That being said, I also must say that it can be overwhelming as an amateur blog writer to hear people tell you they like what you say. It causes me to put the pressure on myself to "bring it" every time. I can't even count the amount of times I've written a blog, read it, then deleted the whole thing because it wasn't up to the standards I think you expect from me. I try hard not to repeat myself, to not use the same analogies or anecdotes more than once, and to not write "I hate my job" every day, even if that's how I'm feeling.
Basically, that's my way of saying thanks for sticking with me....and now we'll return to your regularly scheduled blog....today with bullets!
- It's no secret that I love TV. Fall premiere week is right up there with the opening weekend of college football and Christmas as things I look forward to every year. I try to watch as many new shows as possible this first week, then pare down my list after giving everything a shot. Sometimes it works out well.....this strategy turned me on to some shows I probably wouldn't have given a shot based on the promos alone, like Journeyman and How I Met Your Mother. Sometimes it is a huge waste of time, such as any show that stars Christian Slater (the forgotten, My Own Worst Enemy) or Jerry O'Connell (that awful show about carpooling.) Last night gave me one of each - Hawaii Five-0 was awesome, The Event was awful. The whole premise of The Event seems to be to show you as little as possible about the plot, blow your mind with some crazy plot twist with thirty seconds left in the episode, leave you with a little nugget of info and some music to let you know how important what just happened was, then show you scenes from the next week. The other 55 minutes are filled with so many flashbacks and story arcs that you need to rewind constantly to review. Anyways, the best thing I can say about the Event is that it Event-ually ended. (Insert "Hey Oh!" sound bite here)
- Jonah started little kickers soccer last weekend. The plan was to use soccer as the carrot at the end of the stick in potty training, but Jonah still shows absolutely no interest in using the facilities. He seriously seems to feel that he's wasting his time using a toilet when his diaper works just fine. We've tried just about every reward we can think of to kick start his use of the toilet, but nothing seems to be working. So we dropped the soccer restriction, realizing that holding him out was basically punishing him for not agreeing to forced potty training. He was super excited, and apparently we were too. We showed up twenty minutes early. I think the coach (a girl named Michele that was born in the 1990's...yikes!) was a little curious as to who the people were who showed up so early the lights had barely been turned on, but everything was cool after that. Jonah was so amped up he was running around like he was avoiding gunfire - top speed, but never in a straight line. At one point, while we introduced ourselves to the coach, Jonah started doing "snow angels" on the field. Rachel made a comment about Jonah becoming the kid who chased butterflies in right field, but I said he was just practicing his goal celebration. Jonah, upon hearing the term "goal celebration," got up and kicked a ball into the goal. He then ran around like he'd just won the world cup, arms outstretched, yelling "Gooooooaaaaaaalllll," before chest bumping the wall and falling backwards as if he'd been knocked unconscious. This was the definitive "why didn't we have the camera rolling" moment of Jonah's life.
Finally the other kids showed up. I've talked before about how you hardly ever see both parents with the kids at the park in Albany or at the McDonald's play place. It was the same at the Corvallis Sports Park, with Rachel and I being the only set of parents who were both on the field with our kid. I, being the judgemental douche that I am, immediately assumed that these were kids of broken homes or had a parent that just didn't care enough. Then I heard someone say that their other kid had a volleyball tournament across town. Why didn't anyone tell me that families may have more than one kid with multiple obligations on the same day? I immediately realized that I was going to hell. - This was a class of four, but we already got a taste of what kind of names we can expect Jonah's friends to have when he starts school. I can understand avoiding uber-popular names like John, Sarah, Jennifer, etc. but that doesn't mean you need to start converting last names into first names, or just straight creating names. The other kids were named Calvin, Rayner, and Lennon. According to www.babynamewizard.com/voyager (one of my favorite websites) those names ranked 231, 818, and 951 respectively in terms of popularity in 2009. Rayner actually wasn't on the list, so I used the closest name, Raynard. Raynard was 818.....in the 1960's. Ooof.
- Why is it that people baby-talk animals? Do animals respond to that better? I realize that dogs can hear sounds that are inaudible to humans, but that doesn't mean you should try to alter your voice to that pitch. I was at work today and a lady brought in her dog. People literally stopped their normal person conversations to say "Well hewwwo widdle dawgie! Who's a good dog? That's wight, you are! Yes you are! Yes you are!" in that special voice reserved only for dogs and babies. Maybe they're the same thing. In fairness, this dog was a baby. It will be celebrating its six month birthday on Thursday. And yes I know this because this information was offered up for no apparent reason. Again, I don't understand people who go gaga for animals. It's ok to love animals, just don't "wuv" animals. That's when it gets creepy.
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