Stripped

My church is rebuilding the sanctuary. The walls are bare. Studs and pipes are showing, and the floor is bare concrete until the new floor tiles are laid.

The last months have felt much like that. I've been rebuilding my own surface, stripping away unnecessary layers, putting down new walls and fortifying them. To build a new home, sometimes you have to tear away walls that you thought would always be standing.

I'll write more, but let me say this. I am at peace. I am sleeping in a new home, and the woman I married is elsewhere.

Nobody was thrown out. It was not a violent ugly separation. It was a mutual decision. We were done.

I am at peace. My son is in good shape, and we're both taking good care of him in our ways.

Half of all marriages fail. You know this. With a child with special needs, the odds are worse. Nobody knows how much worse.

Any marriage is challenging. Marriage is the deepest act of faith. It's reaching out and saying this one. This is the person I will trust. Through thick and thin. Though bankruptcy, cancer, car accidents, unpaid bills, job terminations, sicknesses, anxiety attacks, all of it. All of it.

Human life has so many twists and turns, and the act of marriage is saying to the universe, this is the person who will walk by my side through all of it. For the rest of my life, this is the person who will have my back.

And you need that person to make the same commitment.

When that commitment fails, it's devastating. When you've been running hand-in-hand for years, and suddenly you realize that the hand is no longer there, it's a shock.

I won't go into detail about what happened, when it happened, who did what. It's not necessary. But we stopped being at each other's side, somehow. Our hands slipped away from each other, and once we realized we had fallen out of pace with each other, we were too far gone to connect again.

A friend of mine asked me how it made any sense. We seemed to be a solid healthy couple, while she says that she and her husband don't even belong together.

I don't know if Mrs. B and I belonged together, but we came together. And we were at each other's sides for a long time. That's how marriage works. It's not about whether you read the same books or eat the same foods, whether you stay up late or go to sleep early together. It's about whether you stand by each other when times get difficult. That's the only prerequisite. Everything else is just detail.

More than anything, a spouse is a partner. And for me, what I realized is that if I was running by myself already, it made no sense to pretend I still had a partner by my side.

Weird Dreams: Marc Maron, My Wife, and Drug Abuse

I don't often talk about dreams, but this one was a doozy.

My wife and I were on a bus of some sort. Who knows where we were going? In the world of dream logic, we may not have been going anywhere. The destination was the bus. Whatever. Oh, and also the bus had drivers in the front and in the back. Which sounds impossible, according to the laws of physics as I understand them.  Again - dream logic.

All of a sudden, a familiar face comes onto the bus, a guitar case strapped across his back. It's Marc Maron! What's he doing on the bus? (Why did he have a guitar?) He comes with an entourage. He's there to record a podcast, live on the bus. He's got some huge console that looks like an old reel-to-reel recorder, apparently to help record the show.

The next part of the dream is bizarre. Marc apparently has staged sequences as part of his podcasts. People prance around in costumes, singing choreographed numbers. This is weird. Definitely a WTF moment. (Pun intended.)

The next thing I know, my wife is singing along, delightedly, with the songs. I look at her and I realize that something's wrong.

"You've been taking drugs?!" I say to her, aghast. Her eyes are bright and delirious.

"I feel so good! I never sing anymore," she responds.

"What drugs did you take?"

"Unidentifiable!" she responds in a singsongy voice.

and ... that's all I remember. So if you're reading this, Marc Maron, you're not allowed in my dreams anymore until you apologize for getting my wife high on the dream bus.

9-11-01 - The Aftermath

It seemed to take the entire day on September 11 before we understood everything that had happened. Wild rumors filled the air. There was a car bomb at the Department of State, a fire at the Pentagon (that was the third plane), attacks on the White House. There was no Twitter, no Facebook, no instant news alerts via email. CNN's website crashed multiple times on 9-11 until they stripped it down to an all-text bulletin page. I kept trying to get the correct details. I wanted to know exactly where the plane hit the Pentagon, how many people were on board the planes, where they flew from, how they had been taken. What had happened in Pennsylvania.

I flew a month afterward. I had to go to Chicago for a conference. They had ratcheted down security so tightly that the lines to board planes went all the way out of O'Hare Airport and back around through another door. I remember seeing National Guardsmen patrolling the airport in camouflage, rifles strapped to their chests, at the ready.

September 11 really threw me out of my orbit. I couldn't stop listening to the news. Something about the way I had found out about the attacks after they were in progress got to me. I wanted to know when the next attacks were happening. Especially if they were going to be happening on the west coast. (Years later, it was revealed that the plan was to attack targets on both coasts, and that one of the potential targets was the tallest building in Seattle.)

I couldn't turn off the news. I watched the national news every night - something that I never did before. I became depressed, haunted, fearful. I worked in downtown Seattle, and we have an airport ten miles away, so planes fly over the city constantly. For months, every time I saw a plane flying near one of the tall buildings, I would watch it until I saw that it passed the building and didn't fly into it.

I ended up going into therapy, and I was taking medications for a while until I was able to regain control. But I still look periodically when a plane is flying low over the Seattle skyline.

About my girlfriend? Well, in September 2001, I had started saving up for an engagement ring. In November, at our favorite Brazilian restaurant, I fell to one knee and asked her to marry me. We've been married nine years. We're happy.

I'm not going to talk about the war on terror, or about homeland security, or about politics. I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about the effect of this on me, because this was an attack on us. This affected all of us, as a people, as a society, as a generation. We have survived, but we are not the same, and we may never be. The world into which my son was born is different than the one I used to live in, in so many ways. I hope his world learns to move past fear, past anger, past hatred. I want him to grow up full of hope, not full of fear. That's the world I'm trying to create for him.

Nisqually Earthquake - 10 Years Later

Ten years ago, there was this little earthquake that happened in the Puget Sound. Here's how I remembered it.

I was driving to work. I had one of those jobs where I showed up in the late morning and worked until about 9 or 10 at night. I worked in Pioneer Square in a sixth floor office.

So I was in Lake Forest Park, driving south. I was driving down the street when two things happened simultaneously.

The first thing was that my tires rumbled strangely on the road. I thought for a second that I had a flat, but changed my mind quickly. I figured there were tracks on the asphalt. Have you ever driven on a part of a road where someone drove when the asphalt was still wet, and there's tire impressions baked into the road? It felt like that - like I was driving in a groove.

The second thing that happened was that Steve Sher and his guest stopped in the middle of a conversation and said things like "whoa!" and "oh, this is just like California." If you skip to the 1.00 mark in this video, you'll hear exactly what it sounded like.

So I knew two things: there was an earthquake, and nobody knew how bad it was. Sher said something like "I hope everyone is safe. We'll let you know once we know more."

So I had a forty-minute drive downtown still, and I didn't have a cell phone. All I had was KUOW, and I kept waiting and waiting to hear reports of damage, destruction, fatalities. I had no idea what I was driving into. For all I knew, everyone at my office had been pulverized.

As I got near downtown, I saw the strangest sights. Entire crowds of people were standing outside of their skyscraper offices. Huge mobs of people, standing on the sidewalk or even on the street. It was a little surreal.

I pulled off the highway, drove toward Pioneer Square. As I went down Jackson Street, I saw this scene.

That was just four blocks from my office.

I got to my office, and I saw all of my co-workers standing on the sidewalk. Nobody was hurt. The worst damage that happened was a potted plant had tipped over and spilled some dirt onto the carpet. A restaurant in the first floor of our building had a nasty crack in one of its walls, but the building was still sound. We called off work for the day. I called this girl that had been seeing for a few months - who later became my fiance, who later became my wife. She was fine. It could have been much worse. But for a few minutes, I was convinced that I was going to drive downtown to see the smoking ruins of buildings. It was a weird feeling.

Seven months later, the World Trade Center collapsed, and it really started to feel like the world was spinning out of control.

Runner

My wife has a sister who used to run marathons. Years ago, I asked Mrs. B if she ever ran, and she looked at me as if the question was "so, have you ever done any Satanic rituals?"

"No," she said with disdain. No, I'm not one of those people. One of those runner people.

My wife is now one of those runner people. Three days a week, she straps on her fancy runner shoes and goes running five or six miles along Alki Beach. She went for a run this morning, when it was 28 degrees outside. She said she ran an extra mile, just because it was so clear and beautiful outside.

Yep, she's definitely one of those people.

Part of her motivation is restlessness. Specifically, the elliptical machine we have in our office drives her crazy. The idea of running for 30 minutes indoors, staring at the wall, is unbearable to her. So much so that, sometime around April, she announced she was going to start running outdoors.

And she's done it, bless her heart. She started out slow - there was a training program she picked up for non-runners that she followed. So at the beginning, it was like 2 minutes of running, 8 minutes of walking. She's now doing 11 minutes of running with a one-minute walking break. Some days, she just runs the whole distance.

She's run a few 5Ks. She recently ran the Jingle Bell run in Seattle, when it was pouring rain and the wind was howling. She crossed the finish line soaked from head to toe, but jubilant. We were waiting at the finish line for her. (I wish I could say we stood outside the whole time, but we spent most of the time in a coffee shop, watching people's umbrellas blow inside out.)

She's going to be running a half-marathon in June. I'm so proud of her for keeping it up, three days a week, week after week after week. She didn't start running until this year, in her forties. We were in Oregon recently, visiting in-laws, and she asked me to drive her to a nearby town so she could do her Sunday run. It's what she does now. She has her running playlists, her little runner's cap, her armband for her iPod, a group of other women who run with her. My wife is a runner now.

Sunrise in Seattle

It's freaking cold outside.

Hard to complain when it looks like this, though.

One of the most breathtaking sunrises I've seen in Seattle. I used to think that the best sunrises and sunsets happened in Colorado, where I lived for several years. But Seattle's had some beautiful ones, this year especially.

I should add that it's also hard to complain when I'm inside a warm toasty house. Mrs. B is out running in the 28-degree weather. More on that later.

Good Knight!

Mrs. B and Oliver had the most hilarious interplay last night.  They were playing with legos or puppets or something, and Oliver decided to say that his little guy was a knight.  A good knight, not a bad knight.

O:  "I'm a good knight!"

Mrs. B: (slyly) "Good night!"

She burst out laughing.  He just got annoyed.  So he tried to explain again that he was a good knight.

Mrs. B: "Good night!"

O:  "No, I'm a knight!"

Mrs. B: "Good night!"

O:  "No!"  

And then he tried to clarify.  "There are two kinds of nights.  I'm the kind of knight that rides a horse.  I'm not the kind of night that you say when you say good night."

Mrs. B:  "Good night!"

O:  "Stop it."

That kept going for at least ten minutes, and Mrs. B and I kept cracking up every time she delivered the line.

A Rough Night

Yesterday, Oliver had a multiple-meltdown afternoon. We went shopping around 4 and stopped in a Barnes & Noble for coffee and cookies. He got completely wild after that (he wanted to go to the kid's section of the bookstore and we didn't have time to go there) and threw himself on the ground. I picked him up and he hit me. Several times, about the head and the neck. He also tried to pinch me in the neck, which he knows drives me crazy and also hurts!

I sat him down on the sidewalk for a timeout. After a few minutes, I asked him if he was able to control himself. He said, no. So I picked him up and brought him to the car.

He tried to blame it on the sugar.  "The sugar made me act bad."  We told him, angrily, that he's in charge of his own body and nobody makes him behave badly except himself.  He was silent after that.  I could just feel him fuming in the back seat.  

We were planning to go out for dinner, but we told him that we might have to cancel our plans because of his behavior. Meltdown. Timeout. A few minutes later, meltdown again. More hitting. More timeouts.

After some discussion amongst ourselves, we decided to cancel going out to dinner. Which was punishing ourselves, really, but it's awful going out to dinner when he's being wild and uncontrollable. Plus, we wanted him to see hard consequences of his bad behavior. He needs to see that sometimes, just saying he's sorry doesn't fix everything.  So we told him about our decision and of course, he melted down again. Wild sobbing, more hitting, more crying, more throwing of things. 

It lasted all the way until bedtime, when he hit me on the way into the bedroom. He went to bed by himself for the first time in forever. (Which caused him to whine, "I want somebody to snuggle up with me!" It was a pretty drastic punishment, in his mind. One of us always lays down with him at bedtime.) Sigh.

And then at 3 am, Mrs. B started puking. She's got a nasty stomach bug and a fever to boot. She's upchucked a couple more times and she's been in bed all day. (it's 10:30 Seattle time, and she's still in bed.)  So it's just been me and Oliver together all morning while she recovers.   

Good news is that Oliver's behaving much better today. But there's no way in hell I'm dragging my poor pukey wife out to dinner tonight.

300

It's a small thing, but I'll share it nonetheless.  I just broke 300 calories burned on our elliptical machine.

No, wait a second.  It's not a small thing.  This is kind of a big deal.  

We have an elliptical machine in our house.  (It's this one, if you're curious.  It's fantastic, and also has a relatively small footprint in our office.)  

When we first got it, my goal was to use it two or three times a week.  It typically was, like, once a week.  Twice if I remembered.  There was too much to do, tv shows to watch, books to read, dessert to eat.  I kept not doing it.  I kept finding excuses not to.

And also (cue whining), it was hard!  I was out of shape.  I had asthma.  My legs weren't used to exercise.  When I started, I could only do twenty minutes.  Sometimes, I would have to stop because I was gasping for air, even with regular pulls from my albuterol inhaler.  

But I got stronger.  Twenty turned into twenty-five, and twenty-five turned into thirty.

Then thirty started feeling easy.  I could burn through thirty minutes fairly effortlessly.  Now, I'm doing forty minutes and ... well, I'm not going to say I don't break a sweat, because I sweat like John Edwards in a room full of videographers.  But I can do it, and I can do it comfortably.  

What's also different is that I want to get on the elliptical now.  Every other night, Mrs. B puts Oliver to bed, and those are the nights I work out.  That means three or four times a week, and that's happening every single week.  Last week, I hopped on the machine four times for an hour and 45 minutes total, and burned 762 calories.  One recent week, I did two hours and twenty minutes on the machine, and burned over 1000 calories.  

It's a routine.  It's something I look forward to, not something I'm avoiding at all costs.  I like that.  It's a good feeling.  

A Milestone

I weighed in this morning at 199 pounds.  Woo hoo!!!

I broke out in a big grin when I saw that first digit "1" on the scale.  I'm under 200.  That's big. I don't really know the last time I've been under 200.  

I've lost, officially, 11 pounds since I purchased a scale.  Unofficially, I've probably lost at least 20 pounds since I started this whole endeavor.

My pants are much looser.  My shirts don't have that obnoxious bulge at the waistline anymore.  It's definitely noticeable - my wife's commented on it a couple of times.  

My secrets so far are pretty simple.  I log every single bit of food I stick in my mouth.  I work out on the elliptical at least 30 minutes, at least four times a week.  Every morning I remember, I do 10 pushups and 20 situps.  (I did 15 pushups this morning.  It doesn't seem like much, but it's a big step.)  I've also started doing some very mild weight lifting with our puny little 5 lb. barbells.  

The other big support is my beloved wife.  Mrs. B is also cutting back and she's lost ten pounds so far.  It's so much easier with us both doing it - we can compare notes on foods and check in on each other when we haven't been exercising.  Our conversations have gotten rather odd in restaurants, though.  We both tend to whip our iPod touches (she has one, too) and start comparing calories in all of the dinner entrees, trying to find the one that's the leanest and most appetizing.  

I made my spaghetti sauce the other day with turkey sausage.  We bought small baguettes and roasted garlic instead of buying the premade buttery garlic bread.  We've been eating more meatless meals, more lean meals.  It helps a lot, being able to share the burden and the successes.  

My original goal was to lose 30 pounds.  That's going to happen in the next couple of months.  

When that happens, I'll see how I feel and how much farther I want to go.  But for right now, I'm celebrating.  

This Time, For Real

I weigh more than I've ever weighed in my life. I can no longer accept this. I've got to get serious about losing weight.

I've made some half-hearted, haphazard attempts to lose weight in the past. I've never taken it seriously before. Not really.

I exercise, when I think of it. We own an elliptical machine, so I don't even to go down to a health club to exercise. But I only use it about once a week. Twice a week, on a good week. When I feel like it. When it doesn't feel like too much of a hassle to get up off the couch.

I've pretended to watch my portions before, but not really. I'll skimp at lunch, only to serve myself an extra scoop of ice cream on dessert. I'll open a bag of tortilla chips and just eat handful after handful, not even thinking about how many calories I'm cramming in my mouth. One handful just leads to another, and then another.

I eat seconds for dinner, just about every night. I finish the leftovers on Oliver's plate. If there's an extra spoonful of mashed potatoes in the pan, I'll finish it off.

I went to the doctor last week for a freak injury. They took my weight, and I discovered I'm twenty pounds heavier than what's listed on my driver's license.

I don't know what I expected, but I didn't expect that. I thought I'd been watching what I eat. I thought I was doing all right. I was wrong.

And the thing is, I knew it. I'd been denying the truth even as it stared me straight in the face. I've gained weight around my waist. A noticeable amount of weight. I can't fit into pants I wore a year ago. I had to buy new pants in a larger size when I went back to work in August. There are few things more humiliating than realizing, while buying pants, that you are no longer the size that you thought you were.

I have more asthma flareups now. There's a connection. I'm carrying too much weight. I'm having pain in my feet now. There might be a connection there, too.

I can't chase Oliver around the park for ten minutes without getting winded. I HATE that.

So I'm getting serious now. I'm using a program on my iPod touch called LoseIt! to track my daily calories and what I'm burning from exercise. (That has been a fascinating and humbling experience. More on that soon.)

I've worked out on the elliptical twice in the last three days. I started a small additional exercise routine - situps and pushups every morning. Right now, it's only ten of each, and I'm sure that I look awful doing them. But it's something. It's a start.

I want to lose thirty pounds by next summer. I'm not going to post my weight here, in order to preserve a bit of my dignity. But that's my goal. Thirty pounds, a pound a week. (And no, I don't own a scale. I'll take care of that soon.)

I'll keep you posted as to my progress on this blog. If I go more than a week without talking about it, remind me. This is serious this time. I have to get myself down to a dignified weight. I have to do this, for my sake, for my health, for Oliver and for Mrs. B. I have to do this.

One of Those Birthdays

(Photo by Flickr user elston, and used under Creative Commons license.)

Let me tell you a story.

Ten years ago, I turned thirty. My life was in tatters. I was ending a chaotic and soul-draining relationship, and it was not ending in that clean surgical way in which relationships should end. It was like pulling away ivy that had been growing for years - pull out a huge chunk, find the next tendril, pull hard, try not to uproot something valuable, find the next tendril...

I had been fired three months before from a job that I hated. I despised the job, and yet to be fired seemed like the ultimate humiliation. I didn't want to be there, but I was furious that they were claiming I wasn't doing good enough work to be doing that job. I pursued legal action, based on firing without just cause, and quickly found out that it was impossible given my state's employment laws.

Because I was living paycheck to paycheck, my firing set in motion a series of events that eventually led to bankruptcy. Eventually, I left my home, ended up living with my brother for several years because I had nowhere else to go and couldn't afford my own place. (Thank you, by the way, to my brother for opening his door to me.)

At the time, I was living in a house that I hated with roommates that I couldn't stand. I had no privacy. I had no social life. I was working in a job that felt tenuous and temporary, and I didn't really know anybody there well enough to call a friend.

I was alone.

I remember that, for my thirtieth birthday, I wanted to get away. I drove to Bellingham, which was as far as I could manage to escape for a night. I drove sixty miles north to Bellingham, got a burger and fries from a highway burger stand, and parked by the waterfront. And I remember watching the sun slowly setting over the water, being alone, gratified for the privacy but aching from my loneliness and sadness. I cried several times that night. It was one of the saddest days of my life.

And then I drove home to my house that I hated, and went to sleep without talking to anyone. No presents, no cards, no cake. That was it.

That was a long time ago, and it was one of the worst birthdays or days that I have ever experienced in my life. I look back at that time now and it seems like a lifetime ago.

Tomorrow I will turn forty, and I've felt on the verge of tears for most of the day. My wife wants to know what I want for my birthday, and I don't know. I have no ideas. I don't want any presents. I don't know how to celebrate this birthday.

I have been out of work for nearly five months. Looking for a job is very much like dating, in the sense that it feels like rejection after rejection after rejection. The momentary bursts of joy are quickly washed away by the repeated slaps in the face. The thrill of the chase is replaced by the desperation of the chase, the fervent need to be exactly what someone (a company) is looking for, and the repeated discovery that you're not the guy. You're not the one they've been looking for, but you're very very close, and maybe someday you'll find the right match for you.

So I have been out of work for nearly five months, and our finances are a bit tight. And my sense of self-worth is pretty low these days. And I'm turning forty, which is supposed to be a pivotal age in my life, a watershed moment, a moment that means something. Some birthdays are just a birthday, and some birthdays are supposed to mean something. 18, 21, 30, 40, 50, 65. Some birthdays matter, and you take note of where you are in your life.

I have a beautiful wife who loves me. I have a son who lights up my life on a daily basis. I have a close circle of friends, friends real and virtual. I have a decent home, music to play, food to eat. We drive good cars. We eat well. I am happy.

But I'm out of work. And that's eating me alive. It is such a small thing, with all the great things happening in my life. But it matters, and it's painful and frustrating and infuriating. And it makes this birthday something that I just want to be over.

It was just over ten years ago that I took my first job in the nonprofit world, and I immediately knew what I would be doing for the rest of my working days. I never realized that I could make money and generate social change at the same time. As many regrets as I have about the misdeeds and failings and imperfections of nonprofit organizations, they are driven by missions that seek to make the world a better place. That might mean cleaning up the air and water, or it might mean fighting social injustices, or it might mean creating jobs for the jobless, finding food for the hungry, finding homes for the homeless. But every organization for which I've worked in the last ten years is trying to make the world a better place, and I have been fortunate to work in this field.

I want to get back to work. It's been ten years since I joined this field, this vocation, the change-the-world career ladder. I'm looking for a way back into that career ladder, back into the movement, back on the horse.

It seems somehow portentous that I find myself back in this position. Ten years ago, I had the rug pulled out from under me, and I made a seemingly small decision that changed my life. Ten years later, the rug has been pulled out again, and I find myself scrambling for footing. Once again, I'm left unsure of myself, questioning my own talents and abilities. Once again, I'm facing one of those birthdays, one that signals a change of life. Once again, so it seems, it's time for another great transition in my life.

I want this period to be over. I hate the waiting. I know that soon, I will find a job that will change my life. I want the waiting to be over so the next change can begin happening. The waiting is what's killing me.

So tomorrow, I will celebrate my birthday that I have been dreading for so long. The next day, I have an interview for a job. It might not be the next great job, but it's the next interview, and that's something. It could lead to the next great job, and it is that promise that keeps me going.

Happy birthday to me.

The Things He Says: Quick Interludes

Recently, Ollie and I were home together. He was in the other room, yelling for his mother. She had left the house earlier to go to work, and of course, he knew this. (I should note that he was yelling playfully, not in an upset or distraught way.)

"MOMMY!!! MOMMY!!!! MOOOOOOO-MMMMMMYYYYYYYY!"

"Oliver!" I called to him. "Your mother went to work, remember?"

Without missing a beat, he said, "Oh, all right then," and began shouting "DAAAAAAADDDDDYYYY! DAAAAAAAAADDDDYYYYYYY!!!!!!"

~~~

I went to get Oliver out of his car seat a few days ago, and he reached for a folded-up piece of paper.

"Daddy, you can't have this."

"Oh, okay."

"It's mine."

"Okay. What is it?"

"It's special."

"But what is it?"

"It's mine."

~~~

He says synchronized ABCs with Mrs. B at the dinner table. The first time i saw it, I nearly died from cuteness overload.

Oliver: "Mommy, say A."

Mrs. B: "A."

Oliver: B."

Mrs. B: "C."

Oliver: "D."

And etc., through the entire alphabet. And then at the end, they alternate the final words of the song.

"Now - I - Know - My - A - B - C's - Next - Time - Won't - You - Sing - with - Me."

~~~

He has discovered fake crying and is practicing it the way people practice a new language they're trying to master. Sometimes, he burst out in ridiculous sobs for absolutely no reason. Then he orders asks us to cry, too. I'm usually laughing too hard to cry on command.

One time, he sang an entire verse of Jingle Bells, with the only lyric being the word "cry."

Cry cry cry, cry cry cry, cry cry cry cry cry...

I'll try to get this on video.

~~~

He breathes life into his stuffed animals in the oddest ways. They have temper tantrums and get time-outs. They get sick. They eat meals with him.

Yesterday, he told us that his little stuffed Pooh bear didn't like him. "He doesn't like people. He only likes other bears."

"Of course, he likes you. In the books, aren't Christopher Robin and Pooh friends?"

"But he doesn't like me. He's not a Christopher Robin bear."

No More Nummies

It's been almost a week, so I feel like I can say this safely. Mrs. B has weaned Oliver.

She cut off "nummies" (our little word for nursing) except for nighttime feedings a month or two ago. Last week, as we were driving home from something-or-another, she told him that the nummies were all gone.

He started negotiating with her - "almost gone?"

"No, honey," she said, "all gone."

"Almost gone," he insisted.

"No, baby, all gone." We both started worrying, and I found myself a little teary. He really seemed upset at this sudden development.

And then, that night, he was fine. He asked once for his nummies, and Mrs. B told him they were all gone, and he just turned over and went to sleep.

The next night, he got a little upset in the middle of the night when he couldn't nurse. But it's gone surprisingly smoothly. She's thinking we could have done this a long time ago, but maybe we just waited until the right time.

Five Years

We were married on the deck of a boat. We had found a judge who would marry us, and it was something like $200 for him to come to a location of our choosing, or $150 to do it on his houseboat in Shilshole Bay. So, of course, we went for the boat. Who wouldn't?

The sky was bluer than blue. The sun shone ferociously. It was a perfect Seattle summer day, eighty degrees and radiant, and we were gettin' hitched, floating on a boat in Puget Sound. That was five years ago, August 12th.

It was my brother, a friend, me and Mrs. B, and the judge. A five-person wedding party. I barely remember the words of the vows - he read the line, we repeated the line, and I kept staring at her in her beautiful dress, luminous in the sunlight. My feet barely touched the ground.

We had drinks at Ray's Boathouse, dropped off our wedding party of two, and headed down to a sumptuous dinner at Stanley & Seafort's in Tacoma. We spent our first night at a lush bed and breakfast - a mansion, literally. I remember feeling like we had gotten away with something.

In the morning, we had a private breakfast on a deck upstairs. Then we headed to the Oregon coast for a honeymoon of more B&Bs, more fantastic dinners, and four lighthouses in five days.

Since that day, lots has happened. I've changed jobs three times. We've moved three times. We've had Oliver, which has changed everything in our lives. We've had heartbreaking moments and moments of pure jubilation.

Some mornings, I still wake up and look over at this woman next to me, and I am filled with awe. Once, before I met her, I entertained the thought that I would never be married, never have a child, and I would be content with that. Now, I can't imagine my life without her or our son. Every one of my days is filled with joy - even if Oliver is incorrigible, even if my work is infuriating and exhausting, even if things happen that make my blood boil. My life is a joy. I have a wife who loves me and I have a son who is filled with wonder and curiosity and a seemingly unending supply of energy.

I am a lucky man.

Father's Day

He was making macaroni and cheese for his kids. He was the good dad, out to dazzle his children with his cooking prowess. He was going to introduce them to real mac-and-cheese, not that powdered boxed crapola. They liked that boxed crap, but he was going to teach them the difference. He knew what was best for them, after all. He was their father.

They hated it. They didn't like the crunchy noodles on top. They thought the bread crumbs on top made it look burnt. They wanted the orange stuff that came in the box, not this. This wasn't macaroni and cheese.

First he argued with them. Then, when their mother tried to explain that it was unfamiliar food, that they'd never seen bread crumbs on top of a dish before, he pouted. He got upset.

He stomped away from the dinner table. He shut himself in his bedroom, a petulant teenager, an overemotional dad in all the wrong ways. One of his children actually went up to apologize, attempting to coax him back to the dinner table.

This was the story I read in a national parents magazine. It's their current issue, on the newsstands just in time for Father's Day. It was part of their section for fathers. No, scratch that. This one-page anecdote was the entirety of their section for dads. That's it. One story about a dad who screwed up dinner. One more story about a dad who doesn't understand what his kids want, doesn't react well to his kids' natural reactions, and doesn't realize that his kids are watching everything he does for signs on how to act like a grown-up.

One more story about one more incompetent dad.

I don't understand how a magazine with a name like Parenting (parents are both mothers and fathers, right?) has only a single page dedicated to fathers. And I don't get how, month after month, the fathers who visit their pages are dunderheads. They make mistakes. They put diapers on wrong. They make atrocious choices about their children's clothes, their food, their safety. They are embarrassments to fatherhood.

I hate to brag, people. But let's get some things straight. I'm a father. I'm a damn good dad. I spent nearly a year at home with my son, changing his diapers, warming his bottles, holding him until my shoulders fell asleep during his naps. So I know a few things about being a father.


I've been his dad since the day he was born. Not a stand-in, not a weekend daddy, not an absentee, not a detached parental unit. I am his dad, and I take my work seriously.

Let me present my credentials:

I can always find his ticklish spots, and I know a few secret ones that his mother might not even know.

I can change his diaper with my eyes closed. Seriously.

I can feed him animal crackers, one by one, while driving down the highway. Without taking my eyes off the road.

If there are ten kids at the park running around, and my kid cries, I hear it. I know the frequency of his cries, the shape and size of the vowels, the pattern, the pitch. I will hear my son cry, because he is my son and I am his dad.

I know how my son talks, and I know the words and almost-words and semi-words that come out of his mouth. Sometimes I can interpret things he says that his mother can't.

I know what he eats and what he doesn't. I stopped getting him veggie burgers a long time ago, because as much as I thought they were a perfect food for him, he never liked them. So I stopped, because I realized I was wasting my time. A real dad knows when he's wasting his time on unimportant things. I feed him what he likes, and when I experiment with new foods on him, I always have a cheese stick or a bowl of peas as a backup.



I don't fear time alone with him. I took a job with a four-day work week so that I could spend an entire day with him. These days are the joys of my week.

I know what he likes to wear. I know which hand he uses to pick up a form. I know that he loves slapstick humor, and running squirrels, and music with a good solid beat. I know that he doesn't like to wear socks when he sleeps. I know how to make his cowlicks stay down.


If I close my eyes, right now, I can remember his sleeping face from the first few weeks of his life.

I know what meconium looks like. I know how to cut his fingernails. I know how to make him laugh. I know exactly where the mole is on his chest.

And I love this boy, this child, my son. I love the smell of his hair when it's been warmed by sunlight. I love the sound of his laughter. I love the way he scolds me when I'm doing something he doesn't like ("no, daddy!") I love watching his face while he sleeps. I love the way he wakes me up ( he says "daddy, come!" and grabs one of my fingers to pull me out of bed). I love every inch of his being.

I'm a good dad. I pay attention. I watch out for him. I keep him safe. I feed him, clothe him, change his diapers, read him stories, put him down for naps, kiss his boo-boos, wipe the snot and drool off his face, let him put half-eaten noodles in my mouth.

I've been his dad since he was born.

I'm not the only dad who gets it. There are millions of us. We are competent. We take pride in our skills (or skillz, as it were) in fathering. We are the new fathers, and there are a hell of a lot of us.

Watch for us on Father's Day. We're all around. We're in the parking lots, holding our kids' hands. We're in the parks, running around with our kids, chasing them as they laugh and scream. We're in the restaurants, offering our kid a bite of our breakfast. We're at home, making our own Father's Day breakfasts. We're good dads, and there's more and more of us all the time.

" I cough. I cry."

Point 1: Oliver's learning to communicate with short sentences - "I do it," "I get," "I drink." Or possession: "my ball," "my milk," "my blankie." (Of course, his pronunciation is still a work in progress, so most of these words sound remarkably similar to anyone but us.) And he mimics me and R all the time. I sat down cross-legged last night (what we used to call Indian style) and he tried to fold up his legs so he could sit like daddy. He drinks water during meals when we drink water. He takes every opportunity to do what mommy and daddy are doing, and takes no small amount of pride in it.

Point 2: He also is fighting a nasty cold that's crept into his lungs. The doctor listened to him breathing on Monday and heard some wheezing. He suggested that it might be an early indicator of asthma. As you can imagine, I freaked out.

Point 3: I have asthma. I've had it most of my life. My father tells me that they found me gasping for air at least once, face blue from the effort, when I was young. When I was older, in grammar school,I remember catching colds and laying in bed, listening to myself wheeze. Wheezing myself to sleep.

I wasn't diagnosed until my mid-20s. I had resigned myself long ago to just having bad lungs, and it was a relief to find out there was medication that could help me through the worse patches. But it's controlled, not gone. I still wheeze when I get sick, as I did last week. On Saturday and Sunday, I was wheezing loud enough to keep myself awake, and I was gasping for air all day. I was taking shots from my albuterol inhaler, along with draining the steroid inhaler that the doctor had given me for emergencies.

So Monday I went to see my doctor. He decided to treat me for bronchitis, even though it's difficult to diagnose in someone with my conditions. He prescribed Advair, which is another steroid inhaler, and azithromycin to kill the infection that was creeping into my lungs.

Meanwhile, Oliver was gasping for air himself and waking himself up with coughing spasms in the middle of the night. He was worrying us enough to take him to the doctor on Tuesday morning, where the doctor heard the wheezing in his tiny lungs. He also discovered an ear infection. He diagnosed liquid albuterol and azithromycin for the infection. So we have father-and-son courses of antibiotics.

We've kept him home from daycare for the past couple of days, and R and I have been switching off to watch him. One of us goes to work in the morning while the other stays home, and then we switch off in the afternoon. I was home with him on Tuesday afternoon, and I had a small coughing fit. As with everything, I talked about it with Oliver. I told him I was sick and that I had a cough that made my lungs hurt.

A light of recognition went off in his eyes. He pointed to himself. "I cough!"

Yes, I explained, he did cough. But it wasn't good that he was coughing - he was sick like daddy. And we both needed to get better so he didn't cough anymore. I didn't tell him that he wheezed like daddy, too. I haven't heard it for myself, and I don't want him to share this particular trait with daddy.

Later that night we were reading one of his (million-and-fifty) board books. A little gosling gets upset in the book and sheds a tear, and I pointed it out to Oliver. "Look, Ollie, he's crying because he's so sad."

Oliver pointed to himself again, that same light in his eyes. "I cry!"

Yes, kid, you do cry. You cry when you cough. You've been crying a lot in the last few days because you've been so sick. No more crying, okay? No more coughing. No more sick. There's some things that your daddy doesn't want to share with you, and asthma is high on that list.

More Snow in Seattle

After the big snowstorm on Wednesday night, this was the scene out on our balcony. We easily had five inches of snow out there. Oliver couldn't have been happier. (Well, except for the nasty cold he's suddenly developed.) He was digging his hands into the snow outside his window, carrying handfuls of it around in a little plastic bucket, sprinkling it over his little Fisher Price play house (hey, little people, it's snowing!) We had some puddles on our floor, but who cares. We was enjoying himself.


West Seattle, by far, got the worst of the snowstorm. I bussed into downtown Seattle to work yesterday, and you could hardly tell that it had snowed. Where was some white stuff on bushes and hedges, the streets were bare.


On the other hand, getting out of West Seattle was an adventure. One bus was canceled because of treacherous road conditions. Streets here are still covered with thick ice and frozen snow chunks. The main drag, California Avenue, was plowed at some point on Tuesday night, during the snowstorm. I don't know if it's happened since. The hill next to our apartment is a solid sheet of ice. It's a bobsled run. I've seen three cars on it in two days.


Mrs. B has been off for the last two days. Poor girl - she's had a full week of snow days and various other days off due to power outages. She's going to be in school until mid-July, the way things are going. But she's pretty jittery about driving on the icy roads, and she's got a number of hills on the drive to her school, so she's happy to be home.

Snow in Seattle!

Ooh, snow on Sunday! Hooray, snow!




It's so pretty! It's so magical!




Oh, no, snow on Monday!



Oh, no, the commute's a disaster! (It took me 1 1/2 hours to get home - usually I have a 40 minute bus ride.)



Oh, no, let's cancel school for the entire Puget Sound region!

Looking out my window, the streets are bare and dry. No ice, no snow (except on the sidewalks.) The skies are blue. So much for Snow Apocalypse 2006.

To be fair, last night was a disaster on the roads. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of cars were stranded on the icy roads. Buses were stuck in snow and ice. I saw some people on the morning news who had been on the highway for six hours trying to get home after the Seahawks game.

Mrs. B's home today - her school is southeast of Seattle, and they've probably got treacherous roads down there. But thousands of Seattleites called it a snow day today and stayed home.
Anyone who doesn't live in Seattle will laugh at this, because you can barely tell it even snowed. But honestly, I've seen these people drive in snow, and I'm grateful that they're staying off the roads. Better safe than sorry upside down in a ditch, holding your latte between your feet.