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.