Kenny was a kitten, was a kitty, was a cat.  Kenny was a young master, what you think about that?  Kenny, Young Master Kenny, was a cat.

Kenny is a foster cat whose origins are shrouded in mystery.  The story we were told at a White Bear Lake residence involved a dog carrying Kenny out of the woods in its mouth then depositing the kitten at a construction site.  The workers called White Bear Lake Animal Rescue and Kenny acquired a fear of everything.  Knowing that several other couples refused to adopt Kenny due to his extreme shyness, I question the veracity of this story, but regardless, he ended up with Janelley and I.  A marker in our evolving relationship, Kenny was an even bigger long term commitment than our one year lease.

Kenny was a cute and playful kitten, with facial markings giving him a mustache and goatee.  He was strictly an indoor cat but did manage to get away from us and hide under parked cars a few times.  The only real scare we had was at our last place in northeast Minneapolis, where we believed he had been locked out of the duplex.  We later learned that he had merely spent a harrowing night in the closet of our crackhead upstairs neighbor.  Ken-Ken nearly avoided moving with us later that year by hiding in the basement, but I managed to lure him out before we U-Hauled ass to Moorhead.  Our next cat scare happened last week.

Our growing family visited several sets of grandparents over Thanksgiving, with a quick stop at home to break up the long weekend.  During our layover, we accidentally let Kenny out the side door.  It happened while we were busy schlepping kids, car seats, suitcases, and guitars; all the ingredients for a Thanksgiving family jamboroo.  The upshot is that Kenny was on his own from Thursday to Sunday night, as I worked a twenty-nine hour shift and the rest of my family stayed with the grandparents.  Poor Kenny, an inside cat thrust into an outside world.

We worried, but we didn’t cancel plans to wait by the door either.  We hoped, but we also understood that our nearly five year relationship may have come to an end.  If the cars didn’t get him, Stubby the Squirrel might, his lack of a tail more than compensated for by his ponderous gut.  We knew that cats usually come back, but having experienced the loss of our fish, we dreaded the worst.

Coming home from my long shift, I saw that the food I had left outside was a bit diminished and my spirits soared.  Sure, it could be Stubby the Fatass Squirrel who ate the food, but it could also mean that Kenny was alive and nearby.  I propped open our screen door, turned on a light, and waited.  I was doing well until my eye chanced on what I like to call our imperative pillow (pillows that tell one what to do or think) reading, “A Home Is Not A Home Without A Cat.”  An hour later, the cat came back.

Our joyful reunion was not marred by accusations of human neglect or recklessness, but occurred purely at the cat level.  Down on all fours, we rubbed the sides of our heads against each other, reaffirming our bonds as man and cat.  All is well that ends well, and our family is whole once again.  Kenny’s dish is a little more full than usual this week despite his feline bulimia issues, and we are more mindful of the side door and its temptations for our favorite non-human, Kenny the Cat.

“So how did we find out in the first place, chief?”

“The usual.  Garbageman came by on Tuesday, noticed a garbage bag full of blood, towels, clothes.  You know how it is.”

“Yeah.  Were you tempted to confront them right away?”

“Nah.  Always talk to the neighbors first, you’d be surprised the things they see.  Turns out there was a lot of commotion the previous Friday.  Some kind of jacuzzi party.  Guy hears this godawful noise like a jet plane taking off, glances in the perp’s dining room windows and instead of a table and chairs like usual there’s some kinda’ hot tub.”

“What about the women, I heard…”

“Oh yeah, there were girls alright.  Neighbors say the ladies started arriving in ones and twos after supper, hanging around the jacuzzi, at least one of them nude.”

“Damn.”

“It was all fun and games at first, loud music, dancing, but then something must have gone wrong ‘cuz one of the women starts making all kinds of noise, wailing like a cat in heat.  Neighbors say they would have called us, but they were scared.”

“What about the lab work, what’d they find?”

“Two victims, both female.  One lived in the house, most of the blood was hers, but the other DNA belongs to somebody not even in the FBI files.  How the hell does someone in this day and age avoid having their DNA on file?  Touch a light switch in a lavatory and the spooks’ll be able to tell what you had for breakfast, am I right?”

“Yeah.  You’re right alright.  Hey, Chief?”

“Yeah?”

“We got the guy in custody yet?  Or are we still playing watch and wait?”

“Watch and wait, kid, watch and wait.  Haven’t seen the woman leave the house so we have to assume she’s dead, her husband was seen spraying down a shop-vac on the side of the house one day, shopping for medical supplies the next, could be she’s being kept alive for some reason.  Soon as the warrant gets signed we’re breaking the door down and finding out.”

“All due respect chief, but screw the warrant, I got a feeling we can crack this thing ourselves.  Let’s go get this scumbag.”

“Fine by me, let’s roll.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

“Hey kid, good thing we trusted your gut.  Do you wanna file the nursing person’s report or should I?”

The Fargo course was closed…the sadness then arose…

to Moorhead in a bound…

where we did throw a round.

The boy and I just got back from an appointment at the county health office.  Dylan is part of a cohort that is allowed to get the H1N1 influenza vaccine, so we hurried out the door in search of a shot this morning.  Once the paperwork was filled out (less onerous than usual) a nurse appeared and called us to follow her.

“Oh, you don’t have to work today,” she stated.  This may have seemed like a safe and polite way to start a conversation in her mind (giving her the benefit of the doubt) but to a stay at home father who is working on a history paper on gender ideology and fatherhood this is like lobbing a softly padded pink grenade.

The equivalent in my mind would be to observe this fifty-ish woman and state, “Oh, your husband let you out of the kitchen today.”  How well would that go over?  Ok, so I will admit that I am more sensitive to this kind of casual sexism than others, but I feel that it makes a point that is worth repeating: sexism works both ways.

Once I asserted that I was at work, that my wife was the primary breadwinner and I was the primary caregiver, she came around in a hurry.  The nurse mentioned a television news story she watched recently about involved fathers and how “nice” that is to see.  The error is forgivable, but clearly an error.  To observe my bulging muscles, manly beard, and two year old son and conclude that I am taking a temporary leave of absence from my traditional gender limited vocations is a kind of casual prejudice that props up the corpse of separate spheres gender ideology like a bad Weekend at Bernie’s movie.

Maria Shriver has released a report claiming that the battle of the sexes is over, and that women won.  In the mode that dominates today, women are not working for pin money, they are full economic partners; men are not merely playing with the kids on the weekend, they are parents who share in the joys and drudgery that accompany life with small children.

The fact is that the doctrine of separate spheres (wherein the male dominates the public and the female dominates the private sphere) had a good run over thousands of years that has thankfully come to an end.  We will continue to carry our biological differences as long as we have bodies, but it is our destiny to mute the outdated gender differences that we are dragging behind us like a tin can.

I didn’t finish college.  There, I said it.  There are plenty of reasons and no excuses as to how I managed to complete all of the requirements for graduation except the big one.  I never completed my senior research project.

It can be awkward having a college degree hanging over one’s head for so many years.  People have all kinds of questions when they find out that I stopped one class short of a four-year liberal arts education, one final paper shy of a degree in History.  The thing is, I have some unanswered questions of my own.  The largest and most fascinating question being, “Why didn’t you just finish it?”

After much thought and the trying on of various theories for size, I have come to understand that although it may have been due to the effect of microscopic organisms in my brain, and it may have been a convenient plot device for my friend Andrew Blissenbach’s college memoir (some kind of metaphor for refusing to grow up most likely), there is a more cogent reason for my failure to launch.  I did not finish college because I was not yet too big to fail.

Eight years later I am a husband, a father, a homeowner, a caregiver, a volunteer, and a juggler.  I have been given a chance to finish what I started, to obtain the degree to go with the education, and I am grateful.

The project is going swimmingly, if you’re into swimming the English Channel that is: choppy, cold, and characterized by a grinding determination to finish the hard way.   Finally so far from land that it is impossible to turn back, the unseen anchors drop away.

The calendar is a clock, the days are ticking, and with the support of my families I am writing the best damned history paper I know how.  Wish me luck.

When we were kids, one of the most repeated admonitions about conservation had to do with dental hygiene.  Even today, I mentally remind myself to turn the taps off while I brush my teeth so I don’t waste water.  Another golden oldie was, “turn off the lights when you leave the room.”  My kids will no doubt hear these conservation tips many times over the years alongside updated ideas such as putting the computer to sleep when not in use.

One of the newest ways to conserve electricity may have landed in my lap in the form of smart metering technology.  Our local utility sent us a letter outlining a pilot program and inviting us to an informational meeting.  The idea is this: if consumers are given up to the minute data on how their decisions affect their electric bill, they will change their behavior for the better.

There will be several groups in the pilot program, some participants will be able to view the smart meter information; others will be left in the dark.  In addition, some households will be charged a higher rate during times of peak demand and a lower rate on nights and weekends while others will be charged a flat rate.  I am hoping to be in the group that has both access to the smart metering data and a higher daytime rate as I am confident that our household would be able to shave hundreds of dollars off of our annual utility bill simply by doing laundry and running our dehumidifier at night.

Many of the solutions to our large scale problems seem to be related to combining transparency in a system with accountability.  In order to drive down health care costs, we need to know how our lifestyle decisions affect our health and our pocketbook.  Environmental degradation will be curbed if we couple caps on emissions with a financial incentive to comply with regulations.  If knowledge is power, then perhaps knowledge about power is power squared.

Transparency and accountability, what a concept!

Johnny’s in the basement
Mixing up the medicine
I’m on the pavement
Thinking about the government – Bob Dylan

Quick!  What’s the most common reason for a hospital stay in U.S. cities? The birth of a child.  No wonder hospitals and insurance companies feel threatened by home birth.

Janelle and I opted for water birth the first time around (back in the big city doncha’ know), but this option is not available at our local hospitals.  After some serious discussions and contingency planning we have decided that our second child will be born at home, likely in our living room.

We selected a licensed midwife to assist us and my wife contacted her insurance company to petition that they cover the fees charged by our chosen health care provider.  Janelle did a great job of presenting the idea, highlighting the cost savings and proven safety of home birth.  If we were to go the hospital route we would likely pay around three thousand dollars and her insurance would kick in roughly six grand.  Under our home birth scenario, total costs will be around three thousand dollars.

There is a small but real possibility that we will end up at the hospital anyway due to unforeseeable circumstances, but of course these additional costs would have been tacked on to our “normal” hospital bill anyway.  Several letters later, the Blue Cross we bear is still keeping us in suspense despite the fact that costs, risks, and unnecessary interventions are kept to a minimum when low risk mothers choose to give birth at home.

The decision to uncouple low risk pregnancy and birth care from the expensive and often counterproductive aspects of hospital care is somewhat controversial, but could be huge in the context of our current effort to reform health care in the U.S.  The rate of cesarean sections has skyrocketed in hospitals, the result of a cascading series of interventions that accompany a high percentage of hospital births.  It may be true that the hospital is the safest place to be in a medical emergency, but it can be downright dangerous for an otherwise healthy mother or newborn.

When you write up a grocery list, do you use your computer, or a pen and paper?  If a flying insect insists on repeatedly buzzing your tower do you hit it with a flyswatter, or call an exterminator?  A good friend of mine recently reminded me that there is nothing inherently wrong with using higher forms of technology as long as we are mindful of using the right tool for the right job.  Hospitals are great at mitigating catastrophe, not so great at facilitating a drug and surgery free birth experience for mothers and babies.  I am hoping that our insurance company will make the right choice, but if the pump don’t work it’s ’cause the vandals took the handle.

My two and a half year old boy was bopping and grooving in that way that only small children can, bouncing on bent knees, gracefully stepping to the beat as a huge grin split his face from ear to ear. We were at his favorite place in the world, Ralphie Mouse’s House of Pizza.

Ralphie Mouse’s is the kind of place that has arcade games, skee-ball, pizza, and animatronic robots singing and dancing up on stage.  The teenagers who work there start out all smiley, thinking it’s a fun place to be, until the non-stop upbeat song and dance routines start to wear on them.  Eventually they end up like the robots onstage, just going through the motions.

As I watched the plushy animals sing and dance, the only human-faced onstage persona caught my eye.  Or at least he seemed to catch my eye.  Alfredo the Italian Drummer didn’t fit in with the rest of the happy go lucky performers.  His porcine features were sad beneath his giant moustache and his eyes were on the verge of weeping.  No tear rolled down the molded plastic face, but the eyes, oh God, the eyes!

At the very end of the song, masked by the stilted crash of a cymbal, Alfredo’s lips moved soundlessly.  “Help me.”

I waited for the show to pause, when the lights go down and attention shifts to the cartoon characters on large flat screen monitors.  My boy was rapturously asking the now motionless Ralphie Mouse character if he could have his third birthday party here.  I slowly walked toward the enigmatic drummer.  His eyes moved dramatically down and to the left, urging me to look beneath his snare drum.  A heavy manacle was clamped around his ankle, chaining him to an iron bar set into the floor of the stage.  “Youse gotta help me,” he whispered, “the mouse is a rat!”

“The whole thing’s a front for the heavy stuff,” he explained, “the rat needs the kids to launder money through a series of intermediaries, see?  The games, the tickets, the crappy prizes, it’s all part of the system.”  My eyes darted nervously to the guitar playing dog on my left and Alfredo quickly assured me that we would not be overheard.  “The dog and the bird are dummies, decoys really.  The purple gorilla is the muscle and the rat is the ringleader, they run this operation all over the country.”  I placed my left shoe on the stage, untied it, and began re-tying the laces as I leaned closer.  The sibilant voice continued.

“You’ll never find the mafia in a Ralphie Mouse town, just like you’ll never find the rat in places like Atlantic City, Vegas, and Queens.  Ralphie started out back east, moved out to the desert and ran slot farms in the 60’s until the mob got wise.  They was the ones that did it to him, made him what he is.  They thought he was a goner after what happened, but guys like Ralphie never go down.  Guys like Ralphie Mouse go underground.”

My son continued to pester the rat as Alfredo made his play.  “So now you know, whaddya say you cut me loose and we make a run for it, whaddya say?”

It was too quiet at the far end of the stage.  Ralphie Mouse had his huge grey paw on the boy’s adoring shoulder.  The Rat turned his head, looked down at my son, then right at me as he slid a finger slowly across his throat.

“Where you going?  Youse gotta help me!”

“Sorry Alfie, I got a family.”  Then, “Hey Champ!  Let’s go to the park, this place gives me the creeps.”

Dylan and I went on a big bicycle trip today, we may even have set a new family record for miles covered on a radventure.  Our first stop was Chuck E. Cheese, which is currently Crackerface’s favorite.  Dylan has begun telling stories about the kid centric pizza place to persuade Janelley and I to bring him there.   “We could go to Chuck E. Cheese and dance with the robots, Daddy.  We can eat pizza, and I can play games, it will be a lot of fun,” he tells me with deadly sincerity.

Dylan plans to have his third birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese, and we now have several plastic toys and doohickeys imprinted with the logo and likeness of the D-man’s favorite anthropomorphic  mouse.  Mickey who?   My favorite is the inflatable hammer.  That’s right, I said inflatable hammer.  We also currently house a CEC flying disc (frisbee for you oldtimers), a plastic microphone, and a bag of unused tokens and tickets.

Chuck is not the only character in the lineup, so Toddlerpants has developed a close personal relationship with the other onstage personas as well.  We will be dancing up a storm when the music will stop and Dylan will begin lecturing on the subject of their names and group affiliations.  “Chuck E. Cheese is a mouse,  and Jasper is a dog, and Pasqually is a guy, and Helen is a bird, and Munch is a big purple gorilla!”

As I watch my boy resume dancing, the only human faced robot on stage seems to lock eyes with me.  I catch myself wondering how Pasqually the Italian drummer fell in with this crowd when Dylan’s high pitched voice tells me that it is time for “more rides”.  The time for dancing with the robots has passed, and the feeding of the machines is up next, I wonder if he suspects how much I love Chuck E. Cheese?