I'm going to be selfish, and that's OK.

I had an "I'm a bad, selfish dad" moment on the walk home from dropping Theo at his 2-morning-per-week school.

It was supposed to be school pictures, but because they take the pics outside and the weather was threatening, we found out when we arrived that they rescheduled. Then it hits me ... they rescheduled when kid and I will be on a roadtrip west for him to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa while I get a long weekend of R&R and booze with college buddies.

In addition, I realized that this Monday is Columbus Day, and therefore he'll be missing school for two full weeks out of this month when it's all said and done.

So on my walk home, I started wondering to myself, is it really fair of me to make him miss so much school just because I want some time to myself and I don't like to fly? He loves going to school, we're paying for it, and the class is so small that he'll probably be missed by the other kids. We already missed a week last month so I could help some friends while one of them had surgery.

Plus I was really looking forward to having the school pictures of him. I love the shirt he was wearing and can't get enough pictures of him in it. I started thinking, maybe I can still get a flight for that afternoon AFTER school. Heck, that way he'd only have to miss one day, because I could get home quicker than we could driving. And sure, It would cost a whole lot more than the car trip will, but why waste the day and a half in the car, when he could have that time to be with his friends... and ... and ... and...

And then it hit me: WHAT ON EARTH AM I THINKING??? When exactly did I lose my fucking mind and turn into the guilt-ridden parent who can't keep the needs of his family versus the needs of the individuals in the family in the proper perspective?

HE'S TWO. HE'S TWO. HE'S TWO! He goes to school SIX HOURS a week and mostly it's just playtime. I myself have one or two memories, tops, from that early in my life and from talking to other folks I suspect I'm above average in that department. If his two-year-old, two-day-per-week preschool ends up being a long-treasured part of his life or mine, then that isn't cute or sentimental, THAT IS A PROBLEM.

Plus, as a two-year-old, he's still about the most perfectly selfish being on Earth. He doesn't know "fair" any better than he knows how to take a crap in the toilet. I'm the one in charge of enforcing "fair" around here, and it isn't very fair that it's been two years since I had a break from him of more than a few hours.

He'll never know he missed a thing, and even if he does remember, he should remember that his primary role model wanted to do something other than cook, clean and read Dr. Seuss all day, every day, for months at a time.

So I'm going to be selfish and not apologize. I'll take a picture of him in his cute shirt when he gets home from school today.

In which reverse snobbery rears its head

Ruth and I ran the Shamrock 8K this morning -- details coming in the next post, but suffice to say it was a great race, we both ran well and had a great time.

On the walk back to the car, wearing my well-deserved finisher's medal and cooling down with a bottle of water, I remembered for the first time in a couple hours that I'd had no coffee that morning. We were up just after 6 and out the door at 6:30 to get Theo to his babysitter, so there really hadn't been time.

But now -- with a spring in my step, celebrating our victory over our old couch-conditioned fata$$ bodies, I knew what I wanted -- a large hot coffee from Starbucks, with a shot of espresso. I'm not usually that picky about coffee -- as long as it's more than warm brown water I'm happy to drink Dunkin', 7-11 or Wawa -- but I know what I really like, it's uusally the consistency of road tar and on a morning when I felt like I've done good for my wife and me, I decided I deserved what I really wanted.

Thing is ... we don't go to the oceanfront often enough for me to know where there might be a Starbucks.

I'd mentioned my craving to Ruth and that I was happy to wait until we were driving home, but she said I should go ahead and ask one of the police or volunteers directing traffic -- she didn't mind walking a little bit out of our way if there was one around and after all, they're around for the benefit of the race participants, right?

So I approached one of the clearly marked volunteers assisting a police officer at a traffic barricade. He's a big dude, a good bit older than us, holding his own cup of joe. I asked him if he knew where there might be a Starbucks nearby. He replied,

"Well ... I couldn't tell you where to find one, because I AVOID Starbucks." I thanked him and turned to the police officer, but he was on the radio assisting another pedestrian, so rather than bother him I moved on.

... and a few steps away, I started thinking a little too much about the tone of the volunteer's response and said out loud, "DUDE, What is your problem?" I told Ruth, "Wow, next time can you say 'I don't know' without the reverse snobbery?"

How would I look if this person stopped me in my own neighborhood and asked about a 7-11, but I sprinkled my directions to him with editorial comments about how I prefer either the local non-chain coffee house or Starbucks? What if I saw him buying Natural Ice Light in a convenience store and stopped him to explain how much I prefer Dogfish Head 90-minute IPA?

He'd come away from either situation calling me a pretentious, snobby yuppie jerk and he'd be totally justified in doing so.

The way I figure it, all these different outlets can co-exist because everyone has slightly different preferences. I'm not a purist who is going to claim that the market success of Starbucks means they have the "best" coffee out there -- my taste buds have never been good enough to make me a connoisseur -- but I like it and apparently a lot of other people do too.

But nooooooooo. Apparently there's now something WRONG with finding and expanding a market in a way that makes lots of people happy, if it doesn't make THIS GUY happy too. This guy didn't strike me as either a communist or a coffee purist, so I'm just going to stereotype him as someone who looks down on a consumer product because he doesn't like the people he sees consuming it. See also, "critics of FOX News" and "Dave Matthews Band haters."

So if you're reading this, Snotty Race Volunteer Guy, HERE'S TO YOU for trying to assert your superiority over a CUP OF FRAKING COFFEE, which I had in my hands at our neighborhood Starbucks not an hour after we spoke. I did tide myself over with a cup from THE WORLD'S SLOWEST MCDONALDS (another story that will remain untold), but for the record, it cost over a $1.25 for cup that lasted all of five swallows -- hardly the bargain of the year -- and I didn't like it as much as that Starbucks. Now go on TELL ME AGAIN HOW MUCH I SUCK.

Part of me feels silly for spending more time on SRVG than he deserves, but I keep wondering, who comes out to volunteer for something like this if they'd rather make snide, dismissive comments to the runners rather than be as helpful as possible?

If Snotty Race Volunteer Guy DOES read this, I urge him to get in touch with me -- I will buy you all the Folgers and 7-11 coffee you can drink next year at this time, if you promise not to "volunteer" again.

No, no, I insist you endanger the rest of us

James REALLY hit a pet peeve of mine in his post today. Because the comments engine of his blog is for shit, I'm posting my response here. Read his post so maybe this will make a little bit of sense.


Giving up the right-of-way at stop signs through some misplaced sense of "courtesy" is a freakin' PLAGUE where I live. I can only assume it's the outrageous percentage of older drivers on the island, or maybe they do it out of habit, because it is very necessary in certain places around town where only one car can fit down the narrow colonial horse paths.

It's not just stop signs, either. My favorite inexplicable behavior is at a busy stoplight with turn lanes but no turn arrows, the person at the head of a lane of traffic will sometimes try to wave through the oncoming traffic turning left when the light turns green -- basically, inviting the car in the lead of oncoming traffic to make what I grew up calling a "California left."

I never take them up on the offer because invariably the car next to or behind the "courteous driver" doesn't know what's going on, so following the accepted rules of traffic flow in the 49 states not called Rhode Island they will dart out around and through the intersection. No joke, I've avoided having my car totaled in this way at least three times in the past two years.


My fear of that fender bender and disgust with that other driver has led me more than once to put the car in neutral and wave to the offending driver with both hands until they give up and take their turn. The way I see it, refusing to follow the rules of the road and take the right-of-way is actually the OPPOSITE of courtesy and might even get someone killed.

I'm still trying to decide if this is better or worse than the current situation in Chicago, where using the crosswalk at any stop sign in Lincoln Park now requires the faith of an apostle. Twice during Thanksgiving week, drivers looked us right in the eye before gunning it through the intersection to miss us by inches.

Of course, I should consider the driver's perspective. By any measure, five seconds of Mr. Mercedes SUV driver's time is worth more than the lives of a family of three, right?

Urge to kill rising...

This post is pretty much written in code, but anyone who has had to assemble furniture may recognize pieces of it. The last thing I want to do is run down the fine American employees of a fine US juvenile furniture manufacturer, so I'm not going to name the company I'm talking about.


I started assembling a changing table two days ago. At this point, I'm wishing I'd taken on an easier task, like maybe the Boston Marathon, or Everest. I'm not the handiest guy on Earth, but I've put together quite a bit of the furniture in our house; I'm an old hand with a screwdriver and an allen wrench, so nothing in the instructions seemed difficult.

In practice, however, I found myself dealing with instructions like "Tighten the four screws securely because you're about to cover them up, making them inaccessible forever," followed immediately by "bend outward the panels you just screwed in securely, taking care not to TEAR THE TABLE APART ENTIRELY."

There are eight connectors, called "cam locks" in the instructions, that appear to be responsible for holding together the entire apparatus. I screwed in the connectors they lock into, carefully bent the sides apart without breaking them, put the shelf in place, and turned the cam locks...and instead of locking, they spun freely. Uh....huh?

Some quick examination revealed that the connectors weren't long enough to reach into the cam locks. So I bent the sides apart again to pull the shelf out, loosened them what seemed an appropriate amount, carefully put the shelf in place to check the placement of the connectors (making sure they were unscrewed far enough for the locks to engage.

...I carefully bent the sides apart without breaking them, put the shelf in place, and turned the cam locks...and instead of locking, they spun freely. Uh....huh?

Some quick examination revealed that the connectors weren't long enough to reach into the cam locks. So I bent the sides apart again to pull the shelf out, loosened them what seemed an appropriate amount, carefully put the shelf in place to check the placement of the connectors (making sure they were unscrewed far enough for the locks to engage.

[Hey, John, you just repeated the last two paragraphs. Yes, I did, because THAT'S HOW IT FUCKING HAPPENED. If I wanted to be more accurate, I would've repeated them FOUR TIMES.]

So the fourth time I had to bend apart the sides, it started to seem that they weren't as solid as they were when I first screwed them in. No problem, I figured that when the locks finally engaged they would hold everything together.

So I went to tighten the shelf -- two of the locks engaged correctly! Huzzah! The third one tightened...and then suddenly went loose. Oh, that can't be good. The fourth was still completely loose.

So I pulled the shelf back out, yet again, to find a bent connector, a "cam lock" in two pieces, and the sides of the table looser still, after another bending. I briefly considered that having 7/8 of the connectors in place would probably be plenty...then I thought about my wife's reaction to gaps between the shelves and sides of the table...and asked myself whether I would really be happy with the idea of my kids being "7/8ths supported" by this table.

So I put everything aside to start on the crib. And as I was stacking the vast amounts of styrofoam and plastic packing material in the corner of the baby's room to make way for the crib...what should drop out of the bottom of the box, but a folded-up half-sheet of typing paper, crushed in the bottom of the box.

I unfolded the sheet, to find an "Instructional Addendum." This addendum let me know that I shouldn't screw in the cam lock connectors to the stopping point, but only to an arbitrary point on the shaft; otherwise the cam locks would not engage properly, and "breakage will occur." Huh. Good thing I didn't know this ahead of time. Good thing this fine manufacturer didn't build their threads to an idiot-proof level of precision that could've prevented the problem. And it's a good thing they didn't spend the 5 minutes to put the "Instructional addendum" in the plastic bag with the rest of the instructions.

Because if they'd done all that, I'd have a fucking changing table in the nursery by now, instead of a pile of fine wood and wood veneers.

SO today I figure I get to order new hardware, and wait 3 weeks for it to arrive, hoping the hardware gets here before the baby. The good news is the crib only involves nuts and bolts, and it's about 50% done already.

So, as I said at the beginning, I have no desire to run down the fine American employees of a fine US juvenile furniture manufacturer...but to address them, and their shoddy connectors, variably threaded screws, and shoved-in-the-bottom-of-the-box "Addendum" for one moment...do you all maybe THINK THIS SORT OF LAZY SHIT MIGHT BE A TEENSY PART OF THE REASON WHY WE'RE ALL BUYING OUR FURNITURE FROM THE SWEDES THESE DAYS?! YOU'RE GETTING YOUR ASSES KICKED BY FUCKING SOCIALISTS!

Ahhh. That's better...