theparkerfamily.org

Tag: Long Reads

  • the clothes don’t make the (wo)man

    photo
    well, another weekend, another closet redone. this time mine (I hate being left out) and on the cheap (spent $39 on wood, saw-ed and installed myself).

    i have this pathological need to be doing stuff now, which i understand is probably a flavor of nesting … only coming from the more-militant-yet-somehow-less-productive wing.

    but the real news comes from the lady sparkler, who is showing enough (understatement!) to start considering actual maternity clothes instead of continuing to accessorize her regular jeans with rubber-band-as-belt-buckle.

    unfortunately, part of said awakening is finding out how much of a pain it is to shop for her new situation. truth be told, she hated shopping for regular clothes, so I guess no one was expecting her to suddenly hit a clothes-buying stride now that she is, er, buying for two.

    honestly, she’s a clotheshorse in her new found state, and looks great in everything she’s brought home. however, she’s begun complaining that certain clothes that lack definition (mommy mumu’s as it were) make her feel like she’s smuggling a watermelon out of the produce aisle.

    I’m sure I don’t know what that means, but I’m equally sure that she is sticking to a-lines and tailored-style clothes from here on out. (personally, I’m guessing that the maternity industry keeps some mumu’s on hand just to make sure the more expensive, tailored clothes fly off the shelves faster.)

    all that said, other than clothes and me pretending to be useful, we’re really just biding time until we know the gender.

    next sonogram is june 19th, and baby sparklet be well past the point where we can stare uncomfortably at his/her/its lower regions and make some sort of guess … provided, of course, that sparklet isn’t being bashful.

    16 days.

    PHOTO: recovery dinner from the weekend that was @ the heights, columbia heights, washington, dc.

  • how i met your mother: the first dates

    []
    dear sparklet,

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

    it’s pretty difficult to pick out one event that would qualify as a first date.

    the first thing we did together outside of work was go to Ben’s Chili Bowl. however, it was for lunch, and bridesmaid Mel was nice enough to chaperon that little event.  i am pretty sure those two things disqualify Ben’s from the “first date” competition.

    (that was also my first hot dog is several years, and i can still remember how my stomach ached after that was all over…)

    several weeks later, the lady sparkler and i went for a hike in Shenandoah national park … and barely survived. we made the mistake of hiking down (to some waterfalls on hazel mountain) instead of up.

    hiking downhill seemed like a good idea for the first six miles, and proved to be easy enough that we kept going farther than we had planned. we were having a great time talking, laughing, and poking t.l.s. with a stick (well, that last part was mostly me…)

    unfortunately, the six miles back uphill to the car sucked most of the will to live out of our poor, frail, out-of-shape, trying-to-impress-each-other-with-our-outdoorsyness bodies.

    we stayed on the trail two hours longer than we had planned, which meant what had been planned as a day event now required dinner, which was a first for us.

    and so, our first dinner date (however accidental) was at a ruby tuesday’s in warrenton on the way back to DC. to this very day, the sonora chicken pasta i had that night is just about my favorite comfort food on the planet.

    now, i was mostly a vegetarian when i met the lady sparkler … i did eat some meat (almost all of it was chicken), i never cooked any dead animals at home, and never ate meat more than once or twice a month (i guess you could say that i was a social carnivore.)

    so it was much to my surprise that after our hike, i found us talking about barbecue — which is not something I talk about much, so i’m guessing the lady sparkler must have brought up.

    to keep up with the conversation, i found myself telling her that she should come up to Glover Park to try the ribs at Rockland’s, regardless of the fact that i had no earthly idea what they tasted like and would probably faint watching someone eat them.

    she thought it sounded great.

    so, while i had successfully arranged our first “alone” date back in DC, i had also managed to create a rather awkward situation. whatever meat i was eating at the time, i can assure you that it wasn’t anything that looked like it was once alive, much less slaughtered, cooked over an open flame, and hacked into little strips.

    that next weekend, we met at Rocklands, and ordered at the counter.  me: a cute little array of sides (coleslaw, mac and cheese, potato salad).  my future wife: a huge slab of meat.

    and so, i watched my wife-to-be pack away half a rack of ribs.

    when finished, she proceeded to suck the marrow from the bones, and then lick her fingers clean. i kissed goodbye whatever vegetarian tendencies i had, right then and there.

    and the rest, as they say, is history.

  • the end of baseball in washington

    []
    photo.jpg, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    i might be about done with the washington nationals.

    the austin spaklers are in town for the lady sparkler’s birthday, and to get some some quality time with her belly. it’d been a year since we saw a nats game, so we tossed in one of those for good measure.

    it turned out that we had three sets of friends there, and we had a great time all around. the food — ben’s chili bowl, again — was fantastic. the stadium is beautiful.

    but the game was awful.

    of course, part of that might be because the nationals are awful. luckily, they were facing the orioles … who are equally awful.

    the two teams are averaging 6 runs allowed per game. together, they allow more people on base than any other teams in the league. washington leads the league in errors, and baltimore is close behind. both are in last place in their division.

    all that futility should mean a scorcher of a game. but alas, did i mention it was awful?

    i swear, there was 20 minutes between each inning. it took until the 5th inning for washington to score its first run (which would also be the last). the game was over in two hours and 31 minutes, but i would have guessed it was twice that.

    in fact, when nat’s shortstop Cristian Guzman homered in the 5th i was excited … until i realized that it tied the game, vastly increasing the chance it would go into extra innings.

    (not to worry, tho, as baltimore “stormed” back to win 2-1.)

    but worst of all, we had to watch all the happy O’s fans … who have to win the award for most socially awkward fan base in the country.

    i know that baseball is a game of stats (which is probably a polite way of saying math geeks) but O’s fans makes red sox and yankees fans look normal by comparison … preppy or thuggy, as the case may be, but without that certain “a/v club” veneer.

    but, at least the O’s have fans.

    honestly, the nats would have better success if they built a giant bar, with great food, a huge HD television, and a $25 cover charge. that way DCers could come and socialize, without feeling guilty about paying attention a baseball game.

    (wait, that’s actually what they did …)

    in the end, the two-plus hours where i didn’t watch the game was great, but the 20 minutes of the game i watched during pauses in the social agenda felt like an afternoon at the dmv.

    it took forever, and no one was particularly happy with how it turned out.

  • how I met your mother: the first kiss

    [Evan and Tasha]
    dear sparklet,

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

    if be lying if I said that I wasn’t interested in the woman who would become the lady sparkler soon after we met, after two years of being telephone-only business chums…

    but, I was coming out of a bit of a rough patch as far as the fairer sex was concerned. point of fact, I had sworn off women all together after the excruciating demise of two (and a half) relationships in an 18 month perod.

    but, to be frank, swearing off women wasn’t quite what the lady sparkler had had in mind.

    those days we spent a little bit of time out of the office together … but completely plutonic, in the “hands off like plutonium” sort of way. I didn’t want to have anything to do (romantically) with women, and she didn’t want anything to do (romantically) with anyone who had such a luminous recent history of spectacularly-demising relationships.

    but all of a sudden, something changed. after, say, four months of plutonic nirvana, she came up to my place in Glover Park on a Friday night for an early dinner, before I was to drive to Williamsburg (and the family) later that night.

    as I was packing, she sat on my bed — it was a studio apartment so there was no couch, you perverts — going ON and ON about how she was happy we were just friends, and that while she could see some thing happening romantically, it was waaaaaay off in the future, and that we should take things slowly, and that I needed time, and that she needed time, and how special male friends were, and how she had a lot of them, and how people often misconstrued that, but she was glad that I didn’t misconstrue that, blah, blah, blah-blah, blah-blah-blah.

    she was preaching to the choir (nay, the clergy) as far as i was concerned … so i said “you are exactly right” for twenty minutes, packed quickly, went with her for a quick bite of Indian, decided her Native American name translated to “she who insists on stating the obvious, over and *over* again,” and drove to Williamsburg.

    She suggested that I stop by on my way back after my trip, which i did, and we ended up going for a walk, I’m guessing to give her roommate a break from the Evan-induced insanity.

    not twenty minutes into the walk, she asked if she could hold my hand. not twenty-one minutes into the walk, she asked if she could kiss me.

    we did, on the corner of Buchanan and Boyle streets, in Alexandria, Virginia.

    to this day, I have no idea what happened between Friday at 8pm and Sunday at 4pm. but, whatever it was, I would like to officially take credit for it here and now.

    all along, it was *obviously* my masterplan to drive her to do this switch-er-roo, and she was just powerless in the face of my onslaught of charm.

    I promise to only use my powers for good from here on out.

  • how I met your mother: the beginning

    []
    dear sparklet,

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

    one of the lady sparkler’s favorite shows these days is “how I met your mother,” whose premise includes a dad explaining to his kids (through flashbacks to modern day) all the zany hijinks that led to him meeting (and marrying) their mother.

    you’ve seen it if you have been on an airplane in the last five years, or have a thing for doogie howser/ buffy the vampire slayer alumni.

    anyway, the premise got me thinking I have a certain moral obligation to document all the embarassing stories I have about the lady sparkler, to make sure you (dear sparklet) have a full understanding of your antecedants.

    so, I’m not sure how many people know this, but I knew my future beloved for about two years before we ever met. she was the head of communications for a small progressive non-profit, and I handled a web consulting contract they had with CTSG way back when.

    it’s reasonable to say that I had a “client crush” on her — hard to explain, but that’s a commonish term that consultants have for clients that they don’t try to avoid at all costs. it happens a more often than you’d think, especially when your “relationship” is limited to whitty banter on the phone.

    the funny part is that I assumed — for two years, up until the day that she started working for at CTSG — that she was 45 years old, married, with two or three kids.

    whoops.

    one day I hear “new girl” is coming by for some social event because she was going to be starting with us in a few weeks, and two hours layer I realize it is (a) her, (b) that I have talked to her for years but never met, (c) she is decidedly not 45, and (d) had cornered me in the office kitchen in such a way that I was fairly certain I had best cooperate with her and whatever her vision of the world might be.

    the part of the story that doesn’t get told all that often is that I inadvertently seduced her under completely false pretences … namely in a suit and tie.

    the day she came to visit just happened to be the only day in four years of political consulting that I had a meeting with a member of congress (nick lampson, fwiw) so had dressed up for work in black tie, black suit and black overcoat.

    (she said I looked dashing … I think I probably looked like John Cusack from Grosse Pointe Blank.)

    regardless, it was one of maybe four times I got that dressed up in the last six years (poor thing).

    looking back, she says it was love at first sight … I’m not sure I was so eloquent, but absolutely thought she was hot, had potential, and was going to kick my #%$& if I didn’t comply with her every demand.

    mmmm, young love 🙂

  • white hart lane

    [Tottenham Hotspur vs. West Bromwich Albion, White Hart Lane, Tottenham, London, England, UK.]
    [Tottenham Hotspur vs. West Bromwich Albion, White Hart Lane, Tottenham, London, England, UK.]
    [White Hart Lane, Tottenham, London, England, UK.]
    i love my wife.

    she’s barely 14 weeks pregnant, just spent seven days gallivanting around scotland with my family, and wraps it all up by going with me (split seats mind you) to see tottenham hotspur at white hart lane.

    i’ve been following tottenham since i’ve been following the premier league — and the thought of seeing them in their 110 year old stadium has been clattering around my head ever since we bought the ridiculously overpriced tickets six weeks ago.

    it’s crescendo-ed to the point that this morning i was certifiably out of my mind — giddy enough that i managed to lose my wallet touring st. paul’s cathedral, but barely even noticing the rather large problem as my tickets to the lane were locked away elsewhere.

    we had planned on taking the tube to Seven Sisters, and making a twenty minute hike up hill to the stadium — but there was some variation on london’s perennial track work, so we detoured to another line and cabbed over.

    (speaking of, when the lady sparkler and i were buying tube tickets, our cashier was an aresnal fan — tottenham’s arch nemesis — and she was utterly unable to say either “tottenham” or “white hart lane” outloud without cringing.)

    (seriously, she kept starting to say something … catching herself … stopping … and saying “your destination” instead.)

    when we got to the lane, we walked a couple of laps — soaking it all in. by the time we actually entered the stadium it was already time for player introductions.

    i walked through the tunnel to the orchestral magesty of John Williams “Dual of the Fates.” it was glorious.

    it’s been a day, and i honestly don’t remember much about the match itself.

    i remember being in the front row, with a bunch of 20-something men. i remember screaming my head off. i remember being told to sit down by the extraordinarily polite stewards, a dozen times or more.

    and, i remember tottenham winning off of a curling 25-yard effort from Jermain Jenas.

    but, most of all i remember the chants, and the whole stadium — 35,000 strong — singing “oh when the spurs go marching in” in unision. i can still hear the glory glory ringing around in my ears.

    glorious.

    See a Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    tottenham vs. west brom, white hart lane, london

  • so, a funny thing happened

    [Castle Stalker, near Port Appin, Scotland, UK.]
    so, a funny thing happened at the car dealership.

    i rented a car from whatever the nationwide/generic car rental place was, and the only thing i asked for was for it to be an automatic. i’ve done the wrong side of the road thing before, but had little interest in doing it on hills with a clutch.

    turns out that the only automatic that they had on the lot was a Mercedes E-Class Wagon, which the guy described as being worth more than his annual paycheck (it costs $49,250 in the States).

    he gave it to us for the rate we already agreed to for what we thought was going to be a crappy Scandinavian four-door, and tossed in a GPS to boot. the lady sparkler said to decline the insurance to use our own, and i drove the really expensive car off the lot like a scared little boy.

    when we got back to the apartment (we’re in a two-bedroom for our stay in Edinburgh) i made my wife call our insurance, just to be sure we were okay. it went something like this:

    We just rented a Mercedes wagon, and want to make sure it’s covered under our insurance.

    What do you mean when you say that you don’t cover “certain” luxury vehicles — like what, Ferrari’s and Lambroghinis?

    So, I started walking back to the rental place — and told him either to give us insurance or to walk over and pick the car back up himself.

    Long story short, we got insurance — and my parents just got upgraded from riding around in the back of a Ford Mondeo for a week.

  • there and back again

    gi_overviewthe lady sparkler’s had a busy week of interviews. la madre de la sparklet has been shopping for a new baby doctor ever since he/she/it announced, “oh, by the way … I don’t deliver babies anymore.”

    mental note: add that to the list of things you could have mentioned three months ago …

    it’s a little early to be doing dry runs to the hospital, but all the practices that baby mama interviewed were out of sibley memorial hospital here in DC and we had only the faintest idea as to where that was.

    and, knowing that i was going to be the one driving her raging hormones around in case of emergency, i convinced her that we might want to discover whether we can actually get to this uncharted hospital in a hurry or not.

    what can I say … I’m a planner.

    it turns out that “we” have picked the farthest-away hospital in the District (at least that doesn’t involve crossing a river, thank god).

    to be more specific, there are six hospitals that are closer — though admittedly two of them you could go in pregnant and come out missing a kidney.

    I digress…

    so, we took a little drive to sibley. I offered to strap a watermellon to her waist and dump a gallon of water on her lap … you know, for authenticity.

    she declined — unless I let her wail hysterically, dig her fingernails into my arm while I drove, and leave at three in the morning … you know, for authenticity.

    I declined.

    so we hopped into our little jetta, and meandered our way west through the city: Cleveland park, van ness, tenleytown, American university, spring valley. (we passed like 200 churches, which I think is a good sign.)

    five miles, twelve stoplights, three stop signs and a traffic circle later, we arrived at sibley.

    the lady sparkler announced that the trip went “pretty good.” I announced that she better be planning to be induced at a time of our choosing.

    it only took 12 minutes, but it felt like thirty … and that was without sparklet trying to bring an abrupt end to his/her claustrophobia.

    oy.

  • yup, we’re pregnant

    well, looks like we *are* pregnant … the lady sparkler went in for a blood test early this week, and it came back a big ol’ thumbs up!

    we’ve already told the future grandparents, but have managed to track down any of the aunts and uncles quite yet. it’s hard to get peoples attention without ruining the surprise.

    the Virginia parkers were in town this weekend (for my father’s birthday) so we got to tell them in person. the Houston spindlers got a phone call, but it turns out they already knew she was pregnant by the time they picked up.

    so, now begins the long wait … we’ve got 64 days until we reach the 12 week threshold where it becomes safe to blab about sparklet (temporary nickname for currently genderless future sparkler) publically.

    speaking of which, yes, we are going to find out the gender before hand, though TLS “feels” like it will be a girl. (and, no, I don’t know what that means either…)

    speaking of which, we just found out that the lady sparkler’s ob-gyn no longer delivers babies, so we have to come up with an artful way of getting our friends to recommend someone without letting on that we have an eminent need to act on their suggestion.

    two other things of note: we’ve started compiling a list of “must do’s” before the baby pops out… including redoing the closet in the second bedroom (which TLS has annexed as her own) and replace the death trap of an electric curcuit-breaker box our home inspector warned us about.

    we’ll probably be fine on furnature to start (sans crib, natch) and we are going to try and avoid getting a bigger car (though may need to invest in some kind of luggage rack considering we max out the trunk when travelling already).

    oh, and the lady sparkler keeps talking about painting, so that’s probably coming, too.

    second item of note: we’ve agreed on the fact that a last name like “Parker” needs to have a fairly conventional anglo first name to “match.” (for instance, Andrew Parker works … Enrique Parker does not.)

    with that already established, I’m thinking the name thing will actually be bearable, and maybe a little fun.

    last thought … we are legitimately super-excited about raising sparklet in the city. everythin within walking distance, the zoo, the limited space that win let us over-accumulate baby crap … everything.

    these are exciting times!

  • well, here we go — a.k.a. the lady sparkler thinks she might be pregnant

    l5885028630_8698so, the lady sparkler thinks she might be pregnant. and while those words strike terror into my heart, it’s not for the reason you think.

    the last time she thought she was pregnant, I decided it would be a good idea to draft up some blog entries, with be idea that they’d be embargoed (ie. not published) until after the 12 week don’t-tell-a-soul period has passed.

    unfortunately, as I was jotting down my thoughts, I came to realize that something was wrong with our blog which cause unpublished drafts to be, well, published.

    and so, in the first week of January, maybe 50+ people who read the blog via RSS feeds (like, through google reader) got this message:

    “tasha thinks she might be pregnant …”

    so, when T.L.S. delivered the news today, after the obvious “yay!” response one would expect from me (closely followed by “let’s wait a few days to be sure”) my next thought was “how can I make sure I don’t embarrass myself again with another premature post.”

    the answer? low tech. I’m drafting this in notepad, and won’t upload anything ’til I’m ready for them to be published. I don’t that even I could screw that up.

    as an aside, thank you to all of you who either (a) didn’t make a big deal of my obvious mistake and pulled me aside quietly, or (b) just ignored the mistake because you knew I was just being a complete idiot. bless you all.

    so, if you are reading this, I guess that means sparklet’s due date is Nov 8th, based off Feb 2nd as the start of T.L.S.’ last period.

    (btw, sparklet is the insider name for the baby — it’s all we’ve got until there is at least a gender to work with.)

    oi! i just looked at the calendar saw a vision of the future: one day in junior high health class, sparklet will count back 38 weeks from his/her birthday and pick Feb14th as the likely conception day.

    even worse, sparklet will be totally grossed out, thinking mom and dad got tanked on Valentine’s Day and couldn’t control themselves … even though it’s been well documented that the only elixer of love we had on that day was ben’s chili bowl.

    btw, remind me to delete this post before sparklet can read … okay? I probably can’t afford the therapy bills this post would cause.