Christmas Letter, 2011

Last December, some may recall, I chose to put our annual Christmas letter online. This decision was met with both scorn and contempt. A number of folks, apparently, had become accustomed to the old-timey feel of the traditional Christmas letter—paper in hand, sitting next to their gas fire places while reading the letter by halogen bulb—and they informed me of their disappointment via email, texting and various social media outlets. I felt bad about this. However, the fact still remains: if I didn’t take the time to mail out dozens of Christmas letters before a crying little baby moved into bed with me, what makes anyone think I would do it now?

Speaking of babies, those of you who are regular readers (all three of you) have probably noticed that there has been quite a bit less to read regularly. This is almost entirely my son’s fault. As mentioned, he is a baby, and, like most babies, he requires an absurd amount of attention. The remaining blame lies squarely on the shoulders of my daughter. She is a toddler, and, like most toddlers, she insists we play “unicorns and ponies and horsies” with her nearly every waking moment of the day. What does the “unicorn and ponies and horsies” game consist of? It consists of her telling us that whatever it is that we are doing at that moment is terribly wrong and needs to stop. It is exhausting.

Needless to say, we love every minute of them. How can we not? They’re great; a true blessing. They’re healthy, good-natured, and, like the “Get out of Jail Free” cards on the Monopoly game, they consistently rescue us from doing things we don’t want to do.

For example, if we are invited to a social function we’d rather not attend, we might play the Toddler Card. “Yeah, I can’t, my daughter is, well, she’s sick. . . and we’d better not take her out.” Or, if an enthusiastic passerby asks us about some landscaping issues, we might put down the Baby Card. “I know, I know, those weeds, really, those weeds just look terrible, such an eyesore, I know. Maybe next year, when the baby’s a little older.”

Perhaps one of us has been “nominated” to fulfill a dull and time-consuming extra assignment at work. Then we’d probably go all out and hit them with the Tiny Young Children Card, which is particularly useful if the person requesting our services can recall their own parenting-of-young-children days. “Man, I really wish I could serve on that committee, you know, it’s really important and I’m honored I was drafted, but with two small kids at home, I just really don’t think I could give it the attention it deserves.”

The fact is, I’m not at all ashamed to admit that we’ve used both our children numerous times this year to get us out of situations in which we’d be expected to wear uncomfortable pants. As the old saying goes, “Hey, they’re only young once. Enjoy every moment with them. Especially if they keep you from pulling weeds.”

Unfortunately, neither one of our kids were able to keep us from going to work five days a week to do our part in dismantling civilization. As most of you know, we are still public school teachers, and, as has been reiterated numerous times in the last couple of years, school teachers are lazy, greedy, and stupid. Not only do we make an absurd amount of money over the course of nine months not teaching anybody anything ever, upon retiring we don’t even have the common decency to immediately die.

This selfishness has basically caused all of our society’s economic problems, and, thus, to punish us for this mess, a few key pieces of legislation have either been put into place or soon will be. Fortunately, these laws should adequately solve our state’s enormous budget woes in less than half a century, or whenever our next governor gets out of prison, whichever comes first.

On a much lighter note, most of my tomato plants died this year before I wanted them to. This was my first actual garden and it consisted of four tomato plants, four green pepper plants and four jalapeño pepper plants, which is about four more jalapeño plants than I needed. The tomato plants did quite well for about three weeks in early summer, a part of my life I’ve since dubbed “My Red Delicious June.” Then it became quite hot and dry, and they just kind of stopped doing anything except mocking me from my kitchen window. Most importantly, though, I’ve learned some valuable lessons which I will forget next spring when I try again.

Another project we tried out this year had much more satisfying results, at least for me, and that was homemade beer making. A wide variety of beer-making kits exist, from complicated, multi-step, rather expensive units that make really, really delicious beer, all the way down to what I have in my basement. My beer-making kit is the Hamburger Helper of the industry, which is exactly what I need with two small children and a wife who doesn’t like beer that much anyway. Some may ask, “Aren’t you setting a bad example for your children, brewing alcohol in your own home?” The answer to that is “No, don’t be silly. Beer is a food. Monks brew beer.” If anything, I am setting a great example because I am teaching them to be resourceful and provide for themselves. Instead of buying the stuff in a store, I order everything needed online and wait for it to be delivered to my doorstep via Federal Express . Also, if society ever collapses, who do you think people will run to when they need to make quick and easy weapons out of broken glass bottles? Basically I’m a survivalist without the cache of military-grade firearms.

In closing, 2011 was pretty cool. The Cardinals earned their eleventh World Series; Blagojevich earned his fourteen years in prison. And the rest of us? Well, we survived. We survived the ice storm, the tornado storms, and the BS storm from Washington. (Remember how they almost shut down the federal government this summer and made us all look like incredible jerks, and then pretended that they could solve the problem by having a secret committee, which made us look like jerks again? Ah, the memories. I’m so glad they got all that fixed.) Also, it’s important to consider that this might be our penultimate letter, what with the Mayan calendar ending next December and what not. With that in mind, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to copy, paste it, and print it out. Take some time to read it by the fire. In fact, to make the experience even more down to earth, you could put it into a bright red Christmas envelope and mail it to yourself. After all, the post office could really use some help. Merry Christmas.

A Big Girl

The Pacifier Fairy is not real. Very much like her half-sister the Tooth Fairy and her step-brother the Lost Toy Elf, the Pacifier Fairy is a made-up creature designed to help lazy parents manipulate their children. Case in point, she visited our home recently to help us wean our two-year-old daughter from her most prized possession. Experts differ on the merits of the pacifier, but most would agree that the sooner a child can function without one, the better. After all, when a toddler must remove the pacifier before she tells you what she wants for breakfast, then pops it back in, it’s probably time to consider its removal.

Like her half-sister, the Pacifier Fairy takes something from the child in exchange for cash. Unlike the Tooth Fairy, however, the Pacifier Fairy must be invited. We learned this rule and others from our daughter’s favorite PBS program, Super Why. For those of you without small children, Super Why is the younger brother of Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk fame. Super Why, along with his companions—Little Red Riding Hood, the princess from the pea story, and the son of the surviving little pig—solve problems by jumping into classic children’s books and adjusting the text. Just like in real life.

This program, along with the DVR, has played a crucial role in keeping our daughter stationary while we comb her hair, load the car, or search the house for a needed item, like her baby brother. And, because the program has also aided in her language development, we don’t even feel all that guilty about it.

On the program, the Pacifier Fairy exchanged a character’s pacifier for something better; something more grownup. Seizing the opportunity, we suggested to our daughter that it was entirely plausible that the Pacifier Fairy might be making a stop in our neighborhood in the near future and would most likely be more than willing to drop by for a look at the merchandise. She mulled this over for a few weeks, aided by the occasional hint. We assumed the time might be ripe, as she’d gotten in the habit of declaring quite loudly and with no apparent instigation that “I’m a big girl. I don’t need pacy!” before tossing it across the room, occasionally into her brother’s face.

Over the weeks the pacifier became a sleeping aid for naps and bedtimes, and eventually a tool to be used solely at night. Despite our hinting, though, it remained a crucial component of her bedtime ritual. But then one evening, after a day of water-color painting with grandma, she told us she wanted some paints. Now. At 8:30 at night.

Instinctually I began to dismiss her suggestion, but then my wife, whose brain functions much better than mine does after dark, seized on what she knew to be a golden opportunity.

“Well, sweety, paints cost money, but I wonder if the Pacifier Fairy could give you some money to buy paints if you gave her your pacifier.

“Yeah,” I joined. “And then maybe tomorrow we can go to Wal-Mart and buy some paints!”

But she’d heard little of my comment.

“Paints!” She shouted, tossing her formerly-prized possession across the kitchen. “I don’t need a pacy! I a big girl!”

And thus a bizarre, borderline-occult little ceremony began. We placed her three remaining pacifiers into a used cottage-cheese container, and then placed the bait onto our well-lit front porch. While my wife distracted her in the next room, I snatched the offering and popped some money into the plastic container, rang the doorbell and ran to her bedroom.

“I think the Pacifier Fairy might have been here!”

We three sprinted to the front door and threw it open, half-expecting to see a shriveled old gypsy women curse us for our deceitful parenting. Fortunately we were greeted with merely the used cottage cheese container. And the cash.

“Money!” She cried. “Now I get some paints!”

“Yeah, I know. Tomorrow we can go get some paints!” I replied, hoping against hope that perhaps, just maybe, she’d see the wisdom in postponing the paint purchase until daylight.

“Nooo! I need paints not tomorrow! I need paints tonight!”

Anticipating a meltdown, my wife quickly swooped in. “Well honey, since you’ve given the Pacifier Fairy your pacy, I bet daddy will take you to Wal-Mart to get some paints. Right now.”

I exchanged a few stern looks with my wife and understood immediately that I would soon be in Wal-Mart, buying paints. Right now.

You know those “bad” parents you see in grocery stores and Wal-Marts at night with children way too young to be up that late? I think maybe, at least some of them, are actually scamming their own children at that very moment. Which doesn’t make it better, of course, but does make it a little more understandable.

So off we went down the road, singing a made-up song about all the beautiful pictures we were about to create. We hustled through Wal-Mart, ignoring the glares from all the folks who knew better than to have a toddler up so late at night. We found a set of gorgeous paints and stylish brushes and flew them to our home as quickly as we could, eager to put them into use.

And as I pulled into the garage, I glanced back at our darling, who sat sweetly in her car seat. Wide, wide awake.

“Paints, daddy! I got paints! I don’t need a pacy! I a big girl!”

We painted, then, into the night, delighting in her enthusiasm, cautiously optimistic that we could all survive her first evening without the crutch. Soon it came time to postpone art for the next day. We prepped her for bed with a bath, with a few books, with her evening prayer requests for all the horsies and ponies and unicorns in the world. And the paints, of course. We had to thank God for the paints.

She grabbed a blankie and tried to settle into her pillow. But something, clearly, was amiss.

“I need my pacy.”

The moment we feared had arrived. Time to pay the piper.

“Well, sweety, we don’t have your pacy anymore. Remember? We gave your pacy away, to the Pacifier Fairy. But now you have paints! Tomorrow we can paint!”

But this was not what she’d wanted to hear. Her immediate whimpering was not what we’d wanted to hear, though neither of us was so naïve as to believe it would be so easy.

Children, it turns out, do not grow up all at once. Like the ebb and flow of ocean tides, time is a constant, and is constantly washing away and shifting around the sands we call our lives. Usually it happens without our noticing, without our input, and we simply wake up one morning to find that “My goodness, and how did the tide get so close?”

But occasionally one does watch a sandcastle tumble. And it is as heartbreaking as one might expect.

She cried herself to sleep that night, without her pacifier; a haunting, gut-wrenching sob full of as much pathos as a two-year-old can muster. She’d made her choice, and as her parents we had to respect that choice, as difficult as it was to do so. She was a big girl now, after all. She’d thrown away a childish crutch. She’d willingly thrown away yet another token of her infancy.

I gathered the pacifiers and placed them into a drawer to one day join up with other mementos—her hospital bracelet, a tiny pair of shoes, a funny pink cap that no longer fit—that I dared not study in a crowded room. Like most parents, I wondered if we’d done the right thing.

Like most parents, I admired the art she’d created with her own joyful hands. I smiled.

The Pacifier Fairy, after all, is not real. And tomorrow we would paint.

We're Still Standing

I Quit You

The recent debacle in Washington, despite its potential to send an already precarious worldwide economic climate into a cataclysmic tail spin from which we will never return, has been, in a weird way, refreshing. In early August Congress proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to the entire world what most of us have assumed was true for quite some time: It’s bad. It’s bad at what it does; it’s full of bad people making bad decisions for bad reasons. It’s just really, really, terrible. So, one might ask, how is that refreshing?

Think about it this way. Have you ever dated someone whom you suspected was also dating other people behind your back? You heard rumors and what not, but you couldn’t actually prove it. You had your suspicions, but there didn’t seem to be quite enough evidence to call them out on it.

Well, guess what? It turns out the rumors are all true. Congress really is a dirty tramp.

But then again, how is the clear knowledge that our officials have been cheating on us, selfishly doing what’s best for them and their constituents instead of what’s best for the nation as a whole, refreshing?

At least now we can dump them. We can break up with them without any remorse, knowing that we gave them multiple chances to shape up and walk right. They just couldn’t do it. The time has come for us, as a nation of scorned citizens, to divorce our so-called leaders.

Every. Single. One of them.

Imagine the message we could send to Washington next November if every single incumbent was fired and replaced by their opponent, regardless of party affiliation. What if every single person running for reelection was told, “Nope, no, I don’t think so. Not again. Not this time, Scooter. You had your chance. You had your two year, four year, six year or more stint, and quite frankly, you just kind of sucked it up out there. We’re going to replace every single one of you until you do it right. Until you figure out how to work together and create legislation that doesn’t make us all look like a bunch of reject Hanna-Barbara cartoon characters, you’re back to actually working for a living like the rest of us. Oh, and thanks for initiating the credit downgrade, too. That was real nice. Now we’re tied with Belgium, you know, so that’s cool. Asses.”

Now, statistically speaking, many of you will not vote at all the next chance you get, and that is in itself a major part of the problem. And, many of you who do vote will be tempted to once again vote along party lines, as if that will somehow magically solve the problem. (Like it’s magically solved the problem every other election.) “Oh, if we could just get all those mean Republicans out of office, or all those idiot Democrats, then we could really get something done.” No, that’s not the point. Every time one party has control of all the pieces something dumb happens, like we get a thousand-plus page social program we can’t afford, or we end up invading a country without a convincing reason.

This is not about getting the right political party into power. This is not a Republican issue or a Democrat issue. This is an issue of political fortitude. This is about making extremely difficult decisions with the nation’s future in mind, not with whether or not your actions will get you reelected. In case you haven’t heard, we are over 14 trillion dollars in debt. If we cannot find the willpower to seriously combat this economic swamp monster, our way of life ends. The only reason we can carry around this kind of ridiculously large tab is because enough of the world has always assumed America was a safe bet. The dollar has been the world’s reserve currency since the end of the Second World War.

As of right now, thankfully, it still is. The day that lovely little fiscal benefit ends, however, our deficit spending habit ends. Our habit of borrowing money to fight two wars at the same time ends. Our habit of borrowing money to pay entitlements like social security and Medicare ends. Our stupid habit of merely printing more money to pay our bills ends, because people are going to stop taking it, and us, seriously.

Republicans are right. Simply raising taxes won’t solve this dilemma. America has a very serious spending problem, and if we’re serious about solving it for the sake of our children and grandchildren, we absolutely have to cut wasteful spending. But to pretend as though you can begin to pay off 14 trillion dollars and still function without seriously reforming your revenue stream is just asinine. Our tax rates are about as low as they’ve been in half a century. As much as I hate to say it and as much as I know people don’t want to hear it, you have to create more revenue. The end.

People will lament, “But I didn’t cause this problem. Why should I have to pay for it?”

This is a valid argument, at least until you get into the third grade. But not causing a problem does not give you the moral authority to pretend as though you don’t have to at least try to fix it for the sake of the common good. Look at it this way. Suppose I have a crack in the foundation of my house. I didn’t build the house, and I’m the fourth person to live here since it was built. I certainly did not cause the crack in my foundation. But if I don’t fix the crack, it will get worse. At the very least, it will make my home more difficult to sell some day. At the worst, the crack gets so bad my house falls down, killing me and my family.

But I didn’t cause this problem, right? Why should I have to pay for it? Good question. We need to answer it before it’s too late.

Frozen Keys & Things Like These

What does an open freezer door mean to you?

Grand spiritual epiphanies rarely find us when we’re out searching for them, beneath ornate cathedral ceilings, along grand ocean vistas, atop mountain retreats full of wise old men sipping tea. They generally find us, surprise us, tackle us, even, when we’re least expecting them. God often speaks loudest and most directly when we aren’t even listening. At six in the morning, for example. In our garages and in our pajamas. Before we’ve even brushed our teeth.

When you open one door to find another wide open, a freezer door, a door designed to keep very cold contents from becoming warm, a typical reaction might be annoyance. “Great. Melted ice cream. Ruined hamburger. Water that was once ice now flooding out over the floor.”

But if you have an infant in the house and your wife is nursing, then that freezer door might be protecting something much more crucial than frozen waffles. It might be protecting hundreds of ounces of food for your child, hundreds of dollars worth of calories, dozens of hours of suddenly thankless work. If your wife is crazy, it might actually be protecting your very life.

Fortunately, my wife is not crazy. It turns out she is quite forgiving, as one must be to stay happily married. Granted, the immediate conversation upon waking her and letting her in on the disastrous secret—that the freezer door remained open during the night and thus put at risk a sizable portion of frozen milk—was not at all pleasant or even suitable to print. It was short, though, and merciful, and, after taking sober stock of the situation and listening to some professionals—both online and over the phone—after accepting that many of the calories could be salvaged, after coming up with a game plan to deal with the situation, it was somewhat therapeutic.

And this is why.

The reason the freezer door was left open most of the night is because I did not shut it. Now, one might ask, why not? Why not shut the door, considering that is the task for which doors in general are meant, considering that this door in particular was safeguarding over a month’s supply of baby food? Why, Mr. English teacher smarty-pants writer-boy, did you not shut the stupid door?

Well, the simple answer is, “I forgot.”

Forget? One might ask. How did you forget? Forgetting is something that happens when you’re grocery shopping, as in, “I forgot to get the Ding Dongs.” Forgetting is something a child claims they did when they chose not to wash their hands after eating sand. Forgetting is for un-fond memories. Forgetting is not for freezer doors. Freezer doors are giant white rectangles suspended above the ground. They’re cold. Normal people do not forget to shut freezer doors. Normal people shut freezer doors and then forget where they left their keys. (Perhaps in the freezer?)

How did I forget?

Because of multitasking. I was actively multitasking. In my exhausted brain, I was thinking about something not at all related to doors, freezers, or even cold things whatsoever. It was late, I was tired, I was in the middle of washing dishes and was looking forward to watching some quality television programming before going to bed. In the morning I would wake up before my family so I could enjoy a quiet cup of coffee with the sunrise, which would then mean I could start a busy day of yard work, or parenting, or basement organizing, or whatever else school teachers do in the summer to keep them from feeling guilty while most people go to work.

I was physically putting something in the freezer, but I was mentally doing something else. That’s multitasking for you; doing two or more things at once, such as infuriating your wife while simultaneously throwing money down the drain, or wasting electricity and melting ice, all at the same time!

The sweet irony behind this debacle is that by multitasking—by putting food in the freezer in the middle of washing dishes while mentally conjuring up a landscaping project I’ll never actually have time to complete—I created for myself additional multiple tasks. Before I left the freezer door open, for example, I was not getting up at three in the morning to feed our son a bottle. Before I left the freezer door open, there wasn’t an assortment of plastic baby-feeding contraptions next to the sink each evening that needed washed. I saved absolutely no time by multitasking. I lost time. Which brings us back to the spiritual epiphany part of today’s column.

I am an eternal optimist, almost to the point of delusion. (Actually, to the point of delusion in some cases, but not in this one in particular.) Almost regardless of what happens, I try to see some kind of good in it, and I believe some good has actually come out of this accident.

For one, since I’m doing more of the feeding, my wife is getting a little more sleep at night. (Very little.) Because I’m feeding our son more, he seems to like me a little more than he did a week ago. (Very little.) By not strangling me when she discovered I’d ruined her day, again, my wife has proven that she really does love me, or, at the very least, is able to control intense homicidal urges.

And, also important, this episode has convinced me my brain needs re-educated. It needs to learn, again, how to do one thing at a time, like a kindergartner learning how to tie a shoe, or an outfielder gauging a pop fly.

Like a husband shutting a freezer door late at night.

Again and again, just to be sure.