The Bean Stands Alone

So, Bean can now add "proficient in standing" to his ever-growing resume. Naturally, T and I are thrilled!

One of my favorite things about these milestones is how much you're forced to acknowledge even the--let's face it--most basic achievement. Bean will stand, but he insists on screaming in jubilation every time he does it, and he grins at you in that way that demands you clap and shout and jump up and down and generally share in his triumph the way babies do, by being way, way over the top about it.

And so we oblige, and this makes me think of one of my favorite "What if?" games. What if you treated everyone the way you treat your kid? At work, that might look something like this (and you've probably seen it before, in bad movies if not in real life):

COWORKER: I went ahead and booked that meeting room for us.
YOU: (in squealy voice, applauding and jumping up and down) Oh my god! You did it! You go! You amaze me! You are such a big, big boy! I have to get the camera! T, where is it? Where's the camera? I have to take pictures of this moment!

Is this how sarcasm was born? Did a bunch of parents start thinking it would be funny to treat everyone in the world this way?

Anyway, congratulations, Bean, on graduating from being 30 inches long to 2'6" tall. And, of course, on pushing the cats one step closer toward a collective mental collapse and on making sure your parents remember to celebrate the things worth celebrating.

I'll Tell You Right Now That the Butler Didn't Do It

Last weekend, T and I hosted a murder-mystery dinner party, the kind where each person plays the role of a suspect. I know, I know. You're thinking, "Dorky! I would never do that," but at the same time, you're thinking, "I would kind of want to do that."

Anyway, we had stellar guests: They dressed up, they played their parts with gusto, and they were careful not to get so wrapped up in the game that we began to wonder if they were (dramatic stage whisper) theatre people.

So, it was fun. Bean played the role of Victoria Lester, the murdered woman, perfectly in that he ran around for a while, screamed, and collapsed for the night. T was somehow able to channel "big shot in oil" Big Bill Bradford, our friends rock, and there was alcohol, so all was good.

The one thing, though, was that this game was produced for, I don't know, maybe four cents, as I believe the cover art demonstrates. Max Haines, murder-mystery dinner-party creator extraordinaire, lends his services as a consultant based on his "knowledge and research of murder mystery," and the writing leaves one...confused. (For the record, each guest gets a generalized script to read from that outlines what his/her character should reveal in a given scene.) Many times over the course of the evening, someone would declare, "I was jealous because she couldn't have him! I mean, I couldn't have him. I mean, wait. Who couldn't have him? I think it was me, but the wording here is a little confusing."

Really, though, the badness was part of the fun. Can you imagine what a well-done murder-mystery dinner party would look like? It would look dorky, that's what.

Anne, Anne, Are You Okay?

Ever since Bean was born, I've done what any good mother would do: I've become increasingly paranoid that my child will choke on anything larger than 1/16 of a sunflower seed, and I've become increasingly convinced that he should probably just eat rice cereal for the rest of his life so we can avoid living the horror stories parents seem to love to tell about the time their kid almost died eating a Gummi bear.

The other thing I did was brush up on my CPR skills. The infant dummy is strange and slightly scary--you have to blow up its body!--but most of us have distinct memories of Anne, the gold standard of resuscitation dummies.

For the curious, Anne was a real person and a probable suicide. I'm not sure what you could do with this information--be nice the next time you give her mouth-to-mouth, I guess? But still, it's interesting, the faces we use and for what. Now to track down that ever-elusive Gerber baby . . .

Photo: Anne

Update: The Gerber baby has been found! (Actually, she wasn't very hard to track down. And she is not Humphrey Bogart.)

So Over Being Zero

A year ago today, many things happened.

1. Our cats died a little inside.

2. I discovered that chastely pronouncing yourself "not of the body" does not exclude you from being completely and 100% of the body during labor, which is really, really gross.

3. I learned that you can have two men of your dreams at once. (Such men can even cohabitate if you play your cards right, ladies!)

Over the past year, we've seen Bean do so many things for the first time: squirm, roll over, hold his head up, crawl, smile, laugh, recognize his family and friends, say a few simple words, stand up, grow hair, lose hair, grow hair again, discover emotions, give the best hugs, smear cake all over his face like a drunken maniac (above), and turn into a little boy. It's almost impossible to think that we met him just one year ago. He's been here forever, really.

Happy MLK Jr. Day

Nearly 20 years ago, I won a local MLK Jr. essay contest. I was twelve, and the winners in other age categories and I were invited to speak at a banquet honoring Dr. King. There were hundreds of people at the banquet, and I was petrified, but I was also terribly proud of myself. I'd gotten a $75 savings bond and a big pat on the back from my parents, my teachers, and even my principal. (Those of you who know me know that I thrive on pats on the back.)

But even as a kid, even when I was walking up to the microphone during the banquet, I suspected the contest judges had made a mistake. This wasn't modesty--I've had a classic writer's ego all my life. Instead, I had a vague feeling that I'd managed to infuse my essay with the proper emotions not necessarily because I was articulating something real in me, but because I'd learned enough about the form to employ a few simple techniques, such as using a quote from King and letting his eloquence close out my essay. I felt a little like a fake.

(Keep in mind, this was also the year I won a personal-narrative contest for writing about a best friend who died in my arms Christmas Eve. My language-arts teacher had told us--I swear!--that personal narratives could be made up, even though they're generally, um, not. Of course, my narrative was completely untrue and entirely inspired by Beaches, much to the chagrin of the contest runner-up, who'd written with brutal honesty about the time she accidentally ate rabbit poop.)

Maybe it's too much to expect that I would have, at twelve, looked across the banquet crowd and understood that most of the people in the audience had been around for the Civil Rights Movement, that most of them could remember what life had been like before King and others gained voice, that King's work affects all of us, and that the Movement wasn't an era that had tidily ended with his life. I don't know what criteria the contest judges were working with, if they were seeking authenticity or an accurate portrayal of King or good grammar or what. I don't think I tricked anyone, exactly. First, I wasn't mature enough or smart enough to do that. Second, I do think I felt something when I wrote my essay, but I suspect those emotions were akin to the emotions I felt when singing "The Wind Beneath My Wings" to myself in my bedroom mirror. Basically, shallow and highly self-conscious. Could I have been capable of more? I don't know. The only ages I'm familiar with these days, from a developmental standpoint, are thirty-two and one.

Today, I read student writing for a living. Often, I'll read the work of a student who's nailed the academic voice or who has a great ear for rhythm and syntax, but who seems, to me, at least, more concerned with form than substance. I think the two are intertwined, but I also worry about what happens when saying something the right way takes precedence over what's being said. (Current discussions about the role of political rhetoric have me thinking about this even more right now.) My worries take me back to that essay contest and, although I guess I can give myself a little break for being a selfish twelve-year-old, I do think I took from that experience a fledgling sense of how important having empathy and something at stake is to a writer. I'm still self-conscious and probably shallow--this post is trite to me--but I want to move in the right direction. The difference this year, since Bean's been around, is that I don't just want to be a better writer (I've always wanted that, and anyway, that's really about me again), but I want to be, finally, a better participant in the good things people are trying to do in this world.

Slow News Day

Whenever my brother and sister-in-law visit from Phoenix, they love to watch and read local news. Although they both grew up in Iowa, they've lived in a big city for enough time that stories about jaywalking and the upcoming Cattle Congress interest them. (And by "interest them" I mean they make fun and say that nothing ever happens in Iowa.)

Well, I would argue that CNN isn't so different from The Waterloo Courier. To demonstrate, here are a few of CNN's top headlines at the moment:

"Five things not to do in the ER"
"I-Reporter catches possible UFO on tape"
"Oh no! Is it Splitsville for Spider-Man and MJ?"
"Dog falls off cliff, gets trapped on ledge"

I'm sure there are a lot of things that could be said about how the media has evolved with the Internet, how headlines like these say something about Americans' interests, and so on, but I'll leave it at this: In my next life, I want to be a headline-writer for CNN.

Why Andy Rooney Is What's Wrong with This Country

Andy Rooney's face has periodically appeared on my television since I was a child, but it's only been in the past year or so that I've realized just how ridiculous he is.

First, let me back up.

A little over a year ago, Trevor and I became addicted to The Amazing Race. Because nothing says "The Amazing Race is about to start" like Andy Rooney, we began to tune in, and at first we thought Andy was sort of delightful and harmless, like your great aunt's Shih Tzu that growls at everyone from its bed in the corner.

Or, better, like a third grader with amazing eyebrows. Take this, from Andy's 10/14/07 segment, titled "What's Your Favorite Season?"

Most of us have a favorite season of the year but if we had the same weather for all 12 months, even if it was the weather we like the best, I don't think anyone would like it.

The island of Jamaica is supposed to have some of the best weather in the world for 12 months of the year but you couldn't pay me to live in Jamaica. There's just so much beautiful warm weather I can take. I like a little of this but then I'd want a change.

I think if we had a vote, fall would probably be most people's favorite season. Some people who like fall call it autumn. I never use the word "autumn." It sounds pretentious.

And that pretty much sums up Andy Rooney. Until, that is, he's being so stunningly cantankerous that I want to do something mean to him, like make him listen to the Ramones. Consider, if you will, Andy's segment "Andy Thinks About Money," in which Andy claims that a) he is not rich, and b) if he were rich, he wouldn't have to think up something to say each week.

Okay, well. Here is where I get grouchy, because a) Andy Rooney made $7700 a week in 1987, and b) his job consists of writing tiny segments that probably take less time to think up than they do to speak out loud.

I can think of a few good responses to all this Rooney-esque griping. First, I don't have to watch. True, but if you were at Christmas dinner, say, and your crazy uncle was about to go on his annual drunken, aimless tirade, would you be able to turn away? He is, for all the wrong reasons, a fascinating study. Second, Andy Rooney might just have enough fans to keep his implausible television existence going. Possibly. (And I guess, since we are usually watching TV at 6:57pm on Sundays, T and I are in that fan group, aren't we? Oops.)

I see two possibilities, ultimately: Either someone, somewhere is afraid to push Andy Rooney into retirement, or someone, somewhere thinks Andy Rooney's a damn fine writer. They're both miserable possibilities, in my opinion, and I'm not even sure which is worse--the one that condones complete passivity or the one that sets the bar so low an aphid couldn't crawl under it.

Oh, who am I kidding? I just wanted to make fun of Andy Rooney. I know he's old and has done some remarkable things in his life, but I just can't claim to be above this sort of thing. Assuming Rooney's salary hasn't changed since 1987, this man makes more money listing his favorite types of milk than I do in months, and he doesn't seem to have even one good suit to show for it, which might be the biggest insult of all.

What Happened, Man?

Tonight, T and I are taking some food over to our friends' house because they just had a baby and are, I imagine, deliriously scarfing down Triscuits* while burping an adorable-but-still-very-"Where the hell am I"-thinking baby while falling asleep watching Bill O'Reilly while wondering why on earth they're watching Bill O'Reilly in the first place.

Or wait, I guess that was T and me.

When I think back to the early days now, I imagine it's a little like a rock star thinking back to the biggest bender of his life. It's all quite hazy, but we might have slept at some point, it was always night, there was a lot of screaming, there was even more laughing--sometimes maniacally, sometimes while screaming.

Even stranger, though, it's strange to remember that Bean was still a stranger to us. (Side note: Please appreciate the fact that I was able to use the word strange three different ways in that sentence!) We loved him, of course, but before he came along we didn't even really know what a baby was, let alone who Bean was. Although I spent hours and hours preparing for labor--doing everything from going to classes to trying and failing to learn self-hypnosis--I rarely thought about what would happen, you know, after. And when I did think about what having a kid would be like, there was a giant "SCENE MISSING" and then suddenly I'd be driving around town doing errands on a beautiful spring day, having a cute conversation with the world's most well-behaved two-year-old, who would be in the back seat asking me questions like, "What color are butterfly souls, Mommy?" Seriously, I couldn't have been more baby ignorant, and I think T feels the same.

But you know, the clichés are true: Babies are only babies for, like, a day. Also, you shouldn't let them grow up to be cowboys.

I'm so happy for my friends. Tonight, here's what I expect to see, and if I see it I'll know they're fully immersed in the bender of early parenthood: bleary ears, disheveled hair, general look of immense confusion, and giant freaking smiles.

(God, I meant to say "eyes" in the above paragraph, but I'm keeping the typo to prove that it's not like one snaps out of it and back into sanity right away or anything.)

(Photo: Bean wonders in disbelief exactly who's running this outfit, anyway, and how can he get them replaced with someone more competent?)

*This post is not sponsored by Triscuits.

Facile as Pie

Yesterday, as I was driving home from work, I heard someone use the phrase "consuming crow" on NPR, and I thought, "How NPR of her to say that." A little bit folksy, a little bit academic. I'm not judging; it's just that this phrase has stuck with me for about 16 hours now, and hey!, I have a blog, so here it is.

Am I gambolling to conclusions? Putting the cart before the Equus caballus? I don't want to get my undergarments in a wad or anything.

Focus, You

I don't know what I want this blog to be. Normally, I would have felt the need to figure out a theme before I started a project like this, but the whole process seemed a little chicken-and-egg to me, and I ended up feeling that the best way to figure out what to blog about is to blog.

(Of course, I could have started a trial blog in Word or something, but how depressing would that have been? I would have been like Creed. Although maybe that wouldn't be a bad thing.)

Of course number two, there's also the possibility that one theme isn't something I'd be very good at delivering, anyway. I know we all have varied lives filled with varying interests, but each of the members of my immediate family tends to cycle--usually dramatically--through a few major...projects? obsessions?...each year. For me, these projects/obsessions are as follows:

1) Professional Development. I'm lucky to work in a job that gives me a lot of freedom in this area. There's research to be read, plans to be drafted, and on and on. I also maintain an active freelancing life, so I get variety there as well. Still, there are times when I'll be almost fanatic about boning up on project management skills, for example, and I'll feel like I have to go buy a bunch of books about project management right now.

2) Physical Activity/Nutrition/Overcoming While Simultaneously Giving Into the Tyranny of the Scale. Shocker, I'm sure, even if you don't know me. Here's a side anecdote: I was in a boutique trying on a coat the other day, and the fit was a little, um, snug. I was trying the coat on in the front of the store, so the salesperson was watching me, and I'm always paranoid that salespeople are generally making horrible judgments about most of their customers.

"Ha ha," I muttered, "still got a few baby pounds to lose." I didn't want her to think I was in the habit of trying too-small clothes on as a matter of course (although I am).

"Oh, when are you due?" she asked. Ba-dum-dum. She was serious, but I chose to hear this as a poke at the classic faux pas where a non-pregnant person is identified as a pregnant person.

"I already had the baby."

"How sweet! How old?"

"...eleven months," I said, pretty much ruining all my cred as someone who isn't normally this pudgy. "Eleven months" just doesn't have the same ring as, say, "three weeks."

And so, as with many, the working out and the dietary diligence waxes and wanes. However, I'm always happy to know things about food, and I haven't managed to unknow a lot of the things I've learned about nutrition over the years. Case in point: My mom called yesterday to tell me that sweet potatoes were, contrary to conventional wisdom, lower in sugar than regular potatoes. (Yes, that was her purpose for calling.) "Sweet potatoes are also very rich in antioxidants," I said sagely.

3) Creative Writing. Unsurprisingly, I write in bursts, I send out submissions in bursts, and I keep tabs on the literary world in bursts. I think this style is probably fine, generally, so long as I don't let too much time pass before creative writing cycles around again.

And then there's everything else. Some interests are constant, for obvious reasons (um, hello, baby), and others are flashes in the pan and not really worth talking about here. For example, I'm certainly not going to mention that astrology phase.

My goal, I guess, would be to find a more consistent balance between all of these. I think a lot of people struggle with the all-or-nothing approach to life, enough so that maybe it's just ingrained and I should stop thinking I need to get over it. Also, having such short-term focus has its merits: My brother decided on a Tuesday to put hardwood flooring in his living room, and he'd installed it by the end of Wednesday. I can't claim to have his ability to follow through on this particular project--I barely know how to install a battery, and I'm not even talking about a car battery--but then there's also the time I bought too many light fixtures for our new home because I'd forgotten to count how many I'd need, but I was at Lowe's already and just couldn't bear the thought of putting off the light-fixture buying for another second. And now those extra light fixtures sit, still packaged, in our house, gathering dust because I'm done thinking about light fixtures and so can't be bothered to bring them back for a refund. So who's to say what's best?

I do want to give sustained attention to this blog, though. Can that be my theme, then?

You Don't Bring Me Flowers

Like many Iowans (go Iowa!), I caucused last Thursday. I was living in Colorado in 2004, and I was too busy being in my early 20s in 2000, so this was the first time I did my civic duty and got my duff to the elementary school down the street.

Before I continue, let me paint a picture of what living in Iowa is like during caucus season, or at least this caucus season: It's cold and gray and often foggy. Also, there is politics. My husband and I don't watch much TV, but at the Iowa campaign's height it didn't matter; the phone was ringing multiple times a day, and at one point T answered the door only to be greeted by the Obama precinct captain while holding a little plastic Guitar Hero guitar. (To be fair to T, I was playing, too.) I live in Iowa City, and it really did seem as if every candidate was here every other day; I'm sure people living in other Iowa towns and cities felt the same. T fielded most of the phone calls, but he reported on some of the best: I was a personal fan of Huckabee's strategy to decry the evils of "Massachusetts Mitt." This was pre-Huckaburger for me, so the general zaniness that is the Huckabee campaign--Chuck Norris, I'm talking to you--was still unknown to me.

This is not to complain about the attention. On the contrary, I grew less--not more--frustrated as the campaign went on. At the beginning, I cynically suggested that your average Iowan would consider voting for anyone who talked to him/her, and that was dumb. I didn't know what it meant for candidates to be on the ground, and for voters to receive them. Don't get me wrong: Everyone likes to be talked to, and Iowans are no different. But two things struck me this go-round. First, the exposure was so great that most Iowans had multiple opportunities to see most candidates, so novelty or awe of celebrity was, I think, dispelled as a significant factor pretty quickly. Second, people in Iowa take caucusing seriously. I know that's the reputation, but I'm not sure you can really know until you see it. I haven't had a lot of faith in American participation (mine included) in the political process over the past few years, so I guess I started at a deficit with my thinking there.

Moving on, here is what things looked like in my precinct on caucus night: 661 people waited in a line that snaked through the school's halls only to end up packed in a small gym. (This was about 200 over the last caucus turnout, which was considered very large.) While in line, I was alternately excited, nervous, and thirsty. I thought I was supposed to try to convince others to join my camp (Obama's), and I wasn't confident I'd be assertive enough. Everyone kept glancing at everyone else's chests to see what stickers they were or weren't sporting. My husband and I were caucusing for different candidates, and as we stood in the gym's entrance, all we could see were posters high on the walls and a sea of heads. What we didn't see were discernible camps.

I saw the Obama posters in the far corner of the gym, and T and I decided to part ways. I walked about three steps forward and found myself in...the Obama camp. Its parameters were that wide. T later said that, when Obama supporters were asked to raise their hands for the first count, it was a sight, all those hands.

So, clearly, I supported Obama, and I still support Obama, but that is not the point of this post. The point is that caucusing was miserable in that it was hot, you had to stand for almost three hours straight, there was arguing, there was shouting, and there was confusion. As far as I could tell, people in Clinton's camp were mad at the Obama precinct captain for bringing a PA system (too loud), while we in the Obama group stared longingly at the Clinton camp because they had bottled water--we only had brownies. I couldn't see what was happening in the other camps. But I digress.

Afterward, T and I felt good. We felt really good. We were part of a huge swell of caucus goers, and to me, that kind of participation is the single best thing to come out of this race (and probably out of the Bush administration, now that I think about it). The feeling of counting, of caring, of knowing that people can be stirred by more than fear and anger if the message is compelling enough. And yes, the subtext here points back to Obama, but what I'm trying to do is illustrate the pride of the moment, because the pride was important, but it was only one feeling among many.

In the middle of all this pat-myself-on-the-back pride, I had to check myself. Of course, having a friend watch your kid so you can hang out in the gym down the street for a couple of hours is not a sacrifice, really. Fighting, living a life of service, dying...those are sacrifices. Caucusing was cool, yes, but it just made me think that we have the chance to set the bar higher for ourselves, especially now that we'll soon be able to count on a president (whoever s/he is) to be more than just mediocre on his very best day.

Back to the campaigning, I felt like I was being paid attention to in the days leading up to the Iowa caucuses, but, naturally, I felt pandered to as well. I'm generalizing, but Iowans aren't stupid. They know that candidates will tout the "rich tradition" of the Iowa caucuses a mere 24 hours before they and others will suggest that the Iowa caucuses don't really matter, that Iowans are either notoriously bad at picking candidates or that the caucus system is so backward that it doesn't merit the attention it gets. I read a lot of blog posts that took some cheap shots at Iowa and Iowans. (Yes, there is corn here. Sigh.) And I felt defensive at various points and probably took too much too personally, but a lot of these people made good points about kinks in the process. The caucus system is certainly flawed. Iowa is not the center of the universe. One caucus does not an election make. But now that the candidates are no longer bringing me flowers, now that I'm putting away my Midwestern, see-saw analysis of whether the candidates really loved me or if they were just saying they did, now that I'm thinking instead about how buzzed those New Hampshire-ites must feel, I'm letting myself feel lucky and happy to live where I live. Except for the cold. Something must be done about the cold.

Is This Thing On?

There are a few awkward things about starting a blog.

1) Do you acknowledge that your first post is, indeed, your first post ever? On anything? Do you come out and proclaim yourself a voice in the darkness, or do you begin confidently, with a post about how you were skeptical about Obama's optimism at first, but damn if he didn't win you over in the end?

2) Is "voice in the darkness" a dorky way to describe an entrance to the Internet? (Side semantic dilemma: Can you "enter" the Internet?) This really does feel like being in a dark room, so I guess maybe the cliché fits, even if a savvier soul would say it doesn't more generally. Who ever enters a dark room, anyway? Anyway, double awkwardness points for realizing that your first post is written for an audience of approximately zero, but that you're secretly hoping that won't be the case for long.

3) Do you link to your husband (who has a blog and is all-around cool) when you do not have a blog? No comment on the cool part.

Clearly, if nothing else, on this site you will find adventures in over-thought. That's a joke. Sort of. The truth is that I don't want to put a pessimistic spin on this, as I'm excited to try out this medium. I've been writing professionally, academically, and "for fun"--oh, cruel phrase--for many years, and my current job requires that I think about writing almost constantly. I've also gotten into quite a few conversations about what it means to blog, the benefits of blogging, the dangers of blogging (bad eyes! mean commenters!) and so on, so it seemed time to put up or, you know, not blog.

And so, a voice squeaks.