theparkerfamily.org

Tag: Long Reads

  • crown molding

    ECPA20090826_0041
    when we moved into mount pleasant, the lady sparkler and I quickly noticed that there was one room in the house that didn’t have crown molding.

    we didn’t really care (because we were planning to redo the room anyway, once we got pregnant) and just chalked it up to the previous owner having a short attention span. 

    but, I’ve recently discovered that none of our walls are flat.  and our ceilings sag.  and the corners of our walls aren’t actually square.

    and now I’m starting to think the previous owners might have known what they were doing (er, not doing) by loosing inerest in molding before all the rooms were done.

    I’m not exactly a slouch with wood-working, from a father who raised me with power tools in the garage, to 15 years of theatrical design, and a groomsman generously let me borrow a power mitre saw to do the heavy lifting…

    but nothing really prepared me for putting up straight boards around a room with nary a straight line in sight.

    it took two weeks to put up forty feet of molding. it took two and a half tubs of wood putty to fill in the gaps between the molding and the ceiling.  it took four sanding blocks to get the joints in the molding to look like someone this side of a three year-old did the carpentry.

    in the end, it looks pretty okay … and thank the good sweet lord that I decided against covering the bottom half of the room in wainscotting.  

    (I would have been %#$&ing about how hard that was until baby sparklet turned at LEAST 16.)

    everything is finally starting to come together.

  • i do elevators, too

    ECPA20090820_0036
    I’ve spent the better part of the last two weeks on crown molding in thhe nursery, and just as it’s winding down … I find out have to recarpet the elevator.

    yes, the elevator.  

    shortly after we moved into our building in mount pleasant, I was elected to our unit-owner association’s board.  i wish it had been some Capra-esque moment, but I was the only one at the annual meeting who wasn’t already a board member.

    long story short, our management company misplaced $30,000 in funds … money which we had already spent to replace our 30-year old elevator.  now we are short on funds, don’t have a functioning elevator, and even the hippies in the building are starting to riot.

    last night I discovered that the only thing separating me from a functioning (though still not entirely paid for) elevator was a 55 by 80 inch fire-resistant carpet, required in order for us to pass inspection.  

    not sure why it fell to me (the rest of the board lives two flights of stairs farther up than I) but I decided I couldn’t risk going into november without a functioning elevator.

    the lady sparkler pitched in and called five different carpet vendors, one of which had something suitable that fell off the back of his truck, and would be waiting for me after hours at their family’s Afghan-Pakistani restaraunt in northern Virginia.

    I picked up the rug and a pound of baklava (the lady sparkler dropped ~27 hints about how good the desserts’ reviews were) and settled in for a long evening of carpet installation.

    turns out my carpeting skills gives my talent for breakdancing a real run for their money, but it went down with two tubes of construction adhesive (replaced duct tape as my universal repair tool of choice) which got our elevator inspected, and back in service.

    in the meantime, i’m glad that my life is going to settle down this winter, and become moderately less bizarre.

  • and the winners are …

    ECPA20090805_0762
    today, the lady sparkler and I started spending the $340,552 it’s going to take to raise baby sparklet until she graduates college.

    I feel strangely proud.

    we’ve been futzing around for *months* on the three “big” purchases — the crib, the stroller and the car seat — going baaaack, and forth, and baaaaack, and forth. but today, after nearly two months of researching, six weeks of trips to the suburbs, and three weeks of dithering, we finally pulled the trigger. on something. eventually.

    and the winners are …

    bonavita_peyton_07116_2bonavita peyton classic crib — a lot of decisions about baby sparklet have terrorized us, but none quite like this one. we’re in a small, small space in the city, so wanted to avoid all of the giii-normous “lifestyle” cribs on the showroom floors.

    unfortunately, all anybody sells are giii-normous “lifestyle” cribs.

    occasionally, you would see a couple of normal looking cribs in a store. in the back corner. under a sign that says “you hate your baby if you get one of these.”

    living in the city, the tween edition of baby sparklet is going to need a loft bed, or is going to have about 2 square feet of floor on which to play. getting a lifestyle crib that converts into a twin bed is of no use to us.

    eventually, we found a crib we liked (bonavita peyton) that had a version (classic, not lifestyle) that was just a crib. not a burr grinder. or a lifeboat. just a crib. it seemed very sturdy in the one showroom (out of six) which featured the model that did *not* convert into a dishwasher.

    the issue that sealed the peyton classic for us was that it was made from good, hard wood … where most of the competition had soft finishes, and were seriously scuffed up from people window shopping. (really, if a crib can’t survive life in a showroom, what’s it going to look like after a couple of years of teething?!?)

    41LiILMKDBL._SL500_AA280_city mini stroller — got a super recommendation from a friend on this one (mightybabyboig) as the stroller they wished they had bought back at the very beginning. it’s light, folds up ridiculously small (important for the bus) and has one of the narrower wheelbases (important for navigating the drunks passed out on District sidewalks).

    another crib, the uppababy vista, went deep into our decision making process when it got a strong plug from the baby bargains book (the guardian of my sanity for the last two months) as the best stroller for “hip urban dwellers.” the vista *was* pretty freakin’ cool as a full strollerpalooza system (included with bassinet, raincover, blender, etc.) but was much wider (2″+) than the mini and no where near as compact folded (might need to be strapped to the roof on a city bus).

    so, i’m not sure how the city mini didn’t get the top pick for my demographic (maybe its just a definition thing — i’m pretty sure we aren’t hip) but i guess it’s a little much asking one little book to make EVERY decision for me.

    of course, none of the stroller models we looked at had either (a) air bags or (b) a star wars missile defense shield, so I’m sure we are recklessly sacrificing baby sparklet’s safety every time we think we even think about leaving the house.

    ECPA20090817_0033graco snugride infant car seat — ah, yes. the Honda civic of car seats. the snugride was at the top of every ranking, and the only thing we really did was shop for the color.

    the lady sparkler hinted that having a car seat that matched the stroller would be a good thing, because apparently the two can plug together into some sort of voltron-like super-combo-robot-stroller.

    speaking of … i wonder if they sell flaming sword attachments? if they did, i’m thinking it would capture the “early-pubescent teen daddy” market that seems to be blooming lately. just a thought.

    on the more boring side, the snugride we got appears to have side impact protection … which is great, because I am pretty sure our car (which cost 200x more) does not.

    i take this fact as yet another sign that I hate my unborn child, as we haven’t dropped everything and bought a tan Volvo station wagon … yet.

    but, then again, tan wouldn’t match.

  • nice rack

    photo
    the lady sparkler and I had a very early realization once we got pregnant — that our poor little Jetta was going to have problems coping.

    first, we have the smallest trunk in the free world (or so it seems…) as when we put two small roller bag in the trunk, there isn’t room for much more. and by “much”, i mean “anything bigger than my self-esteem.”

    next, we have a sick cat whose meds require that she travel with us every time we leave for more than a day. that means a procession of (at minimum) a cat carrier, a cooler for meds, a litter box, a water fountain, replacement litter, not to mention the vaguely mental cat at the head of the entourage (who i am beginning to think has a future in pop music).

    now, we are facing a new baby, the very thought of which fills our back seat and trunk with crap: strollers, clothes, books, bags, diapers, not to mention whatever mommy and daddy needs to not be naked and insane.

    suddenly, getting an SUV doesn’t seem quite so crazy.

    we love our little (fully paid off) Jetta, and specifically how easy it is to street park in DC (and how fully paid off it is). so, instead of downgrading our beloved to a big suburban monstrosity, we decided to experiment with a roof rack for some added storage.

    to date, we just have the a “base” unit that you’d find at REI — a couple of poles running across the roof which other stuff is lashed down to — but we have a low-profile basket (which we can remove and store in the trunk) shipping to us in the next couple weeks.

    the system (it’s a Yakima) is admittedly a little pricey, but we figure we have a long way to go before we spend the cost of a new monthly car payment, so it’s worth a shot.

    here’s hoping.

  • release the $&@#%s list already

    manny_papi
    I hate blogging about sports, but nothing is frustrating me more than steroids in the baseball right now. and that includes my complete inability to sleep, AND all the trips to the suburbs baby sparklet’s pending arrival is requiring.

    once upon a time, there was no steroid testing in baseball … but in 2003, the league and the players agreed to do a pilot testing program to discover if there was really a steroids problem.

    turns out there was. (“Shocked! I am shocked to find gambling going on in this casino!”)

    over a hundred players failed the supposedly confidential 2003 tests, and now two more names have been leaked from the list (bringing the tally to seven). and yet, the sanctimonious morons who cover this sport in the press are saying it is our duty to protect the rest.

    it’s not our duty to protect idiots or cheaters. that’s their lawyer’s problem, not ours.

    you see … in 2003, everybody in baseball knew the “random-in-name-only” tests were coming, and knew that the whole testing regimen would die an unceremonious death if there weren’t enough positive tests to justify further testing. so, it was in the dirty bums best interests to clean up just this once to pass their tests, and yet they still couldn’t stay off the juice long enough to protect their own long-term interests.

    on the other hand, let’s think through this from the point of view of someone on this list: in the last six months, seven names have been leaked at a slow trickle, giving each perp the limelight-of-shame all to themselves for the few weeks that followed. given the choice between this spotlight, or being “outed” at the same time as 96 other players, I’m taking the latter … and banking that there is at least one person more famous on the list than I to distract the press and public.

    we as a country, as a sport, and as a civilization have spent enough time being concerned about protecting the rights of the guilty in baseball. this is a sport, we’re not negotiating world peace.

    how about we *out* these schmucks, and finally remove the cloud of suspicion from those innocent players who have done nothing except play clean ball next to a bunch of dirty teammates.

    keeping the rest of these cheats anonymous isn’t helping them, it’s ruining everyone else.

  • the ‘burbs and the baby

    photo
    for the uninitiated, i really can’t explain the horror that is Babies ‘R Us.

    our m.o.h., foster mom, is in town this weekend, and we’re taking advantage of her unbridled enthusiasm to travel across the vast wastelands of the D.C. suburbs looking for baby crap.

    the store seems to have been organized via the detonation of a low-yield nuclear weapon, and then ravaged by whatever rampaging, post-apocalyptic hordes survived. there is no sign of intelligent life to explain to you what you really need, just clerks saying what will happen if you don’t buy the most expensive device they have in stock. to make matters worse, only the most overpriced items are readily available, and all the “reasonably priced” merchandise is either out-of-stock, or hidden in some dark ghetto corner-of-shame in the store.

    admittedly, i might not be qualified to judge fairly — i hate the ‘burbs, i hate driving in the ‘burbs, i hate big box stores, i hate backward “R”s, and i get claustrophobic when surrounded by lots of 200 lb pregnant women using strollers as cow-catchers.

    none of this affords me an unbiased platform from which to judge.

    that being said, there is at least one good thing about these monuments to baby-spending-excess: you can touch the items. before you put them back down. and buy the same thing online. for 20% less.

    fortunately, friend and co-worker Papa Bradstein (unwittingly) gave us sage advice about a book called Baby Bargains, which is a kind of Consumer Reports for baby stuff.

    (actually, Baby Bargains is better, because while CR rates baby products, they don’t give much insight into why they rated one product better than another.)

    the book has been great, and i’ve been reading it non-stop … taking away solid info on not only which particular product is best for us (ie. one car seat vs another) but what types of mass-marketing bunk we can avoid entirely (diaper-stackers) without it triggering a child endangerment persecution or (worse yet) nasty looks from our parenting peers.

    luckily, as we slog through the baby shopping, the lady sparkler and i are on the same page about this breed of baby consumerism and she is every bit as exasperated/angry as i am.

    the only difference? i know more about breast pumps than any human possibly can with out getting his man-card forcibly revoked.

  • karma: chinese zodiac

    chinese_ox
    the lady sparkler and i did our second consecutive date-night tonight … a movie (“up”), then dinner in Chinatown at one of the few real Chinese restaurants left in the city (“full kee”).

    the food was great, but the best part was the chinese zodiac place mats, which gives little personality sketches based on the year of birth. obviously, this got us thinking about Baby Sparklet’s personality, which
    (apparently) will be guided by the chinese sign of the Ox.

    Bright, patient and inspiring to others. You can be happily by yourself, yet make an outstanding parent.

    feeling like we were on a roll, when i got home i found a couple of sites that walk through the signs a little more. that’s when things got interesting:

    Ox people are hard-working and persistent, they can stick at a task longer and go at it harder than anybody. They believe in themselves and tend to classify almost everything into two basic categories, bad and good. They hold up their high standards as a model and severely judge those who don’t aspire to maintain these same ideals.

    Although appears to be tranquil, in fact, Oxens are ponderous but impulsive when angry. They are capable of fearsome rages, therefore, it is better not to cross an Oxen. Ox people are observant, they have remarkable memories and are good at reporting on absolutely everything they observe.

    that’s one heck of a way to start the description, but the rest gets a little better (“kind, caring souls, logical, positive, filled with common sense”) … right up until the end where it says that the Ox’s “childhood and youth will generally be without incident.”

    note the use of the word “generally.”

    for the record, it turns out that I am a Rabbit (“quick, clever and ambitious”) and, while my money was on the lady sparkler being an Ox — just like our baby girl! — she ends up being a Snake (“not to be ignored”).

    and while their “compatibility” estimates are really designed for life partners, it turns out that an Ox, a Rabbit, and a Snake can live pretty happily under one roof … so long as the Rabbit (me) and Snake (the lady sparkler) aren’t romantically involved.

    can’t wait to see how that all pans out.

  • the five rules of baby names

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    photo.jpg, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    there has been a lot of talk about baby names, now that we know the gender of baby sparklet.  

    we have our favorites, but are very much in the “exploratory” stage of the naming process … and we are still adding as many names to the list as we are removing.

    before last week, we had only discussed one rule of baby naming: 

    • the “last name” test —  each first name has a last name, and it’s got to match.  with a last name like “Parker,” that means the first name needs be something from the same Anglo school … and while “Mariella” is a beautiful name, “Mariella Parker” is just crazy.

    originally, the lady sparkler and i thought that one rule would guide us home, but now that we have spent some serious time talking about names, we have a couple new rules to add to the collection:

    • the “CEO” test — sure we want the baby to have a cute name worthy of babydom, but will it look rediculous on business cards in twenty years?  for some reason “Kaylee” comes to mind.
    • the “elementary school” test — will the child be able to spell her name by the start of school?  will the teacher be able to call her name without a phoenetic guidebook?  I think “Nevaeh” manages to fail both at once, as I can’t spell or say without serious assistance.
    • the “gift shop magnet” test — while personally i hate those personalized rainbow magnets you find in gift shops, I fervently believe sparklet should have the ability to find her name if she’s looking.  this means no bizzaro names (“Estrella”, “Willow”) and no bizzaro spellings (“Nataly”, “Madisyn”).
    • the “place in the family” test — if history (or the lady sparkler) is any indication, baby sparklet will be a force of nature … and likely the alpha dog of the household.  as a result, we can’t use any flowery names (“Lily”, “Emma”, “Ashley”) that are ultimately better suited for a second baby sparklet.

    I think those are all the rules, though there are one or two corollaries we are also keeping in mind:  

    • there has got to be a workable nickname (all I ever wanted in life was a nickname);
    • have to watch those initials (“Isabella Constance Parker” would have the initials “I See Pee”);
    • there will be no gender ambiguity (“Chris”, “Taylor”);
    • and no stealing names from nieces/cousins (which is a shame, because I *love* the name “Natalie”);
    • our M.O.H. won’t let us name the baby after the cat (which is also a shame, because “Emily” is my favorite name ever).

    aside from that, it’s open season.  let me know what you come up with … 

    Explore the Photo Set:
    Album: the lady sparkler, Sue and Jeremy (facebook)

  • how I met your mother: engagement, part 2

    (continued from part 1)

    this is the fifth in a series of letters to baby sparklet about how mommy and daddy met and woo-ed each other.

    immediately after the lady sparkler’s crazy Texas friends started haranguing her into haranguing me into marrying her, I thought to myself “you know, I do love her, and want to spend the rest of my life with her…”

    and so i decided to get a ring. that was December. I had the ring two weeks later.

    we were already talking about going to new York for my birthday (April) and it seemed like (at the time) my beloved’s marital haranguing might actually die down by then, at least long enough for me to propose uninterrupted.

    not so much.

    by February, i was sufficiently badgered to explain to her (in no uncertain terms) that from now on, each time she brought up engagement, i would move the “hypothetical” proposal back another month.

    by April, she had managed to add *fourteen* months to the engagement time line. so, while i hadn’t succeeded in her stifling the running of her mouth, i at least knew that a proposal was the farthest thing from her mind when we pulled into NYC’s Penn Station the second week of April.

    the same, however, couldn’t be said for me…

    I was a wreck, and constantly obsessed about the ring — where it was, and whether it had fallen out of the triple-bagged cocoon in which it was placed. to make matters worse, on the day i was going to propose (april 14th) it rained, and rained, and rained, and rained.

    i had already decided I couldn’t propose to the lady sparkler inside some silly, human-built structure because whatever we were inside could be torn down, or worse, turned into a starbucks.

    so, i decided i would do the deed in Central Park, which (obviously) wasn’t particularly rain-friendly, which meant that april 14th became april 15th, and engagement day became tax day.

    that afternoon, i marched my beloved around central park for over an hour, mostly because i couldn’t find a place to propose. i know it’s crazy, but there are a *lot* of people in new york — who knew? — and every single one of them seemed to be lounging around central park.

    before we left DC, i had asked my best friend from college (and future bridesmaid) if she had any suggestions about the whole engagement process. it turns out that her husband was such a mess when he proposed, that she was convinced (right up until she saw the ring) that he was dumping her.

    her solution? pull the ring out first.

    and, when we finally found a secluded spot, i did just that. the lady sparkler was resting for a moment on a mostly horizontal tree, when i pulled out the ring, and sat down beside her.

    she didn’t hear a single thing that i said. she was like the crow from the secret of n.i.m.h., when he sees mrs. frisbee’s medallion and says: “ooooooooooo, SPARKLY!”

    interestingly enough, to this day, she has no idea what *she* said either. (for the record, it was: “oh. my. god. are you, like, serious?”)

    i have what i said written down somewhere, but it was exactly what you would expect: “love, blah, blah, blah, so happy, blah, blah, life together, blah blah.” she replied, “yes, yes. oh my god, yes.” which — i would surmise — is just about as good of a response as you can get.

    speaking of which, on our way out of central park we ran into the back of another boy proposing to another girl, and it looked like he had arranged for a photographer and her parents to join in the festivities.

    unfortunately, she looked abjectly horrified. yeeeesh. at least *we* lived happily ever after.

    PHOTO: tulips, new york, new york.

  • how I met your mother: engagement, Texas-style

    dear sparklet,

    this is the fourth in a series of letters to baby sparklet about how mommy and daddy met and woo-ed each other.

    there are some stories that get better with age … and then there are stories that start out really $&#% funny, and stay really $&@#% funny.

    I hope this is the latter.

    a few years into the relationship, we made the honest mistake of going to Texas. sure, the lady sparkler’s parents were great, and her sisters were awesome … but her friends? lunatics.

    apparently, something in the water down there causes people to think that 18 months of dating is the maximum allowable before some kind of engagement is necessary, beit of the voluntary or shotgun variety.

    the sparklers, being a bit past that “threshold” had apparently tripped some kind of Texas state-wide alert system, where friends hold waves of rolling interventions to make sure “everything’s alright” and that the boy doesn’t have any “problems” that needed to be addressed (likely by overwhelming displays of machismo, or belt buckles, or both).

    by the end of the year, after a couple of months of interventions, the lady sparkler was in a tizzy … and her occasional, badly disguised, open-ended questions about an engagement timeline started getting more and more pointed (and more and more badly disguised).

    each time she would tizzy, we would talk … and each time we’d agree that *we* needed to have a timeline that worked for *us,* even if it was at odds with the posse was forming along the Rio Grande.

    I should pause.

    sure, Texans are ten-gallon-hat-sized-crazy for thinking 18 months of dating is suitable for long-term mate selection (which leads to all sorts of redneck/missing teeth/social Darwinist jokes which I will forgo due to likely readership demographics) …

    … but it is possible that my people (from the opposite side of the “war of northern aggression”) just might fall off the other end of the commitment scale. I have friends that dated for 8 years before the topic of marriage even came up, or (worse yet) were engaged for 5+ years before deciding whether they should actually tie the knot.

    so, from my worldview, i thought that I was being carefree to the point of reckless abandonment by thinking of proposing to a woman I had been dating for *only* two years. yet, all the while, the great state of Texas was negotiating with Chuck Norris to come shift my worldview for me.

    I digress …

    by February, my beloved had become as subtle as a three year old in the aisle of a toy store … and I was started to dig in, solely as a matter on principle. by the 27th time the issue was raised in those three months, I sat my beloved down, and we talked. it went something like this:

    me: “you know i love you. and i want you to know that you can propose to me anytime you like …”

    the lady sparkler: “ummmm.”

    me: “no, seriously. I know how much you want to get engaged… so you are welcome to go ring shopping, pick out something nice for me, and then get down on one knee and propose. I promise I’ll wear the ring everyday.”

    her: “uhhhhhh.”

    me: “what’s wrong, sweetie?”

    her: “I think I’d prefer if you proposed to me.”

    me: “interesting. okay, here’s the deal. let’s say we have a date for the hypothetical engagement, let’s call it X.”

    her: “is X soon?”

    me: “well, interesting that you mentioned that … each time you ask when it is, or suggest that X should be coming sooner, the hypothtical engagement date becomes X + 1 month.”

    her: “so, when is X then?”

    me: “i’m not sure, but it’s now TWO months later than it was three minutes ago.”

    of course, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I had bought an engagement ring two months earlier and was just waiting for her to shut her yap about it, so it could be a surprise.

    continued …

    PHOTO: Statue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York.