Domestic Report, January 8, 2007 (Stardate unknown)

This post will be brief, as it is only designed to tidy up the loose ends and stray plot threads from the last few months of my life. It’ll be like the last 20 minutes of the third Hobbit film, only hopefully it won’t take any more than half that long to read, start to finish.

The house above is a renter not a lifetime commitment, but we’ll be damned if we want to move again. Ever. I aim to hang onto this place like my life depends on it. My goal is that our next move will be to Our Lifetime Commitment. I have maybe that many more moves in me (see inset).

The Man Cub is already sleeping through the night, after a first couple nights of extra attention as he got comfortable with his new surroundings. His up-hour is moving closer to 6 a.m. all the time, and he’s even hit it more than once since we moved in a scant ten days ago.

The Child Care situation, always a scary black backroad on a moonless midnight before, appears to have resolved itself surprisingly quick. After grim predictions from local citizens and child-care providers alike, what was expected to be a protracted search ended up a quick glance that by all accounts has yielded solid gold. The provider we found was ready to admit my little guy right away, but suddenly I didn’t want to let go. So we compromised, and I get to keep him at home with me another ten days or so. With babysitters watching him when I’m busy in my office, it’s like the dream dad scenario: Work as hard and as long as I want to, then stroll out and play with my son, whose actual needs are being seen to by hired professionals. Stroll back to work. Repeat.

This must be why celebrities and rich people (although we are neither) always gush about how faaaaabulous it is having kids – they’re not the ones being kept up nights, and spending their whole day every day keeping Junior from bathing in the dog’s water bowl or disassembling the electrical cords that run around the baseboard.

Actually, our problems just became more knee-level then ground level, again with the inset:

The Man Cub has embraced walking in just the last week with a vengeance, and now insists on shuffling awkwardly on his own everywhere. At the point where, naturally, one becomes required to deter him from his desired path of locomotion, the screaming, kicking and writhing ensues. That photograph is funnier, but nowhere near as cute, or accurate in its depiction of his normally sunny self.

Even the dog digs the new dump. His bed is central to the entire place and is bathed in sunlight half the day. A dog’s life, indeed.

The Missus’ kick-ass new job continues to reap rewards: It was a colleague of hers that directed us to the upcoming Child Care provider, and it’s flying her off to the deep south for a half a week of conventioneering later this month, so things continue to look promising on that front.

As for myself, I am reverting to form and keeping my personal shit personal, but I will allow as much: Went through some damn tough times, but short of an unforeseen reversal of fortune, for the first time in a long time I feel like better days are ahead.


And that’s the Domestic Report. I get the feeling politics may be overtaking this space in the immediate future; I sense a disruption in the Force, a Surge in political outrage on the horizon...