Our New House Guest is Half Joe Camel and a Third Fonzarelli

Judging by the ol' counter in the upper left corner of this blog, readership has slowed a bit lately. Perhaps I've alienated the childless demographic with the recent Ryan saturation. Or maybe the increasing fart-jokes-per-post ratio has turned off the cultural elite. Or maybe your you're all realizing I just don't write very good well, and as a result I'm loosing losing readers.

Regardless of the reason, I'd like to see it fixed. 

In theory, this bit of bad news should provide the motivation I need to improve my writing. Seek out some formal training. Maybe diversify my topics.

But I'm a lazy, lazy man.

So rather than work harder to improve my craft, I'll just look to my old friend television for inspiration. Teacher. Mother. Secret lover. 

Historically, sitcoms have attempted to boost sagging ratings by adding an unnecessary character in hopes of injecting new life into their stale programming. Happy Days brought in the Fonz. Saved By the Bell added that hard-ass chick, Tory. And yes, even the critically acclaimed Itchy and Scratchy needed a shot of Poochie the dog to reinvigorate their dwindling fan base.

Typically, these characters are nothing more than caricatures, cluttering up the scene and spouting contrived catch phrases at every turn. For example, when they were creating Poochie, the following directives were issued to the illustrator:

Creator: He needs attitude, attitude! Uh... sunglasses!

Consultant: Could we put him in more of a "hip-hop" context?

Krusty the Klown: Forget context, he's gotta' be a surfer. Give me a nice shmear of surfer.

Consultant: I feel we should Rasta-fy him by... 10 percent or so.

All Three: Oh, yeah, bingo. Yeah, that's it! There it is, right there! I love it!

The result was the rather "in your face" canine you see above. But let me tell you, Poochie created quite a stir amongst the Itchy and Scratchy faithful. It worked.

Taking a page from my favorite show-within-a-show, Lauren, Ryan, Maci and I are adding a little spice to our lives this winter and bringing in some new blood. My good friend Brett "the Jet" Friel -- lifeguard, budding photog, and collector of hilarious bumper stickers -- will be spending the winter in Aspen, and we're hopeful his experiences as a 25-year old single guy in a world class party town will spice up the blog.

What's refreshing about Brett, is unlike Poochie, he's no ridiculous caricature, born from some out-of-touch corporate desire to capitalize on ill-conceived requirements for "cool" like surfing and sunglasses and bad-ass attitude. He's a real-life, grounded, guy who...oh shit....

Perhaps you should ignore that last paragraph. Yes, that is Mr. Friel, apparently doing his best Poochie impression during a recent trip to Mexico.

In all seriousness, I'm extremely jealous of Brett. And not because he's younger, better looking, and judging from that picture, significantly more Rasta-fied than me.

I'm jealous because he's got the balls that I didn't at that stage of my life. To pick up and move to a ski town at his age on a whim, out of nothing more than a desire to experience a life he's always wondered about, is an act of courage I admire.

Look, I'm smart enough to know that I've got it pretty good. At 34, I'm living exactly as I've always dreamed, aside from the fact that Lauren and I don't spend our free time driving around in a van, solving mysteries.

But by no means was this a linear process for me. It has taken many steps -- some forward, many back, a few sideways -- for me to get from a twenty-three year old CPA at Arthur Andersen in Roseland, NJ to where I am today. And I'm pretty certain that if I had only possesed the cayones Brett has, I might have gotten here sooner.

Life is fleeting. This should come as a surprise to absolutely no one. As you're sitting in your cubicle or manning the assembly line down at the cracker factory, daydreaming of a different reality, the hourglass is emptying.

I don't mean to come off as preachy. Nor am I suggesting that people should spend every waking moment of every day pursuing their wildest fantasies. It's that type of uncompromising thinking that made the poor kid from Dead Poets Society shoot himself. We don't want that. 

No, real life doesn't work like that. Shit gets in the way. We have obligations and responsibilities and families and pressures that sometimes make it impossible to create seismic changes. I understand and respect that.

With that said, if there is somewhere or someone you'd rather be, and no compelling reason you can't make it happen, I'd implore you to at least have a plan. I may not have had any balls in my mid-twenties, but one thing I did have was a idea.  An image burned into my head of exactly what was important to me, and what I thought I needed in order to provide the best life for myself and the family I hoped to have some day. I kept that idea, that image, with me throughout the past decade, anxiously awaiting the one thing that would spur me into action. 

For me, it was all about the girl.

Once I met Lauren, everything fell into place. With her, I no longer harbored any fear of the unknown. Suddenly, picking up and moving to the mountains didn't seem impossible. If the town went bad, if my job went bad, I knew I'd still have her. She gave me courage. Unlike Brett, I didn't have the strength to go it alone.

I shamelessly admit my intent to live vicariously through Poochie Brett for the next six months. He's about to experience a winter he'll never forget, and I'm happy to be a part of it. When his life story is penned, the winter he spends as a young, single guy in Aspen won't make the first few paragraphs, but you likely won't have to flip too many pages to find it. This was his daydream, just as it was mine. And he'll soon be living it.

But our daydream likely isn't yours, and that's just fine. That's the coolest thing about daydreams: they're personalized. What's heaven to me -- living in a quiet mountain town two hundred miles from the nearest shopping mall -- would be hell to many. Maybe you dream of attending art school, or running your own business, or purchasing a really kick-ass watch. I've got no argument for that. I think it was Plato who said "The world don't move to the beat of just one drum. What might be right for you, might not be right for some." Smart guy.

Of course, these things don't come without risks. I 've taken them. Brett's certainly taking one. In all likelihood, you'll have to take one or two as well. If happiness were easy to come by, everyone would have it.

But you owe it to yourself to at least try. What's the worst that can happen?

Except for the whole Dead Poets Society thing, of course.

/As an aside, I think I've outdone myself with the Simpsons references in this post. I'm not sure there is an original thought in here. A shiny nickel to anyone who can count them all.*

* no nickel will be awarded

My Kid Is So Money, And He Doesn't Even Know It

My memory may be a bit fuzzy, but I think it was Randy Watson, frontman for the groundbreaking band Sexual Chocolate, who first sang the lyrics, "I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way."

Very true, Randy. 

But as parents, while we're busy indoctrinating our offspring into our love for the Yankees or distrust of foreigners or whatever it is that makes us us, we often get so focused on imparting our wisdom that we fail to realize that if we simply pay attention, we can learn nearly as much from our kids as they from us. 

Granted, Ryan is the first child I've ever paid any significant amount of attention to, but I've found him to be a pretty interesting dude. Sure he struggles with verbal communication and shits his pants several times a day (more on that later), but he's also seen more bare female breast in the last 24 hours than I have in 34 years, so he's doing something right.

In fact, he's doing a lot of things right, but if we adults could steal just three things from him, I'd recommend these.

Wear Your Emotions on Your Sleeve

Do you see that face? That's the look of pure joy I get treated to every time the boy is happy. It's a beautiful thing because for that moment, you can rest assured that everything is right in his world.

Children don't have the skills -- nor do they see the need -- to temper or hide their emotions. When things are good, they let you know. When things are bad, well...they'll sure as hell let you know that, too. 

But it won't last. As Ryan grows into an adult, he'll inevitably learn that sometimes it's in your best interest to appear happy when you're really not, and other times, it's best to appear sad when you're really happy, like when your wealthy grandmother dies. Emotions, with age, become more of a calculated response than a window to our soul.

In no area of life are these bullshit parlor games more prevalent than in love. We're never more reticent to show our emotional hand than when it's our heart at stake. We do it in the name of not "coming on too strong" or appearing overanxious or desperate, but clearly, it's simply a defense mechanism to protect ourselves lest things go bad.

Sadly, Ryan will be no different. At some point, the boy is going to meet a girl he really digs, and while sharing a beer with his buddies, will have the following conversation (warning: one NSFW moment towards the end)

What makes Swingers, and this scene in particular, such a classic is that every guy between the ages of 21 and 45 has endured this exact useless exercise at some point in their single lives.

It's all needlessly complicated. Wouldn't we all be better off if our emotions were an open book, like our kids?

Think about what I had to go through to win my wife's attention. The story has already been told, but long story short, I quit my job, risked my livelihood, and moved 2,000 miles to take a lifeguarding gig on the off chance that I might run into a girl that, in our one previous meeting, gave no indication that she was aware I was alive.

But what if it hadn't gone down that way? What if when I first met Lauren, she made the Ryan face upon our introduction?

Now, that would have sped up the process a bit, wouldn't it? Instead of six months worth of guessing games, I would have known immediately that Lauren was helpless in the face of my animal magnetism, and I could have skipped that return flight to Denver so we could start our lives together.

So if you're single and reading this, cut the bullshit. If there's some guy or girl or one of each that tickles your fancy, let them know. Give them the Ryan face. Send them flowers. Tell them you're meant to be together and threaten to kill yourself if they don't love you the way you love them. Go with your heart.

(Ed note: It is not recommended that you tell them you're meant to be together and threaten to kill yourself if they don't love you the way you love them.)

How to Turn a Humiliating Moment Into a Sympathetic One

The other day, Lauren, Ryan and I were at my client's office, introducing the boy to the people that indirectly pay my salary. When we arrived, Ryan was still asleep, so we sat around making small talk for a few minutes. As we were talking, he suddenly became unsettled, and what began as a wiggle and whimper quickly evolved into a writhe and wail. 

Then he farted, and was calm once more.

And this was no ordinary fart. It was loud, lengthy, and its scent stung the nostrils. 

Here's the thing...do you know what all the people in that room felt at that undeniably awkward moment? Pity. Not embarrassment, not disgust, but pity. We could see that the poor kid was clearly in a great deal of discomfort, and if he needed to let one rip in order to alleviate that discomfort, well..so be it.

Now, that may work fine and dandy as an adorable infant, but pull that shit as a 34-year old male random adult in a crowded elevator, and suddenly you're worse than Hitler.

It doesn't seem fair, does it? Who's to say an adult can't be in just as much gastrointestinal distress as a child? When you think about it, the boy only eats formula and breast milk, how bad could his gas be? Slip the kid a Wendy's bacon double cheeseburger and a supersized Coke, then let's talk about stomach pains.

But as adults, we don't get that free pass. People look past the underlying pain, and focus solely on the social stigma attached to ridding oneself of said pain. For anyone over the age of 6, every flatulent moment ends like this (warning: NSFW moment at very end courtesy of Seth Rogan):



The lesson here is simple: if you want pity, you've got to earn it. The next time you find yourself in a public setting and last night's enchilada rears its ugly head, ham it up. Kick, scream, do whatever you have to do to draw attention to the fact that if you don't fanny burp and fanny burp soon, you might not make it. Maybe, just maybe, instead of the evil eye that stranger standing nearby will offer you a "poor baby" and a pat on the head.

But I wouldn't count on it.

Learn to Laugh at Yourself

Last night, I was home alone with Ryan when Maci started to take an unusual amount of interest in him. At first, I thought all the sniffing was a sign of affection, until I realized the majority of the attention was focused squarely on the boy's butt.

And that's when I discovered the mother of all poops. Having burst free from the restraints of his diaper in search of sunlight, it was covering his back, shoulders and the inside of his pajamas.

Minutes later, as I diligently scrubbed shit off my son's scapulas, he looked up at me and laughed. And laughed. And laughed some more.

Annoyed as I was, I knew there was something to be gained from this experience. If the kid can laugh through his worst moments, why can't we? Who among us hasn't tripped while running for the bus, or yelled "Hold on...I'm just cutting the cheese!!" in a crowded supermarket, or woke up late on a Sunday morning and forgot to wear pants to church?

And when this stuff happens, we've got two choices: we can either hang our head in shame and half-heartedly protest the church's outdated, oppressive pants requirement, or we can have a good laugh at ourselves and move on with our lives, like children do.

Sure, you may argue that Ryan was laughing because he doesn't know any better, and the timing was merely coincidental. But I think it was more than that. Perhaps, in their simplistic world view, children understand that we're all going to shit our proverbial pants at times, and there's no sense in getting worked up over it.

And that pretty much sums up how kids work. They smile when they're happy, cry when they're not, pass gas with impunity, and laugh off moments that would scar adults for decades. Meanwhile, parents are forced to hold in their emotions as well as their gas, and we take our setbacks far too hard.

So who's raising who?

It's One More Day Up In The Canyon

With winter playing hard to get in this here mountain town, the unseasonably warm weather has allowed for some fantastic early November bike rides. Today I took a break from my fatherly duties (read: financial support and spankings) and headed out for a quick jaunt up to Ruedi Reservoir.

While Denver and the surrounding foothills were pounded by a late October storm, the Roaring Fork Valley hasn't seen any significant accumulation as of yet. Here's the rather green view from 7,500 feet, a few miles up the Frying Pan Road. Coincidentally named Frying Pan River to the right.

Once out of the shade, here's the Frying Pan River illuminated by the vibrant sunshine that's been the norm around these parts for the past few weeks.

Fifteen miles and 1,200 vertical feet from the start of the ride, here's my goal for the day, the Ruedi Reservoir. Not much to look at here.

Zoom towards Hagerman Pass. While the valley is green, the high country is donning its traditional coating of white.

A beautiful view from the descent. This pretty much sums up why I live here.

Nearing the town of Basalt, Mt. Sopris peeks out from behind the foothills.

A close-up of the twin summits of Mt. Sopris. Thomas Lakes bowl begging to be skied from 12,995 feet.

Advice From A Kick-Ass Dad: How To Scare the Shit Out of Your Kids Before Someone Else Does

Lauren and I have this friend. To protect her identity, let's call her Melissa X. No...wait...that might give it away. Let's go with Mrs. Maguire. Yeah, that's better.

Mrs. Maguire has a three-year old son. On Friday, she woke up, got her little boy all dressed up as a tiger or elephant or mutant ninja turtle or whatever it is three year old boys dress up as for Halloween, and headed off to his first preschool costume party. Her son was, predictably, rather excited for the day. This was going to be his first real Halloween, and it was going to kick ass. (My words, not his.)

When they arrived at school, they were greeted by a room full of similarly dressed, similarly enthused toddlers. There were princesses and pandas, Doras and Diegos, butterflies and Batmans...you get the idea. Everyone was having a great time.

Until that one kid showed up. You know, the one dressed as an extra from 28 Days Later, all blood and gore and festering wounds. Once he crashed the party, all the excitement of dress-up and Jack-O-Lanterns and Trick-or-Treat promptly disappeared, as 19 preschoolers peed themselves in unison upon the realization that Halloween isn't all puppy dogs and ice cream. It's meant to be scary, dammit.

As you can imagine, Mrs. Maguire was none to pleased about this. Nor were the rest of the parents. They were the ones left holding the bag, desperately attempting to salvage Halloween for 19 traumatized, pee-stained kids.

And I've gotta' say, I couldn't agree with Mrs. Maguire more. As a new dad, the potential for this kind of situation in my near future infuriates me. If anyone is going to emotionally scar my son by exposing him to stuff he shouldn't be exposed to, it's going to be me, godamn it, not some other unfit parent.

That's why I plan to indulge Ryan's every desire to watch any scary movie that intrigues him, regardless of his age or its level of appropriateness. It's much better to have him ease into a lifetime of debilitating phobias while in the comfort of his own home rather then have them thrust upon him while he's bobbing for apples at his preschool Halloween party.

Phobias like these:

The Clown From Poltergeist

There are a lot of scary movies out there, with many a disturbing scene, but for my money there is no more crippling fear a kid can develop then the realization that when you least expect it, something as seemingly innocuous as a stuffed clown can flat out wreck your shit while you sleep.

In case you've forgotten the movie, here's the clown in it's not-yet-possessed-yet-still-exceedingly-creepy state.

I was seven when Poltergeist came out. I had a stuffed clown hanging from a shelf in my bedroom. You can see where this is going.

Each night before bed, I would turn that clown around so it faced away from me, and every time I opened my eyes, I fully expected it to have gone missing. Every shuffle, squeak or creaky floorboard I heard throughout the night could only be that murderous clown, slowly making its way from the shelf to my bed and preparing to unleash hell. And if I dared to look...well, we all know how that ended for the kid in Poltergeist.

Eventually, I toughened up, waited until the light of day, and hid the clown in my sister's room. Let her deal with it.

The worst part of being subjected to Poltergeist at such a young age wasn't so much the sudden fear of clowns as it was the newfound distrust I quickly developed towards all of the inanimate objects I harbored in my bedroom closet. If a freaking clown could be the end of me, what about those toys better equipped to do some serious damage? Curious George, is that you? GI Joe? Hungry Hungry Hippos????

The Twins from The Shining

You know, for the first hour or so, The Shining really isn't all that frightening. Then Danny Torrance decides to go for a little cruise on his Big Wheel, and stumbles upon these two.

Meet the Grady twins; loving daughters/brutal axe-murder victims of Charles Grady, the former caretaker of the Overlook. They want Danny to come play with them forever...and ever...and ever.

If you saw The Shining before the age of 17 and claim that this scene didn't 1) leave you terrified of identically-dressed twins, and 2) forever change your expectations when you turned the corner of a hotel hallway, then I'm calling bullshit.

The truly debilitating aspect of this Shining-induced phobia is that it doesn't fade with time. Any reasonable adult will eventually come to realize that they probably won't suffer death-by-stuffed clown, but you can never be absolutely certain what previously went down at that Motel 6 you just checked into.

Sweet dreams.

The Shower Scene in Psycho

There's an episode of The Simpsons where Homer, in an attempt to cheer up a despondent Mel Gibson, tells him, ''Before Lethal Weapon 2, I never thought there could be a bomb in my toilet, but now I check every time."

If you've seen Alfred Hitchcock's original Psycho, as I did as an impressionable 13-year old, you know where Homer's coming from. I haven't showered while home alone since 1988 out of fear of being viciously stabbed by a cross-dressing lunatic. Adherence to this policy has kept me safe from harm, though it has made for some awkward elevator rides.

The real power of this legendary scene is that it forces you to accept that you aren't safe anywhere.  There you are, enjoying a hot shower, scrubbing your back, belting out your finest falsetto to that Aaron Neville-Linda Ronstadt duet you dig so much, when BAM...butcher knife through the shower curtain.

Now, by today's standards, these three movies are relatively tame. And that's what pisses me off about Mrs. Maguire's experience on Friday. Thanks to today's cinematic efforts, by the time he's seven, Ryan will very likely be terrified of a whole bunch of shit that I haven't even considered. God knows, if he stumbles upon Paranormal Activity on Starz one night he'll be sleeping in our bed until his late teens. He certainly doesn't need the rest of his classmates' help in introducing him to the concept of fear.

The lesson here is simple, yet so many parents seem to struggle with its implementation. If you want to be irresponsible and screw up your kid, by all means have at it, but kindly make sure you're screwing up only your kid. Don't go screwing up my kid. I can do an excellent job of that on my own, thank you very much.

Reason #427 Why We All Inevitably Grow Up to Subconciously Resent Our Mothers

It's A Celebration!! Lightly Read Blog Hits 200th Post, Author Applauded For His Abundance of Free Time

While Lauren's brother Freddy sleeps off the hangover induced by Saturday's ALittlePlaceCalled.blogspot.com's 200th Post Celebration Gala, I'm already hard at work, fulfilling my obligation to update friends and family on the mundane and trivial details of day to day life in the tiny mountain hamlet of Aspen, Colorado.

It's been a good run for this here blog. To give you an idea of the magnitude of its lifespan, when the inaugural post hit the interwebs in August of 2006, Lauren and I owned neither a house nor a dog, my brain was pleasantly titanium-free, and Ryan was but a twinkle in his daddy's pants.

All of that has changed, obviously, and we're thankful that much of what we've experienced over the past three years has been memorialized here, if for no other reason than to allow future generations to study our writings and gain some insight into our beautiful yet primative culture.

I don't always get to sit down and write as much as I'd like, and when a week or two goes by with no posts, the boy gets a bit concerned that he may be getting robbed of some time in the spotlight on the glorified Ryan-centric slideshow this blog has become. He's spoiled like that.

And if I've learned nothing else in the four months I've been a father, -- and I haven't -- it's that it's vital you give your child whatever they want, whenever they want it. See that, it worked!!

The best part of this philosophy of parenting is knowing that it will never, ever, come back to haunt me.

To be honest, I haven't had much time for the boy lately, what with my beloved Phillies making their second run to the World Series in as many years. The Nitti house has been filled with palpable angst over the past three weeks, and who's got time to deal with the incessant neediness of an infant when Jimmy Rollins is at the plate with two on and two out in the bottom of the ninth?



Speaking of which, one of the greatest things about the internet is that anything that can be done, has been done. For example, take this video where some bored yet innovative Phils fan dubbed the call of Rollins' walk-off double in Game 4 over the scene in Goodfellas where Henry Hill learns his boys pulled off the Lufthansa heist. Pure genius.

Similarly affected by the Phillies post-season run is this very happy, very blurry man, my brother Mike. I chronicled our mutual love affair for the Fightin' Phils here, and if you've already read it, it won't suprise you to learn that Mike and I shared the final three outs of the Phillies series-clinching Game 5 victory over the sacrificial lambs Dodgers via Skype. I took the opportunity to snap this still photo of our video call while Mike was in the midst of this standard celebratory gesture.

Not to get off on a tangent here, but if you live far away from family, Skype is a kick-ass tool to have. We've got our parents using the technology, and it helps them feel closer to the boy if they get to see him from time to time. Added bonus: if you've ever wanted to put to bed the age-old debate of religion versus science and prove Darwin's theory of evolution, simply hand one laptop to a 68-year old and another to a chimpanzee, and see who can get Skype working first. You'll find that we're not so different after all.

In between baseball games, we've been doing all the things families do. Here we are posing in front of my most recent investment, a pumpkin patch. The value has been skyrocking throughout October, and I expect it to peak right around Christmas. Then it's time to sell and watch the money roll in just in time for the holidays.

With all of the family time recently, I've developed a hypothesis that the long-rumored "maternal instinct" is nothing more than every woman's inherent desire to have someone in the house that she can:

A) dress to her specifications,
B) talk to throughout the day without having to be interrupted by a response, and
C) take photos of in various staged poses for the sole purpose of sharing said photos with her friends in exchange for photos of their kids in various staged poses.

Allow me to present Exhibit A:

Nineteen years from now, if my son gets arrested on the Wisconsin border with three dead hookers in the trunk of his car, this photo should be the first piece of evidence shown by the prosecution to establish motive. Who tucks a kid's flannel shirt into corduroy pants and thinks this won't have some sort of long-lasting effect on his mental state? I don't know much about parenting, but I do know this: doing this to your son can only end badly.

Exhibit B:



Look, I love my wife. She's beautiful and she's smart and she's caring, but she's no Margaret Cho, if you know what I mean.

/OK, you don't know what I mean. Fine, let's see you try and reference a funny female comedian. It's like trying to reference a white running back or monogomous ESPN analyst.

Anyway, who can blame Lauren for wanting that type of audience? Five minutes with the boy and she's feeling like...Wanda Sykes? Kathy Griffin? Lisa Lampenelli? I give up.

And lastly, Exhibit C:

Allright, I'll admit, this one is pretty cool, although Maci doesn't look all that pleased with her new role as baby prop. Within minutes of this photo being taken, it was traveling through cyberspace to Lauren's collection of baby-mama friends, to be ogled and rated as to its level of cutenesss. Verdict? Damned cute.

I've tried to figure out an appropriate way to celebrate reaching post #200, but nothing really comes to mind. When a long-running TV show reaches some arbitrary milestone, it invariably offers up some sort of quick retrospective/musical montage to mark the moment and highlight some of the show's more entertaining moments. Since that concept doesn't work particularly well with the written word, I've decided just to rip off The Simpsons again. Enjoy!!

The Three Fallacies of Fatherhood

People are full of shit. No, no...not you. You're a straight shooter. I was talking about everyone else.

If it wasn't bad enough that I spent Lauren's entire pregnancy being pestered with a million iterations of the same unanswerable question, ever since Ryan's arrived, people have felt the need to offer their unsolicited nuggets of wisdom as to what it means to be a father. At first I listened, since I knew dangerously little about what I'd gotten myself into. But now that I'm four months in, I can pretty safely call bullshit on a lot of what I was told. So for those of you soon-to-be-first-time-fathers, take heed.

Fallacy #1: "Having a Kid Changes You, Man"

I used to hear this one quite a bit before the boy showed up, and I must confess, I started to look forward to the potential for a forced transformation. The way I figured it, I could stand a good personality overhaul more than most. From the way people made it sound, as soon as Ryan popped out, I'd be bawling at Kay Jewelers commercials, doffing my cap to strangers, and generally -- to quote Clark Griswold -- whistling Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah out of my asshole. Needless to say, none of that happened.

That's not to say parts of who I am haven't changed. For example, before I became a dad, I rarely carried around an L.L. Bean bag containing used diapers. So that's new. But I don't think much else about me is different. Best I can tell, I'm still the same selfish, anti-social guy I was June 1st. Only now, I'm a selfish, anti-social guy with a kid. Which means there's a 50% chance he'll grow up to be selfish and anti-social, which kind of sucks for Lauren. Circle of life, I guess.

Fallacy #2: "Enjoy Every Minute of It. They Grow Up So Fast!"

Oftentimes, people say things merely because they believe they're supposed to say them. Some common examples include:

a) "What a lovely home you have here!"
b)  "You have beautiful children!"
c) "You're a great gal. I'll call you sometime.....now can you help me find my pants?"

It's the same situation with Fallacy #2. It seems every parent I know has warned me just how quickly time goes by with a baby, and how Ryan will be all grown up and applying to several small liberal arts colleges before I know it. These people are very, very wrong. The boy is four months old, and I can say with confidence that it's been the longest four months of my life. Do you know why?

BECAUSE I DON'T SLEEP ANYMORE.

/Turns and shakes fist at boy. Boy appears unfazed.

Remember that one time when you went a little crazy, stayed out until 3AM on a Wednesday night, and went to work the next day really, really hungover? I'm willing to bet that day didn't exactly sprint by, now did it? Of course not. The days absolutely drag when you're exhausted. I clearly remember a Tuesday in early August that lasted 43 hours.

Of course, that's just my subjective view of why life has crawled since we had the boy. We can also look at this from a  purely mathematical perspective.

For the better part of my adult life, I've slept somewhere between 8-12 hours per night. That comes to, on average, 70 hours of my week spent in a state of blissful rest. Time flies when you're sleeping. You go to bed, your body recovers, your mind rests, you travel to far off places and solve mysteries or arm wrestle Yoda or whatever it is you do, and the next thing you know, it's morning. Sleep rocks.

Take away that sleep, however, and there's nearly twice as much time per week you've got to find a way to kill. Essentially, your conscious life has instantly doubled. Does that sound like a good way to speed up time to you? 

Fallacy #3: "The Birth of Your Child Will be the Best Day of Your Life"

Prior to Ryan's birth, I'd been alive for 12,000 days, give or take a few. That's plenty of time to fit in a memorable moment or three. Now, I've given this a lot of thought, and with apologies to my wedding day, college graduation, and that time I found a twenty wedged between the couch cushions, the best day among those 12,000 came on Saturday, September 29th, 2001.

I had just finished a week of work at a client site in Portland, Oregon, and while I was free to head home to Denver for the weekend before returning on Monday morning,  the events of three weeks prior had added the very real possiblity of being flown into a large building, so I made the sensible decision to stay put and spend my two off days in the Pacific Northwest.

On Saturday morning, I woke in my Westin hotel room at 9AM, just as the first games of the day were kicking off. I flipped on the TV, cranked up the A/C, and drew those wonderful hotel double blinds, leaving my room darker than Wesley Snipes and colder than Ted Williams' head. Over the next twelve hours, while never venturing outside my self-created cave, I managed to win $900 during an 11-1 stretch betting on college football while spending roughly the equivalent of my company's money gorging on room service, before finally falling asleep bloated and happy in my Heavenly bed at 8:30 PM. Now that, my friends, is a good freaking day.

Lets compare this to Ryan's birth.

After a semi-panicked late afternoon phone call from my wife, we went to the OBGYN and found out we'd reached the point of no return. I dropped Lauren off at the ER, then drove forty miles round trip in an apocalyptic thunderstorm to retrieve our stuff for the hospital stay.

By the time I got back to the delivery room, Lauren was in active labor. For the next 13 hours, I alternated between being scared shitless for my wife and scared shitless for my soon-to-be-born son, separated only by brief moments where I was scared shitless that I was going to go into cardiac arrest from being scared shitless for so long. Two days after Ryan was born, I got an EKG because I was convinced I'd had a minor heart attack during the delivery. Sadly, I'm not joking. Sounds like a great time, doesn't it?

Don't get me wrong, the moment of birth is magical. It's everything it's cracked up to be. But unfortunately, that moment lasts for all of  forty seconds, or roughly until the time you notice the team of doctors surrounding your child and wielding ominous looking instruments, taking all sorts of measurements and speaking in hushed tones.

Look, having a son is awesome, there's no doubt about that, and I'm extremely excited for the future. But if you think having a kid is going to turn you into a better human, save your marraige, or make those 9-5 shifts down at the cracker factory fly by, you're barking up the wrong tree. Have a child because you and your wife/mail-order bride/lifemate think you're prepared to provide a loving setting and a wonderful opportunity for some lucky kid, not because you think that kid will fix all of your problems.

That's what booze is for.