I've been informed that it's time to update this thing, and that seems like a reasonable assertion. Here's some stuff:
The baby is moving like crazy now. She moved all throughout Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which made it a pretty awesome experience all around. Best Potter movie yet. Best baby yet.
I hung out in the city yesterday with Wolfhaus, which was a grand old time. We walked around until our feet swelled up, and hit the ol' comic shop. Yes, we nerded it up. Would you expect anything less?
I just updated my Amazon Wishlist with a bunch of video games and junk, in case you want to buy me things just for being such a good person.
Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and I'm going to eat a lot.
Someone needs to kick me in the ass to start writing more. I've been really laxe about it. I'm a writer, dammit! Writers write, correct?
That's all for now. I'm not going to ask you to holla at me, because it's rude to yell, but please do leave a comment. Thanks!
My new favorite pastime is feeling the baby move. I've had a lot of dads describe it to me as "freaky" and "alien", but I think it's cool. Then again, I think freaky aliens are cool as well. But knowing that it's my child kicking me in the hand...well, it's pretty amazing.
Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the day we got so depressed about Bush winning the election that we drove into the wilds of Pennsylvania and got Calli. In her honor, here's a recent column.
I’ve been trying to find an entertaining way to write a column about my dog for almost a year now. I probably should have come to the conclusion that no one wants to read about my dog except for me and, debatably, my family, but I figured I’d give it one more go. After all, in just a few months I’ll be kicking off a string of columns about how many times my baby has burped this week, so I might as well get used to boring people now.
My dog’s name is Calliope, but we call her Calli for short. She’s a black/brindle Scottish terrier and she just turned a year old. And I love her. This may not sound like anything out of the ordinary, but it represents a true departure in my concept of my own identity.
I had always been of the opinion that people are either Dog People or Cat People. Dog People, in my mind, were rough and tumble. They wanted an animal you could wrestle with. They were the football players and the cub scouts and whatever other sort of masculine, all-American clichés you can come up with. Then there were the Cat People, who preferred an animal that would sit quietly with you while you read a book. They didn’t mind that cats aren’t always affectionate towards you, so when they finally rub their head against your leg it felt earned. Cat People to me seemed more withdrawn, more intellectual. It shouldn’t surprise you that I had cats. (I should also note that some people love both dogs and cats, but my metaphor wasn’t comprehensive enough to include them.)
I had two cats growing up and I loved them dearly. Then I went away to college and wasn’t around them every day, and suddenly I would find myself getting really allergic when I was around cats. Not deathly allergic, but allergic enough where if I touched a cat and then touched my eye I would merely wish to die. The same thing, oddly enough, happened to my wife, so when we thought about getting pets we kind of wrote the whole cat thing off. Which left gerbils (which we had…and had and had and had again, until our original pair was old enough to stop mating), and fish (which we also had and still have, although attempts to cuddle with fish are going to result in bodily harm to either you or the fish), and dogs.
Now my wife has had dogs her whole life (she’s one of those bizarre Cat/Dog People I failed to take into account) but the closest I’d ever come to owning a dog was the cocker spaniel my mom got after I went to college. And seeing as I never really lived in the same house as Pumpkin, I thought of her more as a tenant who’s renting out my old room than a beloved pet. (To my mother, who is reading this and freaking out – I love her now, Ma. I’m just trying to make a point here.)
So when we bought my mom’s house and were free of our apartment’s pet restrictions, our plan was to wait about a month after we moved in so we could get settled before we got a dog. We made it about four days. The day after last November’s election we were so depressed (about what? I’m not saying – draw your own conclusions) that we drove two hours after dark into some strange rural part of Pennsylvania because we needed something to make us feel better at that exact moment. And that’s how we got Calli.
Now I can’t imagine life without her. She sleeps between my wife and I with her body under the covers and her head on the pillow like some strange hairy child who’s had a bad dream. And for people as shy as Brooke and I are, she provides a wonderfully convenient icebreaker to talk to our neighbors – We get to apologize for her as she jumps all over them or their dogs. “Sorry,” we’ll say, “she’s just a puppy,” and we’re well on our way to a conversation.
Now I realize, as I so often do, how wrong I was as a child. There aren’t Dog People and Cat People, and not everyone who loves dogs also loves monster truck rallies. There are Animal Lovers and…well, weirdos. It’s funny, but I never find myself asking, “Isn’t it weird that I own a dog and I’m a Cat Person?” I’ll usually just ask myself, “Don’t I have the cutest dog?” and the answer is yes.