Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 562

Mexican worry doll gave me something to worry about

This is a Mexican worry doll. 

It was given to my wife following a recent dinner at a local Mexican restaurant.  One is given to every customer following their meal.

I knew none of this, so when I found this tiny, crude, bizarre, inexplicable doll on the kitchen floor last night, I thought for a moment that the dust bunnies, crushed Cheerio dust and cat hair had somehow coalesced into this strange new form.

Evolution on the scale of dirt.

It freaked me out for a minute. 

It really did.    

Not exactly normal behavior

I took my daughter to her friend's birthday party last week.  Clara is always a little slow to warm up, but if Elysha is not with us, her slow-to-warn-up nature becomes downright glacial.

The party was hosted at Jump Zone, which is essentially an enormous room filled with the kind of inflatable jumping apparatuses that you see at carnivals, school fairs and the like. 

It looks like a lot of fun.

And Clara's favorite thing to do is jump.  Or maybe dance.  Or maybe play with her little people. 

But jumping is at least in the top three. 

This place should have been like heaven to her.

Instead, this is how she spent her time:

Eventually she began jumping, but even this wasn't exactly normal:

Gratitude journal: The phone call

Tonight I am grateful for the phone call that we received this afternoon informing us that the results of my wife's recent amniocentesis were normal. 

We waited almost forty-eight hours for the phone call, which is actually a  remarkably short period of time considering the sample was sent from Connecticut to New Mexico for analysis.

Nevertheless, forty-eight hours can feel like forty-eight days when your waiting for news about your future baby.

We find ourselves feeling quite grateful this evening.

Non-starter

Elysha and I were watching Mad Men last night and saw Trudy wearing this unique piece of maternity lingerie. 

I immediately offered to purchase it for Elysha.  I'd scour the Earth until I found it, I assured her.  Flea markets, second-hand stores, costume departments… I'd leave no stone unturned in my relentless pursuit to find this artifact of the 1960s.      

She declined.  Vehemently.  

Pajama Day takedown

Pajama Day is a reward used in many elementary schools.  Fill the jelly bean jar, accumulate enough points or gather enough good behavior tickets and students are invited to wear their pajamas to school for a day.

As a teacher, I am not a fan of Pajama Day, but I recognize that it is a popular and easy-to-implement reward.

When I was in second or third grade, my class accumulated enough tokens to warrant a Pajama Day. 

Even then I thought that Pajama Day was kind of stupid. 

Pajama Day was scheduled for Friday, so on Thursday I walked into class wearing my pajamas. It created quite a stir.  The teacher eventually noticed my attire and approached my desk.  "Matt, Pajama Day is tomorrow.  You're one day early."

"No, I'm not," I said.  "There's no rule against wearing pajamas to school, so I decided to wear them today, too.  And maybe tomorrow, too."     

My mother called me The Instigator. This is why.

Can you imagine how rotten I must have been to attempt to usurp Pajama Day?

As an eight-year old?

When a student proves to be especially challenging, I sometimes wonder if the universe isn't just getting even for all the teachers I tortured as a child.

Gratitude journal: Boo Boo Penguin

Tonight I am thankful for Boo Boo Penguin, the anthropomorphized ice pack that we offered Clara when she fell off my back while climbing Mount Daddy tonight and smacked her head on the floor. 

All the King's horses and all the King's men (not to mention Mommy's cuddling) could not get Clara to stop crying as quickly as the application of Boo Boo Penguin on her forehead.

Granted, Boo Boo Penguin eventually ended up on her chin, elbow, foot, knee, and briefly in her mouth, but I'm willing to accept the over-application of Boo Boo Penguin in exchange for quieting a child who is more frightened than hurt.  

Delaying what is inevitable and right

When my daughter is my age, she will find it inconceivable that she was born into a country that did not allow for gay marriage, much the same way people from my generation wonder how separate but equal was ever thought to be a reasonable compromise to institutional racism.

I take great comfort in this thought in a time when bigotry has masked itself as a plank on a political campaign.      

Are these Republican candidates incapable of seeing that it is only a matter of time before this country allows any two people to marry, regardless of sex?  They remind me of the little boy who sticks his finger in the dike, hoping to hold back the oncoming flood.

Their institutional bigotry is coming to an end.  Can't they see that?

They stand against the inevitable. 

They stand against righteousness.

They stand against my daughter's future.

And I just wish they would get the hell out of the way so we can usher in the future a little sooner.  

Unexpected sympathy

As a person who was once killed by bees, it was difficult to imagine any scenario in which I might feel sympathy for them.

I think of them as tiny bullets, just waiting to murder me. 

But this stunning and masterfully shot video left me heartsick for these bees.  I did not think this possible. 

My lack of a nightstand

I was recently interviewed by author Victoria Loustalot for her blog The Pencil Box.

The interview posted yesterday. 

She asked me to photograph my nightstand (I don't actually own one) and then formulated her questions based upon the image that I sent to her. 

You can read the interview here.

Gratitude journal: Rocketfish RF-MAB2 Headphones

Tonight I am grateful for my Rocketfish Mobile RF-MAB2 High-Definition Stereo Bluetooth Headphones, given to me by my wife for Christmas two years ago and by far the absolute best gift that I have ever received. 

I typically use them for listening to books and podcasts.  With controls on the side of the headphones for stopping and starting, volume, rewind and fast forward, listening to my audio content has become exceedingly simple.   

But I was speaking on the phone a lot today, which is uncommon, and they work beautifully for this function as well, with a microphone built right into the headphones for speaking. 

Using the iPhone's Siri capabilities, I need not even have the phone in the same room as me in order to make a call just as long as I have the headphones on.  Simply press a button on the side of the headphones, state the name of the person I want to speak to, and the call will be placed by the phone regardless of where it might be within the house. 

I am also able to keep both hands free while speaking (last night I gave the dog a bath while speaking to a friend) and do not have to worry about disturbing anyone as I might if I were using the speakerphone function on my phone. I can hear the person on the other end of the line perfectly but no one else can.  

These headphones are ingenious, indestructible, indispensible and almost always attached to my head. 

I don't typically enjoy speaking on the phone, but today, they made my many phone calls much more pleasurable.