message to jeff mullen

to the offensive coordinator of west virginia university's football team, i have one thing to say: when you find something that works, keep doing it.

don't throw a change-up.

don't try to keep the opposition guessing.

don't try to be fancy.

put your foot on the gas and stand on it until the other team is a speck in the rear view mirror.

thank you.

wvu-marshall: a revelation

so my colleague and marshall university alumna, cara, proofs our first edition paper and reads this column about relationships between fans of west virginia university and marshall.

she said she liked what she read.

what followed was a sort of roundtable discussion/group therapy session among the remaining four staffers in the newsroom about the nature of the rivalry, for want of a better term.

what seemed to roil her most was the apparent incivility of wvu fans toward visiting marshall fans what with the cursing and tossed beer cans.

i offered that it was a demonstrative, loutish handful of inebriated partyers that were giving all of us a bad name.

and i conceded that wvu doesn't seem to handle success very well in that we become fairly obnoxious when we're on a hot streak, forgetting about things like sportsmanship.

but the thought since occurred to me that what cara and probably other herd fans perceive to be crassness directed to their school in particular is most likely rude and crude rowdiness toward our opponents in general.

if you want to be ridiculous about it, they should be happy we choose to mistreat them with the same vileness we reserved for perennial powerhouses like miami, pitt and penn state.

this is west virginia university. an equal opportunity annoyer.

cruel nature

while the boy took his afternoon nap today, kris and i got to eat lunch on the back porch, where we enjoyed tasty turkey avocado sandwiches and white wine.

as she looked out into the backyard, she wondered what she was seeing above the mimosa tree near the fence. something spinning, she said.

i looked and knew that the thing spinning was one of the hummingbirds that has been frequenting the young tree since it started flowering this year.

it was caught about 20 feet off the ground in a single strand of a spider's web; it was beating its wings furiously -- and futilely.

the scene was a testament to the tensile strength of spider spit.

as pitiful as the situation was, there was nothing i could do.

breaking a single strand of the floss 20 feet above me with a rock or stick would require aim i don't possess.

and even if i did manage to snap the thread, the bird would be so entangled by the sticky webbing, its wing would be useless. i don't think i could make the animal fly again and it would eventually starve.

"spiders have to eat, too," kris said.

i knew the creature would eventually grow tired and stop fighting; the spider just had to wait.

(lower animals scoring upsets on the food chain always creep me out.)

in a world where we fantasize about happy endings and harmony, moments like these remind me that life is rarely neat and pretty.

sizing up my sandwich, i noted that we were eating birds, too.

ours just died and were processed in a more "civilized" manner.

the difference between man and beast, i guess, is we're neater.

time sucker

this is how i spend the night with my wife now that the baby is asleep in his crib on a friday night:

• eating pizza and beer in bed while waiting for itunes rental of "kick-ass" to download
• watching "kick-ass" and laughing ours off from the cartoon violence
• updating my stupid facebook profile with pics like this one

btw, this was from the 3rd annual charlie williamson triathlon, where the relay team with my sisters finished 23rd out of 26th. i finished last out of the relay 5k runners, my reward for not running any distance since the boy was born.

(of course, none of us finished better than 20th in our fields -- that was pamy for swimming; joy was 21st in the bike; i was 25. the 26th team was disqualified. i walked three minutes three times.)

and now i'm blogging. precious hours of sleeping baby are being wasted on e-ffluvia instead of sleep.

i deserve whatever i get -- and i don't get to complain about it either.

this week's routine

sleepy butt
Originally uploaded by grumpnet

before i get ahead of myself, i have to remember what my buddy tom told me about child-rearing: it's always changing.

so i can't be getting too comfortable with the routine we have this week, in which we seem to have gotten the lad back to sleeping in his crib.

from my end, it's given me some normality in 3-hour shifts: wake, activity, feed, sleep, begin again.

after kris left for work today, i fed the boy and was able to get him to sleep long enough for me to take the nap i needed after getting up before i wanted.

then, with the weather seeming to break from the oppressively hot summer we've had, he and i took the mile or so walk around the neighborhood, which is like exercising with a 16-pound medicine ball hanging from your neck. took about 25 minutes.

we got home, i fed him his pureed squash and formula, and now he's been asleep for about half an hour.

we've managed this particular routine twice this week; if we can make this something regular for a while, it would make all our lives a little easier.

kris says he's sleeping way better at night -- six hours a stretch -- which means she gets to sleep, which is less nice than miraculous.

i know i can't count on things to remain this way, but i'm hoping the crib sleeping and regular naps are here to stay.

seriously, this time next year when he's ambulatory, the little monkey will likely be running my ass ragged.

still soaking in these moments, though, when he's still small enough to carry around.

pops

pops
Originally uploaded by grumpnet

and while i lament the mental hygiene of my wife and me below, i read on a friend's facebook post this evening how this weekend marks the last he'll share with all three of his boys together for a long time, as his eldest sets off for college next week.

even as i'm plumbing the depths of frustration from a tired, wired baby, i only need look at his pudgy cheeks and his slowly-filling hairline to remind myself that these days of having a tiny, adoring, totally dependent child are actually very brief.

i took the boy with me to the county courthouse to pay taxes and renew my vehicle registration. (he made eyes with every woman in the tax office, like some kind of puppy dog.) after my business was done, i left about the same time as another fellow, who kindly opened doors for me as i carried the boy.

at each door, he shared with me the observation that all loving parents have whenever they see us with the lad: "they're only small for a short time.

"next thing you know," he said, "they're asking for the car keys."

as we parted in front of the courthouse, he finally said, "then they're wanting you to take dance lessons for their wedding."

he was wistful and nostalgic.

i was grateful for the reminder.

beat

beat
Originally uploaded by grumpnet

our boy had his mom and me in bed by 6 p.m.

6 p.m.!

the sun was still out!

i think we have reached the point that my brother told me about years ago when all his children weren't sleeping alone or ambulatory.

he was talking about being out of his mind crazy with tiredness after days without rest from trying to keep up with his brood of three kids under the age of 6.

we might have a sense of what he's talking about.

the house is in a post-vacation shambles, without a 3-foot-square section of floor free of clutter.

we can't walk in straight line from one end of a room to the other.

and there's not much we can do about it right now.

our hands are tied to a teething baby whose dull, gnawing pains make him too fussy to leave alone for more than 15 minutes at a time and a work and summer schedule that left us one day a month to handle what used to be regular weekend maintenance.

the sense of being hemmed in by our house is only heightening the anxiety from fatigue.

we've got to break out of this.

beached, as in whale.

i told kris i wasn't so much feeling my age on this latest family trip to the beach as i was feeling my stage.

the morning we were to leave, i told her i awoke thinking back seven years of a vacation to the same destination -- the same one we've gone on since the mid-1970s.

i was in the best shape of my life, prepping for the first of what i thought would be many triathlons. i was single, wooing the woman who would eventually lead me to my wife. work was exciting, challenging and fun.

i've got a few creaks now and i'm about 15 pounds softer than i used to be. and while i've managed at least one road race every year, i've only completed that one triathlon. work, on the other hand, is work.

but i've got this amazing little boy who exasperates and thrills me at the same time. life is exciting, challenging and fun.

best line of the vacation came from my niece vivian.

we were at the hotel water park and she asked me why girls have to wear tops and boys don't.

i told her that girls have more area to cover.

"why?" she asked.

"because girls have boobs," her brother sam answered. (shocking to hear from a boy so young, 4.)

she replied, "uncle p has bigger boobs than me and he doesn't need a top."