Category: grindstone

All about breadwinning.

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all the better to see you with


Sunday afternoon and I’m done mowing both lawns before wunderground.com tells me the approaching clouds plan to loose their loads. Mowing with haste under the threat of grey skies makes a man sweat, warrants a shower before he heats up some leftover fajitas for lunch.

Anyway, I’ve decided that I’m gonna wake up and head into work early tomorrow, give myself a couple “bonus” hours on the day. I don’t like to do this, but the week ahead dictates it I’m afraid. I’d planned on working some tonight, getting that head start, but I have fundamental thing against using my weekend to do work. I know, if my issue is with work cutting into “my time,” the weekend or pre-8am are the same. I don’t think it’s that though, it’s more: work for five days, rest for two. Don’t work on those two, just don’t. So it ends up being that I don’t mind pulling longer hours during the “work week,” as long as I can sufficiently atrophy over the weekend.

Folks, I’ve decided what I’m going to do with the loot I’ll get from selling off my CDs (a shoddy, never-finished, out-of-date and incorrect webpage explaining this can be found here). Yup, that $1300 was calling all kinds of things out to me: HDTV, Keaton’s college education, downpayment on a new vehicle, etc. But, while showering Saturday morning it hit me: I’m going to use the money to get Lasik surgery. Last time I went to the optometrist, he casually mentioned that I’d be a great candidate for the newest Lasik procedure (apparently even less invasive, or something), and that piqued my interest. Plus, it seems that, within the past year, my eyes have grown less and less tolerant of contact lenses – I used to not even know they were in, and now I can’t stand them after ~12hrs.

Anyway, ever since the idea graced my brain, it’s been all I can think of. The thought of camping or hiking or going to a concert and not having my contacts dry out and bug me, not having to deal with my eyes tiring of them each evening – I’m so pumped. I think my vision plan will actually match a certain percentage up to an amount, and I plan on checking into it tomorrow (today, as you read this). I’m actually really excited, and would do this before I left for Germany if there was any way to… but I doubt it. As it is now, I really am going to try and get something scheduled as soon as I get back – this bug has really bitten me. I keep thinking how awesome it’ll be to be able to wake up and see again, no more worrying about fumbling for my glasses when that burglar breaks in before I can aim my gun and cap him.

This weekend, I set out to make my mp3 collection all the better. By normalizing the volume not just of individual files, but all my files relative to each other. Most MP3 normalizers just adjust individual mp3s to a peak level within each file, but not necessarily relative to other files in that album, or other files from other albums. This used to confuse the crap out of me, I’d normalize my files to 89dB thinking now I wouldn’t have to adjust the volume on the iPod when switching from the Moody Blues to Nine Inch Nails… but t wouldn’t work like I wanted it to – the Moody Blues were still half a spin of the knob quieter than Trent. Then, this weekend, I discovered the open-source MP3Gain, which allows you to normalize all your albums to an average 89dB while preserving each file’s relative album volume (i.e. it doesn’t just “amp” all the songs on an album to a certain volume). This little program is awesome, and it’s volume adjustments are not only lossless, they’re completely undo-able should they break something (MP3Gain stores some undo info in the mp3 tag itself). I also used Zortam to auto-import album cover art from Amazon for my entire collection. Took all weekend, but now I just have to completely empty the iPod and repopulate it with the volume-corrected albums… bummer, but worth it.

It’s nearing the end now, running out of steam. Let’s finish this off with a random bit I wrote Saturday.

I thought the local Tapei newpaper’s April Fool’s joke was pretty good. They pretended to “out” a top-secret government weapons program based on betel nut spit, or Operation Bin Lang Fen Nu. I’ve written about betel nut before, so just the fact that I “got” the joke made it funny for me. The device is described as “an aerosol-dispersal device to shower enemy positions with red betel-nut juice, leaving enemy personnel feeling slightly ill, while possessing them with an uncontrollable desire to sing at a KTV.”

Goodnight.

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on the island, all bets are off


Keaton’s in her swing, wrapped loosely in a pink blanket that defines soft, watching the mobile spin above her head while hiccuping. Sharaun ran out to do some errands and I happily traded the babble of the TV for silence and some time to write. I’m kicked back on the couch in shorts and my house slippers, thinking about how I’ll do the dishes from dinner just a little later. Tuesday night, home from a busy day at work around 6pm – had to stay late to finish “just a couple” things before heading home. Every day at work I have just enough “just a couple” things to do before I leave to keep me around until morning the next day, you just have to draw the line somewhere and cash out. I’m pretty good at drawing that line in the sand and sticking to it, and more often than not it’s right around 5pm. What am I talking about?

It’s Springtime, and my backyard is a verdant bloom of weeds again, the unending rain helping them take root in otherwise non-ideal places. They blanket the unplanted hillsides that flank my house left and rear, growing in the damp mulch. They crowd the Japanese maple, blocking out the little plot of dirt I’ve been intending to plant pretty flowers in. They have taken over, and I hate them. My only solace is in the knowledge that the summer swelter will scorch their little leaves and stems; dry up the milky sap that is their lifeblood, and leave them as brittle, crumbling shells of their former thriving selves. I hate weeds.

I have this daydream thing I sometimes do, where I sometimes dream about getting stranded on a desert island (yes, I know I’ve done the island thing over and over and over, but this one’s different). It takes me as I am now, and puts me washed up on some desolate beach far away – only I’m not alone. I’m with a woman, one that’s not my wife. The fantasy really doesn’t do much else, it’s more of a setup for the line of questions that follow. I always wonder, if I were to find myself in this situation, how would my new island life with this person unfold? I’m assuming, of course, that I am a skilled enough survivalist to provide us with food and shelter and keep us alive, and we’d have each other’s company as a ward against insanity. With all the basics of life taken care of, you’re now left with an island existence, both of you living out your days together. It’s there that my mind begins to work, to twist and turn…

At some point, this woman and you would do it, right? I mean, you’re on an island, there’s nothing but the trees and waves and coconuts to eat… It may be slow in coming: you first erect a small lean-to for shelter, later you further the bond between you by perhaps bringing her a fresh-caught fish or starting a fire with a stick. She begins to trust you, depend on you even. In my daydreams, this woman is nearly always someone I know, a friend of mine or Sharaun’s. It’s all the better if, in real life, you could never imagine yourself having a relationship with the person. But, on the island, with just the crabs and gulls and wind in the palms, all bets are off. It may start as a simple compliment – how becoming her new grass skirt is; how the berries make her hair smell good. Yes, that’s where it may start, friends, but it’s not where it ends – only the island knows where it ends.

Soon, as the reality of life on the island sets in, urges turn less survivalist and more animal. Glances are cast, body language broadcast: it’s about to be on. Then, one day (yes, it’s the bright of day – that’s the awesome thing about stranded-on-a-desert-island sex, there’s no one there to be bridled for… in fact, you can be as unbridled as you want on the island), the impossible happens: humping. Oh yes, there’s no question that the time on the island would lead to doin’ it; all desert-island roads lead to fornication – I’m convinced. The bond that the island can form is a unique one, and the island can get even the loneliest of men laid… provided they can build a fire and clean a fish. You’re Screech Powers and find yourself washed waywardly ashore alongside the fetching Kelly Kapowski? No worries my friend, the thick impenetrable layers of highschool social strata do not exist here on the island. Here, you are as boneable as AC Slater. All God’s children got game on the island.

Uh-huh, I’m aware that this is nothing more than a complex construct to daydream about humping unattainable women whom I know – and I’m OK with that because it’s not as direct as simply dreaming about an affair. At least my sex-fantasies are set in impossible situations and only happen after hard-won demonstrations of manhood and survivor/provider instinct. Only if all men had to jump through such a set of pre-daydream-sex hoops – maybe there’d be less indiscriminate humping. Sharaun’s pretty much guaranteed a faithful husband unless a friend of hers and I happen to land ourselves in the remote South Pacific… and even then I have to keep us both alive long enough for the island to make her want me. Those are pretty good odds, if you ask me.

Where that all came from, I have no idea. Goodnight.

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nap in a hammock


I can feel the weather starting to turn: a little warmer with each day, trudging slowly through Spring on our way to what’s sure to be another sweltering Northern California Summer. Every time I go outside in the evening to take out the trash, or, recycling, if you’re more eco-sensitive, I get a little more anxious for my first Summer with a backyard. Oh, and I’ve got plans; I’ve got hammocks to string up and benches to build, foliage and flowers and groundcover to plant, and garden-boxes to build and seed. I want strawberries and maybe corn and tomatoes and fresh herbs; maybe cucumbers and squash or maybe even a watermelon or two. I want summer naps in the hammock, beer in-hand while the iPod shuffles my favorite songs over the speakers and the sun shines. Am I dreaming? I can have this, right?

While reassembling my PC after dropping in my new RAID array, I took the time to throw in a friend-donated PCI card to parallel port (so I can use my trusty laser printer, which has been sitting idle since I upgraded to a legacy-free PC), and I took a chance and re-hooked up my old DVD burner which I disconnected long ago when thought it failed. Turned out, the drive is fine – and I’m back to having a decent speed DVD burner again. Not only that, I removed a PCI Firewire card that I never use, as well as the swappable drive bay hard drive caddy thing that I also never use. Stripped down and back to health, the machine is running like a champ again. Not only that, but the PATA drives that make up my new RAID5 array seem to run much, much cooler than the SATA drives of my old RAID0+1. Don’t know why, but I do know it’s better for the drives and everything in that case. Sorry for the nerd talk, I write what I do.

Travel coming up for work, taking me away from Keaton for the first time. I’ll be doing a US tour in early April: Texas, South Carolina, and Colorado. Then I’m off for a few days in Germany later in April, I think four or five once all is said and done. My first time in Germany, or Europe, for that matter – I’m pretty excited, but leery leaving Sharaun alone with the baby. I know she can take care of herself, I just feel bad taking off and romping ’round the world while she stays home and does the mom thing. I’m also a little worried about the material I’ll be presenting, as, for the first time in a looong time, I’m not the one developing it. Presenting something you created is one thing, but presenting something borne of someone else’s mind and organizational/content-flow preferences is another thing altogether. I just want to make sure I have time to get comfortable with the stuff before I’m up in front of a group of Germans parroting it. Germany!

I guess it’s time to go to bed, I’m not doing any good here anyway. Goodnight.

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guided by the divine


I completely kicked ass at work today, and feel damn good for doing so. In fact, today was one of the best work-days I’ve had in a long time – the planets all seemed to align for me, and things just kept falling into place as if guided by the divine. Coming off a day like that, and arriving home to this brand new food-to-poop-converter Sharaun and I gave life to, puts me in an exceptionally good mood. As I tick off items on my to-do list, my confidence grows. Taking time off for Keaton’s arrival put a more significant dent in that confidence than I’d originally thought.

You wouldn’t think two weeks away would be able to cause much pause, but for me, that feeling of being “out of it” that I described the other day really gnaws at me. I don’t feel right as a “manager” until I’m holding all the reigns of that team of horses before me. I know I’m to blame for my confidence waxing and waning in relation to relatively unrealistic factors, after all, I’m the one who sets these fairly ridiculous OCD-like requirements for myself (i.e. having to have “closure paths” for all the tasks before me before I can sleep easy), and they’re largely unnecessary – but I live and die by them regardless. For this obsessive behavior, I blame my dad. Thanks pops, I still love you.

I suppose it’s all related back to my self-confidence, or lack thereof. I’ve come to understand that my sense of self-assuredness and feeling of being “tied in,” or “in control,” is fairly brittle. Things that wouldn’t be specks of dust in the path for others can topple my cart. I’m not sure where this comes from. Since I was a kid, I think I’ve consciously undervalued myself out of a desire to seem humble. Understating achievements and strengths in front of an audience is natural for those attempting humility, but I think I actually undervalue myself to myself – which is different altogether. That little part of me that knows I’m smart and talented, and “better” than a lot of other people is shut-up tight in a cell at the back of my brain. I know it’s there, I let it have a little time in the yard every now and again – but for the most part I repress it, for whatever reason. This is just me: the not-so-subtle fake-humble guy.

Today I logged on to CNN to see a headline about how we (the USofA) arrested some Colombian drug badguys, which the US authorities have dubbed “narcoterrorists.” No, those aren’t the kind of terrorists that fall asleep suddenly and randomly, rather they are so named due to both their narcotic and terrorist activities. I think this is awesome. We’ve discovered a way to take someone who may be considered as a “vanilla” criminal, and equate him immediately with the likes of Al Qaeda. By simply by appending the root-word “terrorist” to their moniker, we knock the layer of ho-hum dust off their crimes and recast them as glamorous international fugitives. In celebration of our newfound way to arrest anyone we want using semantics, I terroristed up a few more common criminals – just to demonstrate how powerful a tactic this actually is. Check out these cutthroat thugs and tell me you don’t want to go all Operation Carpet Bomb on they asses:

  • jaywalkerrorists
  • atheierrorists
  • litterrorists
  • public intoxicaterrorists
  • terrorespassorists

Awesome, let’s round ’em up and send ’em to Gitmo, stat.

Nite.

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smarter, not harder


First off, I finally added some new pictures to Keaton’s gallery. Now onto the junk.

I walked out of work today to the kind crisp air that follows an afternoon of rain, that clean smell was on the wind – like everything had a good rinsing, and I could see my breath against the grey clouds. I plugged in the iPod and queued up the new Tapes ‘n Tapes album I’d “got” the day before. It’s no news to those who follow the indie buzz that the Tapes ‘n Tapes are the music blogs’ darlings this month, stealing at least some of the Arctic Monkeys arguably-underdeserved hype. Tonight’s our first night where we won’t make up tomorrow and have new or pre-existing guests in the house, our first night where, tomorrow, it’s us and the baby for the foreseeable future; bona-fide parents.

Work is hectic… frantic even. I’m speeding along trying to juggle things as best I can, trying to tie off all the loose ends. There are really three main states of “stuff to do” that I deal with at work, in order of painfulness:

  • Having a ton of stuff to do with no idea how I’m going to do it
  • Having a ton of stuff to do with clear ideas on how to get it done
  • Having everything done

When I got back from baby-vacation, I surveyed my task-landscape and took stock – my situation falling into the first class of “stuff to do” above. When I’m in this situation, things just flapping around with no closure in sight – that’s when I start freaking out. I feel out of control, aimless, at a loss and overwhelmed. I hate being in this situation. So, I start working. And that brings us to the present.

As of now, I’m somewhere in between the 1st two with my current “to do” list. The work I’m currently scrambling to do is merely plans for doing the actual work I have to do. As wrong, or backwards, as that may sound – I’ve learned it’s actually essential. For me, it’s easier to make a first-pass at the list, identifying paths to closure for everything and then acting on those paths in parallel, rather than taking them one item at a time serially. I think lots of people would begin attacking things one-by-one, closing each out in turn and moving to the next. I, however, like to take tasks like this and move them to my second stress-class: a pile of things to do with clear plans on how I’ll get each one done. Once I get there, I feel much better. Not only does it make me feel better, I actually believe it makes me work better. It’s like the Chinese acrobats who set plates spinning atop sticks: they run from stick to stick and get each plate spinning, then step back and watch for the first plates to being to slow and give them a second spin as they do. For me, it’s easier to manage several things at once, as long as the effort was put in up front to get them pointed in the right direction initially. I guess multitasking is just part of the modern workplace.

To close, some crumbs of stories:

I got my free iPod from freeipods.com the other day, or got Sharaun’s free iPod – since I’m now able to return the favor she did me a while back. In some respects, I can’t believe it actually came. And, they send a nifty t-shirt and mousepad to boot.

In other iPod news, although it’s been around for a while – I recently personally discovered the great iPod software SharePod. A 300k executable that you put on, and run from, your iPod. Once run, you have direct access to all music on the iPod, and can do everything you can with iTunes, and more: add songs to your library, delete songs from your library, play songs, and the most important – copy songs from your iPod to a PC (something iTunes doesn’t support). And, since ephpod hoses 5G ‘pods, this little piece of software is brilliant for getting your music back off your iPod. But, the real beauty of the app is the fact that it runs on the iPod, meaning you can plug your iPod into anyone’s computer and take/give music with ease – all without said person having to have any software installed on their end. Brilliant, just brilliant.

The Daily Show does Bush vs. Bush:

Also, I wanted to thank the fine folks over at Cheetah for sending me a free registration code for their great Cheetah DVD Burner software. Their policy is to send registration codes for links to their software, or kind reviews on download sites. So, in an attempt to round out my Cheetah line, I’m now linking to their CD burning app – which, in trial form, appears to be equally as awesome (and free!) as the DVD app. If you’re looking for slick, guilt-free alternatives to whatever app you’re currently pirating – check out the peeps at Cheetah for some awesome non-soul-damning software.

Goodnight folks, I loves ya.

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into your brain


It’s Monday as I write, and it’s the last day of my week-long “working from home” vacation extension. If I were grading the amount of “work” I’m getting done while “working from home,” I’d say I’m at about 75% of my in-office capacity. It’s not that I can’t do it without being distracted, it’s that I just don’t knuckle down enough while here. So, in part, I’ll be glad to actually get back into the office tomorrow where I can be 100% worker-Dave and work my way back into the flow of things. I’ll miss the baby, and the abject laziness without regret, and hanging out with Sharaun all day eating gingersnaps – but it will be good to actually feel like I’m truly “earning” my paycheck again. Oh, and before we get into whatever we’re about to get into – I added a bunch of new pictures to Keaton’s gallery. I dunno, maybe you’re not as amped as I am about my new daughter… I suppose that’s understandable. But even so, I’m gonna keep posting pictures and linkdropping right here, mostly because you’re not the boss of me.

Tonight Sharaun ran out to the grocery store and left me to man the baby-ship. Turns out, Keaton was still a half-hour away from her next “scheduled” feeding (I like how, when they’re infants, they’re not “eating,” they’re “feeding.” Like throwing slop in the trough for the pigs every day at 4pm – “feeding time.”). However, we’ve sort of noticed a pattern in her evening eating habits – the pattern being she picks up her schedule starting around sundown, wanting to eat every couple hours vs. every three. Needless to say, she was not happy being stuck with dad – the only member of the family with milk in her breasts not around. So, I bounced and sang, swung and patted, hugged and kissed – did pretty much everything and anything to try and calm her down. I had a modicum of success, for the most part keeping her occupied between raspy wails, but I was a poor substitute for boobs. Hopefully, as Sharaun learns to love the robot suckling-machine, I can play a poor mammary substitute with a bottle of fresh stuff in mom’s stead. ‘Cause man, ain’t nothing piercing like a baby’s hungry cry… I mean right into your brain.

Sometime over the weekend, my SATA RAID array went south. Truth be told, I knew it was going to happen – the thing’s been acting flaky now for the better part of a year. Randomly on reboot I’ll get a degraded or failed message from the controller, but usually a reboot will make the thing recognize properly. It’s been tenuous forever, and I keep saying I’ll replace it one day – but working in the “computer industry,” the last thing I want to do at home is fix computers. So, I’ve been ignoring it, rebooting until it works, chugging along and filling that crap array with more and more data I don’t want to lose. So, now, the standard frantic data copy to some intermediate drive, RAID replacement and re-copy. I’m going to a larger PATA drive array, I made a purchase of four 250GB drives long ago when there was some rebate offer – planning to change the dodgy array all along. As a bonus, aside from a non-crap array, I’ll be doubling my capacity to 500GB – which is good, as I was fast approaching my old 240GB cap. I hate working on computers, I really, really hate it.

Back to work. Cellphone alarm’ll ring ’round 6:40am and I’ll snooze it till 7am. 10min shower, dress, pour four cups of coffee into my metal carry-cup and hit the road. Tomorrow I’ll dig my fingernails in, grip tight for my 8hrs and try and kill so much work that I can sleepwalk through Friday afternoon. I imagine it being busy, when I get back; busy like it was when I left. I plan on coming home for lunch so I can hold my daughter – maybe she’ll be in one of those good moods where she just looks up at the lights and makes little snorting sounds. I think that would make my day.

Goodnight.

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like a ton of bricks


First day back at work, even if it is from the comfort of my couch in slippers, and I’m already ready for another baby-vacation. It’s always been hard for me to truly work when I’m “working from home,” so I’ve been closeting myself away in the computer room – attempting to be isolated as much as possible from the hustle and bustle of the new-baby rest-of-the-house area. It’s working OK so far, I was able to catch up on mail and at least bring myself up to speed on what’s going on – now if I could just read enough e-mail to make me care. Nah, that’s unfair; I care… just not as much as I do about the new little life that’s sleeping behind the office double-doors, just in the other room. Somehow work just pales in comparison.

While I was sleeping on a hide-a-bed in the corner of the hospital room where our daughter was born, I’d put the iPod on “shuffle songs” and drift off to sleep to some rand() generated mix of tunes. Today I took advantage of the rarity of recent days that was sunshine and mowed the front and back lawns during a working-from-home lunch break. Again, I put the iPod on “shuffle songs” and let the little computer decide what I’d hear. It was during that random listening session that I got the idea for a blog feature centered around the iPod’s “shuffle songs” function: the iPod random memory generator. For me, songs are tied to memories almost as closely as smells are (I’ve written about it before, so won’t put myself through documenting it again). So, this evening while Sharaun and her mom were out shopping, I put the iPod on shuffle and began remembering. The rules: I document what the song makes me think of, what I remember thinking about the song, and I skip songs that have no appreciable memories. Here goes:

The Byrds – Eight Miles High
Middle-school summer, maybe 7th or 8th grade. I think I 1st heard this song as part of some “deep discount” bin 60’s psychedelic comp cassettes. The seemingly random guitar jumble that makes up the bridge immediately turned me on, as did the foreboding harmonies throughout the track. Another one of those songs that made me want to try marijuana.

The Beatles – When I’m 64
Middle school again, 8th grade this time. Sitting in the backseat of my best friend Kyle’s mom’s miniature Dodge Colt, Kyle’s had her put his Sgt. Pepper cassette in the deck. At the time, I’m deeply in 7th-grade-love with Kyle’s little sister – something about which I think he has no idea. In reality, sometime later Kyle tells me all his friends eventually come to be infatuated with his sister. I felt bad, but that can-count-the-weeks-on-my-hand closet “relationship” did wonders for me on the road to the perfected womanizing I’d so enjoy come my nubile college years.

Ministry – Flashback
9th grade. I’ve taken to wearing black steel-toed boots, long back socks which, when coupled with my too-long black shorts, leave only an inch of exposed calf, a Skinny Puppy t-shirt, and shades. My lord, I must’ve made the worst looking wannabe goth of all time. I remember diving into the industrial/noise scene head-first. Fueled, of course, by a fascination with the music – and then later bleeding into a misguided attempt at adopting the culture. I tried my best though: bought incense, outlined my windows in velcro and affixed a hook-side copy of the velcro square to pieces of 5mil black visqueen which I could use to completely blot out all external light from my bedroom, dressed the part, etc. I did everything short of dying my hair, painting my walls black, and posing for pictures in graveyards. What a joke; but what a memory.

Dungen – Sluta Följa Efter
Fall 2004. Riding around with the windows down, this absolutely euphoric album blaring. Sharaun is complaining, they’re not singing in English, she can’t understand them, they sound all “fjordy” and stupid, like the hurdy-gurdy Swedish Chef muppet or something. But God as my witness, this album is infectious – saccharine and dreamy, with layered cymbal, bursting beats and spinny guitars. Eventually, I oblige and change to something more “intelligible” for Sharaun’s sake – but I think this LP will always remind me of my last pre-baby summer.

The Decemberists – Los Angeles
Driving the 405, headed to a yacht on which my best-friend from 5th grade is about to be married. Before this, I’ve only seen him once since I left California so many years ago. A surreal experience, seeing him again and being able to be there at his wedding – so many years in the future.

Donovan – Riki Tiki Tavi
College. I have a one-bedroom place in town, Sharaun stays with me most nights even though we’d be condemned to Hell should her family find out. We don’t hump, I swear. My computer is stashed away in a desk that’s been shoved into my walk-in closet – and it’s here that I struggle through my first few engineering courses. Every night I fall asleep to music, and Sharaun with me by default. I’d picked up a bunch of Donovan LPs remastered as CDs at the local college used-CD store, and kicked them fairly often. Visions of pizza boxes on the counter and second-hand futon furniture… college.

Sleater Kinney – Little Babies
Junior year of college. I take a 36hr bus trip halfway across the country to visit Kyle in his Air Force barracks. An amazing journey in itself – but while there he introduces me to some new music (as he’s done for years). Sleater Kinney is one of the acts he turns me on to. Without re-writing what’s already been written, here’s what I remember when I hear this song. Oh, and I think there’s a paragraph in here too.

That’s enough of that for now. It’s fun though, I think I’ll try it again sometime.

Today the baby stepped up her game and launched a three-front attack on her poor old dad. Sharaun pawned her off on me for a wet diaper change, so I stripped her down and laid her on the changing table for a wipedown. She immediately peed on herself, and the table. Pee on her back, legs, everywhere. I cleaned up the pee, wiped down her entire body, and laid her back down on a cloth diaper. I turned to reach for a fresh diaper, turned back, and she’d peed on herself again. Wiped her down, put her on a new cloth diaper, and began strapping on her new clean one. Then the coup de grace, she spit up all over her face, neck, and hair. A three-fluid attack pretty much warrants a bath… those scented wipes can only go so far.

Oh, and I’m happy to report that the dead-animal smell which was coming from my beautiful new daughter’s nasty bellybutton is waning – as the shriveled thing finally made up its mind and dropped off. But man, we had neighborhood dogs ringing the doorbell and asking, in an extremely complicated sequence of barks and whines, which I eventually deciphered, if they could roll around on her. I don’t know if I have an extra-sensitive nose or what, but, to me, it really was that bad. Apparently, rotting stuff stinks. Sure, they look cute in photos when there’s not liquid poop running down their legs and curdled boob-milk leaking from their mouths. I was misled, people, babies are nothing like their presskits.

Until tomorrow, hope all is well out there in the blogosphere. Oh, and a warning, tomorrow’s will be a completely canned entry about religion – written long-ago and saved for a “vacation” day. Despite this admission, I urge you to keep reading, and keep commenting – it’s what keeps me going.

Goodnight.