Nice One, Dad

There is an awful lot of doxy, both ortho and hetero, on controlling your child’s crying. Do you have non-stop contact with the child or do you increase the periods of time between visits to the wailing infant? It appears that the jury is still out but I am pleased to say that my research into uncontrolled crying has been started and concluded in a single morning.

What I have found is that if you get a good chunk of flesh in with the fingernail when you are manicuring babies miniscule fingers, you can go straight from zero to uncontrolled crying in a nanosecond.

Now that I have successfully broken the sacred bond of trust between father and infant, I’m going to nick up to the shops and see if I can run over a few kittens on the way.   

He Saw It Too, I'm Just The Only One Who Can Speak

There are sideline benefits to having kids (apart from having organ donors on tap) that I had not considered. Here’s one. Criticism By Proxy. I have never, ever before, been able to say:

Did silly mummy put your nappy on backwards? She’s so silly. Look at how silly she is. Daddy wouldn’t make those mistakes. No! Gusha gooo gooo.

Did crazy mummy think that a bath this deep wouldn’t drown you? Crazy mumma. Dadda wouldn’t do that, would he? He’d make it safe, wouldn’t he? Yes he would. Yes he would. Yes he zsha zsha gia boo gia boo.

Did mumma push the plutonium rods too far into the reactor just before the Soviet Delegation got here? Silly mumma. She does that, doesn’t she? A gusha goo goo blatty bum.

The avenues for self righteousness open up before me in nauseatingly proliferate ways.  

Cut It Out

Tribal Wives is a show that takes English women of varying degrees of poshness and catapults them into a village where vaccination is witchcraft and the technology behind bras is borderline magic. I’ve watched only one and I was disgusted, but probably not for the reasons that you would expect me to be. (I’m fine with people volunteering to be put in embarrassing or potentially dangerous situations for my entertainment.) This was something else.

One of the Posh Girls was getting to know her local matriarchy when she came upon their practice of female circumcision. The elder proudly stated that she had circumcised hundreds, maybe thousands of girls in her community. Our Posh Girl, remaining open minded and culturally sensitive, asked why. The main reason for a total clitorectomy on all of the girls in this “society”, is so they can get pregnant.

Let’s be clear - They believe that if they don’t get circumcised, they can’t get pregnant. Obviously, no one in this group has put that to the test, but there’s their reasoning.

Posh Girl remains politely interested and asks questions of the girls who have had it done and we learn a little more about female sexuality, but nothing more about the hideous injuries that must have been inflicted. Posh Girl finishes the show with a new found respect for her sisterhood and we’re all heart-warmed as she disappears back to Blighty to resume her life with running water and antibiotics.

But, really, after the cameras stopped rolling, Interpol should have swept in. Why isn’t this elder up in front of the Hague for crimes against humanity? She is a self confessed butcher of children and her rationale is an easily disproved belief. We’re happy to try Milosevic for his stupid beliefs. No doubt Anders Breivik is going be dealt with as harshly as possible for his ridiculous beliefs, why does this mutilator in a mud hut get away with it? We’re now too embarrassed to intercede with the noble savages after centuries of our rape and pillage?

Priorities and perspective please, people. 

Dwarf Star

Recently, Emergency Contact and I were sitting in a boardroom with four other seasoned professionals, and all of a sudden, I met my son.


He swept into the room like Darth Vader and the world sort of stopped for me. Well, like a small Darth Vader being carried by his current minion, but he had a retinue and he definitely swept in, carrying all before him. True to form, the boardroom went silent. He was polite enough not to choke anyone with his mind, but my throat did go a little tight when I held him, and EC burst into tears, so there was obviously some mind trick going on.

Little Vader moves his base of operations to our place on the 18th of this month. I'm expecting that there will be tours by lesser minions to see if it suits his purposes. He will want to know that the troops don't need new ways to be motivated and that everything will be finished on time. EC and I have been working feverishly to get the base finished. It's no moon, I can't promise him that, but we do have a good feeling about it.

C'mon Already

I’ve never been terribly good at waiting. I’m particularly no good at waiting for a delivery. Once I’ve committed to the misguided shopping spree brought on by promises and poor judgement, I just want the thing to arrive before the thrill wears off and regret sets in.

You may or may not remember my debacle with the steam mops, but that is actually a fairly accurate portrayal of my general dealings with the non-bricks-and-mortar retail world. And yet, I persist.

After several years of up and down, in and out, optimism and straw-clutching, Emergency Contact and I were recently given the go-ahead by a local NGO, and now we’re waiting on another delivery.

Of a baby boy. Ahuh... a boiby. Doesn’t that drop a couple of steam mops down the list of ‘things I’m looking forward to the delivery of’.