Saturday, February 07, 2004
Here it is!

Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Please be patient with me... I'm still figuring this stuff out. In due time, I will try to post here with some sort of regularity. I'll put a picture link up tomorrow. Ani looks very cute as a preggernaut.

I don’t know whom it was that I was asking to be patient in the last post. I haven’t told more than two people that I’m doing this, so it’s doubtful that anyone will be flaming me for infrequent updates. I really don’t know why I’m making this blog. I guess I just want to write about things that Ani, Ruby, and I are doing and thinking, and have a dialogue with people who might be interested. I am not in school right now; because I’ve taken a semester off to greet the kid whose arrival is so imminent. I need something to keep up my writing chops, and I have a lot of thoughts bouncing around inside my head like a handful of superballs flung as hard as possible inside a small closet. Perhaps putting some of those thoughts down here, where others can read it, will force me to gather them up and organize ‘em.

My friend Justin is in Japan having an adventure, and his blog from the Far East inspired me to give it a try. I put a link to it there on the right.=> (His is much cooler than this- He is a professional Art Director and Graphic Designer, so I’m kind of out of my league, although I should say that this isn’t really my design at all. I just picked it from a series of sample templates.) The fact that Justin is sharing an adventure with his friends, family, and anyone else that cares to read about it is exciting. Reading his blog has become an important part of my day; one of the first things I do in the morning after I have my coffee is check to see if Justin’s new post is there. His writing is so in sync with his personality that I feel like I just had a great conversation with him, and the fact that so many of our mutual friends are also reading it, makes me feel like we have all been hanging out at Gumby with a bottle of bourbon and a bunch of dogs. It’s great to read his voice, if and when he comes back home, it won’t feel so strange to play catch up.

I think another reason that I am writing this is that I want to give a little more real thought to my daily life and the way that I spend my time. Ani and I are in a nesting phase. In addition to painting Ruby’s room, building shelves to help reorganize the house, and buying all kinds of goofy but necessary baby stuff, I am trying put myself on course to become the kind of father that Ruby and I will both like. I have quit watching TV. I was finding myself just staring at infomercials and old episodes of COPS almost every night when I came home from work. I’ve been reading a lot, and trying to renew my interest in healthier pastimes like drawing and carpentry. I’m attempting to write a story for Ruby based on the Mabinogion. And to keep things balanced, I’m playing a fair amount of video games and reading quite a few web comics. That all seems like good solid dad stuff to me. It feels natural to realign myself a little here and there for the changes that are going to come.
Ok, so now that that’s out of the way, I’ll email a few more people and let them know that I’m doing this. I hope that by TOMORROW I’ll put up a link to a picture page, because Ani really is extremely cute right now, and so are the dogs, and the house, and so on. Also, I’m gonna try to figure out how to put up a link at the bottom of these posts so anyone can respond. In the meantime, drop me an email at gregburge@yahoo.com.

Thursday, February 12, 2004

So sorry. No photo's yet... They are coming. I had to reformat my hard drive the other day; because I screwed everything up trying to install a router for my new high speed DSL connection. Now I'm in the process of reinstalling all my photo manipulation stuff (along with everything else that was on this blasted machine.) I love technology, but the more I think I understand about it, the more I realize that I really am always a decade behind. As Couch said a couple of days ago with regards to my newfound Internet savvy and zippy new connection: "Welcome to the mid '90's." Ah well. At least I beat him at Ghost Recon.
Ani and I went to the doctor yesterday, and everything is AOK. We have to go there every week now; I guess that’s the doc’s version of DEFCON 4. He asked us if the house is ready for the baby. I think he was just trying to make conversation, but he had no idea of the panic that his question caused me. “NO, the house is not ready for a baby!" We still have a friend’s crazy/territorial/child-eating (and awfully cuddly/fun/smart) dog just waiting in the living room for a seven to nine pound meal. Someone is going to come get her soon, but right now she’s still there! There is furniture and paperwork piled in the middle of Ruby’s room. It used to be my office, which kinda meant that it was my place to make a mess and close the door so that Ani wouldn’t have to look at it. It’s amazing what can pile up in a room like that over a couple of years. The door to that room is now off of its hinges because we just finished painting the purple trim, and there is a ceiling fan hanging from a hook (DON’T TURN ON THAT SWITCH!!!) until I figure out how to install the new one. The closet is full of baby things still in their boxes like a Diaper Caddy and a crib mobile (I wish that that was like a baby version of the batmobile. Vroom.)
Of course the house could be ready in an instant. Nothing is really out of control, and the baby is going to sleep in a little bassinet for quite a while anyways, so a couple of days tinkering around won’t be a problem. I guess it was the figurative translation of the “Is your house ready for a new child?” question that shocked me. The answer is that I have no idea. I’ve never had a kid, so how can I know if our home is ready? I do know that I am extremely excited. I do know that I love Ani more than anything, and she’s going to be a great mom.
Time for us to sink or swim.
I think he saw the panic in my eyes. He said that it’d most likely be at least a couple of weeks before we have to be totally ready. Ok. Now I am reassured.

Ok, I think I've got a photo link set up over there. Or Right Here. Now I just need to get more pictures in there.

Sunday, February 15, 2004

Wow. Valentines Day. Without doubt, V-Day, Mother’s Day, and Easter are the three roughest days of the year for people in the service industry.
Craziness=Going out to eat on Valentines Day. Every restaurant in town is overbooked and stretched beyond its ability to give perfect service. Do yourselves a favor and skip the insanity. Go out to eat a few days before or after Valentines if the Hallmark holiday absolutely needs to be celebrated.
Ok. Enough complaining. I made great money, and at least there was romance in the air. I actually had some nice customers tonight. I waited on a couple with a newborn girl and another with a boy who is due a month after Ruby’s Due Date. I guess we aren’t the first or last people to partake in this adventure! It’s strange to see people on different points of the child continuum. Because this is all so new to me, I constantly have to remind myself that, in actuality, having children is a very common thing. All I have to do is look around and everyone whom I see was born! They all had parents who went through something similar to this! Weird.

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

We went for our weekly doctor visit today, and it was so crowded that we had to sit on the floor. I think that Ani had less trouble getting down and up than I did. The yoga she does keeps her limber and comfortable, and the work that I do makes my knees pop and crack.

Baby-doctor waiting rooms strike me as strange, and I haven't been exactly sure what bothers me about them. The obvious culprit would be the art on the walls. They all have awkwardly posed JC Penney studio style portraits of kids in fancy dresses or suits standing near a plastic model of a quaint country bridge over a painted stream with that soft Vaseline on the lens effect. There’s always a picture or two of a baby dressed up like a bug or a flower, and our doctor’s office has a really disturbing picture of a Marky Mark underwear model-type guy, shirtless and holding a newborn. He is trying to look sexily into the camera. He’s wearing his hospital bracelet, so you have to wonder if he stopped everything in the delivery room so he could take off his shirt and flex for the photographer. Weird.

Today I realized something else that throws off my sense of equilibrium in that office. Ani and I drove separate vehicles, and I walked in a little later than she did. I knew she was there because her car was in the lot, but my usual trick of scanning the room quickly for a pregnant lady didn’t work. This may seem like an obvious observation, but that room was teeming with pregnant people! There are ten or twelve couches in there, and several little chairs, and we still had to sit on the floor. I don’t mean to say that I don’t recognize my wife easily in public; because I do, but there were a lot of people in those two rooms, and everyone in there was either pregnant, with someone pregnant, or recently pregnant with a newborn infant. I just stood there spinning around looking for her until she called my name.
In other official offices, it is difficult to know exactly why people are there. In the dentist’s office, that person sitting opposite from you could be in severe pain and need a root canal, they could be waiting for their spouse, or they could just be there for a checkup. At the family doctor, it’s the same thing: it could be VD, cancer, or a simple cold. I always try to read the magazines or look at the art on the wall, but what I usually wind up doing in waiting rooms is the Sherlock Holmes game. I piece life stories together with clues. “Of course the untrained eye would fail to notice the tract marks on his left arm and the imprints of mosquito netting on his Peruvian hat. Combine that with his bottle of Schwepps tonic water, a fine source of quinine, and it becomes rudimentary, Watson. This man is obviously a junkie with Malaria …” and so on. For some reason, because I know why these people are at the OBGYN, their fictional scenarios become less fantastic. I don’t think that the woman over there is a CIA agent, and I don’t wonder what a splinter cell operative does for maternity leave. Instead, I wonder if she’s still in high school. She could be that young. What’s up with that guy? Is he as excited as I am to be a father? What kind of car seat are they gonna get? Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would be disappointed with me.

I just said goodbye to Kino, Justin’s dog. Justin left for Japan last August. We thought we’d be watching her for a couple of weeks, and it evolved into seven months. I wish she were still here. I wish she liked babies. Apart from her dislike of little people, and her occasional spreading of the garbage on the bedroom floor, she’s a very good girl. She’s got a great howler and she uses it when she’s really happy. She just left for Utah with Justin’s mom en route to our friend Sticky’s house in Ohio. She’s bouncing around the country, confused and goofy, waiting for her boy to come home. I feel bad, cause she was just starting to seem at home here. Sticky, please send us some pictures when she gets to you. That’s a good dog. Good girl.

Saturday, February 21, 2004

I am always surprised by how many women are at the OBGYN alone. It’s not really indicative of any particular family situation, because most husbands or partners work during the day, and there is no real reason that they need to be there, other than curiosity and the desire to be supportive. When I go with Ani, I don’t do anything, and I really don’t understand much of what the doctors and nurses are doing. I enjoy the technology, and I like to see the ultrasounds and hear Ruby’s heartbeat. As past experience has shown, if some thing is wrong, I hold Ani’s hand and look worried with her until they say that every thing is ok, and then I hold her hand and look relieved. Most times however, it’s just a routine squeeze of the belly, a blood pressure check and a heart beat monitor. I can understand why some guys wouldn’t show up for these routine appointments. I think; however, that a significant number of these women are going through this process on their own.

My mother was a single parent, and I have always taken that for granted. I have always been glad that my parents were divorced; I still am, as a matter of fact. All three of us would have gone nuts if they had tried to make their relationship work. People change and grow apart, and certain people just don’t mesh well. My parents are two such people, and the process of divorce never was an issue for me, because it happened when I was an infant. I grew up thinking that everyone visited their father once a week, and even though I’m sure that my mom told me differently, I remember being surprised to learn that many kids lived with both their moms and their dads. I didn’t have to go through the jarring loss of a parent later in childhood like many of my friends. It always just seemed like the normal way to grow up, so in my mind, it had to be normal for my mom. But now that I am trying to get ready for Ruby, I am wondering how in the world she did this alone. I can’t fathom it. We did have some help. My Grandmother has always been very supportive, and I hear stories about being babysat by other relatives, but to work and raise a kid without a partner seems like a heroic and monumental task. I think she must have done a pretty good job too. Sure I’m no Pulitzer Prize winner, but then again, I’m no serial killer. I have never felt unloved by my family, and my physical and emotional needs have always been met. I worry about whether I’ll get my shit together well enough to get out of bed and go to work, let alone take care of all those needs for a little one too. Sure, mom and I have plenty of annoying little issues like any parent and child, but wow, she’s my new hero. I look around that doctor’s office and see all those women who may or may not be on their own and think about the struggles that they face, and I don’t know how they’ll manage. Thanks mom.

Thursday, February 26, 2004

Tuesday, the doctor said that we have a fifty-fifty chance of the baby being born this week or next week. Then he said he’d probably say the same thing next week. Ain’t science great?
I don’t know exactly why, but the fact that I got that damn ceiling fan installed yesterday makes me feel much more up to the task of being a father. It was one of those projects that I told myself, “no problem… Easy as pie, it’s just a ceiling fan!” And then we got the good ceiling fan that can be wired twenty different ways with up to three different switches on the wall or in the fan itself. Then I took off the little cheap ceiling off of its bracket and realized that none of its wires were marked like the instructions said they would be. Then I realized that the house wiring was all the same color…not very useful. Then I realized that the bracket was a different size. Then my back started to give out while I stood on one foot on a chair trying to hold stuff up. I just left it hanging dangerously there and put the whole project off. It gnawed at me, because I knew I should be taking care of it, but I wasn’t sure I knew how to do it, and I didn’t want to make things worse. And then I decided it was time, and I did it, and it was just as easy as I hoped it would be. I'm so proud that I posted a picture of it, along with my new office (recently removed from Ruby's room) Aaahhhhh… Whew… bring on the baby!

I think Ani’s ready too. She’s tired and excited and worried all at the same time, which seems as close to a state of readiness as she can be. I keep checking my cell phone to see if she’s called me on her way to the hospital or something. I’m waiting tables with my phone in my pocket -the ringer on vibrate, so when a friend calls to see what I’m up to or to leave a message, I jump and make an excuse to get away from the guest’s table and run to the back of the restaurant to see if it was Ani.

Must breathe. Must relax. Ruby will come when she’s ready.

Just got snowed out of work. I got a phone call saying that the building is slowly being covered with snow, and they are going to close early.
As a father to be, I need the money, but boy do I like having an unexpected day off (a fairly regular perk in my line of work). It feels like when I was a kid, and I’d hope for ten feet of snow. Snow Days rocked. I guess they cancelled classes because it was unsafe to bus us up the hill, but that meant that all of us latch-key kids got to run around town in the slippery snow unsupervised. We could always find some trouble in the snow. I don’t know which was more dangerous: the slippery drive to school, or the wanton abandon of mock truancy, but I do know which was more fun.
I hope all those kids up in Galena near my work get to run around and be nutty tomorrow. Dang global warming. It seems like kids get less snow days than they used to. Maybe they were so special to me that I remember them out of proportion to reality. Maybe kids get the same number of snow days now. I suppose there’s a website somewhere with those statistics.

Saturday, February 28, 2004

February 29. Leap Year. That’d be a pretty fun birthday to have. She’d have two birthdays on non leap years, because it'd be impossible to decide whether to celebrate on the 28th or the 1st. Then on actual leap years, you could have a really special party. When she turns sixteen, she’ll be all cool and say that it's a hassle and that all the jokes about her being four are getting old, but inside she’d be digging the extra attention. Kids are rad (a word from my sixteenth birthday). I work with a couple of high school kids; they bus tables at Galena Forest, and they are always trying to be down with everything. I love the “playing it cool” thing.

Crazy Leah and Dan went to the city for the weekend, and CL left a message on our machine saying that we weren’t supposed to let the baby come out until they get back. Hmm… I don’t know how much we have to say about Ruby's timing.

I’m easy. Now that the ceiling fan is up, my calendar is open. Ani said today that sooner would definitely be better than later.

Sunday, February 29, 2004

I don’t mean to keep harping on this ceiling fan thing, but I was looking at it yesterday, and I began to fully comprehend its magnitude. I think it was designed to stylishly ventilate an aircraft hangar. Its blades measure something close to twenty-seven feet across. Maybe you can’t tell from the picture. As soon as Ruby is born, I will strategically place her crib beneath the fan. Next, I will reverse the fan’s direction and turn it on. Ruby will be the first levitating baby in Reno... Maybe… Has anyone seen a levitating baby in Reno?

Archive
Solids Axes and Pie
Nekkid Dad
We're Still Here
My Monkey House
Nine Fingered Girl
Rock on Little Lady
You and Me Kiddo
A Great Day
Baby Lugosi
Big Papa
A Call To Arms
Ruby in the Wilderness
Pyramid
I Broke It
River Rat
Beaker
ZZZZZ
Shitty Day
Oh No, Bono
Big Pointy
Blow it Dry
Baby Burn
Long Story
Spring Rose
Bennetts and Monkeys
Why Can't I?
Smarty Pants
Primavera
Bjorn
Stim
Yum
*Yawns*
Mulling It Over
Arrgh
Ms. Clean
Easter Cometh
Lucky Number Seven
Fooled
As Jobs Go...
March 23-28
She's Here
March 1-18, 2004
February 2004