Resisting the Douchebaggery of Parenthood
"Little Timmy just took his first steps!"
"Oooooh, that's so wonderful! He's gonna get in all sorts of trouble now! Better keep an eye out! How old is he now? 15 months? Oh good. Billy took his first steps at 10 months."
This sort of thing is exactly the kind of person I do not want to become now that I'm a parent. It's pretty easy to not say stupid things like that out loud, but thinking them is a different story.
I guess it's not inherently snobbish to compare your child's development to other kids close to them in age, but I still feel a little guilty when I do it. I guess as parents we're just always looking for some kind of point of reference we can use to make sure our kids are growing and learning properly. It sure would suck to have to go to school for the first time and discover they know significantly less than all of their classmates, because at that point you've gotta play catch up.
I've been trying my best for three years now to teach Emmy an assortment of things. Last night I explained the concept of opposites to her, which is actually pretty hard to do if you really think about it. Go ahead, try to think of an explanation of what "opposite" means without actually using the word opposite. Hard, aye? But after a little bit she'd gotten a good idea of it.
Now, the next time I see one of the kids my sister babysits for, or one of Emmy's cousins, I'm not going to start grilling them on opposites, but if the topic comes up I will certainly be listening closely. It's some form of validation that I'm doing a good job as a parent. I really want to give her a jump start on learning so that she'll have an easier time in school, because I'm not sure what areas she'll take to quickly and which she won't. I often had a difficult time learning certain subjects at the pace with which they were taught in school, and I'd love for her to fall behind like I did.
Of course, I still feel like a douchebag for comparing her to the other children she meets. I just like knowing that I'm doing a good job at this whole parenting thing, because it certainly took some getting used to.
The Job Hunt: Disappointment Manifested
I'm not good at searching for jobs. It's too easy for me to get discouraged and stop being productive about it. Searching for openings and filling out applications and calling in to check up on them and going in for interviews, only to never hear back from them really turns me off from the whole process.
I've had several "sure-fire" connections to a new job that eventually fell through anyway. I spent a good amount of money and time jumping through all the necessary hoops needed to drive school buses only to have them tell me I had to come in to take a test at a time that I couldn't do. No negotiations, it could only be that time. So they hired someone else and I was out all that time and money.
As I've said before, my only sell-able trait is the fact that I work really hard once I'm in the job. Getting the job, well, that's a different story. I'm too easily put off by the tiresome and frustrating process. Yet, somehow I have an interview this Friday. Strangely, Zoe had only started filling out an application for me there, so either they liked that portion of the application enough to find it in their system and call me, or her cousin that works there gave me a good word.
My in-laws and wife are excited at the very chance of an interview, but I know better. There's no point in getting my hopes up here. If it happens, great, but until it happens I'll expect to be shot down. That's what I've come to know of the job hunting field. Disappointment.
Things Emmy Says, Part 4
She walked up to me with her motorized Thomas train and said it wasn't working well. I looked and there was hair or a string or something wrapped around the wheel, so I told her I'd warned her about using it on the carpet and I wasn't going to fix it right now. She came back awhile later and told me she had fixed it. She had taped over all of the wheels.
"Now the hair has tape over it! It's fixed!"
She wanted cocoa and Zoe told her she didn't know because her cousins were going to be over soon.
Emmy: "Well hurry, we're wasting time!"
That JG Wentworth commercial came on where people yell "It's my money and I need it now!" about a billion times. Emmy watched it quietly, and after it was over turned to me and said, "It's their money and they want it now." very matter-of-factly.
Zoe and Emmy were getting ready to go to Cosco and she handed her a purple shirt with frog heads all over it.
Emmy: "If I wear my frog shirt, all the people at Cosco will know how very funny I am!"
She has interpreted sounding things out as merely saying the first letter a few times before saying the word. She'll say D-D-Daddy, E-E-Emmy, and more whenever she feels like "sounding things out."
Our cat, Jack, was sitting between a set of plastic bins and the bathroom counter and Em walked in and said "Jack's a g-g-genius!"
Zoe asked her if she wanted to watch Up, she said, "No, I think we should watch Pawn Stars."
Funny Names
Emmy calls things by weird names occasionally. Here are some of them.
She calls her trampoline her jumpolene despite frequent corrections. She's quite aware that it is supposed to be called a trampoline, she just doesn't seem to like that name much.
She calls two of the cats her "Lovey Doveys" and the other two cats her "Boops." I have no idea where she came up with those.
Nope, March Sucks Too
Well, I was hoping things would start getting better now that February was over. I should have known better to believe a month had magical powers over my life. Things just like to go wrong no matter what month it is.
Before I even got to fixing the shocks that I need to replace, the wheel cylinder busted on my rear passenger tire. This is the second time that has happened to me. The wheel cylinder is the thing that takes the brake fluid and uses it to press the brakes out and into the drum, causing you to stop. When it breaks, you suddenly lose all pressure in your brakes because the brake fluid drains out. Meaning your brake pedal goes down to the floor and you can no longer stop effectively.
Luckily, both of the times this has happened to me I was on a back road with no other cars around. This time I was going down an icy hill, and was promptly spun around 180 degrees before I came to a stop. Unable to effectively stop was an obvious hindrance to finishing my paper route, so I called my mother to see if she could drive over to help me finish and get the car home.
Upon getting in the car to start slowly heading home, I found that it didn't want to move. I'd used the parking brake to see if that was feasible for stopping, and despite the fact that the pedal was un-pressed, the brakes were still engaged. This meant getting at the release wire directly to try to get them to come off. We finally got it and began the sloooooow drive home.
Now I have brakes and a wheel cylinder to change tomorrow morning, on top of the shocks that need to be changed before they wear my tires down to the rim. Unfortunately, March isn't looking good for my wallet either.
Making it Through February
I used to laugh when people said things about certain months being particularly unlucky, but February has come to be a time of great stress in my life. Now sure, three years ago I was lucky enough to see my first child born on the first of February, but that may have come to haunt me later.
After barely making it through Christmas each year, we have to turn around and get ready for a birthday party in just one month's time. This has been made all the more difficult by the fact that we purchased a piece of shit car that has had a transmission fail the last two years in a row; in February.
This year the money has been so tight that we've come down to below $50 left in our bank account each and every week of that accursed month just trying to keep up on the bills. The very last week of the month we finally had a couple hundred dollars left over that we might have been able to use to pay back some of the money we've had to borrow. Of course, I suddenly learned I'd need to spend that on control arms to once again fix my car.
It is now the first day of March, and we're entering the new month with sizable debts to family members who graciously helped us to get through. I'm crossing my fingers that this month goes MUCH better for us, but on the last day of the devil month I found out I'd need to replace the shocks and possibly struts on my car as well if I didn't want my tires worn to nothing.
February just won't let us go. March is going to have to be one hell of a great month in order to make up for all the shit we've got coming into it.
Interview with Emmy #2
I've gotta catch up on my One A Day posts, so I put it to Twitter to ask Emmy some more questions. This time I recorded her responses. Commence with your "Aaaaawwwww"s and such.
Cops Can Be Real Dicks When They Wanna Be
See, I mostly have a very prominent dislike for cops. Not because I'm a criminal, but because it seems like it is a cops job to treat you like a criminal at all times. To me, the sight of a cop should make me (someone who doesn't ever commit crimes) feel safe. How did you feel the last time you saw a cop? Chances are you got a little nervous and started thinking about exactly how you were driving. That is always the way I feel when I see a cop. Did I stay at that stop sign for long enough or was that a "rolling stop?" Am I staying completely in my lane or drifting a little bit out of it? Does that make me look drunk?
Let me be clear, I have never once been drunk in my entire life. This thought process is completely irrational, but with the way cops analyze you for any slight mistakes, it breeds paranoia. I should never have to be paranoid about a cop pulling me over because I don't commit crimes, but they will find something you did wrong. One of the lights above your license plate is out, better check if you're drunk. Why else would you be out driving in the middle of the night? Well, the license plate light seems to be working fine once we got home, so I guess that was just a load of bullshit.
Delivering newspapers has put me up against cops on plenty of occasions. The thing is, it's actually made me kind of like them. I usually pass them when I am driving down the shoulder of the road, the wrong way. Or I'm doing a u-turn right in front of where they are parked so that I can deliver a paper out my window and then continue down the road in the wrong lane. One time when I did that last thing right in front of a cop, he pulled out and drove up next to me at the next box. I rolled down my window and he asked if I was delivering something. I said yes and held up one of the papers, and he replied "Oh, that's fine then. Just making sure." and drove off.
The other day when I slid off the road a bit in front of someone's mailbox and a man in a truck stopped to help pull me back up, a cop who was driving past stopped. He asked how I'd gotten there and I told him I was delivering papers. He took my license, then stopped traffic while we worked on pulling me back onto the road. Afterwards, he told me he was giving me a verbal warning because I needed to rotate my tires and I was improperly using the lane by being on the wrong side of the road. I was a bit confused. I said, "Even with the paper delivering?" He said yes. So, that means that all the cops I've passed while driving down the wrong side of the road could have pulled me over and given me a ticket, they just aren't dicks and they understand I'm just trying to do my job. That cop that drove up next to me and asked if I was delivering just wanted to make sure before he gave me a free pass to bend the rules.
So, really, it's entirely in their hands whether they want to be a dick about it or not. Back when I delivered papers in town, I would drop papers off at stores and in the big metal paper machines around town. This meant I usually double parked in front of the stores when there weren't any available parking spots, because I was only going to be there a minute at the most. Of course, one day a cop pulled up within the minute it took me to reload the box in front of a local coffee house.
I explained to him that I was just filling the paper box, but he didn't really care. "It doesn't matter if you're delivering anything, you need to park in an actual spot." Of course, this was complete bullshit, because several times a week I would have to maneuver around the beer trucks that were double parked in front of the bars downtown for at least a half an hour at a time. I mentioned this to the cop, and he informed me that they delivered to the back of the bars. Funny, every time I've seen them it has been in the street, so I guess he's just never come across that despite the fact they're sitting there for much longer than I ever do. Or maybe it's just that he decided he wanted to be a dick to me right then, and he valued the beer trucks more than the newspaper. His choice I guess.
In a small town the police force is usually full of the dumb jocks from high school that couldn't achieve anything better in their life. Of course, in a big city you come across more serious issues like racial profiling and bribing. Cops should make you feel safe, but when it seems to be completely up to their mood that particular day whether or not you get a ticket -- or worse -- well, it's hard to feel safe, and not just paranoid.
Point Proven
It's no secret I don't have a ton of confidence in my ability to actually achieve things by myself, but I'm usually determined enough to successfully finish anything that I happen to start.
This weekend I set forth to tackle my first car repair (besides brakes) entirely on my own, because I didn't want to bother anyone else with my incessant need for fixing cars. Also partly to prove to some people that I'm perfectly capable as they'd been doubting it. Suddenly, my confidence in repairing a car on my own has skyrocketed.
In the last nine years that I've been delivering papers I've employed the help of my father-in-law quite a bit to save money when things on my car break. Mostly I've just watched and helped him when he needed it, which has given me some amount of knowledge but not really made me fluent. This time I wanted to set out to replace the control arms by myself, to prove that I could and to not waste his time.
The first one took me the whole day, though, I was quite lackadaisical about it. I was nervous to go about each of the steps right away and much more cautious about it since I didn't really know what I was doing. I also made a few mistakes that took awhile to correct. But by the time I had to hit the sack Saturday afternoon so that I could wake up at midnight for papers, I'd finished one side of the car by myself.
That was the confidence boost I needed, and I also knew what I was doing at that point. I started back up after papers on Sunday with renewed vigor. My father came out to the garage to say he was going to pick something up at the store and get breakfast at McDonalds. Before he even got back I'd gotten the old control arm off. I came inside to eat some breakfast and he asked how it was going. He looked amazed when I told him I'd already gotten the old one off. It's not often my father is impressed with something I do.
I headed back out and in another half an hour I'd put the new one in place. I tightened everything up properly and set to cleaning up all the tools. My mother popped her head out to see if I needed anything and was shocked that I'd already finished. Soon my father as well came out to marvel at my handiwork.
Look, I know this sounds like I'm gloating, but I'd grown tired of my father's way of talking down to my abilities. When my car needed it's transmission replaced, and he called upon my future brother-in-law to help fix my wife's car for us, he'd taken to frequently talking up how great he was at fixing cars. Honestly, it got pretty annoying. Yeah, yeah, Sean is brilliant and wonderful and I'm so lucky to have him helping me.
Well, maybe now my dad will think of me a little bit differently. I'm not completely inept, I just don't have the time to try to do it completely by myself when someone else can help me do it faster. It may seem weird to be so proud of successfully achieving that little goal I set for myself, but it feels pretty good anyway, so I'll just pat myself on the back a little bit and allow myself the good feelings for once. Much better than not having confidence in my own abilities.
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