Calling Harrison Bergeron

9 year-old pitcher not allowed to play in 8-10 year-old little league team "because he's too good." Story here, and detailing the requisite follow-up legal action here.

Money line:

Jericho ’s pitches are so fast and accurate that league officials and some
parents feared their kids weren’t able to play freely, league attorney Peter
Noble said recently.

I was watching the Incredibles this weekend, uh with my daughter, and this story brought back this dialogue:

Helen: Everyone's special, Dash.
Dash: [muttering] Which is another way of saying no one is.

Title comes from this (excellent) story by Kurt Vonnegut.

Rebirth Day

Six years and one day ago I met up with some friends in Philadelphia. We chatted amiably; I met my friend Terry's daughter who just turned one; we walked through Fairmount Park and had an otherwise lovely day. I felt great.

I thought to myself on my way home how good the day was and how well I felt, all things considered.

I went back to the two-room apartment I was living in that was appointed with a TV, a side table and a beaten-up chair (a bed with an end-table and an alarm clock in the other room rounded out the decor--the entirety of the decor).

I sat down in the chair, adjusted the hole in the slipcover, called my wife at her parents house where she was living with our dog, told her how well the day went, made some false promises and got off the phone.

Then I drank about 60 ounces of Steel Reserve malt liquor and passed out. I was never able to finish the second forty.

A few hours passed and my wife was standing next to me. Looking sad and sickened and familiar to me. I had, in the past two years or so, gotten used to seeing her this way.

I apologized, again. Like I had apologized after I had to explain the real reason why I had "resigned" my previous job; like I had apologized after we had to sell our house and move in with her parents; like I apologized after her parents asked me to leave; like I had apologized so many, many times before for lying and breaking promises.

"I'm done," I said. "I don't want to do this anymore."

I don't know what she said back. It would be some variation of "why should I believe you" or "you've said this before" to "I hope so."

She shouldn't have believed me (I don't think she did); I had said all of this before and I knew she hoped so. And in some way, so did I. But I had hoped before. I didn't want to drink that day. There were many times when I had no conscious desire to drink and yet I found myself strolling into some dive bar that sells take-out malt liquor at odd hours, driving into Trenton to buy MD 20/20 because they're open on Sundays or leaving my job at 8:52am due to some contrived illness so I could be at the state store at 9:00am when it opened.

I didn't want to drink as much as I did. But I drank anyway.

A lot.

We talked a bit more, I didn't move from my seat. I just watched as she dumped the remainder down the drain, again. She seemed more sad than angry. But nothing, to me, seemed out of the ordinary.

She left.

Either she called me or I called her later on. This was our routine. Just about every night we would talk on the phone until 10 or 11pm. Usually I would try to blow her off so I could finish drinking what I had or run to the bar and buy something else to drink. I hadn't, after she left earlier, gone out and bought anything more. That was different. And so I was sober when we spoke that night. She could tell. She still sounded beaten.
I apologized. Again.
I didn't go out and buy anything else. I stayed up a little while longer and then went to bed and fell asleep.

The next day was Monday, 22 July 2002 and was unremarkable in almost every way. I took the train into the city and went to work at my part-time job with my mother at a title insurance agency (I barely held onto a full-time job at a diagnostic laboratory from Tuesday to Saturday and had to be in work at 6:00am, hence leaving early to get to the liquor store before all of the other miscreants--only legitimate bar owners and alcoholics are in a Pennsylvania Wine & Spirits Shoppe at 9:00am).
The only thing I remember for certain from that day was that my mom took me to lunch with a colleague of hers to a Chinese restaurant on Walnut Street. It had been about 22 hours since I had anything to drink and I hadn't eaten anything since then, either. I don't know if I was suffering from delirium tremens or some other fringe benefit of alcohol abuse, but it was everything I could do to get the fork from the plate to my mouth.
I also had an incredible urge to vomit. How I didn't I don't know. I had to eat some of the food, so as not to appear rude, but it was tough going.
The workday ended and I walked back to the train station to make my way home. I called my wife while waiting for the train. I told her I'd call her when I got home.
I don't remember much at all from the rest of that night. Other than the horrific experience at the restaurant, the day was wholly unremarkable. I did speak with my wife again later that night and she could tell I hadn't been drinking. I think she was happy.
I didn't drink on Monday, 22 July 2002.

This is not necessarily remarkable, either. I had gone nineteen days without drinking in April of that year--but it was only nineteen days and not the thirty I claimed when I accepted the thirty-day coin from the AA clubhouse I attended in body but not spirit. And though an alcoholic, I didn't drink every day. Just most of them. To excess. To the extent that I didn't ordinarily "go to bed" at night, I passed out in my ratty chair in front of the television. I would come to in the middle of the night, drink some of whatever was left in whatever bottle was next to me--the bottle in the same place, every time--and then go to bed.

The sort-of remarkable thing was that I didn't drink on Tuesday, 23 July 2002, either. I don't know if I wanted to or not. I don't remember. I probably did. But I didn't. Nor did I the next day.

The really remarkable thing is that I haven't since.

And so today, after a terrible night's sleep (my otherwise wonderful, fitful-sleeping, four-month old couldn't get settled last night) I was in the kitchen and my older daughter came in and, prompted by mommy, said "Happy Six Years Daddy!"

She has no idea what that means, but we do. My wife, against my best efforts, stayed with me. How much longer I had, either with her or on this earth, I don't know. But I'm glad I didn't find out.

In the copy of Alcoholics Anonymous that a wonderful man gave me in my first, failed attempt to get sober I keep a piece of paper that has written on it, "Be Strong! You can do this! Love you, Heather...and Love yourself." This and the undeserved thirty-day coin that I still have are among my most prized possessions. They show more than anything what is possible for me. The coin represents all of the most terrible things I can do. A man that misrepresents himself, to his family, his friends, his co-workers and to a group of people whose sole collective purpose is to help others get and remain sober is no man--I have a very difficult time tolerating lying and this comes from all of the lying I've done myself, to myself. The coin stands for all of the lying, stealing, duplicity; all of the horrible things I am capable of when I drink. The note stands for all of the opposite. That this woman was kind enough to stay with me. To care when just about everyone else who knew anything about me had stopped still amazes me. Not everyone stopped caring and few stopped entirely. But with my sickness I created a particularly dreadful form of hell for this woman. And she stayed. The note shows that there is hope and love. No one, not even me, the guy in the coin, is irredeemable.

Certainly I can still be a jerk and life is not without it problems. But today we face them together, with our small family and meager circumstances. And I know we can handle anything. So long as I don't drink.

Which I don't.

And haven't.

Since 22 July 2002.

One day at a time.

Thank you Heather.

And God Bless Peter Gabriel.

The Hidden Cost of Raising Children

Just over a week ago I bought an eight-pack of AA batteries. At the time of purchase, nothing needed batteries.

We're going to the zoo today and I put the last two batteries from the pack into the camera.

Baby Joy

I just wasted thirty seconds of your life, but it was cute.


Sound effects provided by Big Sister.

Joy to the World!

I am very proud to say that my wife gave birth to our second beautiful daughter, Joy Eileen, on Saturday, 08 March 2008. The baby was delivered at 6:06pm and weighed 8#, 3 oz, and was 20.75" long.
This was the end of a very long, very anxious process my wife and I started about two years ago.

On the morning of the 8th my wife, who was feeling quite miserable, said she thought her water broke and we made our way to the hospital after speaking with her doctor.
We got there about 10:30 and got her hooked up to the monitors. They couldn't determine if her water broke with the nitrazine strip. She went to the bathroom and her contractions stopped. The nurse, who was fantastic, said that was normal, but they still needed to determine that her water broke, which after some time they were able to do.
Since her contractions had stopped and they knew her water had broken, they were going to induce, but before they could give her pitocin to get things going they had to make sure the baby was in the proper position.
We had to wait until the doctor who was in "the pit" finished with a Caesarian Section. It took longer for the mobile ultrasound machine to warm up than it took for this guy to find the baby's head and say "OK," and walk out.
Then my wife had to get an IV put in and she is a pretty difficult "stick." The otherwise fantastic regular nurse couldn't get her and neither could another nurse on the floor so they called in the IV team, which took another 45 minutes or so. All told, the waiting for the doctor and the nurses took more than an hour, which is not a complaint, just an observation. The baby would have come that much sooner.
The pitocin was given around 2:00pm and kicked in quickly. By 3:00pm she was 4 cm dilated and 90% effaced. They actually pulled the pitocin so they could give her the epidural.
After they gave the epidural, which they kicked me out of the room to administer, and re-started the pitocin, things moved swiftly.
My wife's friend who works at the hospital stopped in around 5:00pm to check on her. It's at this point that the pain from the contractions and the pressure on her lower back start to outweigh the epidural. It is also at this point that I have my wife on tape stating that we will have no more children.
Around 5:45 I call the grandparents to let them know that I think the baby will be here around 7:00pm. The in-laws, who have our older daughter, say they are going to make their way down now and not to worry about coming out to see them until after the baby is born.
At right before 6:00pm my wife's doctor comes in in street clothes and tells her everything looks great, he's getting changed and not to push.
He gets in the room at 6:02pm and the show gets started and the wife is handling everything amazingly.
After a few minutes he motions for me to move. I'm thinking I'm in his way and start to move to the far side of the room. He tells me to stop and pulls me next to him and says "put your hands here and pull the baby out."

No kidding.

He tells me not to let the baby slip and helps me put the baby on my wife's stomach. He puts his hand on top of mine, which is on the baby, and looks at me and says, "Isn't that great?"
And it really, really was.

The baby was perfectly healthy; perfectly perfect.

My wife had to push for only four minutes. The picture above was taken at about four or five minutes.
Ryann met her little sister at 6:30pm.

Our daughter is named for my wife's friend who died tragically last year. The family was gracious enough to allow us to use her name in her honor. We conceived around the time her friend took ill and had some problems getting pregnant before then and had some issues during the pregnancy. My wife is convinced that her friend helped this pregnancy stick and got baby Joy and us through the other issues.
Baby Joy was born on the birth-date of her friend's husband and will be baptized on the friend's birth-date.
I don't believe in the hereafter or in the interposition of the dead with the living. But this got even me thinking.

On our way home from the hospital, we stopped at the cemetery to lay flowers on Joy's grave and to thank her.

Good Eats

My wife and I recently celebrated our eighth anniversary with dinner at the elegant Peter Shields Inn in Cape May, New Jersey.

It is a beautiful, fairly imposing restaurant right across from the beach. We've been aware of the place for years but never had a previous opportunity to dine there before. My wife's family has been vacationing there for decades, and through meeting her I've been introduced to the pulchritude and history that is Cape May.

While redoubtable in appearance from the outside, inside is as warm and friendly an atmosphere as you could wish for: the hostess was pleasant; the owners were milling about and were congenial without being obtrusive; the waitress was knowledgeable, friendly and helpful without hovering, pushing or overtly up-selling--which can be tricky, but she did it nicely.

My wife started with Crabmeat in a Tomato Broth, which was just amazing. Not a single spoonful did she take that wasn't teeming with crabmeat, almost all of it lump; the broth was sublime. I had the Parma & Pasta appetizer; the flavors of the ham and cheese were balanced perfectly with the sauce and texture of the tortellini. "Amazing" and "balanced" were recurrent themes for the entire experience.

For entrées, my wife had the Halibut, which was seared to perfection with a light crust. The tartness of the saffron-caper cream sauce was balanced with the sweet of the grape-tomato and cucumber slaw. I had the Lobster Crab Cake which, with the application of just the hint of pressure from my fork, split to offer an abundance of lobster and lump crabmeat. The cake was served on a bed of rice and topped with a lobster stock cognac sauce. As with everything else, the flavors and textures of the dish melded together seamlessly in my mouth.

For dessert, my wife had the Crème Brulée whose appearance was second only to the flavor and texture. I had a warm fudge brownie á la mode which was decadent beyond belief.

If I had one quibble, it was with the decaffeinated coffee. It had the taste of sand without any of the personality.

Otherwise, it was an exquisite evening and I can't recommend the Peter Shields Inn highly enough. It is in the top five meals of my life, included with such establishments as il Tulipano, the Bernards Inn, the Monte Carlo Living Room and Louie's Backyard.