matthearn.com

I haven’t been sick in almost a year (I attribute this to clean livin’ and sweatin’ to the Oldies, and also making sure I get my weekly ration of medicinal alcohol), but then I get a little sleep-deprived and BOOM I’ve come down with a cold almost instantly. It suuuuuuuuucks. Josephine’s sick too, which has led to her waking up in the middle of the night and refusing to go back to sleep. Last night’s activities:

• 3:30am – William woke up to be fed, and Josephine woke up simultaneously, demanding…well, who knows. She just cried. Mommy got her some water, and I attempted to console her. Got her calmed down, and went back to bed, at which point she started moaning again.


• 4am – She started screaming again, so I went back in to try and calm her. Sarah came in shortly thereafter, and convinced her to lie down and cover up with her blanket. We left, and she immediately started whining again.


• 4:30am – Screaming once again, so I went in, ask her what’s wrong, offer some water, lay her down, but she doesn’t respond well to this so I close the door so maybe the rest of us can get some sleep. She commenced shrilly screaming, but screw it I’m exhausted so I’m going back to bed. I walked back in our bedroom and Sarah said, “Why is she screaming?”

  
  “Because I closed her door.”

  
  “SHE’S SICK, MATT!” Sarah yelled. At that hour, I didn’t see any connection between her being sick and me closing her door so the rest of us could possibly sleep, but I also don’t want Sarah to smother me with a Boppy while I’m sleeping, so I went back in, got Josephine, and sat with her while in the rocking chair.

  
  After 10 minutes or so, she calmed, and crawled out of my arms to stand on the floor. She said something I couldn’t understand, but pointed to the changing table, so I put her on their and changed her diaper, which was dry. When I tried to put her pajama pants back on, she cried “No! No!”

  
  “You don’t want your pajama pants?”

  
  “No!”

  
  “Okay.” She started pulling on her shirt, so I figured “She’s overheated” and pulled that off too. Then she said,

  
  “Thomas shirt!”

  
  She is a HUGE Thomas the Tank Engine fan, and recently was given a couple shirts with Thomas and some of his friends on the front, and wants to wear them at every opportunity. At 5am, actual parenting becomes useless and you do whatever you think will get the child to go back to bed, so I put her Thomas shirt on, and then, at her request, her jeans. I drew the line at socks and shoes, and rocked her a bit more, at which point Sarah came in and took over so I could try and get some sleep.

  
  After 90 minutes of fitful sleep, I showered, and when I came back to the bedroom Sarah was feeding William and Josephine was once again just whining, standing in the doorway.

  
  “Josephine, are you hungry?”

  
  “Mmmm….uh-huh..mmmmmnnnn”

  
  “Stop whining. Let’s go downstairs and get breakfast.” I put my shoes on, and then Josephine did one of her super cute things, which is to simply grab my forefinger and lead me off to the kitchen, where I gave her a cereal bar and some Froot Loops.

  
  I have no idea how much sleep Sarah got, but I think I got 4.5 non-contiguous hours, so if you’re thinking “Wow this post really sucks,” that’d be why. I would like a nap. Forgive the crappiness. I ain’t even gonna proofreed this.

Holy crap, my wife and I own two homes.

We settled on our new place yesterday (and will be moving next Saturday; want to come lift heavy crap with us?), so now we’re broke AND have two mortgages. I guess I better get a third job.

At any rate, if you notice that things have been kinda dead here, that’s why; time is…scant.

Richard over at Honest Hypocrite is pissed, and with pretty good reason:

About the time when we seem to be getting Linus calmed, a manager (the unfriendly one) comes over and tells us in the most officious manner possible that some of the other patrons have been threatening to leave because of our crying baby, and some parents take their children outside to calm them, and isn’t teething tough.

Wow. I can honestly say, I’ve taken Charles and/or Josephine to any number of restaurants, and I’ve never had anything like that happen. Richard has asked for responses and advice, but before I do that, I have qualifications and caveats:

1. When I think my own kids are disturbing someone else’s meal, it drives me insane. Ruins dinner for me, even if the other patrons don’t say anything.


2. Conversely, I’ve never been bothered by someone’s baby, other than my own, crying at dinner. I’m routinely pissed about other people’s kids’ behavior, but that happens all the time, not just at restaurants. Babies cry; that’s how they roll. Maybe Linus is particularly loud, but I doubt it.


3. I have two kids, and I know their moods and behavior pretty well; if I think, based on factors like previous behavior, time of day, nap status, food status, etc., that the one or other of the kids is going to be a pill, we won’t go. This isn’t to say I haven’t guessed wrong, and I’m certainly not making any assumptions about Richard and his wife’s ability to gauge Linus’s behavior, I’m just saying that by and large I’ll do just about anything to avoid the above situation, so perhaps that’s why it hasn’t happened to me.


4. I’m pretty selective about where I’ll take my kids. Red Robin? Sure. Walter’s Steakhouse? No. Friendly’s? Of course. The Corner Bistro? Maybe for brunch, but never for dinner. I see kids taken to these places and it feels awkward to me, even if they are well-behaved. Now, I know nothing about Bensi’s. I’ve never heard of it. It might be the kind of place where I’d look at it and think “Of course, kids, no problem.” Since Richard mentioned there were other families with kids there, I’m inclined to think it’s a bit more of a family restaurant, and perhaps the complaining diners were just douche-knuckles.

Okay, enough caveats and explanation. Here’s my take: given that Linus was merely crying, and not running rampant through the restaurant, and there were enough other children there to qualify Bensi’s as supposedly-kid-friendly, I’d say the customers who complained were out-of-line. I’d also say the manager who complained was waaaaaay out-of-line. If something like this had happened to Sarah and me and the kids, here’s what the responses would have been:

Me: “Really? Are you kidding me?”

Sarah: “F%&# you, @?#hole.” ::rips off manager’s face and makes it into a drippy chapeau::

And then we’d pack up and leave without paying. We’d also probably jury rig some silverware so we could hang a stinky diaper above the table candle.

In Lancaster, California, Honda decided it would be fun to carve grooves in a road such that when you drive over them, the vibration of your suspension plays a song. They decided, for unknown reasons, to use the William Tell Overture, by Giaochino “Joey Chinos” Rossini. In case you haven’t watched the Lone Ranger recently, listen to this.

Then, go watch and listen to this.

Notice anything? Am I the only one? They spent heaven knows how many man-hours gouging grooves into that road and did it to produce the wrong fricking notes. This commercial gets played at least once every time I watch a Daily Show online and it makes me insane.

Just so you know.

Since I reach a significant Age next week, I had to go to the DMV and renew my license. My car is also going to require renewal in two months, so I figured, hell, they’ll let me do it now, why not kill two birds with one stone! Particularly when those birds are massive, slavering creatures with Adamantium talons who hate me and everything that we as a nation hold dear.

So I snuck out of work for an early lunch hour, thinking I’d beat the crowds. this handy website shows the wait times for various functions, and it was saying I’d wait no more than 5 minutes for my license, and maybe 10 for my registration. Awesome!

I arrived shortly after 11, and got into a short line at the inspection lanes. As I later twittered, I, as always, picked the wrong lane, and watched as 3 or 4 cars who arrived after me got in first. But the joke was on them! I had, completely on accident, picked the one lane that could do all the regular checks (turn signals, lights, horn, etc.) plus the ODBII check (where they plug into your car’s computer to see if you’ve downloaded porn to it)! All the other lanes could do the car checks, but then you had to get into another lane for the computer read-out. This seems like a foolish way to do it, but I grinned happily as I parked and went inside, where I discovered that the South Wilmington DMV, unlike the New Castle one that is technically closer to my house but horribly inconvenient for a lunch hour visit, doesn’t actually have “line;” it has a take a number system, so you can sit and read horrific books while you wait! (I went with Dude, Where’s My Country? by Michael Moore, a book so painful that I got it at the dollar store. For a dollar.)

They were on number 202 when I sat down; I had number 222. So I read, and occasionally glanced up when the shift supervisor, the Mother Superior of the DMV, would get called over to yell at some poor soul who believed they could renew their car’s registration without having the current one, or without an insurance card, or without retrieving their car from the impound lot whence it was towed for unpaid parking tickets. (An aside: some of these people were at least fifty years old. Folks, how do you not know how this works? How do you reach the age of fifty, probably renewing at least one vehicle every two years, and not know what documents you require for this process?)

Finally I was called up to a very polite gentleman who took my documents and money and gave me a new registration and sticker in three minutes flat. I fail to understand why this is such a difficult process for some people.

By that point it was roughly 12:30, and I had to go get another number to wait for my license renewal. I was number #177; they were at #140. I shed a few silent, hot tears and sat down next to some sort of kiosk. After 20 minutes or so, they had gotten only to #150, and a young woman came out and started fiddling with the computer at the little kiosk. In a flash of brilliant insight, I deduced the following:

1. Eventually, this lady was going to open this kiosk for business;
2. It was likely that they intended it to be an express lane, meaning it would most likely be available for people with simple class-D license renewals (no truck licenses, no new licensees, no state IDs, etc.);
3. It was also likely that the line would be first come, first served;
4. The instant they made any sign of opening up, I needed to spring to my feet and sprint to the head of the line, hardly a challenge since the kiosk was approximately three feet to my left.

Sure enough, at about 1:10pm, a supervisor came out and started to announce that they were opening the kiosk for simple license renewals, and before he had said two words I was standing next to the nice young woman running the show. I think I even semi-accidentally butted in front of another fellow, but he sensed that were he to confront me, I might roll up a Driver’s Education Manual and beat him to death with it, so he held his tongue.

Because I know how to handle a drive-thru bureaucracy (just like a fast-food drive-thru; no special orders, basic meals only), I was through the line in three minutes, had my picture taken, and handed a literally piping hot new ID by 1:15. A little creative driving had me back at the office at 1:35! I think the word I’m searching for is “WOO!”

In short, the DMV is slow, news at Eleven.

Can someone explain to me why you’re not allowed to smoke anywhere but a specially constructed, hermetically sealed, underground iron box, but it’s perfectly legal for people to drench themselves in cheap perfume and go out in public?

I went to church yesterday; I didn’t have to sing, so for the first time in a while, I sat in the congregation. And it was like a hyacinth was having sex with my sinuses. I thought someone must put a funeral wreath in a blender and then poured it on their clothing. My own clothing I considered burning when I get home, but instead muttered dark incantations as I ran it through the washing machine eighteen times.

Do people really not notice that they smell like a florist’s refrigerator? How dead must your olfactory nerves be that you think 7 squirts of Eau de Rabais is necessary? More to the point, why hasn’t the government intervened? I’m not normally a fan of intrusive regulation, but it seems to me that it should be illegal for someone to put on so much stinkum that it feels like someone has jabbed a hot poker into each of my nostrils, right?

The worst offenders will actually argue with you about what they’re wearing. I knew a wonderful woman who continually came choir rehearsal smelling like a cathouse, and people complained, until the director took her aside and said “You must stop wearing perfume.” She replied, “I’m not!” The next day, she once again smelled like she’d bathed in rose petals, and another choir member said, “I thought you were told not to wear perfume anymore!” Again, like Peter, she denied it, and was asked “So why do you smell like a burning rose bush?”

“Oh, that’s just my body spray,” she replied, and so we had to beat her to death with our hymnals, Your Honor.

Things have been insane this week, so I haven’t had time to comment on the fact that, um, I’m old now. So I’ll do that now. The big 3-0. Three Zero. MattHearnIsFreakingOld.com. Some of you who are already in your mid-30s are saying, “Old? OLD? Screw you, you youngling!” To which I respond: let me have a moment of glory. I don’t get many, other than when Sarah changes Charles’s diaper and he takes a moment to point to his penis, yell “WANG!”, and giggle; that’s as glorious for me as it is mortifying for Sarah.

Anyway, in short, I turned 30 on Monday. I was hoping to have a leisurely day, but of course something broke, so it was just a big ball of stress in my stomach all day. NOT the way I wanted to start my fourth decade, for real reals. We did at least get to go out to dinner, at Walter’s, where I drank a sizable amount of alcohol, had a steak that weighed about the same as Charles, and enjoyed a raw bar that feature oysters and clams with flavors that could best be described as “hauntingly pungent.” Tuesday was no less stressful, and yesterday things began to ease up but I had 4 hours of rehearsals last night. So today is the first opportunity I’ve had to sit back and contemplate my ever-increasing age. I’ve come to some conclusions:

• I am now definitely at the age where it is basically impossible for me to ever get a shot at trying out for left field for the Phillies. Sure, Chris Coste didn’t make it to the majors until he was 33, but he had spent something like 12 years toiling in the minors to get his shot. I’m, um, not doing that. Also he has actual baseball talent, and I couldn’t hit a major league fastball with a piece of 1×12 white pine.
• I’m probably at the age where, despite taking piano lessons and practicing regularly, I am unlikely to become a concert pianist. I’m also nearing the age where it is unlikely I’ll be good enough to even accompany a bad church choir.
• I’m nearing the age where people will start calling me sir instead of “Hey jerk.” This is good and bad, I guess.

So tell me, fellow 30-somethings, what’s the best part about hidding pre-pre-middle-age? Other than I think I can run for the US Senate now?

Let’s chat about humor for a moment. I’d just like to take the time to address a big problem in the world, and that is that a surprising number of people have a misconfigured sense of humor. Oh sure, some things are universally funny:

• Fart jokes
• Actual farts
• Reference to the sex lives of the Amish
• That story your dad tells every time he gets hammered about the time he took a dump in a mailbox
• Any joke involving a priest, a rabbi, and a 300W rainbow-colored marital aid
• Covered wagons, aka Dutch Ovens

The laughs never end, when those topics get broken out at parties. Particularly if the party as at my house, and the participants have drunk between 5 and 17 bottles of homemade Continental Pilsner apiece. But certain topics seem to make certain folks laugh, and other folks whine in great dismay.

For example: my wife is in the business of assisting the differently-abled. (They used to be called “handicapped,” and before that, “crippled;” by 2015 they’ll be called “Judiciously Improved.”) I fully support this, except that the Political Correctness Brigade has now weaseled its way into my very home. During my adolescence, it was perfectly acceptable, when someone did something stupid, to call him “retarded.” And mirth would result. Now, I have to expend great amounts of brainpower trying to not say that word in front of my wife and her coworkers. (In a similar vein, we were allowed to call anything we disagreed with “gay,” as in “Dude, homework is totally gay,” or “Bobby and Jimmy kissing behind the school was so gay.” No longer. The internet has invented a substitute word, “ghey,” which is totally gay.)

As far as I can tell, the word “retarded” is no less funny than it was in 1993. And yet nowadays people get their undergarments in a SEVERE bunch if you break it out anywhere but a hockey team’s locker room. This is a disturbing indicator of the path we’re on, in which I won’t be able to say things like “Dude, your new subwoofer has a totally fat sound” without some overweight ninny saying “What did you say? Fat? How dare you!” and then attempting to kick me in the nards but failing because her thigh-fat precludes any actual upward motion of her legs. (Note: this would actually be HILARIOUS to witness.)

And lest you think I’m just some completely irreverent buffoon that would laugh at a baby’s funeral, let me show you the depth of my intellect: I have seen the other side of the coin, albeit for a totally retarded stupid reason. Last night I was watching David Letterman, something I normally avoid because Paul Shaffer’s voice makes my ears bleed, and they were doing the top 10, which was something like “top 10 ways you can tell that gasoline prices are out of hand.” #3 was, “Anna Nicole Smith married a Texaco franchisee.” My initial response was “Damn, that’s cold. Her bloated corpse is barely cold yet.” But then I realized that, due to the Writer’s Strike, all the late shows are in re-runs until like 2009, and the joke dated from 2005 when Anna Nicole was still barely alive. Why did the fact that she’s dead make the joke seem less funny and more mean? It’s ridiculous. It should be the other way around; now that she’s dead, it’s not like she’s gonna hear about it and get pissed off. The joke is just as funny as it was in 2005, which is of course to say that it’s not funny at all and never was. (Brian will probably have a heart attack, but I’ve always found Letterman (and all the late-night guys since Johnny quit) to be pretty overrated when it comes to bringing the funny.)

I got to thinking about this, because a few weeks ago I set my Facebook status message to something like “Matt Hearn is wondering how people can confuse ‘they’re’, ‘there’, and ‘their’; is it because they have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome?” Which you have to admit, if you don’t have FAS, is pretty funny. I still got some irritated messages about it. If you do have FAS, it might be perceived as insulting, but 1) if you have FAS and know the difference between those three words, then obviously the joke isn’t directed at you and 2) if you have FAS and don’t know the difference between those three words, then perhaps my little jibe will inspire you to go to school and study hard. It’s win-win! And if you don’t have FAS, but have a problem with sand in your vagina, just go to the bathroom and rinse it out. Stop annoying me because Uncle Gropey took away your girlish laughter.

It’s hard to avoid being insulted by certain jokes. I think the secret is not to flip out about it. If you hear a joke that offends you, just laugh along with the rest and tell your own insulting joke right back. Note: this may only work with minorities.

Thank SSCBJ for sick days, or personal days, or mental health days, or whatever it was I used yesterday to get out of most of my workday so I could get some bloody sleep. Bejeebers, I was exhausted.

Since Sarah’s doing the Brandywiners show this year, PLUS taking a class in a subject I don’t even begin to comprehend, I’m on Charles duty most of the time, so I’m routinely running a bit ragged. The weekend, which I’ll get to momentarily, nearly killed me.

Sarah had to be out of town most of the weekend at a wedding, so of course I made sure that my weekend was as busy as possible to make everything completely complex. I was singing in a benefit concert Saturday night, which included a Friday night rehearsal, so I had to find someone to watch HRB on Saturday; Craig and Mel jumped all over it, and did a bang-up job keeping him from eating nails and/or one of their cats, for which they are owed one ENORMOUS favor from me. That afternoon I took Charles and my parents to the Brandywiners picnic, at which there was frivolity and beer-drinking, and then sprinted home to try and get Charles to nap so I could shower and pack him up to go to C&M’s.

Of course, he refused to nap. At least, after a while, he stopped screaming, and busied himself trying to disassemble his crib through the combined efforts of mumbling incoherently while shaking the sides and banging his head into the slats as hard as possible. Since he was calm, I showered and changed, then I got him ready, dropped him off, and headed to Archmere Academy in north Wilmington, the site of the benefit, which went very well. Jenny and I sang “Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better,” from “Annie, Get Your Gun,” which is inspired completely by a GAP commercial containing Claire Danes. Later we performed “No One Is Alone” from “Into The Woods” with two young people, Brooke and Madsy. It was all good times, and since my stuff was all done in the first act, I got to spend the second act eating and drinking in the lobby with the other people. It was fantastic!

After we were done, I returned to pick up Charles, who was a trouper despite the fact that it was 11pm before we got home, and we both passed out like your dad in the alley behind “Buxom.”

Sunday, we relaxed in the morning, and then went to a pool party at a BEAUTIFUL home near Hagley Museum. It was awesome; the pool was the size of my house, and instead of a diving board, it was just built into the hillside such that it had a stone wall and a diving ROCK. Charles splashed around and drank chlorinated pool water, and Sarah came back from Long Island in time to fling herself off of the diving rock and make everyone giggle.

Finally, we went home and fell asleep, which was just awesome. It was so completely rad. Nevertheless, I woke up yesterday morning STILL exhausted, and so I called in “dead” and went back to sleep. I awoke to attend a couple meetings, and then had time to run some errands, mow the lawn (untouched in three weeks; the neighbors were thrilled), clean the bathrooms (which had become sentient), and even do some woodworking. Good times! Good times.

Tomorrow: I make beer.

Yay! DelDOT (The Delaware Department O’ Transportation) is finally going to do something about the hellish I-95 traffic!

Wait…crap. They’re doing the wrong bloody thing! Boo!

Everybody agrees that traffic on I-95, particularly southbound in the afternoons, is ridiculous; apparently the bone of contention is what the actual cause is. DelDOT seems to be of the opinion that the problem is 95 itself not being wide enough, which would appear to be the obvious issue. However, what they are overlooking is the fact that where the worst of the backup on 95 occurs in a three mile stretch where 295 and 495 (souhtbound) rejoin the main interstate, and storied Route 1 exits. And as anyone who has recently driven through there during a high traffic situation, the number of cars decreases dramatically after you pass Route 1. What this says to me is that maybe, just maybe, you might eliminate some traffic on 95 if there was more than a single-lane exit for 1, which is of course the main artery to Middletown and points south, also known as the FASTEST FREAKING GROWING AREA IN THE STATE? Don’t you think maybe this warrants an improvement of that particular junction?

Don’t believe me? Try going north on Route 1 to 95 north some morning, around 8:15am. You can’t. I mean, eventually you’ll get through, but it’ll be closer to 9am before you’re actually on the interstate. Might it perhaps be time to upgrade this route to look more like the 495 exit, which features three lanes for traffic and even during the worst of the rush hour is never clogged up, except by idiots driving in the left lane? Perhaps!

But nay, the State has decided to just add a 5th lane to each side of 95, the biggest waste of money since Paris Hilton got her sex change. (I refuse to believe that she wasn’t once a dude. Her jaw is squarer than a ceramic floor tile and her boobs are smaller than mine.)

Argh.