time for sleep.

Baby stopped sleeping through the night, some time in early to mid November.
I think it was likely when she got sick. She would wake up, we'd say "oh, she's sick" and go trot into her room without waiting to see if she'd go back to sleep.
In our defense, she WAS pretty sick.
Then a long weekend in Atlanta @ family's house, she wakes up, we jump to quiet her so as not to disturb the 13 other people sleeping elsewhere in the house...

and viola, it's 6 weeks later, we've not gotten a good night's sleep, and life's not quite what it should be.

The wife decided a few days ago that she just plain refused to let the baby cry herself back to sleep, which was a bit of a blow.


Cut to last night.

We're lying in bed, after dusting off two different books on infant sleeping that we had purchased a little over a year ago, looking for advice /tips on trying to fix the problem.

The books serve no practical purpose, save for getting us to laugh.
They'd probably also work as a coaster....

The most ridiculous was from the No Cry Sleep Solution. It was a.....nine stage process, I think. Each stage geared toward moving your kid just a liiiiiiiiiiitttttllllleeee bit closer to putting themselves back to sleep unaided.

Nine stages, each additional stage to be obtained VERY gradually.

stage one - do what you're doing now, but for not quite as long. put kid to bed drowsy. if kid reacts poorly, pick her up, and keep doing what you're doing, until you can get her to NOT react poorly when you put her in the crib.

Stage two, shorten it up even more, put kid to bed....pick her up... blah blah etc.

Stage three......

you get the idea.

Stage nine has you standing juuuuuuuuuuuust outside her door, using only verbals to talk her into going back to sleep.

the shear silliness of this cracked us up.

"I think stage 10 would be standing a little further away from the doorway.... stage 11 would be talking her to sleep from the vicinity of the kitchen sink......"
"stage 17 would be from the doorway leading out of the dining room into the hallway"
"stage 21 would be just rolling over in bed, and yelling at her to shut the hell up and go back to sleep. but she won't hear us because she'll be off at college at this point......"

Ironically, we started the sleep training nonsense a year ago today. bought a couple different books before christmas, read up on different ways to get her to sleep in her crib, because she and my wife were not co-sleeping successfully. The books were ridiculous a year ago.
Made us laugh then, too.

The most ridiculous one at THAT time also came from the No Cry Sleep Solution.
Put the baby in the crib, but right next to your bed. gradually move the crib a few inches further from your bed, over time, until it was a few feet away.
By the time it was down the freakin' hall and into the baby's room, she will have been out of it for like...12 years.
"Dad, can I borrow the car, I need to go study at Jennifer's"
"not until you push your crib out of the kitchen and into your room. It's really in the way...."

Anyhow, after shaking our heads at the methods we read a year ago, we decided to just chuck her in the crib and let her cry it out, sleep-training old-school.
And it worked, fairly well, though it was not easy. She gradually started putting herself back to sleep, and doing so quicker and quicker, until we'd get a couple nights a week at least of no waking at all.

Cut again to last night. we gave up on the books, had a good laugh, and went to sleep.

She woke us up at 11:30, I guess, cus I didn't look at the clock. I just know that Wendy had gotten up, and that she woke me at 12:45 to take the baby, cuz she'd been up for over an hour...
I had her asleep 20 minutes later, and got back in bed.

"You win" my wife said.
"I tried one of those suggestions we read tonite, she farted all over it. We can let her cry it out."

A couple hours later, she woke up again, and started her usual hollering. We fell back asleep.
awhile later, we woke up, and there was complete quiet coming from the baby's room.
yes!

So, we'll see what happens next, and how long it will take until we get a full night's sleep again.

Gotta have this sh*t fixed, before she gets old enough to sleep in a regular bed. we really don't want her to be knocking on our door 3 times a night....

Happy...

...New Year.
2008 was not an easy year, but had some very cool moments.
We're hoping 2009 is a very cool year, with only a few un-easy moments.

If we can keep drunk drivers from smashing into our house; emergency room and hospital visits to a minimum; and the wolves from our door in general, we'll consider it a success.
a vacation that includes sufficient amounts of sleep would be extra credit.

Actually being able to use my kayak, would be the cherry on top.



...Birthday to me.

Turned 41 the other day. celebrated it by getting up and coming to work, without waking up my wife or baby; getting to the office to find out that my b-day was completely ignored by my co-workers; going home and opening a few presents, eating leftovers for dinner, and then going to bed, only to get up two hours later when my daughter woke up screaming.
She's done this every night since mid November, not sleeping all the way through in aprox 6-7 weeks.
To say that I'm feeling every one of my 41 years today, would be an understatement.

DID have a few people over for ice cream and opera cake the night before my birthday, which was nice.

...Christmas to all.
my daughter's juuuuuust old enough to kind of "get" christmas.
Certainly understood the new toys were for her.
Was enamored with the nativity we put under the tree, it tended to end up looking like Tokyo, Post-Godzilla.
She thought the baby jesus figurine was the coolest, probably because it was, you know: a baby.
carried it everywhere when we'd let her, which resulted in the following quotes, followed by much laughter.


"don't put our lord and saviour down the ball chute!"
"no, no. You can't put the baby jesus in your poop."

christmas this year also meant lots of hosting of family.
three days / two nights of hosting my folks, and had the family's christmas gathering at our house.
Chaos, anarchy, yelling, messes, lots of cooking, etc.
A good time had by all, but was cool with my folks leaving on the third day.
Just in time for my MIL to arrive for the entire week, 22-26th.
Also harmless, and also glad when she left, just because it meant no more having to entertain anyone.
And I could once again walk naked from my bedroom to the bathroom in the morning.

Some day I'll expound on my theory that ones' day goes downhill the moment one has to put on pants in the morning...
Naked = good.
Pants = bad.

It's a bit more detailed than that, but you get the general idea.

bitter cold, and pelting the president with shoes

So, I went to bed last night, it was 50 degrees.
That's a "WTF?" all by itself, for mid december in Chicago.

But wait....

Woke up this morning, it was 9 degrees.
Temp dropped forty one degrees in four hours.

WTF????

bitter cold this morning, didn't care for it all.

Heard something when I got to work however, that warmed my heart.

President Bush ducks shoes in Baghdad.

Everyone was chuckling about it, talking about how he's got good reflexes, etc.

I attribute it to lots of practice.

He's been ducking all kinds of things, for most of his adult life.
Responsibility
consequences
the media
straight answers....

Oh, The People You'll meet!!!

Oh the people you'll meet!

Another Patrick Murray original.

Not written by Dr. Seuss, that's for sure.


Oh the people you'll meet!
As you venture down the stairs,
off of the street, and go underground.
Follow the shaking floors, and
the roaring sound

step, sniffing, through the el train door,
deciding to sit down if it doesn't smell like pee or ass
or something more.

Oh the people you'll meet!
sitting on the shiny train
trying not to make eye contact - it's all in vain
Crazy doesn't need to look you in the eyes
To be crazy.
It's always a surprise
The people that you meet.

Most are harmless, headed to work
or to catch a plane
Some are unwashed
a few are insane.

The troubled are the ones that stand out, 'tis true
As being different than me and you.
Oh the people you'll meet!
that serve to remind you that your life is sweet

Because you're not talking to yourself
or to someone I can't see
Or screaming at a wall
Or sitting in your pee

You're not preaching, preaching, all the time
about the evils of going to work
You're not panhandling for a dime
Or changing seats at every stop
or being harassed by a transit cop
Because you travel with nine trash bags full of things
not described in childrens songs
at least not any song that we sing

You're not a grown man who thinks he's a spy
talking into a toy wrist communicator with a
happy gleam in your eye

You're not a one-eyed screamer, demanding my seat
Because you're unstable, you yell
and then you prop up your feet
after I let you sit down, but I was too slow
So you continue to berate me as the train starts to go.

Oh the people you'll meet!
Oh the people you'll smell!
Oh the people you wish you could avoid
When you're riding on the El.

But I still wish them well.

five christmas cartoons of note.

#1 Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown.

not a huge fan of the dialog, liked the general plot idea ok. Loved the music, of course.
The thing about this, and some of the other peanut cartoons, that I really liked?
The quiet.

This was a slow, peaceful cartoon, with emphasis put on what was being said. screen time actually given to the characters simply walking from point A to point B.
For want of a better term, this cartoon is..... relaxing.


#2 The Tick vs. Santa Clause (AKA: The Tick Loves Santa)

A petty thief dressed as Santa gets electrocuted, and finds he can reproduce himself. He creates an army of criminal santas and goes on a crime spree in The City.
Only the Tick can stop his nefarious plans, but can't bring himself to hurt Santa Clause...
He discovers that a static electric shock causes the replicants to dissolve, when he rubs one of them on the head.

Yep. Noogies save christmas.

Hey, it's the Tick, for christ's sake. If you've never seen this animated series from the early 90's, you need to. It was brilliant.
The Tick - huge, strong, nearly indestructible, a little dim and child like.
Arthur - His doughy, accountant-turned-moth-man sidekick. Throw in some crazy supervillains with equally odd nefarious plans, and some secondary superhero characters, and it was entertaining as hell.

The Tick: Lowly wretch! This is the last time you make epic naughty in Santa threads!
The Tick: Like a great blue salmon of justice, the mighty Tick courses upstream to the very spawning grounds of Evil!


#3 How The Grinch Stole Christmas

duh. great direction, courtesy of Chuck Jones, and truly inspired casting of Boris Karloff as the voice of the Grinch, and the narrator.

A great adaptation of a teriffic book by Dr. Seuss. There are many good cartoon adaptations of his books, and not a single good live action adaptation.

Christmas day IS in your grasp, as long as you have hands to clasp.

# 4: Pinky and the Brain's Christmas special.

Pinky and the brain. One's a genius, the other's insane.

And that's the brilliance of this cartoon series. You get to decide who's which.

The christmas episode won an Emmy, by the way.

Pinky and the Brain travel to the north pole. Pinky wants to meet Santa, the Brain's created a toy that hypnotizes people, and wants Santa to (unknowningly) distribute the toy worldwide, so The Brain can hypnotize everyone, and finally achieve his goal of World Domination.

#5 is a combo, cuz you put 'em both together and you almost have one good cartoon.
Year without a Santa Claus
Ok. This was actually crap. As were all the Rankin Bass Stop-Action animation cartoons (Rudolph, Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July) It's probably un-american to say so, but - crap.
Visually interesting, as you don't see stop-action animation anymore. Storylines, etc.... dodgy. And big on sentimental.
The adult me doesn't like gooey sentimentalism in my entertainment choices.
And why was Mickey Rooney always doing one of the voices? There had to be a lot of actors looking for an easy paycheck when these were made. Did he own stock?

While they were all largely crap, a couple of them were partially redeemed by fun characters, or at least a fun song.

Heat Miser and Cold Miser were whiny, mama's boys. But I liked their songs.
Like 'em? They stick in my head like a deer tick on a camping trip.

You can take the rest of the cartoon: the two dim elves, the sickly baby reindeer, the whiny sniffly santa clause, the doe-eyed, buck toothed boy and stuff them in a stocking or something else suitably tied in with the holiday theme of this post.


Santa Clause is Coming To Town

See above rant about Rankin Bass cartoons. What saves this one? Burgermeister Meisterburger, of course.
and the catchy "Put one foot in front of the other".

It's a story about the origin of Santa, how a young Kris Kringle built toys as an act of civil disobedience, corrupting the town's children, in direct violation of the law, grew a beard to disguise his face, and then got old and fat.

Oh, and an evil winter warlock finds a few kernels of magic corn in his pockets, after a gift of a toy makes him the goodhearted winter warlock, feeds them to some deer, who in turn bust everyone out of jail.
Now you know the origin of the eight flying reindeer. They ate some "magic" corn, and then became accessories to several felonies.

Mrs Clause is explained as well. She's the hot, single, good hearted school teacher of course.
She has a thing for bad boys, apparently, and is smitten with the rebellious, toy-making rabble rouser. She quits her job, leaves her home, and goes off to live with him and his midget friends in the woods. And then got old and fat.
The End.
And damn if Mickey Rooney's not the voice of Santa Clause again.


Hey, I know 40 year old me is not the audience at which the Rankin / Bass cartoons were aimed.
I mock because I can.

Kids still love 'em, my daughter will doubtless enjoy them when she's a little older, and my wife still loves 'em; even though she'll joke along with me the whole time about their relative cheesiness.

And that's why they made my list, really.

five christmas movies

Was watching Elf over the weekend.
Will Farrell, like Jim Carrey, is a limited exposure kind of actor for me.
He plays arrogant and dumb at the same time, very well.
But the joke gets old.

When he tries his hand at something different, like he did in Stranger Than Fiction and Elf, however, he impresses the crap outta me.

As it's that time of year, I'll try to come up with my $0.02 worth of five best holiday movies in the whole world, ever.
In no particular order.

Keep in mind I'm not a very sentimental guy, and my humour runs dark. Also keep in mind that when I refer to them as the best holiday movies in the whole world, ever, it's possible I'm less than 100% serious.


Long Kiss Goodnight - Geena Davis, Samuel Jackson.
A heartwarming tale of an amnesiac professional killer, living the life of suburban housewife until. She has no idea who she was before she work up on a beach, three months pregnant, many years earlier.
Until she hits a deer, driving a drunk home from her christmas party. She gradually regains her memory and job skills, just in time to save (WAY) upstate New York from a fake terrorist attack.
The attack is orchestrated by a government agency looking to increase how much money it gets from the fed government, in the coming fiscal year. In the 2nd or third (but final) thrilling climax of this movie ( too many endings, a'la Speed), she flies through the air on a string of christmas lights, and kills the father of her daughter, then is saved by a ridiculously battered Sam Jackson, and they drive away as the tanker explodes behind them....
Nothing says Merry Christmas like an over-the-top violent amnesiac assassin movie.

The Ref - Denis Leary, Kevin Spacey, Judy Davis.

A cat burglar botches a job, and hi-jacks a car driven by a fighting couple on their way home from marriage counseling. The town goes on lock-down because of the botched job, so he hides out at the warring couples' house until the heat dies down, pretending to be their marriage counselor, as their dysfunctional family arrives for christmas eve dinner.

Mean, mean, mean movie. Laughed my ass off the first time I watched it. Leary's great as Gus, a down and out kinda guy who is constantly surprised by the level of animosity and venom on display within the family he's holding hostage. Kevin Spacey does snide well, Judy Davis does pretentious artsy-type well, and the in-laws are so over-the-top obnoxious...
A little too warm and fuzzy at the end, but starts so far away from warm and fuzzy that you know it's gotta end on a cuddly note.

Gus: Do you know what this family needs? A mute.


Scrooged - Bill Murray.
Any version of this story, where Karol Kane and David Johansen are two of the ghosts - gold, baby. Pure gold. And the scene at the end, with the big speech, is riveting. And pre-ghost scrooge as a heartless TV exec was a refreshing update to the old old money lender scrooge. As was a black, female Cratchett character.

ELF - Will Farrell.
Damn, he was fun to watch in this movie. Great supporting cast as well. And Zooey Daschnel (Sp?) is dreamy. Scenes where he confronts a dept. store Santa ("You sit on a throne of lies!!!!"), where he comes in contact with a midget children's' book author ("he's an angry elf"), and where he finds out who his father is, and that he's on the "naughty list" are particular standouts in a movie with no real weak scenes. Farrell's a fearless actor, and this movie worked only because he took the role seriously.

Scrooge - Albert Finney stars in this musical version of A Christmas Carol, released in 1970.
I can honestly say I'd never seen or even heard of this version, until my wife introduced me to it not too long into our relationship. And I was none to excited about watching it the first time, given that
a) it was yet ANOTHER adaptation of an overly adapted book.
b) it was a musical.

I'm a guy. I don't really enjoy musicals all that much. Something about my characters breaking into spontaneous song and complex dance routines makes it difficult for me to suspend disbelief and let myself be caught up in a story.

But Albert Finney's performance as both a young and old Scrooge is amazing. You can see how he became a truly miserly and loathsome creature over time. And while some of the songs make the narrative drag, "I Like Life" and "Thank You Very Much" are great fun.
The scene in Hell is suitably unpleasant, and a bit...psychedelic in nature. Almost.
Hey, it WAS released in 1970. And The Ghost of Christmas Present is a guy I'd really like to party with, ESPECIALLY if he's bringing the wine.


So, there you go. I'll probably think of three better ones the moment i post this.

Next up - five best christmas themed cartoons. exciting, isn't it?

road rage - thanksgiving

It started innocently enough.

It really did.

I was just driving to work this morning.

A little back-filler, if you will.

I work 28 miles away from my house.
23 of those are spent on I-294, locally known as the Tri-State. the other five miles is spent on 95th street, getting to and from the highway.
In the morning, it takes me as long to drive the five miles, as it does to drive the 23.

Ok, now on with the story.

Did I mention that it all started innocently enough?

The woman in front of me at the stoplight, did not press her right foot down on the gas pedal, thus keeping her car from moving forward, when the light turned green.

To keep myself in check, I've instituted a slow 3-count for such situations. I give the driver in front of me slow three count before tapping briefly on my horn. And it's just that, a tap.
Honest.

And that's what the helmet-haired honey got from me this morning. A slow 3-count, and a brief horn tap.

Which caused her to go into a fit of rage.

6:45am, the day before Thanksgiving, on a fairly empty street, and I've managed to enrage someone.
I've got mad skills.

She's in her mid-50's, makeup looks like it was applied by a clown, afore-mentioned stiff helmet of hair, driving a Lincoln, with bobble-head dogs lined up across the back window, and she's flipping me the bird and yelling at me in her rear-view, as she slllllllllllllllooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwlllllyyyyyyyyyy began moving.
She was doing five miles an hour, to spite me, and was making sure I knew it.

NO problem. I've got three lanes to maneuver within, and no personal issues with the glowering clown in front of me, who's bent on showing me the error of my ways. I'm just trying to get to work.

And I don't even want to go to work.

So I shift over a lane, and then into the other one when it opened up. a minute later I looked over, and she had accelerated, so that she was keeping even with me, two lanes over, still visibly upset, hunched over steering wheel, taking her eyes off the road to glare at me some more.

Geezus.

As we got close to the Tri-State, I had to get over to the middle lane, to pass someone, and....There she was. She actually slipped in behind me, and was tailgating me. I was beyond amused at the situation by this point.
Was this crazy bitch going to get on the highway with me? Certainly I could lose her easily enough, if she did, but who wants to play games on a busy interstate?

I signaled to change lanes so I could get onto the highway, and she leaned on her horn.
man.....

Someone lets me over, she comes up beside me again, honks and yells one more time, and drives off, NOT getting on the highway with me.

I breathe a sigh of relief as I ease up the on-ramp and merge with traffic and continue on my merry way.

Happy Thanksgiving ma'am, whoever you are.

May you spend it alone and lonely, ignored by family and ex-friends who you've repelled by your anger and willingness to lash out randomly at the slightest provocation.

If you stop to think about how you've gotten to this point, you will doubtless blame everyone else.