Computing

It’s been pretty quiet this week, both at work and on the home front. I pulled a completely spastic move when I stepped on my laptop while reaching to close the window in the middle of the night, cracking the screen and relegating the unit to the scrap heap. After much contemplation I’ve decided to go over to the folks at Apple and get an I-Mac or whatever they’re calling their laptops these days. The Windows GUI is just too much of a pain in the ass. All that buggy software and endless scanning for viruses. I have such little patience for that kind of thing. In anticipation of the new computer’s arrival I’ve been backing up everything on my home PC and the distressed laptop to an external hard drive.

Jack has gotten into the computer lately. He’s been scaling the desk chair checking my e-mail and smashing the mouse repeatedly into the keyboard in a child-sized parody of what daddy wishes he could do at work every day. When I try to remove him he protests. Loudly. So, I usually leave him be. Now that I have all my files backed up he can destroy the darn thing for all I care, although I wonder if I should be more firm with him when he behaves like a frustrated stockbroker. Whenever I speak to him sternly he just laughs. I’m really not much of a disciplinarian. I remember telling Becky before he was born that she would have to be responsible for keeping him in line because I’m really just a big softee. I can put on a good act when he’s doing something zany like sticking his tongue in the electrical outlet or trying to play patty-cake with the front door of a 500 degree oven, but I don’t have it in me to restrict behavior that is merely marginally dangerous, like standing on the coffee table and hurling the remote control across the living room. I worry that if I don’t assert my parental authority now he’s not going to let me set boundaries in the future, boundaries which, Dr. Sears tells me, children expect and appreciate. Too much restriction on his activities and I run the risk of staunching his urge to explore and experience the big old world. Too little, and he might end up running around like he was raised by wolves. A fine balancing act indeed.

The Great Outdoors

Ah, camping. The great outdoors, fresh air, the smell of wood smoke and the relaxation of waking up to the twittering of birds as you gaze out the window of your tent to see a light mist hanging over the lake. Well, that’s one way of seeing it. Here’s another: Ah, camping. A long weekend spent chasing two little boys who were constantly running off into the woods in opposite directions when they weren’t sticking their hands in the fire or screaming because they grabbed a molten marshmallow off a smoldering stick.

When I conceptualized parenting, pre-child, the principal visual my mind would conjure up was me sitting next to a lake teaching my son (or daughter) to fish and build a fire. The reality of the camping experience is rather different from my idyllic fantasies. I was prepared for a few challenges but not the constant vigilance required to keep Jack and Dimitri from inadvertently killing themselves with the variety of potentially lethal situations that arise in the woods. Mind you, we spent the week-end not bushwacking through the primordial wilderness but at the Kenneth L. Wilson DEC Campground in the Catskills. The campground was voted one of the most “family friendly” campgrounds in the United States, apparently by people who have neither gone camping nor have a family. There was a lake, to be sure, but it was completely devoid of any fish and the nice expanse of grass leading up to the waters edge which initially appeared like a pleasant place for a picnic was, upon closer inspection, covered with the shit of innumerable Canada Geese.

Have you ever tried to teach a 3.5 year old how to fish? Let’s just say that fishing requires both patience and concentration, traits which are not present in great quantities in toddlers who require immediate and constant stimulation. Not to mention that while I was trying to explain the difference between artificial bait and live worms to Dimitri, Jack was doing his best to hurl himself from the dock into the water, despite the fact that he doesn’t know how to swim.

Then, of course, there were the bears. We were walking back from the lake when I head some rustling in the bushes to my left. Thinking we might stumble upon a few deer, I stopped and peered around a tree only to be confronted with what looked to me like a veritable herd of bears foraging for food. They spooked and ran off in the general direction of the lake. Dimitri was loudly protesting some perceived slight at the time and thus failed to see the bears, as did Jack who was busily trying to reach a branch to gnaw on from his position in the baby carrier, but Erin and I saw them, oh yes we did. Visions of two little boys being dragged off into the woods and eaten filled my thoughts for the rest of the afternoon. That night I made sure everyone took off the clothes they ate in and put them in the trunk of the car along with the cooler and all the food and garbage. Erin and I then spent a restless night on a slowly deflating air mattress thinking every noise we heard was the hungry bear family come to rip open the tent in search for the pack of cookies I had inadvertently left in the front pocket of my pack.

It got better when we could confine them in strollers and back-packs. We spent all day Saturday walking around Woodstock and Kingston and even managed to find an animal farm so the boys could see animals that were in cages rather than ones strolling through the campground. That part was more fun than trying to corral the kids, which was very much like herding cats who suffer from ADD. I think I’ll wait a few years before doing the tent camping thing again. Cabins may be more expensive but you cannot put a price on peace of mind.

"It's better to be a dog in a peaceful time than be a man in a chaotic period"

May you live in interesting times is reputed to be an ancient Chinese curse. It is said that it was the first of three curses of increasing severity, the other two being, may you come to the attention of those in authority and, may you find what you are looking for. This past week-end was interesting. Saturday was a pleasant day. Erin, Jack and I spent the day in Brooklyn, specifically in Prospect Park and environs since D-Train had a visit with his father in Bay Ridge and we wanted to be close by in case an intervention was needed. Fortunately, everything went smoothly and Jack got to run around in the park and see some small animals from very far away at the Prospect Park Zoo. He also took a turn around the Carousel which he decidedly did not like. We sat him on a horse that went up and down with the rotation of the ride and he had a complete freak-out when the thing started moving. I was alternating between feeling really bad for him and trying to stop laughing. The weather was perfect and I was playing my favorite Park Slope game of guessing which over-paid obnoxious yuppie had spent the most money on their stroller. Park Slope bashing is apparently a popular sport in New York according to this story that appeared the very next day in the Times.

For the record I do not own a Bug-A-Boo, or any of the other $1000 travesties that have become the status symbols du jour amongst the celebrity wanna-be set, but a rather ratty, formula stained McClaren which has given me not one iota of trouble since I bought it for $199 at Babies-R-Us six months ago. I should probably say that I *used* to own a rather ratty McClaren, since early Sunday morning some fucker stole it out of the back of my car while I was getting changed to go out running. At about 8am I went out to the car, unlocked the door, retrieved my I-pod from the armrest and went back into the house to change. When I came back out 10 minutes later, the trunk was popped and the stroller gone. The diaper bag was also dumped into the back seat. Now I live in a fairly suburban block so leaving one’s car unlocked in broad daylight on a Sunday morning is hardly “asking for it”. Unfortunately, the road I live on is the main thoroughfare from the housing projects on Jersey Street to the stores on Forest Avenue so there is always a sketchy figure or two lurking around. I usually give them the benefit of the doubt but no more. I also forget that Sunday mornings are when the crack heads start to get desperate and are on the prowl looking for something to sell. Oh well, lesson learned. I went right back to the store and bought the same model. So far Jack hasn’t noticed any difference.

Nanny State

Well I finally got my box of fresh organic produce delivered to my door, at 9:30 last night. They keep strange hours, those Urban Organic delivery people. Now I just have to figure out what to do with a bundle of Swiss chard that is roughly the size of Jack. Food has been on my mind lately what with the new ordinance that requires all restaurants in the City with more than 15 locations nationwide to post calorie content on their menus. Since New York has basically been turned into a giant shopping mall, replete with chain restaurants and food courts, this affects a fair number of places that I never go to, except for Starbucks.

(Warning, Rant Ahead: As some of you may know, New York City has become a much safer, cleaner and boring City under the watchful eye of our dear leader Mike Bloomburg. Since taking office he has passed a smoking ban, the aforementioned calorie posting requirement and is presently studying whether to move up the required closing time for bars to 2am instead of the current 4am. Mayor buzzkill indeed. What surprises me is how much support he has. Since he was elected in 2001 Bloomberg has successfully turned NYC into a police state by introducing the random searching of bags in the mass transit system and continuing Giuliani’s practice of ticketing people for "quality of life" violations. You know, such dangerous threats to the public order like taking up two seats on the subway, sitting on steps, fonts being too large on store signs, climbing trees in parks, feeding pigeons, "loitering" in front of your own home, using the wrong color garbage bag, etc., etc. Not to mention the fact that he banned smoking in bars yet wrote exemptions specifically designed to allow the upper-class to smoke in certain places. He continues to support the illegal arrests of cyclists during Critical Mass bike rides, supported the NYPD's illegal search-and-arrest methods during the RNC, and even proposed making extended dog barking illegal, yet he remains enormously popular. I just have no idea why. )

Ahem. Where was I? Oh yes, calorie counts at Starbucks. I’m a creature of habit. During the week I usually eat a yogurt with cereal for breakfast-watching the waistline and all that. On the week-ends I like to cut loose and order a cranberry scone when I pick up a cup of coffee at the local Starbucks. Jack usually goes for banana bread, but has been known to down a bran muffin when he is particularly, er, backed up. Imagine my surprise upon finding that that small pastry with its vague resemblance to a cowpie packs in a walloping 380 calories! The muffin at over 400! Damn you Mike Bloomburg for making me feel guilty about eating overpriced pastry on the week-ends. From now on I’m going down the block to the Italian bakery where there is no talk of calories and the only time you’re made to feel guilty is if you buy too little.

Urban Organics is Kind of Lame

Last week I signed up for a weekly delivery of organic produce through a service known as “Urban Organics”. For a fairly reasonable charge of $35 Urban Organics claims that it will deliver a box of fresh varied organically grown fruit and vegetables to your door on a prescribed delivery date once a week, or less, depending on your needs. They also try to obtain their produce locally, thereby supporting the small farms in upstate New York. Sounds good, right? There’s only one problem. The place is run by irresponsible hippies with extremely poor organizational skills. My first box was supposed to arrive yesterday but it was a no-show. While they couldn’t master the art of delivering the product, they still managed to charge my credit card. Despite the fact that I sent them an e-mail early this morning, I still have not been contacted by customer service to explain what happened to my wayward Swiss chard and fava beans. I should have known better. Years ago I used their service when I lived at two different addresses, one in Brooklyn and one in the Bronx, only to cancel each time due to delivery issues. I’m surprised they are still in business.

For the average person, I suppose the botched delivery wouldn’t be a particularly vexing issue, but as a single parent working full-time I arrange my shopping trips quite carefully and the fact that I was counting on the box of vegetables arriving yesterday (they only deliver to each boro once per week) means I didn’t buy any produce on my weekly shopping trip. This translates into another time consuming trip back to the store. With all the competition from farmers markets and organic produce readily available in supermarkets, I would think that a company like Urban Organics would emphasize customer service. Ah well. Back to Stop & Shop.

Stormy Monday

What a strange spring here in the northeast. Today we’re having a nor’easter which, if it happened in February, would have given everyone a snow-day, but since it happened in May the result was snarled traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike and bad tempered drivers. I am one of those drivers. I arrived at the office in ill humor from my hour plus slog through the swamps. I loathe car commuting for a variety of reasons; books on tape cannot replace books on paper, burning all that gas makes me feel horribly guilty (and poor) and I invariably arrive at my destination (be it work or home) in a worse mood than the one I was in when I started my trip. I can always tell when I’ve been pushed too far when I start yelling back at the radio, especially since all I listen to is NPR.

Compared to my last commute-bike to the ferry terminal, Staten Island Ferry, walk to the office-my present meanderings through New Jersey aren’t much fun. However, all it not lost. Hopefully I can soon trade the Nissan for a daily ride on the Long Island Railroad. (Did I actually just equate the LIRR with some sort of commuting Shangri-la?) Erin and I looked at a few apartments in Great Neck out on the Island this past Saturday. Great Neck is a curious place. Despite a somewhat snooty suburban reputation, the town has a very green and semi-urban feel to it. Mixed density housing, a pedestrian friendly main street and a small park with a band shell give Great Neck the feeling of small town America that is still only a 25 minute train ride from Manhattan.

Another interesting factoid, as of the 2000 census Great Neck was the second most Iranian place in the United States with 21.1% of its population reporting Iranian ancestry. Practically speaking this equates to good falafel and shwarma-very important if you have been subjected to as much mediocre southern Italian food as I have since moving to Staten Island. This may be a matter for discussion in another post. the food on Staten island is pleantiful but rather uninspired. I've taken to doing a lot more cooking, though only as much as I can accomplish with a baby hanging off my leg. Most people are familiar with Great Neck since it (specifically Kings Point) was featured by Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby. In the novel it was thinly disguised as "West Egg", in counterpoint to Port Washington's more posh "East Egg." Needless to say I have not been running about pricing waterfront mansions in the style of the roaring twenties. Great Neck also has a number of well-kept apartment buildings with rents much cheaper than Manhattan, although not cheap by the standards of anyone other than a New Yorker. There are also numerous child-care options and good, reasonably priced restaurants. We'll see what happens.

I took Jack over to Long Beach on Sunday on our way out to Erin’s aunt’s house. He was at the beach down in Asbury briefly last summer, but I doubt he remembers it since he was so young. He didn’t quite know what to make of all the sand and the water but he seemed pretty interested in the goings on. He was plucking shells and throwing sand and doing all the things one expects toddlers to do at the beach. I took off his shoes and socks and let him run around some. Extracting the sand from between his toes and fingers proved to be a royal pain in the ass, especially since it was cold and I couldn’t run him under the beach shower. I let his feet air-dry on the walk back to the party. We’ll have to go back when it gets warmer.

Mother's Day

Mother’s day is this coming Sunday. Last year I ignored the holiday, for obvious reasons. This year I’m going to a party out on Long Island, but I still don't really feel too festive. Maybe I should just embrace the day as a celebration of my own role as Jack’s mother/father but frankly, that’s a little too weird so I’ll just motor through it like last year. I have no idea how I’m going to approach this holiday when Jack gets a little older, but that is a worry for another time.

The history of Mother’s Day is actually quite interesting. I originally thought that Mother’s Day had been invented by Hallmark to sell cards and candy-and that is indeed what it turned into-but a little internet research revealed that the holiday has a lengthier and more storied history. One school of thought claims that the day emerged from a custom of mother worship in ancient Greece, which kept a festival to Cybele, a great mother of Greek gods. This festival was held around the Vernal Equinox around Asia Minor and eventually in Rome itself around the Ides of March.
In the United States, Mother's Day imported by social activist Julia Ward Howe after the American Civil War. It was originally intended as a call to unite women against war. In 1870, Howe wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament. She ultimately failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother's Day for Peace. She was directly influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides. In 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.
When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started the drive for a memorial day for women. The first Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on 10 May 1908, in the church where the elder Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday School. (This building now houses the International Mother's Day Shrine).The custom caught on — spreading eventually to 45 states. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.
Nine years after the first official Mother's Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. Mother's Day continues to this day to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions. –Thanks to Wikipedia for most of the history cited above.

I Want To Ride My Bicycle

Ok, I'm going to drift into politics for one second-HILARY SHOUD DROP THE HELL OUT OF THE RACE. She can't win, and if she insists on taking the Michigan/Florida issue to the mat she is going to destroy the party. Whew! That feels better.

I got the bike seat installed yesterday and took Jack for a ride up to Silver Lake Park. My little friend tolerated the seat ok but the helmet was the cause of quite a bit of consternation. He kept trying to remove it but could only get it ½ off, which meant it covered his face like a hockey mask and led to a general freak-out. Regular bike helmets aren’t really designed for those seats. If he leans back the helmet gets pushed forward over his face. I’m thinking that putting something behind his neck might be helpful. Frankly, if he fell out of the seat with the helmet on over his face he’d probably be worse off than if he had no helmet at all, but kids under 14 in New York have to wear a helmet or else the parents get a fine. I’m going to fiddle with it tonight and try again.

I am truly raising an urban baby. Whenever I take Jack to the park or anywhere there is grass, he makes a beeline for the nearest concrete path and then launches himself at a good clip after whatever happens to traveling thereupon; dog, baby, bicycle, etc. It must be easier for him to walk on a firm surface like concrete than on the grass, but the hiker/camper in me is a little concerned that he finds the hard manufactured trail more accommodating than the soft grass for his little feet. I’ll have to ensure that he spends more time on grass this summer.

Blow Baby, Blow

Note the almost proper hand positioning.

In the Garden

Last night after work I finally got around to heading down the hill to Girardi’s farmer’s market and picking up some herbs and flowers to plant on the back deck. I love the longer days of late springtime; you can get so much more accomplished. Ever since I put up a gate on the stairs leading off the deck I have let Jack run around out there, but it was looking a little bleak without any greenery, and the only thing he had to play with was a large rock which he kept dropping perilously close to his bare feet. I figured we could learn about plants and gardening together and give him something interesting he could chew on with no ill effects on his health or well-being. Yesterday while I was planting, Jack was investigating the potting soil and staring with wide-eyed wonder at the miracle of the garden hose. Last summer I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to engage in any gardening, but having fresh herbs to cook with in the summer is a wonderful thing so I’m more inspired this year, especially since I have been cooking a bit more. I feel like a semi-suburban version of the Barefoot Contessa, wandering around my Staten Island estate snipping basil and rosemary for use in complicated recipes. Tonight I will definitely tackle the bike seat. Really.

Of Sippy Cups and 1/2 Marathons

What a nice week-end. I am pleased to report that I survived the Long Island ½ marathon with dignity and ligaments intact; finishing in 1:54.07, 953rd out of 3154 runners. For those who are interested in such things, that puts me in the top 30.2% of all finishers. In my age group, (men 40-44) I placed 116th out of 273, or in the top 42%. My age group is apparently full of aging male Gen Xers who are becoming more competitive as they start to fall apart physically. I admit that it felt good to blow past some of the kiddies towards the end of the race. Pacing and experience must count for something. I realized the other day that this is my 16th year running. That’s a lot of miles. Erin, Jack and Dimitri met me at the finish. Jack slept the whole time as I had the temerity to finish the race during his morning nap. The day before the race we all went to the cherry blossom festival at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Jack and D-Train were very happy to be uncaged and tore around the gardens with wild abandon. There is a nice children’s garden where you can touch the plants and do experiments with leaves and water. Jack kept trying to eat bark and was more interested in pulling out all the signs than identifying plants, but hey, he’s only 15 months old. He also reached a major milestone this past week-he learned how to drink from a sippy-cup with a straw, thereby freeing daddy to drive with both hands on the wheel rather than trying to juggle bottle feeding, driving, drinking coffee and tuning the radio simultaneously. Good job son! Some time this week I’m going to try to install his bike seat and teach him to wear his helmet without ripping it off every two seconds. I love a good challenge.

Run for the Roses

So in a spasm of post-new year’s optimism I signed up for the Long Island Half-Marathon back in January. At the time I figured that I would have plenty of time to whip my tired old ass into shape before the gun went off. This week it dawned on me that the race is this Sunday and the last time I ran more than my usual 5 miles per day was quite some time ago. February, maybe? I considered blowing it off and diligently started coming up with a handful of excuses that wouldn’t sound too lame when spoken aloud, but at the end of the day (at the end of yesterday, actually) I decided to just get out there and do it. I remember back in the distant past when I wouldn’t have even considered 13 miles to be a decent training run, but that was back in 1993 when I was young and spry of step and the future held great promise. Now I’m old, creaky and cynical but I think I’ll be able to finish anyway. One thing that hasn’t changed from back then is that I’m too dense to realize when I should quit. That, plus the contact high from running next to a whole bunch of well trained people should be enough to carry me through. Erin will be keeping an eye on Jack and “meeting me at the finish line”. If I were her I’d lurk around the 9 mile mark in case one of my parts wears out. Wish me luck.

Parenting, Inc.

I have a stack of books on my nightstand and like most parents, my reading time is limited to the period between when I can get my offspring to sleep and when exhaustion overtakes me and I pass out with my clothes on and the light shining in my face. This usually ends up being somewhere in the neighborhood of five minutes to a half hour depending on the day and how energetically Jack rails against the dying of the light. I noticed recently that my choice of books reflects the preoccupations of my day to day life; sleeplessness and child rearing. For example, the last book I finished was a 500 page tome on the history of coffee, which took me over a month to slog through. I am currently deep into Pamela Paul’s new book, "Parenting, Inc.: How We Are Sold on $800 Strollers, Fetal Education, Baby Sign Language, Sleeping Coaches, Toddler Coutur, and Diaper Wipe Warmers . And What it Means For Our Children" (Times Books, 2008). You can pretty much guess the content of the book by the unnecessarily long title. I’m not a huge fan of Pamela Paul, (I disagree with almost everything she wrote in her last book on pornography), but she does a good job of deconstructing the parenting industrial complex that has risen along with easy access to credit and disposable income. The book asks and then answers questions like, “Why do parents think that they need an $800 stroller? Why do they think their kids should watch "Baby Einstein" videos? Does the baby really need $80 face cream? Bugaboo strollers are treated in particular detail, with their initial marketing plan and the response by consumers dissected in detail.

To me the most interesting issue is how the corporations have learned how to manipulate parent’s fear that their child may not be hitting their developmental milestones and using this as an effective marketing tool. Parents have been conditioned to fear that their child will fall behind if they don’t purchase a bevy of products or send them to an infant development class. It is amazing how easily otherwise intelligent parents are manipulated to break out the credit cards for a bunch of overpriced products whose efficacy is completely unproven. Case in point: Baby Einstein and similar video and DVD programs are heavily marketed to parents of infants and young children, but the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends children under 2 be exposed to little or no television. In fact, a recent study found that Baby Einstein videos actually inhibit learning. Not to mention the fact that such videos are also unnecessary. From a Paul interview in Slate recently:

“The playpen is something that all of our parents used. You plopped the kid in it, and then you ran to take the laundry out of the washing machine, and throw it in the dryer, or to return a call to your girlfriend. Today, the playpen is considered totally verboten. You never put your kid in a playpen. How could you limit their exploration? How could you deprive them of the stimulation? You may as well be spanking your kid roundly every day for no reason whatsoever. But what is Baby Einstein really, but a modern playpen? It's a way to have your kid occupied, while you get to go do something else…Baby Einstein used to say this quite openly in their marketing: "Go take a shower, while your kid is learning about Noah's Ark." Now, they're much more careful about their wording, and they say: "This is an interactive experience for you to watch with your child." But you talk to most parents, and the last thing that they want to do is watch Baby Einstein. It's incredibly annoying.” I can attest to that. I'll probably post a bit more on this topic in the weeks ahead.