Happy B-day to me,

Thirty-Four, thank you for asking.

I am mighty distracted of late, which is not helping me get my stuff done at work. Because I definitely need to get my stuff done before the babies comes. But the fact the babies are coming is highly distracting.

And so it goes.

On the Home front I have been obsessed with cleaning up and clearing out our offices to put a giant room swap into play, whereby we move our bed into an office and start some hard core baby nursery decoration. This mainly entails boxing things we want to keep in some semi-organized fashion, and throwing away the other half. You accumulate a lot of crap over the years, I can tell you.

Also highly distracting are the Dodgers, who are in the thick of a seriously entertaining playoff chase. Basically three teams, the Los Angeles Dodgers, San Diego Padres, & Philadelphia Phillies (Is that a crappy name or what) are in a race to go the playoffs. One will win the Western Division, one will win the free pass of baseball known as the Wild Card, and one will go home to sulk and probably develop a substance abuse problem. As of this morning the Dodgers lay exactly half way between the Padres and the Phillies, with basically a game separating them either way. You don't want to know what happens if teams end the season tied, but it is complicated and involves a white board to explain. I have all sorts of playoff tickets if the Dodgers can get there, as I am part of a Season Ticket pool, so that kind of makes this doubly distracting.

Fortunately the Dodgers just won their game this afternoon (19-11, a traditional Coors Field pitcher's duel), putting pressure on both their rivals who play later.

See, I told you I was distracted.

Breast Feeding Class: Less Hot Than You Might Think

Demonstrating I am well on my way to full middle-class, suburban husband-hood, I attended a Breast Feeding class last night. There is nothing young, hip, or edgey about learning how to breast feed. I am prefectly willing to allow that a totally cool, with-it hot chick might attend such a class (although I don't recall any there...uh, except my beautiful wife -- phew! that was close), but since my attendence was to learn about it so I could understand and help my wife go through with it, I think this clearly puts me into the mini-van man demographic.

Hell, I have even been talking about getting a mini-van. Mini-vans are so uncool, that they are almost cool. Especially if I could get a brand new one, fully tricked out. Maybe I could put those spinning wheels and some fluorescent under-lights on it. I could really cruise in one of those and have plenty of storage room for strollers and diaper bags. Yeah, bitches!

Anywho, the class was actually kind of interesting, sort of like the Science of the Breast 101. Apparently a breast is a lot like a stalk of broccoli. Seriously, the lecturer brought broccoli as a visual prop. I imagine afterwords she went home and boiled her breast before melting some cheese on top. Mmm.

I learned a newborn baby has a stomach the size of a marble, which grows to the size of ping pong ball over the first few weeks of their life. Again, there were props. Really, the lecturer was like the Carrot Top of lactation consultants.

I also learned TOR. Tickle the lower lip. Open the mouth wide. RAM it in.

Apparently the nurses have asked the lactation people to stop using this memory acronym. I am not sure if they find the ramming of breasts distasteful, or merely the linguistic faux pas of putting an acronym in an acronym, as RAM also stands for Rapid Arm Movement. All I know is breast feeding requires a good latch. I will probably check out Home Depot after work.

Finally I learned we are suppose to breast feed every 2-3 hours for weeks on end and that we should really wait 4 weeks before first trying to introduce a bottle. Yikes, that doesn't sound like much sleep. With two of the little rugrats we have to make sure they feed simultaneously, otherwise the little woman will never do anything else. Even as it is I imagine more often than not she will look like a shark with a couple of remora fish tucked under each arm.

T-Minus 5 weeks to destruction of decadent, lazy-do-nothing lifestyle.

For God's Sake, They Don't Hate Our Freedom!

I don't know who came up with that gem, but it has traveled back and forth across the American psyche so many times it has become gospel.

Muslim Terrorists Hate Our Freedom.

I mean seriously, a 19-year devote muslim living in Baghdad is blowing himself and a school-load worth of children off this planet because someone, far off in the United States, is enjoying an abstract concept like freedom. Oh yes, I want to fight and die because Jennifer Thompson in Long Island, New York is allowed to watch MTV. Oh, you person I have and never will meet, I hate your ability to travel freely throughout your territorial boundries so much that I will march and chant "Death to Israel".

It is absurd no matter how you look at it and is among the most blatant propaganda since we declared Saddam Hussein to be the next Hitler. Yeah, that level of rhetoric worked out well.

Muslims Terrorists do not hate freedom or liberty or puppies or apple pie. They may not be fond of Western culture or morals, but that is also not why they are lining up to die. Muslim Terrorists hate the way the Western nations and particularly the United States are interfering in the Muslim world.

Period. End of sentence. No further explanation required.

Now whether or not the West should be interfering in the Muslim world or even whether we have a choice in the matter is another question. I am not a proponent of packing up our diplomatic bags and going home. But that is where the hate comes from.

The U.S. created, armed and continues to support Israel.
The U.S. props up multiple repressive "friendly" regimes, from Saudi Arabia to Egypt.
The U.S. continually plays one Muslim nation against another, with Iraq vs. Iran being among the bloodier examples.
The U.S. attempts to extract the maximum amount of oil from the region, putting money into the pockets of an elite few.

And this is all pre-Iraq invasion, a completely bald-faced attempt to impose U.S. control on an Arab country.

You can add to all that the general (and quite accurate) sense that the United States thinks of everyone in the Muslim countries as second class citizens (of the world), and you can begin to get a notion of why a vocal minority would, in fact, hate us.

We disrespect them while at the same time constantly interfere in their lives. How would you think of that sort of person? Particularly if they make things worse 75% of the time (I may be being generous) and seem to be getting more belligerant and more controlling.

Using the Terrorists Hate Freedom propaganda is not helping us solve this problem. How do you fight that? Give them Freedom? Take their Freedom? Hide our Freedom? I think we need to publicly address the grievances, real and false, the Muslim world has with our policy towards the region, where they live. It is not giving in to terrorists to address problems that make the majority of Muslims unhappy, any more than it is giving in to inner city criminals to address the urban decay issues that led to their creation. In general, terrorism is a crime and terrorists are criminals and that is how they should be dealt with. You can't win a war on terrorism any more than you can win a war on crime. Or poverty. Or any other abstract concept one could name.

Like Freedom.

Anxiety

Now the main purpose of this blog is to blather on and on, like I am wont to do, about all subjects great and small. I have many opinions and the world (i.e. 4-6 people who irregularly read this blog) need to know them.

It is not meant to be a diary, except in that it gives me an excellent place to post progress on various projects that I obsess about but no one should be forced to hear about. Example 1: The hole. I figure once my kids are born this will be an excellent place to vent new father stuff without boring other people to death who really do not want to know about the latest adventure in diapers.

Having said all that, today I will post a more personal/diary-esque post and see how that feels.

I feel anxious. Not sure why. I have some very good reasons, I suppose. Kids on the way, behind in my work, major financial/logistical implications of consolidating my finances and re-modeling the house. Stupid air conditioning has some sort of issue with water collecting in the system, condensing and pouring water down into the furnace/blower. This is collecting down on the hallway floor, leading to both wood warping and mold issues. Called a repair guy this morning, the company that installed my A/C and repaired my blower. Apparently, they don't fix this sort of thing (?!?!??!). Then who does? Sigh.

Some days you wake up and feel ready to take on the world and others you wake up and want to crawl back into bed. Maybe I just need more vitamins? Protein? Less sleep? More sleep? I don't believe in biorhythms and it seems unlikely my hormone levels are changing by much, so why do some days suck more than others? Dropping air pressure? Am I a human barometer?

Ah phooey. I may not know what causes an anxious day. But I know what the cure is.

About three fingers, neat.