comfortable, but you'll have to ask the boys about that part.  I like being able to use it as a double or as a single.  It's useful in just about any situation, as long as there aren't any crowded spaces or narrow aisles.  The pro- list is short, but it sums up everything that's right about this stroller.  It's the lightest, most compact, and most adaptable double stroller that you can find.  We debated buying it for months, we shopped around and tried out other double strollers, but nothing matched the Phil and Ted's Vibe.  I probably wouldn't buy it online again, but I'd buy another one of these.  I even wish we'd bought the basic stroller when we had our fist boy, just to have gotten the most use out of it.

Change is permanent.

Two days ago I had both boys all to myself  for the day.  Now that my wife is back to work and my Mother-in-Law went back home I have them for one whole day each week.  Let me tell you, it's a lot more work to have two of them, and it's not a linear progression, it's exponential.

Those of you with more than one kid are nodding our heads in agreement, but those of you without kids, or even with only one, you just can't imagine it.  It's not as if it's all that much, but it's all about timing.  If you don't have it down pat, then things fall apart quickly.  Let me tell you a story. . .

It begins a long time ago, before I had children, even before I was married.  I was watching my younger brother (let's call him Thelonious, for absolutely no good reason) change my niece's diaper.  My niece was 6 weeks old or so, maybe even a bit less than that, and Thelonious had graciously offered to let me change the diaper.  In the spirit of camaraderie, I refused.  So Thelonius, who had not yet learned to cope with smelly poop, was forced to gag and bear it.  He set upon the task, was almost done except for one more good wipe when my niece let go.  And I mean she let everything go, with gusto.  Poop sprayed from her raised heinie all the way across the room and all over Thelonius.  I, of course, filled with even more brotherly love, died laughing while he could barely contain his vomit.  Anyway, I thought that was a funny story until I had kids of my own.

Which brings me back to my first day with the two boys.  I changed the eldest, who had just about the worst bowel movement that you could imagine.  Just plain nasty.  Then I decided to change the little one.  I'm giving him one last wipe after cleaning his poop, thinking about the story of Thelonius the Unfortunate, when the little one lets fly from his well up-raised tush.  I can tell you from my very up close and personal experience, breast fed babies really do have seedy poop, but it's not seeds at all, not at all.  You couldn't plant this stuff and get poop blossoms.  You guys are welcome to try, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Still not a regular. . .

Wow, time just continues to fly.  I really should set myself a regular schedule if I intend to keep writing.

Both boys are growing and doing well, and my Mother-in-Law is still here, so the littlest one hasn’t had to go to day care yet.  I can’t tell you how happy I am about that.  I still don’t like sending the older off, but what can one do?

Yeah, I know, I just threw in a third person phrase up there, but if that really bothers you you should stop reading this.  And if you didn’t notice, shame on you.  Go read better literature instead.

Boy, I think I just told pretty much anyone who’s read this far that they should read something else.  Probably good advice, though.

One thing that I wanted to do was write a small section on the gadgets that we use for the boys.  From the mundane items, like our single stroller, to the slightly more exotic, such as our double stroller.  I’ve got a long story about the double one I’ll tell you about later on.

And I’m writing this on a new Mac, more of which I’ll get into as well.

Monkey #2 is now 2 1/2 months old, which is just unbelievable.  Monkey #1 is now just a bit under 2 years old.  We just bought a real bed for him (at Ikea, of course), but haven’t let him sleep in it just yet.  It’s just in his room, teasing him with this 

big-boy-bed-ishness that he loves.  It’s one of those bunk beds that can pretend it’s a single bed until you need it, then you just roll it over and you can slide in another mattress and you’ve got space for two boys to sleep in one bedroom and still have a bit of area for them to play.

Currently, in Monkey #1’s bedroom there is no space at all.  With the bunk bed and the crib he’s still sleeping in and one chest of drawers it’s filled to overflowing.  When we set that room up as a nursery we painted some murals on two walls.  You’d have to understand how unartistic my wife and I are for this to truly sink in.  Imagine that you’re drawing a circle, then imagine that you color in to solid circles for eyes, got that?  Well, I can’t even get that far, that’s how difficult the project was for us.

Luckily, with borrowed a projector, and my wife’s patience, we managed to draw some fish on one wall, then a tree with a monkey and a bird, and a giraffe on the other side of that wall.  The project took us about 3 months of squabbling and painful attention to detail to finish and it actually looked pretty good to us.  And now it’s all covered up with cheap furniture!!!

Sometimes even when you think you’re winning, you’re really not.

Oh boy, time flies when you most want to hold on to it.

Months after the start of this blog, and I’m just now getting back to it.  Huge changes.  Not unexpected, but huge.

Monkey #2 has arrived!  Yup, it’s been that long.  Monkey #1 is now a year and a half old.  He’s walking, stringing a couple of words together at a time, and discovered screaming in public places.  I used to really dislike it when kids did that.  Actually, I still do dislike it, but now I feel sorry for all the parents that I thought black things of way back then.  Monkey #1 is not terrible about it, but it happens often enough to raise my hackles and not enough for me to become used to it.  He’s also really into cars.  Any kind of car, but especially big semi trucks.  We like in an industrial area, so there are tons of these when we drive around, and he loves them.  We once drove around next to a cement truck for a little while, and he was just ecstatic about that.  Not even Yoko makes him as happy as that cement truck.  

Monkey #2 is one month old.  He’s as cute as his older brother was, dimples and maybe the long eye lashes, but a cleft chin and lighter hair.

The heart-breaking part is that my wife has to go back to work in two weeks.  Six weeks of maternity leave sounds like a long time, but it really isn’t at all.  How can anyone expect a new mother to abandon a six-week old baby to the care of strangers?  And yet people have to do it every day.  We’re luckier than most, since my Mother-in-Law volunteered to watch the new baby for 3 months, so he won’t have to go to day care until he’s a whole 4 months old.  Monkey #1 will continue to go to daycare, since we don’t think she can really cope with the two of them.  Well, she could cope, but it would probably involve Monkey #1 watching lot of TV, which I just don’t like.

My son, let’s call him Monkey for the sake of clarity, is a swell kid.  Every parent says that, so you have to take my word for it that he really is one of the better ones out there.  And why wouldn’t you?  You’ve read this far, so it must be true.

He’s just a bit over a year old, and Monkey #2 is already on the way, but more about that later on.

Let’s fill in some basics on Monkey.  He isn’t walking yet.  He’s got a limited vocabulary, and it’s mostly centered on “hungry”, “more”, and “milk”, all in sign.  He’s definitely an observer, not a jumper-in-er.  It’s strange to think back on this, but even as a tiny infant he just seemed too aware, more so than most kids.  Really, even taking my biased opinion into account.  I’m not saying he’s a genius or anything, although he may be for all I know, I’m just saying that he really takes his time to take it all in before deciding on a course of action.

He’s a Virgo, and they’re probably all like that.  He’s also a Rat under the Chinese Zodiac, so he also fits that profile.

What else?  He’s got big eyes and long lashes, not at all like me, but like his Mother.  Come to think of it, she’s more of an observer than me as well.  He goes to daycare 5 days a week, and it breaks his Mother’s heart each and every day he has to go.  But more on the challenges for the middle class later.  There’s something to that, the heart-break of day care.  I don’t like it, but I see it as a necessary evil, so it doesn’t tear me up to drop him off every morning.

The part that bothers me is not knowing what happened during the day.  What exactly did he eat?  How much?  Did he poop?  I know, that last one is kind of weird, but it turns out that now, as a parent, the excretion habits of someone else have taken on a real measure of importance.  

Of course I ask the day care lady about this, but it’s not enough detail.  Even being told “Yes, he did poop today” is sometimes not enough, it makes me feel as though I shouldn’t have had to ask, I should have been able to eyeball him and think “Oh, yes, he looks as though he’s pooped recently”.  But enough about that.

What else?  Monkey’s very first, actual, word was “Yoko”, although if you want to get technical about it it sounds more like Koko.  For the sake of clarity, I’ll tell you that our dog’s name is Yoko.  So that was it, not Mama or Dada or ball, it was Yoko.

And I hate that dog.

The Half-Discovered or Life Confessions of a Dedicated Slacker

Starting is supposed to be the hard part, so. . .here’s the start.

First of all, there won’t really be any confessions.  If I wanted catharsis I’d tell my wife and take my lumps.  Since I’m writing here, not telling her, then I see no reason to expose myself to danger by allowing you rat-finks to tell her I’m writing stuff on the web.  Not that I think you’re all rat-finks, but some of you undoubtedly are, so I have to take into account the lowest common denominator.

Why does on expose oneself to ridicule by writing a blog?  Well, I’m doing it to learn a bit about myself as I go along.  Do I really think writing some anonymous drivel will help in that?  I’m not sure,  but it can’t hurt.  Unless you tell my wife, and then it could hurt quite a bit.  Ha, ha, just kidding!  Love you, Honey!

You never know.  Gotta cover all the bases.

Where was I?  Yeah, self-discovery, journey of a thousand words, etc. etc.

I should tell you from the start that I’m moderately happy.  And that qualifier is painful.  It detracts from my enjoyment of being even moderately happy.  It makes my moderately happy sound like simple contentment, and that’s just wrong.  There’s nothing wrong with my life that isn’t common.  I’m happily married (see?  I didn’t have to qualify that statement).  I have a son who’s brought more joy into my life than I thought he would (more, much more, on fatherhood later on), and a decent job.  Not a swell job, nor one that will let me retire at 45, or 50, or probably even 62, but it’s a decent job none the less.  And yet I’m only moderately happy, not ecstatic.  As I see it, I deserve to be ravingly happy and unlimitedly joyful all the time.  Well, not all the time, but by golly I deserve to be happy almost all the time.

Maybe I should begin there.  Why do I deserve to be happy?  Does someone owe me happiness?  I can assure you, if I had an IOU for deliriously happy in my wallet I’d take advantage of it.  Now, I’m not going to get into the religious aspects of it.  At least not any more than what is absolutely required to explore the subject.  This is going to be more stream-of-consciousness and I don’t want to stop and look up bible verses (or find quotes from  Sartre if that’s the direction of the moment).

Maybe not even that, after all, I am a slacker.