Periodically.org

(Draft written 2014) I have long hair. Typical nerd with a ponytail look. There really is no justifying it, other than I quite like it. Mrs. Owl loathes it, my children are indifferent but THEIR friends find it somewhat disconcerting. I've gotten quite used to the vacant stares that slowly fill with horror as little children see me. A daddy? With MOMMY HAIR!? Sure I'm injecting just a little weirdness into their lives. It's also my perquisite as a nerd who works at nerdly things for work. It's our wan squeal of rebellion against the Man, never mind that we work for him and have to fill out TPS reports and attend meetings and file whatever document report thing business type people need. Never mind I have a mortgage like many people and go to work for the majority of my life like even more people and look forward, ashamedly, to whatever smidge of novelty is planned in the office come Friday. I get to wear my hair long though! Yeah! *throws Jude Nelson's half-glov...

It's a little known fact, well, known only to parents, that parenthood consists of facing and planning for obscene horrors. Yes, there is all the schmaltzy stuff that gets posted on your Facebook wall or gets chain-mailed from your mother or aunt or whatever (eventually all coming from a devout but curiously bigoted church lady in Nebraska) , but there is that other thing. Especially true for dads, I'm guessing. Evolutionarily it's dad's job to keep everyone from being consumed completely by a random sabre toothed tigers (I want to say T-Rexes of Velociraptors but for some reason feel compelled to adhere to scientific accuracy when spouting out a hyperbole (and weaker, but still strong, is the revulsion of using sabre toothed tigers, which I'm sure I've used before)). Not that this can't be mom's job, but she was likely much busier rearing the children and feeding them and whatnot. Where was I? Oh yes, horrors. One of these horrors is swimming, i...

It was the last thing his mother gave him before she was shot dead in broad daylight for standing up to El Jefe AND city hall. It reminds him of the infinite fragility of planet Earth, with its whorls and eddies of life and  the gusts of inequities visited upon the weak and the strong; the shuddering tidal wave of death that evens everything in the end. Also IT TASTES FUNNY. He was the runner-up to represent 7UP for their Hong Kong sub regional ad campaign 3 years in a row and just cant. Let it. Go. It reminds him of the last clown to ever tease him. He' s a recovering alcoholic whose poison of choice was tequila. He was the last surviving member of an all-dog around the world sailing expedition, all of who, except for him, died of scurvy. He's part of a Labour Union Iniative for Mtn Dogs and is sitting in solidarity for oppressed and exploited citrus workers of Southern California. He has canine onset diabetes and this is the closest he'll ever get to nuzzling all ...

Owl Jr. is of a decided picky bent when it comes to eating. Plain carbs, yes. Chicken strips and fries, yes. Gravy on chicken? NO. He's the sort of boy who eats apples all day long and polishes it off with a long tall drink of juice. And like any First World parent I worry about him eating enough. Tale as old as the post-industrialization-enabled abundance of food driving sprawling urbanization and  a dangerous reliance on genetically invariant foodstocks. It's funny because I was never a picky eater. I was more like Owlet. Undiscriminating, enthusiastic, and like Owlet, maybe just a touch... dense for my age (not that she knows). Owl Jr. is just a ball of yelling screaming, jittery energy. He doesn't go anywhere, he bounces, he jostles, he judders. So, so, so, I gotta, like a grandmother from country that is resolutely trying to get into the EU, fatten him up. He does like pancakes, of all things. I stuff it with blueberries and chocolate chips and I cram him with the...