Home Alone

The Woman has left. You see, she got a job. Not that she really wants to be working so soon, but an opportunity arose that she couldn’t pass up. Teaching massage 3 nights a week but only 2 hours each night. And not that far from home, either. But now that leaves me home. At night. Alone. To take care of Kayleigh.

Of course, as with most timing in our lives, this job came just a tad prematurely. In another 3 months it would have been a complete nobrainer. As it stands, we… well, she… is in the middle of teaching our little girl about the wonders of sleeping for hours on end at nighttime. This is a wonder that we used to both enjoy and would like to get back to enjoying. Unfortunately, Kayleigh doesn’t completely understand this yet, thus my stress levels jump through the roof every time I hear her little grunts or sighs come over the monitor.

But that’s nighttime parenting. Living in fear that your baby will start fussing when you want them to sleep. Oh, and when they aren’t fussing? You poke and prod them until they do to make sure they’re alright. It’s brilliant! Much like the arguments I have with Kayleigh when she is over tired: “But honey, you’re sleepy. You need sleep. We want you to sleep. If you just go to sleep, everybody, including you, will be happy. Why won’t you just go to sleep?”

It’s like they say, there’s just no reasoning with kids. Especially when they lack any kind of verbal skills beyond the occasional “Enh!” Personally I think she really does understand these debates I have with her. Something in the way she smiles after we give up trying to get her to nap because she insists on crying the instant her head touches the mattress. That smile almost looks like a smirk, like she’s about to wink at me over The Woman’s shoulder to make sure I know that she fooled us again.

And so we come back to the idea of teaching her how to sleep. Training, really. Training? What is she, a dog? Well, we do clean up her poop, try to get her to walk on all fours, give her things to chew on, and watch her play with a squeaky toy… the line between baby and pet is beginning to blur. I’m starting to feel bad about all of those jokes I made about keeping her in the guinea pig cage.

Perhaps I’m pushing my luck just by clacking away on the keyboard, but she’s been sleeping in her crib for the past hour while I’ve been glued to bed waiting for the first signs of distress. That last sigh to come over the airwaves certainly sounded like her typically sleeping sigh. Maybe I can at least put my head back on the pillow… to sleep, perchance to dream?

‘Cause this Is Thriller, Thriller Night

I’m still not exactly sure what that line means, but I know I’ve “sung” it many times over the past decade and a half. A friend of mine pointed out that the video for Thriller turned 25 just over a week ago. Holy crappola! 25? I remember anxiously awaiting the world premier – you know, back when MTV used to make music video premiers a big deal… actually, back when they just made music videos a big deal. He summed up the feeling with this line:

I remember the 25th anniversary of Woodstock, and realizing that Thriller is as ancient to kids in high school as Woodstock is to me is making me feel ancient.

Since the driving force behind the Internet (besides porn, of course) seems to be 30 somethings who failed to notice that they are no longer 20 somethings and gasp in amazement as they realize that their childhood actually took place many moons ago, now seems like the perfect time to point him and my other aging friends in the direction of kottke’s Timeline twins post.

His Back to the Future/To Kill a Mockingbird “comparison” hits me hardest. I remember seeing that Michael J. Fox opus in the theater with my best friend and then spending the rest of the summer pretending to hitch rides on cars while sitting on skateboards (my balance on those wheels was terrible) and dodging the angry principal. Did kids spend the summer of ’62 rolling down hills in tires and pretending to defend black men in rape trials? Suddenly my childhood seems rather mundane…

Anyway, to stem the bleeding of lameness that is a 32 year-old man complaining about “feeling old” I’d rather just switch to something awesome about Thriller instead. And that would be François Macré’s 64-track, a capella version of said song:

That’s a better use of 350 hours of time than just about anything I’ve ever done. In particular, the muted guitar and bass line are incredible. My only wish is that he had used the original vocals by Michael Jackson so that I could better hear just how close the musical part sounds.

Renegade Geek Cyber Emporium

While I am, somewhat obviously, not big on the holiday greeting card circuit, a friend of mine has started making some really cool, old-fashioned ones and is now selling them via a CafePress shop:

Renegade Geek Cyber Emporium
Want to win FREE Greeting cards? Learn how!

Make sure you check out the naughty designs even if you want a nice one – otherwise you might miss out on Creepy Santa…

My baby is cuter than yours

Two posts into the month already and I’m sure you’re all just thinking, “Where the hell are the pictures of that kid?!?!” Lots of photos having actually been, not only taken, but printed and shared with family members. Shocking!!! But true! So yes, I have taken thousands of photos of Kayleigh already. By the time she’s a teenager she’ll probably hate the fact that we have documented proof that she slept with her mouth wide open or her tush up in the air. But that’s my job as her father, to do embarrassing (and threatening) things in front of every boy that so much as glances in her direction.

Anyway, most of what I’ve processed thus far has been family-type photos – not too many that I’m in a rush to post on the web. But we did do this one “photoshoot”. Kind of a complement to the flowery shot I posted on her 1 month birthday – it’s another adorable dress provided by the same co-worker of mine. And to give you an idea of just how cute/adorable/beautiful/amazing my little girl is, here are a select few:

Yeah, she really is this good at posing for pictures

The smile!

Look at the little foot in the background

As you can see, I’ve had more pressing matters than this website. And I know, everybody thinks their little baby is the cutest – but I have photographic evidence to back me up!

A brief musical interlude

Holy crap! Two posts in one day! Lucky you!

I do intend to revive my poorly conceived music blog at some point in the near future. Doing so will coincide with whenever I finish my “Best of 2008” list – yes, I’m sure you’re all giddy with anticipation. However, until that time I wanted to point out that Amazon.com is still running their Black Friday promotions, which includes their top 50 mp3 albums for 5 bucks.

Normally I would assume that the top 50 albums were all pure crap, but there’s a lot of good music there. I’ll tell you right now that Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend*, She & Him – Volume One*, Santogold – Santogold*, Moby – Last Night, Mates of State – Re-arrange Us*  and Jamie Lidell – Jim will all be on the list or honorable mentions. There’s also several other worthwhile downloads and a few that I just picked up myself. Not sure how much longer this sale will go on, so take advantage while you can.

* – These ones are also available on eMusic.

Welcome back my friends…

So… um… hey. How’s it going? Geez, this is awkward. Yeah, I’ve been a tad busy. All those big time bloggers that suddenly disappeared for long periods once they had a kid? Sorry for making fun of you. It appears that having a baby takes up a lot of one’s time. I mean a LOT of one’s time. Alright, I mean ALL of one’s time.

But I’m not packing it in. I just need to relearn how to operate this blog and… type. Yeah, I gotta remember how to type words and stuff. Maybe even try to be coherent. Then again, that was probably never my strong suit so let’s just focus on get some semblance of the English language up on the web. That would put me one step ahead of a typical Youtube comment.

It’s about time that I get back on the proverbial horse, so here I am. And I’m trying to tidy things up while I’m at it. In case you hadn’t noticed (and why should you) I changed the color theme to a lighter, more friendly one. It’s still the same, lovely Fauna from Joen, but the dark version of it was making me a tad depressed so I switched.

You may have also notice that I joined the Twitter revolution… 2 years after the fact. I am incredibly difficult to find, unless you know my name or look at the sidebar 2 inches to your right (assuming you’re reading this on my website and not in a feed reader). I have no intentions of putting my witty and insightful Twitter comments in summary blog posts (or the bland and mundane ones for that matter), so you’ll either have to follow me or hit refresh on the main page every couple of days to get my instantaneous LOL response to someone else’s comments… ain’t Web 2.0 exciting?

The links on the sidebar are also slowly being updated. Two of my favorite blogs of late have finally been added – jonsonblog and Man vs. Clown! I have no idea how I came upon either of them and they both tend to fall on the crude or disturbing side of humor; yet jonson may have the most adorable daughter not to come from my own loins and Peter has left me wondering what to do when you end a sentence with a title that ends in an exclamation point…

Also I started reading Ken Jenning’s blog, because he’s witty, funny and won a lot of money on a real game show.

Believe it or not, I expect to post even more these days. That’s helped by the fact that I’m taking more vacation days and not accomplishing anything except learning the rest of the lyrics to “Beyond the Sea” in order to sing Kayleigh to sleep. Welcome back, indeed.