Ok, while this article is ridiculously over the top, I can totally sympathize with the general sentiment. I used to love going to the stores on the Friday after Christmas, just to be in with a crowd of people who were in good moods, listening to Christmas music, and admiring the decorations. But the madness that this has evolved into means that I'll wait until one of my Mondays off to do all of that. There won't be crowds, but it'll just give me more room to wander with my baby and look at lights.
And then I'll order my presents from here . Mwah-ha-ha-ha-haaaa, take that big box stores!
After three months of spending my time like a lotus-eater with nothing more to do than stare lovingly at my baby's face and wonder why the heck he's still crying, I'm now back at work. It's a little rough, but one saving grace is that I'm leaving Porter with the person I trust most in the world to take care of him - Chris. And at least I took 3 months off with him and wasn't stuck with the unfortunate world of 6 paid weeks and then back to work. So far it hasn't been end of the world. I suspect that will actually be the worst in January when I start having to work full weeks. In December, this is my only full work week, and then I have one or two days off every week. But man....what a drag this is.
And as surely as Black Friday follows Thanksgiving, does Dirty Dozen Saturday follow Black Friday.
The Dirty Dozen is a 24 year Pittsburgh tradition. Every year a bunch of sickos ride the 13 toughest hills in Pittsburgh. Yes, they cannot count. Or they're all bakers. Anyway, babykins and I headed out to watch Chris ride Sycamore and Canton st.
First up: Sycamore. I remembered to bring my camera along to film it. Just before the riders got there, I tried to frame the shot only to see the battery light start flashing. Then as the riders approached, I shifted Porter in my arms, and he started crying. Which then distracted me in my filming so that I got an awful lot of the fine paving job on the side of the hill. After two attempts at filming the camera gave up the ghost all together.
Sigh.
Then I hung out with Chris and a few other friends that I haven't really had a chance to talk to this summer. Then it was off to Canton St, one of the contenders for the steepest street in the world. It's supposedly steeper than anything in San Francisco at 37.5%. It's a crazy street, and better than 1/2 the riders fell over on their sides when they ran out of energy part way up. Alas one such rider went straight into Chris on his way up, and knocked him over.
Steevo killed it and won the whole race handily. Chris got somewhere in the 5th or 6th place. So it was a good day, and a good time was had by all.
So if you're driving through Pittsburgh on the Saturday after Thanksgiving next year, and you see 100+ cyclists, you'll know that they're headed off to do something silly. Fun....but silly.
So these "lovely" people don't want babies. Whatever. I certainly respect people's procreative choices. But...
"Having children is selfish. It's all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet," says Toni, 35.
And why are we maintaining the planet? I like how I would be a bad person for not respecting her choices, but she can judge my motives in the paper. Snort.
Over the last couple of months, I've slowly become obsessed with reading personal finance blogs. In part, that's for obvious reasons. Somehow we have to pay to raise our little bambino. But also, reading articles like this one about "The Sandwiched Generation"makes me realize that if we don't get our retirement shit together, Porter's going to be paying for our nursing home. And if we aren't nice enough to him, he'll put us in some cheap elder-abuse kind of place.
But anyway...if anyone's interested in reading PF (Personal Finance) blogs, some good ones are: Get Rich Slowly
We just figured out how to use the RSS reader a few weeks ago, and man is it sweet. Check out "Google Reader" sometime. My favorite moment in RSS reader history was Sunday night of the Granogue/Wiss weekend. Chris was hitting "refresh" on that thing like a rat on a feeder bar, waiting for blogs to post updates about the big races that he missed. From the time fatmarc showed up in the reader to the time Chris got out to the site to leave a comment THREE other people had already commented. Wow....
MSNBC has an article about how expensive kids are.
Duh.
I've been doing a lot of reading about personal finance lately, (gee what a surprise, huh?) and one topic that's always good for a healthy debate is the financial impact of having children. When should you have them? How much money do you need to have stored up? Are you a sucker for having children because of the cost?
I think the MSNBC article hit the nail on the head in one aspect - kids used to be a financial investment when they worked around the farm and took care of their parents in their dotage. But now they're an emotional investment. And while I would never say that you shouldn't consider finances (believe me, I've considered them a lot of late), I find it hard to believe that finances are a prime mover for most of us in deciding whether or not to have kids. (Note: For an exception to the rule, read Jeff Opdyke's "Love and Money".) I have two dogs who are emotional investments as well. If they keep the house from getting robbed, that's a nice bonus, but I got them for non-financial reasons. I ride bikes for fun, it's an emotional investment. If it makes me healthy, great! There are a lot of things we do that aren't financially motivated.
Having said that, I'm not suggesting that if you want kids, you shouldn't factor finances into the timing. I just think that if you want kids, you'll make things work. And you probably aren't deciding to have kids because it's a sound financial investment.
Things I'm missing only 2 months into this parenting thing:
caffeine. I want my Dr Pepper, darn it.
dairy - I miss cheese, and ice cream, and butter and yogurt and... Alas, Porter doesn't seem to take well to dairy.
being able to pick up my keys and walk out the door. Ok, Chris just spit his drink all over the computer screen. More accurately, I miss being able to look for my keys for 10 minutes, then borrow Chris's keys and walk out the door.
alcohol. Pre pregnancy, I had a drink about once a month, tops. Now, just knowing that I can't/shouldn't is enough to make me miss it.
being able to walk the dogs without 15lbs of baby strapped to my chest. There are days when I'm like "Is this what a disc rupture feels like?"
sleeping through the night. God, I miss sleep.
But this little guy? Totally worth it. At least that's what I chanted the whole time I was in caffeine withdrawal:
Seriously...Al Gore gets a Nobel Peace Prize? Last year's winner, Muhammad Yunus works to give people a chance to pull themselves out of poverty. Gore? He tells everyone that if they're not careful, the world's going to get too hot for him to air condition his mansion. (spits in dust in disgust)
Why the hell isn't Stephen Colbert running for president in PA? I'd vote for him, he's as good a candidate as any of them out there...
Found two really cool charities - one via the Colbeaaarrrr Repoooorrrr - Donor's Choose Kiva
I'm only 23 years behind the times - I watched "The Killing Fields" and realized that the thing that's tugging at my heart these days is...crying babies. What a surprise.
Our little tyke is huge. No, really big for his age, I'm not kidding. We keep singing "I'm a little teapot short and stout..." Our pediatrician was trying oh so tactfully to say that our kid is...uh...large. As one, Chris and I said "It's ok, he's fat".
We saw the "Bodies" exhibit. At the end they had a board where you could put a post-it with your thoughts on the exhibit. My feelings matched the one that read "Cool, but gross". Also...a lot smaller than I expected. Tickets were $22/person, but the whole exhibit took maybe 45 minutes to go through. So for two of us, it was a bit pricey. Cool, but pricey.
Flick's last two posts are hysterical. Good on you mate. And I hear you show up in "A Sunday in Delaware". A star is born.
Overall, I'm avoiding presidential candidates. No point in getting wound up until I know who's actually running. But there have been some pretty funny moments. Kucinich on the Colbert report made me laugh. I've heard Edwards was good, too. And I liked this video from McCain:
It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm…of pish, and crawls insanely up to the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.
-H.L. Mencken
By Ken Levine One of the writers from the TV series M*A*S*H writes about Hollywood, showbiz, etc
Class Factotum She's Baaaacccckkkkk. And as funny as ever!
Cobb I'm fascinated on this man's ponderings on being American. And being black. And being an African-American.
Confessions of a Pioneer Woman She makes me laugh. Any woman who has named her own disease - Low Blood Sugar Cranky Butt Disorder - is ok by me.
Cute Overload OK! I admit it, I love a website which uses terms like "prosh" and "paws-up-itude". I'm pretty sure I will have my engineering degree taken away now.
Fatmarc Mountain Bike, Cyclo-cross...is there anything this man doesn't do?
