You mean I can't have this in my carry-on?

Like many millions of Americans, I did not see Snakes on a Plane this last weekend. I actually would have loved to, Sam, but, you know, the whole dad/husband/work/homeowner role thing I'm trying to play prevented me from making it over to the Majestic.

Luckily, I can get a run-down right here which, from what I understand, may be even better than the actual movie.

When you really need the emergency lane

KC just reminded me that I meant to detail one more story about this summer's journey. This involves the final leg of Xan-and-me-alone, from Rochester to Cape Cod. Angela was already fretting that I had decided to leave on the 2nd of August rather than the 1st, and we had gotten a late start out of Rochester: suffice to say, we were a little behind schedule. After stopping around Albany for lunch, I called Angela once we arrived in Massachusetts.

She was not pleased. "You should have left earlier."

"I will be there as soon as I can."

"No more stopping, OK?"

I agreed that I would not stop, thinking that even if I had to stop, it would be realtively short anyway. We lept driving. That part of the Mass Pike is actually quite beautiful and we were missing the gigantic thunderstorm that broke the 100+-degree heat in the Northeast, so life was going pretty well.

Somewhere around exit 8, around Worcester I think, I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw Xan scrunch his face up in a familiar way. (At this point, I should clarify that I figured out how to turn the rear-view mirror so that I could see him, he could see me and I could still see the cars behind me. Ah, the amazing things you learn to do when you have a kid back there that you need to amuse...) it dawned on me that we had not had a "major" diaper alert (i.e. good ol' number two) for going on 36 hours, so I knew what that face signified. I couldn't smell anything, but I made a mental note that I should probably stop and clean him at the next rest area. I looked back again and saw that his face was back to normal, and that he was looking down at something.

And then his hand came up.

With poo.

Smiling, he brought his hand to his other hand and started mashing them together.

It is at this point that I screamed.

Basically almost causing an accident, I veered from the left-most lane all the way over to the breakdown lane while saying, "Nononono! Notinthemouth! Notinthemouth! Nono!" I then proceeded to change his diaper and subsequent clothing and attempt to clean the car seat (which basically consisted of me putting all of our dirty clothes on it so that he wouldn't get any messier). I admit that I was seeing the humor in all of this and laughing my head off as I was trying to do what was patently riduculous on the side of the road, with tractor trailers whizzing by at top speeds and large ants crawling up our legs.

With mission accomplished, I all of sudden realize that there was an emergency vehicle coming up to me to see what was wrong. The guy in the truck yelled at me, saying that my stop did not constitute an emergency. I mean, really: if that wasn't an emergency, I don't know what is.

What I learned on my summer vacation

And oh, there were many things to learn....

• It is possible to drive eight hours alone in a car with a toddler. No, I did not die, nor did I kill the boy. In fact, the most successful trip was the first day, which was also the longest. The plan -- for everyone else out there -- was to have none. We jeeped him up all morning long before his nap (having him literally run around, walk all over the place, sing and yell, etc.) until he was so tired, he could barely move. At that point, we threw him into the already-packed rental car and got going. He was asleep before we hit Silver Spring -- and didn't wake up again until we got to Pennsylvania... when it was time to stop for lunch! We stopped, ran around a bit, got back on the road.
  
  About and hour and a half later, he got antsy. This took more creative methods -- but luckily (the only time I have ever thought this was a good thing) I was on a toll road. I got off the Pennsylvania Turnpike and asked the tollbooth operator if there was a park nearby. It turns out that, indeed, a very nice park was closeby. Xan had a ball playing all over this place.
  
  Back on the road, he got antsy again in another two hours -- just in time for dinner! After another hour eating and running around a rest stop, charming absolutely everyone (and my, but those rest stops on the Ohio Turnpike are nice!), back on the road again. Here's where the "plan" went a little wrong, because I then expected him to go to sleep. He didn't, staying awake the whole rest of the way until we got to Michigan. At 11:00 PM. Yikes. Nevertheless, he did so quietly, without complaint. And it only took him a day to get back onto schedule. Success!
• This method may not be feasible for shorter trips. By the time we got to the Cape, Angela and I decided for a family trip to Provincetown -- and quickly discovered that (a) the method described doesn't work with Xan when there will be traffic, because he wake up when the car stops, and (b) there is no need to expose him to cute tchochkes, quaint cobblestone streets, nice beaches, and so many shirtless, buff men that I felt I was both overdressed and not doing justice to my sexuality by wearing a t-shirt... at least until he's old enough to appreciate all of this. Maybe at 5.
• Nature is fun to appreciate. The first week, Xan and I spent some time at my parents' apartment, which they recently moved into. They are on the ground floor with a great view of a duck pond. Like many of the residents of this senior community, they spend a considerable amount of effort making sure there is bread handily available for feeding the ducks. Fresh off learning the word "duck," Xan took to this really well. Although he never quite grasped the concept of feeding the ducks since, after helping Oma rip up the pieces of bread, he would feed himself instead of the ducks. This only led my mother to laugh harder.
• Nature is really fun to appreciate. After arriving on Cape Cod, Xan and I discovered that this summer there were very few mosquitos out and about -- which meant we were out as much as possible. In Xan's case, this meant cavorting all around their rather expansive backyard. This also meant that he has acquired a whole assortment of cuts, scrapes and bruises all over his body, confirming the fact that, yes, he is a boy.
• Nature is sometimes too fun to appreciate. While in Ann Arbor, my old friends Bonnie and Brian (and their firecracker daughter Kyleigh) invited us to go to a quiet lake about a half hour out of town. We were having a wonderful time -- Xan has taken to water quite well... to the extent that he will run into water pell mell without regard to whether it is too deep or not -- and at one point I stayed a little ways back while Xan went exploring up a narrow path leading to the parking area. Brian had gone up in that direction earlier and only now mentioned, "You know what I saw earlier? It seemed to be a rattlesnake -- a little small, but with a definite rattl..."
  
  And at that moment, no joke: I heard an unmistakable sound. And I looked up and saw my son bending over with his usual curiosity about two feet away from a rattlesnake. Which was reared back, shaking his little tail off.
  
  Yowza.
  
  Putting aside for the moment the notion of "what the hell is a rattler of any size doing anywhere outside the Southwest" (a notion I later found was just incorrect), I leaped closeby, plucking Xan away. This annoyed him. Only a few minutes later did I think, "Damn. That could have ended badly for both of us."
• Ice cream is a great way of meeting new people. As usual, we perused the several neighborhood ice cream shops around Angela's parents' place on several occasions. The tip jar at the Whistle Stop Ice Cream shop in Pocasset mentioned that it was to support college funds for some of the summer workers. We've seen this before. This year, the three schools listed said "Fairleigh Dickinson - Boston College - American." Lo and behold, I left a note for the soon-to-arrive freshman, who emailed me a lovely note.
  

That's it for now. There's more, surely. But this is already getting too long. And the semester is soon to begin. Have to get back into the swing of things -- including more regular posting!

Ah, summer. We hardly knew ye.

One for the road

So why haven't I been posting of late? Well, folks, that's easy: because on Friday afternoon, the computer decided to go kaputski. I couldn't start the machine again in any sort of mode, safe or not. When I finally brought it into the IT folk yesterday at campus, they basically figured out that my hard drive had melted and that there was little I could do.

This made me extremely happy that I had taken some time out on Wednesday to back all the important Word files onto my campus file space. Whew!

I did lose some amazing baby pictures (which I had not backed up on Wednesday, thinking I would do so when I had more time on Monday... oops...), but most of the early stuff was backed up in May, so I'm also OK there. Double whew.

And, as it turns out, I was due for a renewal on my computer since, apparently, the campus replaces them when the warranty runs out after three years. So I'm now typing on a new laptop (looking all space-agey) and trying to remember all the bookmarks I had saved on the old computer. (Still, I'm a-likin' this new one.)

And why might I not be posting for a few weeks? Well, see, tomorrow I am leaving for Ann Arbor, Michigan to see my parents.

Driving.

Alone.

With Xan.

Followed by my driving to Cape Cod.

The straitjacket for when I finally arrive on Cape had already been sized and ordered. In any case, I may not be posting for a little bit because either (a) I'm having trouble finding a good, free Internet connection, or (b) I have gone plumb nuts. Either way, wish me luck.

My son likes beaver

See? Its name is Buzz.

Still portraying a Niagara Falls barrel

I confess that I actually uttered the following words since the summer began to another professor in the department: "Well, I'm not even sure how to teach about poetry in class. This is why I stick to teaching fiction and film."

Here is, perhaps, another reason. Personally, I'm mildly impressed at my 16-year-old self's turning-of-phrase in "captain at helm." I'm not entirely sure I would have come up with something like this now.

Since we're unearthing all sorts of the musty past, I confess that I've recently rediscovered a whole trove of poetry written during high school and college. Unlike the example on the pink card, most of my teenage stuff is best described by Henry Rollins (paraphrased here): "And you lock yourself in your room and dress in black and your write lots of poetry and you know it's all good because you are the king or queen of paaaain."

Exhibit A:

Masque
[originally published in Kaleidoscope, Colegio Roosevelt, 1987]

Eyes bright
Cheeks are rosy
A smile curled upon my lips
A friendly hello to a few friends . . .
Not much, but enough
To let them see what I
Want them to see.

Mm. Cheery.

It's stuff like this that led my tía Elsa to inform my mother that I was about to commit suicide at any moment. Don't let her know, but one of my most recent poems, written on the sly in the last year, is titled "Car, crash." (For those of you now even more worried about me, my most recent one - still in progress - is tentatively titled "Music for Anne Beattie's Frank," which is much lighter. No, no Xan poems yet -- I'm too busy running after him to write poems about him.)

Still, I wonder what that 16-year-old whipping out a ditty on the back of was probably a note attached to a carnation or something would think of me now, twice a lifetime later.

Potential gothdom thwarted by big eyes

I have over the last week or so been trying to figure out how to goth out the various accoutrements on my computer. This is in part inspired by my far-cooler-dad-than-I-am nephew Joel who is in part my idol because he actually did funky, experimental looks and things that I only thought about in passing. (Case in point: nipple ring.) Despite my preponderance for Depeche Mode, the Cure and Interpol over Britney, I have never really seriously tried going goth. There was a moment when I had makeup on college, but it literally lasted days and really wasn't going to work at Dartmouth, at least not for me. This does not mean I dropped my penchant for black clothing, or my realization that I actually still look good with eyeliner; I just decided it wasn't really worth the effort to goth myself out for what it would get me.

Anyway, I wouldn't have done it with my computer either, Joel's coolness notwithstanding, if I didn't also read that it would be easier on the eyes. I don't know whether this is actually true or not, but it sounds good and provides a good excuse to pimp my desktop in a dark way. Indeed, I'm loving all of the new fun ways in which my computer now inspires me to dance alone in a corner.

Here's the problem: Xan's eyes just aren't amenable to the whole goth aesthetic.

You see, my desktop picture is the famous Ikea-after-finding-Dino pic (seen here) and, while everything else can be modified accordingly, my son's wide-open orbs of blueness seemingly fill up the screen, bringing joy and light and a smile to my lips... and otherwise thwarting my attempts to inspire despair through the color black.

And oddly enough, I consider this a good contradictory juxtaposition, precisely because it reminds me of me: sunny disposition from hell that would love to just wear lots of black anyway. Perhaps I can instill this in my son? Maybe I just need to buy him clothing that is slightly more offensive, for starters.

It must be the calcium caseinate

Do you see the unbridled joy in this boy's face?

This is what happens when, after an entire lifetime of organic juice mixed with flaxseed extract and no television, you expose a child to Twinkies and The Price Is Right.

Thanks to Uncle Jew for providing the semi-baked goods. (And before anyone jumps on me for the nickname, when seriously asked, this is the one he chose. No kidding.) Thanks also to Auntie Twinkie for taking the pictures, right before bemoaning the fact that creamy goo filling was getting all over the floor. (And yes, she chose that name, too.)

Ah, Zinedine, you foolish man...

Not that we were rooting for France or anything. I wasn't, at least -- I'm thrilled that Italy won, despite their cheap win over Australia in the 2nd round. I was sure he would win the Golden Ball (which he did). And on the way up to visit my sister-in-law in New York, Angela floated the idea that Zinedine would be a great name if we had a second boy. ("Oh yeah," I said, "then we would have Zin and Xan." "No," she replied, "we could call him 'Dean.' And I know how much you would love that, with your James Dean fetish and all." She has a very good point there...)

Anyway, I found him to be quite the gentleman footballer, even if (like me) he's ancient at 34.

And then he goes and does something really stupid, like this:



I mean, really, what was he thinking? Hmm, maybe no one will see me? Despite the fact that the ENTIRE WORLD was watching? I mean, come on.

Well, there ends my sports obsession for another four years. And we have all learned that I should not predict anything sport-related. Then again, maybe I can procure a Spanish footballing jersy on discount now? Hmm...

I can't believe it

I've made my own self-imposed deadline today for getting four chapters and the introduction into good enough shape to send it out.

Yippee!

And now, I can go to New York for the weekend. Without the computer.