ironSoap

I’m obsessed with human waste. Not in the creepy I-keep-mason-jars-of-it-under-my-pillow sort of way, but in the it’s-constantly-at-the-forefront-of-my-mind fashion. I’d blame my daughter but honestly she doesn’t really seem all that concerned about it. Sure, when she’s been sitting in her own foul for half an hour she’ll express some dismay over her environment, but it’s not like she’s really interested in what it is, she only cares what it represents. I, on the other hand, care deeply about it for reasons I don’t fully understand.

Actually, that isn’t true. I do in fact understand my preoccupation with “poops” and “peepee.” It’s like when there’s that really annoying pop song that seems to be on everywhere you go, relentlessly pounding its syrupy beat and trite lyrics into your skull for days on end and finally your only defense is to give in, turn up the radio to sing along, download the track from iTunes and buy a T-shirt with the chorus hook printed on it to wear ironically and prove to everyone how cool you are for being so uncool. What I’m saying is I don’t want to spend so much time thinking and talking about doo-doo but I don’t have a choice because it keeps coming up so I can either gnash my teeth in impotent angst over it or pretend it’s some kind of scientific pursuit.

The reason it’s such a nagging constant these days starts with the diaper. I realized before we had a baby in the house that children of this age utilized diapers in lieu of toilets and I understood that they needed to be changed quite a bit. What I wasn’t exactly prepared for was the frequency of the diaper contents. Aside from the half dozen or so “pit stops” in the restroom which can be accommodated in my case by a urinal (or even a waist-high bush if it comes to that) I have about one serious visit per day. By comparison my daughter does upwards of six or seven number twos per day. Early in the morning it’s all fine and good, with much praise and odd parental pride: “Look at the big girl with her big girl poops! Such a good girl!” etc. By mid-day the tone has shifted more along the lines of “Again? Well, okay…” and by the early evening you’re hearing the sort of heavy bargaining typically reserved for International Treaty Negotiations only in this case the outcome is who has to change the current diaper and who is owned (and I quote) “Fourteen thousand back rubs and the full unrestricted rights to choose the pizza toppings for the next ten pizzas.”

But listen, if it was just the frequency I could readily treat it as an unfortunately regular annoyance that entered my mind only as necessary and then left just as readily. But alas the tragedy of baby ownership is that they lack any sort of reliable communication interface aside from a catch-all error code function which is not only excessively verbose but also frequently misreports problems and occasionally alerts for no reason at all. As such you’re left to secondary monitoring to determine the overall health of the unit and in this case it means you can only ordain the quality of the input by closely examining the output. Not that even this kind of analysis is really informative. I mean, given the various parameters described by the professionals, I know from experience you can have detailed debates with your co-administrators over whether a particular specimen exhibits problematic characteristics or not. If you want to try this experiment at home, see if you can agree with a family member about what qualifies as “mucousy” given no additional information or examples.

I can tell you authoritatively that there are relatively few parties like a parents party when a parents party gets going on a Friday night about whether this or that globule of excrement means the baby is sick, allergic to something, getting too much foremilk or is indicative of a normal infant’s digestive system. Holla.

But perhaps the most persistent human-by-product-related musings revolve around messes in undesired locations. I’m talking about pee in your hand or poop on your hat here. I like to think of myself as a fairly clean and sanitary person. I shower regularly, I prefer a tidy environment (maybe not to the same degree as some, but I’m certain more so than others) and I try to remain at least mostly presentable. But it only takes one—two at the most—instances of being out in public and finding some sort of excrement that doesn’t belong to you on your arm or shoe before you start to develop an ever-present concern that you may at any given point in time be sporting dookie on your pants. The terrible fear is that the baby may not even be around when a tragic discovery is made and it’s really hard to play off a big pee stain on the back of your shirt while you’re giving a career-making presentation to your boss’ boss’ boss without having something cute and cooing to distract people with.

I guess the best you can hope for is that they’re new parents too, at which point they’ll just be thinking, “Wait. Did I check the back of my shirt for urine this morning?”

Paul walks in. Nik sits on the floor, baby in front of her.

Nik: Here, take this.

Paul: What is it?

Nik: It’s a gold nugget.

Paul takes diaper.

Paul: This is a diaper. Augh! There’s poop here!

Nik: Well, it’s not full of candy.

Paul: No! The poop is on the outside!

Paul hurriedly throws diaper into trash. Paul rushes to the bathroom and begins washing hands.

Nik: Laughing. There was an incident.

Paul: Aw, man. There’s no soap in here! What is happening?

Paul runs into kitchen.

Nik: Hey, when you’re done running around, can you get a new shirt for the baby?

Nik considers.

Nik: Also, you may want to grab the carpet cleaner.

If you’ve ever wondered why your parents are crazy, I happen to have stumbled across the answer: They are all suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In one of those deliciously wicked twists of design, appreciable mostly by those of us who collect and consume irony as if it were artisan cheese of the most rancid and pungent varieties, the source of that trauma is in fact children themselves. The execution of this assault on parental sanity occurs upon a child’s arrival into the world and lasts basically as long as children are incapable of forming any lasting memories thus ensuring that they emerge from the ordeal basically amnesic while their mothers and fathers remain haunted shells of their former selves. As such, children are left to wonder what force on Earth could have made their parents such complete lunatics, fully unaware that the madness that plagues their own existences is in fact self-wrought.

The techniques employed by the welcomed invaders are classic, really. Sleep deprivation is a legitimate form of torture but it really is just a softening tactic in this particular application, a way to pave the road for the true torment yet to come. I mean, you can set off a bomb in a building but if you want to bring the whole thing down, you need to first weaken the foundations. What happens with babies is not a sort of constant annoyance the way you might expect where they, for example, cry for protracted periods of time. After all, the goal here is to inflict psychological damage rather than merely focusing on brute force sleeplessness. Instead the assault comes in the form of a series of intermittent wails which vary in volume, duration, and pattern such that you can perpetually be lured into the false notion that relief is imminent.

Being sleep deprived is a state I’m familiar with. Large portions of my life have been spent with self-inflicted exhaustion due to my disinterest in ceasing whatever interesting activity engages me so that I can rest. Then there was the whole graveyard shift debacle of ‘07 though I’m not sure I want to pick at that scab too much just yet. What strikes me about the sleeplessness associated with newborn skirmishes is how oppressive it is, comparatively. It is all-encompassing and creates obsession in the strongest-willed combatants. Normally if you get behind on sleep you cancel an appointment, wait for a weekend or take a prescription medication to knock yourself out for a couple of days. But in this case there is no reprieve and no amount of chivalry on the part of your squadmates can rectify the situation since the one thing—the only thing—that you could not sleep through is the cry of your beloved foe.

Nik and I used to gripe before the baby was born about new parents we’d run into who would examine Nik’s pregnant belly and say something like, “Get ready to never sleep again.” We regarded these people as plankton: Unfeeling sociopaths who were menacing a pregnant woman who had experienced one failed pregnancy already and lived still in mortal fear of having complications in another. At least, she would seethe, your baby is healthy. Our sympathy for these veterans has waned considerably over the past few weeks since we realized that the problem isn’t a lack of appreciation but one of all-consuming weariness that borders dangerously on narcolepsy. At no point is a new parent unaware of the triumph and blessing their child represents, but it becomes impossible to fathom anything else except sanity-violating tiredness. “Sleep” becomes the answer to every puzzle, it is the epitome of every desire, the chalice placed out of reach that contains the magical elixir of happiness. At one point deep in our daughter’s third week of life Nik and I were watching Jeopardy! and we shouted synonyms for slumber in the form of a question, with all sincerity, for 21 out of 30 questions in the Double Jeopardy round. I heard my wife, typically the paragon of reason, attempt at one point to bribe our daughter to sleep with such untenable promises as ponies, castles and luxury cars.

Once the parental psyche has been rent under the spine-crushing weight of enervation the true damage is done via a series of carefully coordinated clandestine assaults on several fronts: There is a physical component where a series of thrashing, uncontrolled movements batter even an adult male in such a way as to not leave any discernible marks but, like tapping a sack of light bulbs with a wiffle bat, the invisible damage is extensive. There is also a more direct psychological aspect to the strategy employed which is almost criminally devious in its subtlety. It plays on the dark corners of fear in your mind by placing a sudden, almost violent responsibility on an unsuspecting civilian, tormented by the other tactics explained above and then cruelly demands that one heap atop this responsibility a freighter of concern and worry. Because the most vindictive tactic unleashed is white-hot love and devotion invading every pore with each screech and every holler. Unjustly the parent is forced to adore their invading force, to pledge undying allegiance to their captor such that instead of resisting the conquerors they welcome them, cater to them and weep to placate them.

I found myself at one point standing in the shower, broken like a once free-spirited pony and staring blankly at the soap scum encrusted wall and thinking I might let the water run cold before I could face another moment of the exhaustion, the abuse. I steeled myself, shut off the water, dried and re-donned my pajamas that had become my uniform and returned to the front where I found it eerily quiet. I relieved my wife of her watch and prepared to flirt again with sheer madness. The moment was fleeting but I gazed down at my baby girl, defiantly refusing sleep, I saw the corners of her eyes crinkle. I braced myself for the tears I knew were coming, steeling for her siren call to cleave my skull but then—suddenly!—an unexpected smile crossed her tiny lips and at once broke into the most beautiful toothless expression of contentment, purity and joy. In that instant, a lifetime of treaties were signed.

Normally I’d consider myself to be a patient person. I find there are far too many interesting distractions and means of filling the space between plainly noteworthy events to bother being too preoccupied with getting to the next. But as pertains to the upcoming birth process, which we are now 12 days prior to the “scheduled” date—which is, as I understand it, at best an educated guesstimate—I find myself lacking my usual sense of casual ease regarding anticipation.

I think there are a couple of things contributing to this but one of them is my wife, she-who-bears-the-child, who is beyond done with the proceedings and ready to have it over. She’s been an absolute champion of womanly strength and courage throughout the ordeal, from her vindictive morning sickness in the first trimester through her pelvic pain due to symphysis pubis dysfunction. It’s not that she’s annoying me with her persistent drive to have the delivery process begin but rather it is her desperate race to feel “ready” prior to that event that runs counter to my ability to shrug my way through the process.

It manifests via a series of lists, starting with the Master To-Do List. It’s relative brevity is misleading, these dozen or so line items are ultra high level overviews of nuanced projects which, in most organizations, would require several project managers, small but efficient teams of 20-30, an oversight committee reporting directly to a steering committee and a staff of support personnel including administrative associates and filing clerks. Each entry in the Master To-Do List has a sub-list which spans several pages including multi-step action items and firm deadlines for completion. There are charts which map out efficient travel routes between build sites and resource acquisition areas, which is important because all items have a mandatory environmental impact and budgetary concerns report attached, which must be strictly adhered to.

Each of these projects is intended to facilitate the arrival of our bundle of joy, although sometimes the line connecting point A (completion of the To-Do item) and point B (utility to an infant) is insubstantial and hard to comprehend, like string theory. I know I’m more of the brawn than the brains and my distinction as such was already in considerable doubt, but when you’re standing in a pile of splintered wood that was at one point a packing crate and crawling into a dumpster to mash down the contents so you can fit the 423rd Amazon.com box inside, you lose a little focus on the big picture and can’t help but wonder what a partially developed human could possibly need that requires this much cardboard.

There was a point this past weekend where Nik expressed a desire to take a break from our List attendant proceedings and for a moment I allowed a look of dissatisfaction to cross my face which sent her off into a torrent of teary incoherence. I think my performance as a supportive husband during the pregnancy has been adequate to acceptable (somewhere in the B/B+ range if one was grading generously) but I do prove to be expertly capable in making my wife cry which she typically—in retrospect at least—attributes to the hormones. I’m not necessarily convinced and hormones or no, there are few more reliable ways of identifying oneself as a class-A heel than by reducing a pregnant woman to tears. In any case I reassured her that I wasn’t upset that she needed to take a break or annoyed that she wasn’t as capable of powering through as she used to be or that I was disgusted by her baby-bearing appearance as she postulated. I’m not sure how that last one slipped into her rolodex of possible causes for my inconsideration but it must weigh heavily on her mind because she presents it as a possibility for practically everything I do, including activities that have absolutely no bearing on her whatsoever. It goes like this:

Nik: “Do you want a bite of this cookie?”
Me: “No, thanks.”
Nik: “Is it because I’ve put on weight?”
Me: “What!? No!”
Nik: “Then why?”
Me: “Because I don’t want any cookie?”
Nik: “So you think I shouldn’t eat it either, then.”
Me: “I didn’t say that! I think you look wonderful! I don’t care what you eat!”
Nik: “Because it’s too late for me? Is that what you’re saying!?”
Me: “I’d love a bite.”

Once I had her calmed down I reassured her I had only been temporarily disheartened by her need for our fifth break in the last hour because I just wanted to get the project done. She asked if there was such a thing as husband-nesting syndrome. I didn’t understand and she triumphantly parroted what I had just said about just wanting to get it done as if that were the critical shred of evidence that exonerated an innocent man accused of a grisly triple murder. I opened my mouth to explain that it wasn’t that at all and in fact I just wanted to get it done because I was hoping that if I crossed at least one item off the Master To-Do List I would be granted a reprieve from comparing shades of pink and learning the ins and outs of bottle assemblage, storage, cleaning and warming at least long enough to watch the last half of SportsCenter. Instead I closed my mouth, swallowed and said, “Well, I don’t know. But I bet I have it!”

The truth is, I really do want to have the preparations complete. My problem is that the closer we get to arriving in this mythical locale known as “Done” (Population: 0) the more immediate our proximity to that thumb-twiddling place of “just hoping it happens soon before the mom-to-be finally loses it and performs a home c-section on herself with a pair of poultry shears.” What I fear is that we’ll be the first people in the history of the world to actually have nothing else to accomplish before the baby arrives weeks in advance and we’ll have nothing to do or talk about other than the fact that she’s not yet in labor.

Me: “So… are you in labor yet?”
Nik: Pauses. “No.”
Me: “Oh. Bummer.”
Nik: “Yeah.”
Me: “Hey, remember when we finished the nursery?”
Nik: “I do.”
Me: “Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a baby to put in there?”
Nik: “Um, yeah.”
Me: “…”
Me: “So, are you in labor now?”
Nik: “Why don’t you wait at the hospital?”

Yet at the same time I’m pushing for these things to be completed because the alternative is so much worse. I know at this juncture that if Callie did decide to arrive in the next few days we’d have ample place for her to sleep, plenty of means of feeding and clothing her and sufficient material to avoid having her just poop on the carpet for me to clean up later with paper towels (we pretty much leave that to the cat). Frankly, we’ve been at the stage where we could be classified as technically prepared for her arrival for over a month now. But from Nik’s perspective there would be no greater catastrophe than having her show up without having a vinyl cutout of her name adhered to the wall over her crib, unless of course she were to arrive and we didn’t have a bouncy seat for her to sit in covered in brightly colored jungle creatures that vibrated, played tinny electronic versions of classic lullabies and emitted “realistic rainforest noises” that sounded curiously identical to a guy peeing into a urinal.

It’s just that the dichotomy of wanting to help Nik finish her list so I can stop spending my weekends feeling frantically pressed for time and the fear of actually accomplishing what we set out to do and having to spend the next two or three weeks drumming our fingers creates a sense of unease I’ve never known. I’ve never been so excited for something to happen and so fearful of it at the same time. I want to savor the time we have left but I’ve never been the kind of person to wade slowly into the shallow end of a cool swimming pool: I prefer the one shocking rush of the deep-end dive.

The other element is honestly that the impending paternity leave I have coinciding (shockingly!) with my paternal initiation represents my sole vacation time this year, and in fact represents a good half of my vacation time for next year as well. As progressive as my employer is on some issues, they lag behind in granting leave for fathers so I have had to scrounge and scrape together as much time off as I could from various channels and as a result I’ve worked for months with only a handful of standard US holidays to provide reprieve. At least my daughter had the courtesy of agreeing to be conceived last winter so I was able to take the time off in the doldrums of August. But I won’t lie: I’m so ready for some time away from work.

It’s strange to think of this as a vacation because my mental image of the next eight weeks or so don’t involve a lot of relaxation and all accounts suggest the first few months are fairly drastically weighted toward the SUPER INSANE CRAZY end of the spectrum on the Life Transitional Stage scale. But it will also be the longest stint of active non-work since I began my “career” over ten years and that includes a year of spotty employment earlier this century. I have family coming out during that period which I’m very excited about both because I’m delighted for them to meet the newest family member and also because I so rarely get to see any of them. In many ways this is the ideal work furlough for a nerdy homebody such as myself: No buffering days for extended travel, no short-term jump in extra expense, no unreasonable expectations to meet, no trying to cram sufficient amounts of organized “fun” into a day to meet an imaginary quota. Just family, friends and a new chapter of our lives.

“Are you nervous?”

This has become the de facto query directed at me when the subject of the impending birth of my daughter inevitably comes up. I’m not saying I find a way to shoehorn the topic into pretty much every conversation, but—hey, have I mentioned I’m about to be a father?

So. Am I nervous? Well, let’s see. I know that having a child can be expensive. We’re facing a situation where our typical two-income family has been relying on me as sole breadwinner for over a year, an arrangement that is unlikely to change in the next couple of years as we’ve decided it is best for Calliope if she has a full-time parent present during her formative years. As opposed to, say, some kindly old woman named Marge who collects the remainder of one paycheck after the government is finished with its plundering. I never really cared for the Atomic family model but when the math adds up… I mean, it’s math. You can’t argue with math.

Then there’s the fact that I’m in a sort of awkward career stage where I desperately need some re-education or additional training probably at a significant cost so I can break my relative salary stagnation which has been in place for about three years now. Did I mention the economy is sagging and my company just announced yesterday its third round of layoffs since I started ten months ago? I would classify myself as concerned about the financial responsibility I face.

Am I nervous? You know, this child has been almost ten years in the making. Theoretically speaking, that is. Nik and I will celebrate our tenth anniversary this October in what I presume will be a much shorter, less grandiose and significantly more anxious ceremony than we may have anticipated twelve months ago. But it’s possible that at any juncture from that date in October (of the last decade; of the last millennium if you want to fudge the numbers a bit) this thing could have been instituted. The reasons it took this long are numerous but a key factor in a lot of it was my own fears of paternal suitability. I’m not exactly the poster child for responsibility or maturity. Among my encyclopedic flaws are a severe jealousy for my personal and leisure time. Initially when we got married I said that I did in fact want children but I wanted us to have some time to be just a couple, to get to experience some alone time while we were young and not save it all until later in life. My proposal was for five years.

We didn’t make it even those five years before Nik began to grow restless waiting for the opportunity to be a mother. Few things in life have held as much appeal to this girl as the prospect of being a mom. Nurturing and care are in her blood, like she has a special enzyme that causes children to find comfort in her presence, solace in her voice and security in her arms. She began to speak of our five-year plan as if it were merely in draft form, suggesting she might put it to a special vote by the council to have the sentence reduced. It was sadly at this same time that I was growing less enamored with the notion of parenthood for mostly selfish reasons and I could not hide it from Nik. She asked point blank if I was still committed to the idea of parenthood and I had no choice but to confess that I was having doubts.

The next few years were difficult. We avoided the subject a lot, because as a couple we were happy but as a couple facing a future whose vision we didn’t share, it was also tinged with nervousness and sadness. But it had to come up now and then and the conversations were wrenching, draining. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be comfortable with the idea of being a dad. In some ways it made me a worse husband: I can’t bring myself to give my wife what she most wants in the world because I need the decision to be mutual and not some sort of martyr, but if I can’t do that, what else do I have to offer? Why even try?

It took an epiphany in the throes of the worst illness I can recall as my brain boiled beneath a 103° fever to make it clear. She was waiting for me. Her faith in me had moved beyond faith in my words or faith in my intent, she believed with her whole heart that either I would come to see that building a family with her was what we needed to do or, if not, that it was in God’s plan for us to be childless. She was willing to sacrifice her whole sense of identity because she was more devoted to me than she was to herself. Stewing in three-day filth and surrounded by discarded Kleenex brand facial tissues and empty glasses of 7Up and orange juice cocktail I suddenly understood that she would give anything for me because she believed in me with her whole heart.

I didn’t really get over the notion that fatherhood was a terrifying prospect, but I at least got over myself. I allowed myself to believe that she might be right, that I could do anything I set my mind to and I was willing at last to set my mind to being a good dad. It took a little bit more planning but everything began to get better after that. I softened on my stance and Nik cautiously began to accept that I might mean it when I said we could consider the idea of building our family. When we did finally reach the point where we were trying we conceived very quickly but our first pregnancy ended in a tragic miscarriage that almost undid everything. It was Nikki’s worst fear come true and we had no idea how to recover. It set us back more than a year, and not just in our plans for having children. Given the pain of that summer, we’ve been on pins and needles the entire pregnancy and I’m not feeling like the apprehension will ever ease. We already love our daughter so much and we’ve yet to even meet her.

But am I nervous? I’ve decommissioned an entire room of our apartment from an office/storage/hobby room into a nursery I don’t even recognize as belonging to me. We’ve helped Babies R Us post a record-breaking earnings quarter and re-arranged not just the baby’s room but our bedroom as well. It now sports a gigantic bassinet thing and a tiny desk that replaced our nice office work area. Even our living room now has to accommodate a bookshelf and, soon, an assortment of bouncers, playmats, toys, cushy pads and safety devices to avoid accidents. I’m already struggling with all manner of new bits of technology I never knew nor cared existed: Carbon monoxide alarms, internal/external thermometer alarms, monitoring systems, vaporizers, diaper disposal units, car seats, collapsible stroller frames. I love gadgets and yet these devices feel alien and unfamiliar.

All of these objects have been purchased and acquired on the recommendations of the thousands of people who’ve done this before us and while I’m grateful to have their advice and opinions, it can be overwhelming at times. There are persistent assertions that we will be sleep-deprived for months following the birth of our child. People warn about the challenges of parenthood as you struggle to maintain an identity as a couple, to make time for each other and to remember your marriage. It seems daily someone reminds me that, because we’re having a daughter, there will come a time in the all-too-rapidly approaching future where I’ll have to contend with snuffling pre- or just barely post-pubescent boys victimized by some fashion or another that I refuse to comprehend seeking to gain favor with my angel and shoulder me out of the picture. These slouching bags of water and hormones will bear the full brunt of my four decades of training in the arts of scorn, sarcasm and derision to the horror of my daughter who will flee the humiliation of her insufferable parents and seek solace in their simpering arms while I rapidly re-evaluate my long held belief that concealed sidearms are unnecessary in a civilized society.

There are cautionary tales about childhood obesity, the rise of autism, developmental concerns vis a vis television watching and electronic media consumption. Not to mention the basics of discipline and forging appropriate relationships with children as protectors and caregivers, nurturers and providers that stops short of casual friendship and who-runs-the-show spoilage. Oceans of ink have been spilled, countless hours devoted on television and PTA and church seminars and parental support group meetings to cover these topics and one’s head twirls around like a ballerina on a music box to consider having to wade into this fray. There is so much to learn, so many pitfalls on the way, so many places where someone as broken and insufferable as I am can stumble and cause irreparable harm to an innocent, unknowing child who had no worse part in this than to be stricken with the misfortune of having me as a parent.

Yeah, am I nervous?

Listen to me: I couldn’t be more excited.

In this episode Nik and I reflect on two months of podcasting and wonder if we’ll have any inclination to continue once the baby is born. We also follow up on the great Blue Toilet Seat Mystery with some new information courtesy of Dr. Mac and then we discuss our 36 week OB appointment in which we discover that both doctors in the group are pretty much the same sort of no-nonsense practitioner. We then dive into a conversation about how rude people can be, likely without even realizing it, when they interact with a sensitive woman in late-term pregnancy. Wrapping it up in That’s Entertainment we see the Next Food Network Star begin to draw to a close and talk about how unsurprised we were to see Jameka get the axe while simultaneously scratching our heads as to how Debbie managed to avoid her fate for another week. Music this week from Spoon.

Show Notes

Total running time: 38:08

• [00:00] Intro: “The Underdog” – Spoon
• [00:20] Welcome; Month Two
• [02:21] Interlude: “Two Sides/Monsieur Valentine” – Spoon
• [02:37] The Great Blue Toilet Seat Mystery Revisited
  • Medical Journal Excerpt
  • Chromhidrosis
• [06:54] Interlude: “The Delicate Place” – Spoon
• [07:18] Baby Talk: 36 Week Appointment
• [13:05] Interlude: “I Turn My Camera On” – Spoon
• [13:31] Baby Talk: Rudeness vs. Pregnancy
• [24:55] Interlude: “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” – Spoon
• [25:20] That’s Entertainment: The Next Food Network Star
• [37:14] Outro: “I Summon You” – Spoon

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It’s midday, except that it’s not. In a short while I’ll be up before sunrise, haunted by these things, writing for a means to find purpose. For now, the sun is mild and there is no breeze flowing from the colorless sky. I’m in a place where I can create, mostly at will although there is accomplishment in my efforts, versions of the things in my life that have come before. These versions are all made of soft material, like shaped balloons: They are kid-friendly and age appropriate. Here is a soft, bouncy version of the kitchen in the first home I remember, tiny ripples of not-liquid and not-solid forming the swirling rings of the electric stove burners in vibrant pinkish red. “Don’t touch,” I say calmly, “Those are hot.”

I’m leading a little girl through my fabrications, a girl I don’t know. She’s very young, maybe four, maybe less. She understands and responds to me, but mostly she listens. Sometimes she wanders ahead of me and I watch her closely. I know I am responsible for her but I’m content to let her explore as long as I can see her.

We discuss the things I’ve made casually, in that adult-to-child way when the grown-up respects the young one’s thoughts and observations as if they both had something to learn. This is right I feel. There are no thoughts, only feelings with words. We spend some time in each location, having time to spare. Her voice is high and amicable, full of bright curiosity and exquisite carelessness that is not a part of apathy but of contentment and inexperience. There is no darkening of the sky but this word-feeling casts a shadow.

The place is inside a giant sandbox I now notice. The surface isn’t sand exactly, it’s not dirty and doesn’t cling to your skin or pour into your shoes as you run. It’s stable but soft and stretches wide and far. We have much ground to cover. We pass a playhouse I’ve made that is a shop where they sell pizzas. My pretend pizzas are made with syrup and discs of candy because I think the little girl will like it better than the food I made in my first job. I tell her about how they used to tease me because I slid my foot along behind the broom when I was supposed to be sweeping the floor. They said it looked like I was dancing with it, and the girl’s giggle brings a sad smile to my face. She doesn’t understand the flushing heat of embarrassment that came with being branded the Broom Dancer. She does little twirls around the oven I created for her, holding the soft pretend broom high above her head so it whirls and blurs like a yellow helicopter blade. I don’t use the lesson opportunity to teach her about humiliation. We have time, but we need to move on.

We pad through the supple sand-like powder and she stops now and then to sit in it and run it through her fingers. I sweep it up and create another moment for her, before her eyes while she squeals with delight and claps her tiny fingers together. It is a mostly dry creekbed or man-made inlet, I was never sure, reproduced here as a model, a tiny play set in 1/64th scale. A path runs along the levee on either side, which people use for bicycle riding or jogging when the weather is nice. I top it with some paper doll people walking funny little origami puppies and the girl picks one up and says, “Aww. Doggie!” I feel words that say I had a doggie once but I don’t remind her of that. She moves the dolls along the path, echoing the memories of Saturday mornings. I don’t tell her of the time when a girl—not significantly older than she is now—told me on my birthday that she wanted to be with someone else instead and how I walked along this path in the pouring rain for what felt like hours, mixing tears with the icy drops until my jeans were soaked and my shoes squished with each step. I don’t tell her that. I don’t tell her how, a few years later, I would return to this same pathway with a different girl and tell her that after all we’d been through it wasn’t enough and we needed to go our separate ways. I leave out all of it, including the part where I just walked away, leaving her crying and alone. Without knowing that, she won’t know how it hurts to be on either side of heartbreak or how ashamed one can feel of their own actions.

The time passes and does not pass. The sky never changes, the invisible sun never sets. We must keep going, though we need not rush. We arrive after a time at the place I’ve been dreading. I’ve made for her a safe model of one of my favorite roller coasters. It has slides where the dips should go and cushy merry-go-rounds instead of frightening loop-the-loops. The colors are shimmering blues and candied greens. She pushes ahead of me, eager to try. “This was the first ride I ever wanted to go on,” I tell her, having to raise my voice to be heard over the distance. I can’t tell if my words are carrying across the landscape that separates us or not. She runs through the playground I’ve made for her in the essence of my favorite amusement park memory and she laughs. She looks ahead and runs further still, seeing more amusements re-created by me. I know something about these, but I can only hurry to catch up.

She crawls through tunnels and tumbles down ramps and gentle, padded inclines. She seems so far away and I cannot seem to cover the ground. She stops, and faces me. It looks like she’s half her size from this far away and I feel-think I’ll never catch her. She asks me a question although maybe it isn’t spoken: “What’s this one?”

I look carefully and tears fill my eyes, though I blink them back quickly and hope she can’t see from way over there. “That’s the ride I’m afraid of,” I tell her. She looks carefully at what I made, a shallow pool of bathwater, warm and welcoming, with tablets of floating foam in the shape of daisies. She skips along them, ever further out of reach. I want to tell her not to fall in. To be careful, but she won’t hear me now.

“Well I’m not afraid,” she says proudly.

I look ahead and I see what I didn’t want to have to face. It’s an opening in the sandbox, a ring of rubberized safety padding surrounding a pit. There is a cover over the pit, painted in yellows and blue zigzag designs like a ball you might buy from an enormous bin at a discount store if you could get one out without making the whole pile come down like an avalanche and bouncing across the tiled floor. The cover is a half-dome, hinged and creased across the diameter so it can retract and open. I don’t want it to open, but it will. It is.

Blue light pours from within, splitting the seam created by the widening gap between hemispheres and the girl looks at it, head tilted slightly in wonder. Tears roll down my face and I ignore them because she can’t see me anymore, she won’t look back, I know. I plead-feel Please don’t look inside and I sink to my knees. Inside is the world. Inside that passage, that pit, is danger. I’m afraid, because I’ve been there and I know. I’m afraid because I want to scream to the girl that we have to go back. I even try making something for her, something to distract her, something to get her to return to my side. I know she won’t, and I’ve forgotten how to create. I drop to my hands, needing the support, my head falls forward and I weep.

Please, no. I forgot to warn her.

She is silhouetted, black against the blue light, and my tears blur the edges until I wake.

Apparently we still don’t quite have our timing down, but if you use the nebulous “weekend podcast” description, we’re totally on point this time around. While we’re at it, we’ve got a fully packed episode in which we recount our surprising but thoroughly enjoyable late-pregnancy concert experience. Then, in Baby Talk, we go over our birthing class, the 35 week OB appointment and the subsequent ultrasound to check the baby’s size. Finally, to make up for last week’s shorter ‘cast, we catch back up on The Next Food Network Star in That’s Entertainment plus we touch on a couple of movies we’ve watched: Baby Mama and Valkyrie. Appropriately, this episode is packed with music from Coldplay.

We want to be sure to thank everybody for listening and ask that you do us one of the following favors (pick only one):

1. Subscribe to our podcast via iTunes, if that’s your digital music player of choice so you never miss an episode.
2. Rate us and write a review for our show on iTunes if you’re already a subscriber.
3. Send feedback: constructive, critical, embarrassingly earnest, any kind of feedback is fine, to ironcast@ironsoap.org.
4. Tell one friend about the show.

I realize that’s asking you to help us out but think about it this way: We don’t interrupt our podcast for advertisements and we don’t have any way of building a base of listeners except through your efforts to improve the show and get the word out a little bit. So if you want ironCast to be better and keep getting made, pick one favor and you will have our eternal gratitude and we’ll send you a check for $10.

Just don’t try to cash it until after the 1st.

Of October.

2028.

Show Notes

Total Running Time: 01:04:55

• [00:00:00] Intro: Coldplay – “Viva La Vida”
• [00:00:55] Welcome: Coldplay Concert
• [00:18:28] Interlude: Coldplay – “Talk”
• [00:18:47] Baby Talk: Birthing Class, Okay?
• [00:29:30] Interlude: Coldplay – “Green Eyes”
• [00:29:43] Baby Talk: 35 Week OB Appointment
• [00:37:30] Interlude: Coldplay – “Shiver”
• [00:37:56] Baby Talk: Size Check Ultrasound
• [00:47:51] Interlude: Coldplay – “42″
• [00:48:10] That’s Entertainment: Baby Mama and Valkyrie
• [00:56:03] Interlude: Coldplay – “Clocks”
• [00:56:18] That’s Entertainment: The Next Food Network Star
• [01:04:24] Outro: Coldplay – “Life in Technicolor”

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Did I say Monday morning? I meant to say Tuesday evening. It’s practically the same anyway. Well, it’s an abbreviated podcast this week: During recording my allergies were acting up so we struggled to get decent sources to begin with what with all my sniffling and wheezing. However I did discover a method for reducing the number of annoying artifacts like that and in the process found that I can also remove a lot of the awkward “ums”, stutters and pregnant pauses that accompany the furious spinning of the hamster wheel in my brain. I think it makes the whole thing far more listenable.

The downside is that it’s much more labor intensive for the editing portion so I’m not sure if it isn’t more effective to just learn how to, you know, speak clearly and confidently. Either way, we’d appreciate if you let us know if this is more to your liking. All told we ended up with about half an episode, which doesn’t really make up for the four-day delay but at least we can say we’ve produced one podcast per week even if the release schedule is a bit dicey. We do manage to chat a bit about our 4th of July including awkward family reunion barbecues, ill-timed power outages, and then we discuss Nikki’s funny walk and talk about our Infant CPR class where we learn what sort of work Tolkien’s halflings can get in the health care field, how to speed up the transition from Heimlich Maneuver to CPR (hint: Give the baby to the pregnant lady) and find out exactly how resilient infants can be. Plus we have music by the Smashing Pumpkins chosen by my adorable co-host.

Oh, and if you missed the previous memo, we’re now on the iTunes Store where we would love if you rated us or wrote a review of our podcast.

Show Notes

Total Running Time: 29:18

• [00:00] Intro: Smashing Pumpkins — “Hummer”
• [00:25] Welcome: 4th of July, Barbecues, Power’s Out
• [11:36] Interlude: Smashing Pumpkins — “Mayonaise”
• [11:57] Baby Talk: Walking Funny (SPD), Infant CPR
• [28:43] Outro: Smashing Pumpkins — “1979″

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I apologize for the delay. ironCast Episode #6 has run afoul of some technical and scheduling hitches, but it should be up before the end of the weekend or Monday morning at the latest. I’m also working on a few more actual, you know, blog posts which will be available when they are finished. Considering all things that could be later this weekend or it could be July 2010, honestly. I am doing what I can, within reason.

However, if it helps to tide you over I was finally able to get ironCast up onto iTunes. If you use the program and wish to subscribe to the ‘cast that way, you can use this handy link to find the show and simply hit the “Subscribe” button whereupon your favorite media player will automagically download the freshest content for you as it becomes available.

I’m not sure why I’m encouraging you not to visit my website, but since I don’t bother to assault you with advertising, I stand to lose nothing. Anyway, if you do happen to visit our iTunes page, please be a dear and review the show or at the very least rate it so we have some vague notion of how we’re doing. At this point for all we know we could be bringing shame and dishonor to our families—a curse which will last for generations—or we could be poised on the cusp of a lucrative XM/Sirius radio deal, lacking only the proper tinder to start the flames of a grassroots groundswell if I may be permitted to combine several clichés and metaphors in a cement mixer. What I’m saying is that without feedback of some sort, you have no one to blame but yourselves.

With a month of podcast experience under our belts we present to you a new, more professional ironCast. No, I’m kidding of course. We learn nothing. However, we do talk about frozen yogurt, Nikki’s baby shower, homemade gifts for Calliope, and how diaper cakes are something that diapers are in rather than something that is in a diaper. We also discuss in utero hiccups, flippant OBs and my convoluted scheme to solve the Great Blue Toilet Seat Mystery.

Then in That’s Entertainment we chat about Pride & Glory and catch up on The Next Food Network Star before exchanging some banter about reading including our thoughts on books we’re currently working on like Bill Bryson’s Neither Here Nor There and the Baby Bargains book. All that plus music by The Shins? We may not be professional, but we are givers.

Sorry for iTunes users who were disappointed last week. I’ll try again and see if I can get it going this time. Don’t forget we’d love to have feedback, just drop us a note at ironcast@ironsoap.org and we’ll get your comments on the air.

Show Notes

Total Running Time: 54:50

• [00:00] Intro: The Shins – “We Will Become Silhouettes”
• [00:41] Welcome: Frozen yogurt, frozen tongues
• [02:53] Interlude: The Shins – “Phantom Limb”
• [03:04] Baby Talk: Baby shower, 33 week OB appointment, baby hiccups, blue toilet seat chemistry plan
• [24:18] Interlude: The Shins – “Pink Bullets”
• [24:42] That’s Entertainment: Pride & Glory, The Next Food Network Star, GoodReads, Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson, Baby Bargains by Denise and Alan Fields.
• [54:09] Outro: The Shins – “New Slang”

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This week Nik and I get self-conscious about our verbal tics and take advantage of my weird work schedule to get some chores done. Along the way we have our second pediatrician interview, talk about eating—for three?—while pregnant and get completely baffled by a blue stain on our toilet seat.

Then in the second segment we chat about entertainment again, discussing the latest to get the boot on The Next Food Network Star and following up on The Real Housewives’ reunion shows. We wrap it up with some talk about Dollhouse, Alias, features we wish were available on TiVo and why we can’t (or won’t if you talk to Nik about it) get rid of cable. This week’s music by Neko Case.

Also, we have an official podcast email address now, send your topic suggestions, feedback or questions to ironcast@ironsoap.org and we’ll incorporate your mail into a future segment on the show. Finally, if all goes well this will be the first week you can get and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes. How official!

Show Notes

Total Running Time: 52:19.

• [00:00] Intro: Neko Case – “Hold On, Hold On”
• [00:31] Welcome: Verbal tics and weird schedules
• [02:31] Pediatrician Interview #2
• [13:26] Pregnancy Eating
• [24:09] The Blue Toilet Seat Mystery
• [32:01] Interlude: Neko Case – “John Saw That Number”
• [32:16] That’s Entertainment: The Next Food Network Star, The Real Housewives of New Jersey Reunion, Dollhouse
• [51:50] Outro: Neko Case – “Thrice All American”

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In this week’s episode, Nik and I are late to the party but that doesn’t stop us from discussing Slumdog Millionaire. Plus we dive into The Next Food Network Star, chat about Chopped and Nik schools me on the ins and outs of The “Real Housewives” of New Jersey. Then we get into a conversation about how our relationship may change once Calliope arrives, how pregnant women are like a dangerous sorority, and what Nik plans to do to help those yet-to-be pregnant women once her stint is over.

Thanks to those who helped us pick a name!

Show Notes

• Episode #3: Ominous Warnings
• Total Running Time: 53:11
• Music: Switchfoot
• Segment 1: That’s Entertainment (Marker: 02:13)
• Segment 2: Baby Talk (Marker: 36:25)

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This week we discuss our new barbecue grill, expanded belly sizes, games of patty cake in utero and the quest for Calliope’s pediatrician. Music by The Decemberists.

Also, please help us name our podcast. Our current contenders:

• The ironSoap Podcast
• ironSoap Radio
• ironCast
• You Can’t Marry a Pirate Podcast
• You Can’t Marry a Pirate Radio
• H-Town Review

Or, we’re totally open to suggestions. Comment below, or send feedback to paul@ironsoap.org.

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It was many months in the making and, well, it doesn’t really show. But at long last Nik and I have recorded a podcast and we present it to you for mockery and scorn. However, it is the only place you can learn the not-so-secret name of our daughter-in-utero, so if you’re not big on the heckling you can listen for that reason.

We had fun making it and we’ll probably do some more now that we kind of have the process figured out. This is a trial run, so bear with us.

Also, we haven’t decided on a name yet. Obviously we could go with something like ironCast or ironSoap Radio, but I also still have the youcantmarryapirate.com domain floating around so I thought we might do the You Can’t Marry a Pirate Podcast. Let us know what you think works and if you have suggestions, we’d love to hear ‘em.

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