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Over the last month or so, Sarah and I have been wondering when we were going to get to feel the baby moving around inside her belly. We weren’t…concerned, specifically, since the late-December ultrasound definitely showed that little booger dancing like we were playing Jamiroquai at it. Sarah was just looking forward to actually FEELING the movement.

Well, finally, on Friday, she felt it shift or kick or do the humpty dance or something. Totally awesome. And apparently the little bugger hasn’t stopped since.

• Friday morning, Sarah in a particularly boring class and getting hungry: the baby kicks a bunch of times to say either “HEY I’M HUNGRY DAMMIT” or “OH MY GOD THIS PROFESSOR IS SO DULL I THINK I’M GOING TO KICK YOU IN THE KIDNEY.”
• Friday night, at a birthday party for my homeboy Ian, baby kicks during a Bon Jovi song. I figure this means one of three things:
  1. The baby was dancing to Bon Jovi because she’s a girl.
  2. The baby was dancing to Bon Jovi because he’s gay.
  3. The baby was kicking Sarah to ask why the hell we were listening to “gay-ass Bon Jovi.”

  I’m hoping for the last response. Not that I am against having a girl or a gay boy, but simply that I’m against Bon Jovi.

So that little honky is in there dancin’ around, and I couldn’t be happier. Unless it comes out dancing like Kenny Mayne on last week’s “Dancing With The Stars.” Poor Kenny: he’s a lovable fellow, but his dancing looks like a pee shiver.

You know, I really respect the guy that came up with the idea of the automatic bathroom paper towel dispenser. I mean, the guy clearly is missing key sections of his frontal lobes and therefore didn’t think things through, but the idea in and of itself has merit. I mean, who really wants to have to touch the handle of a towel dispenser? Knowing that 75-85% of the guys that actually bother to “wash” their hands don’t use soap? Just thinking of the nasty stuff that John Q. Public has on his wang that he then casually wipes on the towel dispenser makes me want to crawl into a corner and weep.

So the original plan was good. Just wave your hands in front of the thing, and poof it spits out a certain amount of paper towel, which you then tear away and use to dry your hands, face, and crotch (which is usually wet from accidentally leaning against the counter, since the average American male apparently cannot wash his hands without splashing water around like a 4-year-old in a bathtub). Good plan, but subtly flawed:

1. Significant sensor issues. For one thing, manufacturers can’t agree where the sensor should be. Sometimes it’s on the front; sometimes it’s on the bottom; sometimes there’s a thing on the front that looks like a sensor, but it appears to be decorative. Coupled with this issue is the fact that whatever sensor they use isn’t sensitive enough to note my frantically waving my hands around it like a spastic in a Taekwondo class, and the entire concept of not having to touch the device and share germs is negated by me punching it until the front of it falls off and I can retrieve my own goddamn paper towels, thank you very much.
2. Paper amount. When you finally convince the thing that yes, you really do want some paper, and you’re not standing there waving and screaming because you’re practicing Evil Yoga, it gives you a piece of paper approximately 8″ by 8″. Which is about the amount that I use to dry one side of my thumb. Dammit, I need like 5 square feet of paper to dry off my massive meathooks! So, I end up standing in front of this stupid device, frantically waving my hands all around it, and periodically tearing off a small piece of paper to dry my hands, repeat 8 or 9 times while crying.

You know what I’d like to see on the dispensers? A big button, right in the middle, that says “press here if the bloody sensor has gone retarded.” That’s a fair compromise. I might get germs on that particular finger, but odds are I’ll have it in my ear or nose within 15 minutes anyway, so there’s no great loss.

You may have gathered from last week’s McDonald’s post, I’m back on my low-carb/no-carb/hohoho-carb diet. The reason for this is simple: at about the end of last summer, I was around 230 pounds; now I’m around 260 pounds. Bad, bad, times. Last summer I was wearing pants with a 36″ waist, and now I’m back up to a semi-snug 40″. Totally weak.

SO. I’m back on the low-carb jaun, which I hopefully didn’t ruin on Saturday night at Ian’s birthday party by doing a couple shots wit’ my peepz, yo. In the spirit of this, I wanted to share some of my “favorite” (the quotes indicate Sarcasm^TM!) low-carb recipes with alls of y’alls, so here it be at:

• Microwaved Meat Chunks: purchase a flat hunk of sirloin, and throw that bad boy in the microwave and cook it on low for like 40 minutes, aka the amount of time it would probably take to do it in the oven anyway. I told you: I’m clinically idiotic. Like, a wonder of medical science.
• Roasted meat chunks: Do the above in an oven at 300 degrees, maybe even throwing the temp up to 500 at the end in a failed effort to get a nice crispy crust on the outside. Ha ha! It doesn’t work! You just overcooked your meat! It was still reasonably tasty, due to buying a cut of meat that consisted of at least 73% fat. Yay: fat.
• Beef Jerky: Invest in a food dehydrator. They are beyond awesome. I just throw a chunk of low-fat meat in the freezer for a little bit so it’s easier to slice. Once duly sliced and whatnot, I throw them bad boys in a freezer bag with roughly a gallon of Worcestorshire (pronounced: Northolt) Sauce and let it fester in the meat drawer of the fridge for 24-48 hours. Then, I put the slices on the trays in my meat dehydrator, salt them liberally, and get to the drying. Within 6 hours, I have enough dried chunks o’ meat to make sure I need dental floss on me at all times for almost a week.
• Egg Salad: First, boil the eggs (it’s best to use old ones; they’re easier to peel, and give you that musky aroma that normal humans associate with cat urine) thusly: throw them in a pot with water, bring to a boil, boil for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat, and then drain the water and replace with cold. Peel the eggs. Hand the eggs to Sarah Hearn, who mutters something about her “preciousssss,” disappears for 20-30 minutes, and reemerges from unknown climes with the best egg salad ever devised.
• One Dozen Warm Meat Patties: Go to McDonald’s. Buy 6 double cheeseburgers. Throw away bread. Eat remainder (pickles optional).
• Mung: Uh…nevermind.

That’s basically what I’ve eaten for the last week, and what I will continue to eat for at least another week, until such time as the little pee strips I need to go buy indicate that my body has entered Super-Duper Fat Burnin’ WOOOOOO Mode. Challa!

(Note: This diet precludes the actual consumption of challa.)

Yesterday, much to your considerable chagrin, I described the source and nature of my issues with medical intervention in the crotchial region (yes it’s a medical term) and the discussion thereof. Today: how I’m going to beat this, and figure out a way to not pass out when the doctor says “Mr. and Mrs. Hearn, I’m afraid this baby has the largest head that I have ever seen in 17 years of delivering babies, and that means I’m going to have to cut you like you’ve never been cut before.”

Which, if you’ve ever measured my head and that of my father-in-law, is a very real possibility.

On Monday, Sarah and I were down at the Rehoboth Beach Outlets, doing a little maternity-wear shopping. This means that I was wandering the store holding a few items of clothing that Sarah intended to buy, while she tried on other things in the fitting room. Picture this: a very, very large man, unshaven and smelling faintly of the previous evening’s scotch, in a wool skull-cap and heavy winter coat, wandering around a maternity store fingering the nursing bras. After a while, I realized that there was a good chance that the clerk running the place might forget that I had come in with a woman and call the police, so I figured I’d better find a book to read or something.

Luckily, this store had several racks of parental reading material; What To Expect When You’re Expecting, 54,000 Hippie Baby Names, The Other Man: How to Tell Your Husband You’re Pregnant With Keith Richards’ Baby, and the like. One book in particular caught my eye: So You’re Going To Be A Dad, by Peter Downey. I had already read one book on pregnancy written from a man’s perspective, but I figured I could look this one over while Sarah tried some things on. So I flipped to a random section and began reading, and after a few minutes was guffawing uproariously. (It’s still a wonderment to my why the clerk didn’t call the cops. Instead, she offered me a chair so I could stop leaning against her display of maternity-style pantyhose.)

Anyway, I decided to buy the book, and over the course of Monday evening, read the entire thing. It’s not particularly informative, basically giving you a humorous overview of pregnancy and the first couple months of raising a child, but it did make a number of salient points, and offered one EXTREMELY useful suggestion, which was this:

If you know you are likely to have a problem with being in the room while your wife gives birth, you need to basically confront that fear head on. Anyone who has conquered a fear of spiders will tell you that avoiding them and constantly being afraid of accidentally coming across a monstrous 8-legger in your house is not going to do the job. You need to go find a spider, study it, talk to it, maybe touch it, and eventually let it crawl into your hand. You probably need to piss it off and let it bite you a few times.

From what Dr. Downey (who is, oddly enough, not an obstretician; his doctorate is in Education, and he teaches high school English somewhere in Australia) says, what I need to do is go rent (or probably buy, since I think this might take a while) a movie that has either actual footage of a live birth, or a very very very realistic depiction thereof, and watch it a bunch of times until I can get through it without getting woozy.

I’m guessing that the first time will have to be done with remote in hand, ’cause I have a sneaking suspicion that a small bloody baby will pop out and I’ll need to immediately stop the video and turn on Alton Brown or something like to prevent myself from passing out and having my wife come home to my still form on the living room floor and fearing I’ve had a stroke. But I’m really hoping that after the first few times, I’ll be able to watch the whole thing through without getting too queasy.

Of course, it’s entirely different when it’s in an unfamiliar location, like, say, a delivery room at Christiana Hospital. So I’m not sure how to get around that, other than maybe pretending to be a nurse and just sneaking in there sometime to watch some woman pop out her firstborn so I can be prepared for Sarah’s doing so. Might be illegal, though, and in any case is probably highly ill-advised, what with doctors having access to scalpels and phenobarbital and all.

Anyway, I have question for all the fathers out there: Even assuming that my inability to deal with genital medical intervention is rather beyond the normal queasiness, I’m guessing that most guys weren’t terribly thrilled with the prospect of witnessing childbirth. If you have done so, how did you get through it? Did you pass out? Did you just show up with a bottle of scotch and some crystal meth? How, dammit, HOW?

Have a superb weekend. Hopefully you won’t have to think much on birthin’ babies and can relax a bit.

What with Hearnwife and I having a baby, the following topic frequently comes up in conversation: “Dude, so like, are you gonna pass out during the delivery or something? Ha ha!”

The reason for this is that I have a bit of a history when it comes to medical activities on the, um, Area, as my sister likes to call it. It first manifested itself in the 7th grade, when during Health class we were discussing the fact that occasionally little boys’ testicles do not naturally drop as they grow out of their early years, and sometimes require surgery.

I calmly raised my hand to tell the teacher I felt queasy, and then I remember dreaming about trains and waking up on the floor of the classroom with Ms. Kupchick and her righteous mullet hovering over me with a look of abject terror on her face. I did get to miss a couple days of school over it, and then most of another day next week when I got to go to the hospital and have an EEG to ensure that I hadn’t had a seizure of some kind. It was all very interesting at the time, although to be honest it didn’t even occur to me until just now how terrifying it must have been for my parents. So, uh, sorry about that, Mom and Dad. My bad!

A few days later I went back to health class and didn’t even make it to my seat before the simple act of returning to the scene of the crime caused me to go down like a lump. The rest of that term, I spent health class in the library. I think I may have been required to do some kind of research project to make up for the fact that I was going to miss a significant portion of required subject-matter, but I don’t remember much about it aside from the fact that I can virtually guarantee it didn’t involve the subject of testicular surgery. (Even typing the words now, roughly 15 years later, makes me have to close my eyes tight and take deep breaths for a moment.)

The following year, I went into Health class with a certain amount of trepidation, but luckily there was no discussion of nad slicing. There was however, much discussion of what childbirth was all about. Honestly, it didn’t really bother me too bad, until the day that the teacher said “Hey, we’re gonna watch a video of a delivery!” She then turned off the lights and rolled the TV over, right in front of me (I was in the second row of seats), and hit play.

We didn’t even get through the credits before I was on the floor.

That year, I spent just a few weeks going to the library during period three, and was able to return to Health class after the reproductive unit of instruction was complete.

In high school, the situation seemed to largely have rectified itself. There were two cases in which I did actually pass out in high school: in health class, in which I think we were discussing my usual favorite topic; I just went to sleep on my desk and nobody even noticed, and I just woke up at the end of class when the bell rang; and in biology. I don’t remember what Mr. Twilley had been discussing, but I know I hadn’t eaten all day. On the way out after class was done I slumped against the wall and slowly eased my way onto the floor. I didn’t even get sent home afterwards, since I just had one class left, and it was in the band room, my usual safe haven of misbehavior.

In college, I majored in music and computers, two subjects that tend to steer away from the discussion of genitalia, so I was pretty much safe.

Sarah and I were having difficulties getting pregnant, however; we’d been trying for over a year, with no luck. Sarah went to see her doctor, who poked and prodded (ew) and reported that everything was fine. Either we just hadn’t gotten lucky yet, or something was wrong with ME.

Well, this affront to my manhood was going to be disproven, dammit, even if I did have to have my nads examined by a doctor. So I steeled up my courage and had Sarah drive me to a very nice specialist in Male Fertility. He had me drop my drawers and copped a lengthy feel, which was definitely FAR more detailed than anything my Primary Care Physician had done, and which caused me to have to sit down, screw my eyes shut tight, and take some deep breaths.

Then he began discussing some things that he had felt that might be problematic, and my having sat down came in handy, because my head flopped back and my tongue lolled out. I obviously don’t remember much, except that I vaguely recall dreaming about something that was so horribly terrifying that when I woke up, Sarah said my entire body tensed like a flexing body builder. She had caught my head to keep it from breaking the window behind me (my noggin has some serious destructive power, along with several orbiting satellites), and the doctor had put my feet up on the examination table to rush some bloodflow to my head.

Now, in my defense, I had given blood that morning. And I stupidly hadn’t eaten anything aside from the silly cookies they give you afterwards. So I was probably low on iron, or hemoglobins, or something that prevents you from looking like a big wuss. But still, the only thing that kept me from crying like a little girl was the knowledge that the doctor’s visit had turned out to be largely unnecessary; we had found out just that morning that Sarah was finally knocked up.

Anyway, you can imagine my friends’ and family’s dismay at the very strong possibility that I won’t even get two steps into the delivery room before I faceplant into an instrument tray and have to have a speculum removed from around my eyeball.

Tomorrow: my plan to alleviate the rather bizarre issue I face.

We have a significant problem in this country, people. SIGNIFICANT. And no, it’s not my usual beefs with people riding in the left-hand lane without passing, or people that are convinced that marijuana use leads to bus-station-bathroom-fellatio for cash. My concern today is very simple:

There are people in America today that don’t understand how fast food restaurants work.

And they aren’t just, say, the Amish, or people coming out of comas after 75 years. They are everyday, car-driving, cellphone-using, computer-owning people, who inexplicably get in front of me in the drive-thru at McDonald’s, get up to the menu, and only at that time do they consider what they might be in the mood for.

Yesterday, for example, I was behind a woman in a MASSIVE burgundy SUV, who pulled slowly into the Newark Main Street McDonald’s, which can, admittedly, be a challenge to enter. Because of the one-way situation on Main Street, there are two main entrances, each of which has its own drive-thru entrance, which then merge into one just before the menu and ordering point. This poor woman was slightly thrown by this and seemed to be about ready to park to collect her thoughts and figure out what to do next when she instead swerved back in front of me and drove over a curb to get back into the drive-thru lane.

Shen then crept forward until she finally was behind the car currently at the electronic ordering communication box. When they finished their order, she sat there for at least 30 seconds while she yelled at her children in the back seat. She pulled forward slowly to the box and began querying the poor employee about something, probably to ask if the Turbot was fresh or something.

4 minutes later, she had figured out what it was she wanted, ordered, and pulled forward. I, per my usual custom, had figured out what I planned to order before I left my house for work that morning, so I pulled up to the box, yelled “6 double cheeseburgers Diet Coke Thanks” and drove on. (I’m back on my Low-Carb jaun because it’s the only thing that’s ever caused me to lose significant weight and I’m pushing three bills again, so I order roughly 12 patties worth of meat and cheese and then throw the buns away. Wasteful? Hell yes it’s wasteful. But if God didn’t want us to waste food, She wouldn’t have given us hungry Ethiopian children to feel guilty about.)

Our hapless SUV-driving broad somehow was able to grasp the intracacies of the American monetary system, so she paid quickly and pulled up to the second window. I paid, and attempted to squeeze up close to her car so that the guy behind me might be able to reach the payment window, but the sheer size of her vehicle made it impossible. And so we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And then I realized that I was caught behind one of Them. You know Them: they may be wonderful, charitable people, but they unfortunately suffer from the debilitating flaw of having to special order fast food items. Being a good, kind, Christian person, I am able to forgive these people. Not least because my wife is one of them. She doesn’t like chives on her Taco Bell nachos, which is a fairly minimal request, particularly at Taco Bell which handmakes your order on the spot anyway, so a special request doesn’t really set things back too much, although it’s slighly annoying because if I’m out picking up some grub and she’s not there, it’s an extra thing I have to write down or remember. I’m not a very good rememberer.

At McDonald’s, however, many sandwiches are premade and sitting in a warming device for a few minutes waiting for customers to order them. All of the basic sandwiches are done this way. You might be thinking, “Ew, that’s gross, I want my food to be freshly made!” Idiot. You’re at McDonald’s, about to pay $1 for a double cheeseburger that is made mostly of grade Q beef and oily cheese. If you want quality and freshness of ingredients, you need to go to Jake’s or someplace that doesn’t reuse floor sweepings as Special Sauce.

Finally, the woman managed to get her two Happy Meals and Big Mac with no lettuce but extra sauce and no middle bun and if you could brush the sesame seeds off the top and toast them a little bit and reattach them with an egg wash, make that just an egg-white wash, I don’t need the yolk fat, and actually I kind of would like the lettuce but maybe in a separate container with a few packets of salt oh and definitely no salt on the fries as that tends to dry my kidneys and I’m going to Hot Yoga this afternoon and can’t afford to be dehydrated, absolutely not, oh and I’ll take probably a bottle of water, oh that’s not included in the meal, well go ahead and give me a small diet soda, to take advantage of the meal deal and all, but if you could also give me a small bottle of water because the soda will undoubtedly be full of sodium unless you have some Pepsi Zero or something, oh you don’t, yeah that’s what I figured and oh back to that Big Mac if there’s any way you can put some extra cheese on it, yes, I’ll pay the 30 cents, of course, that’s no problem, oh and are the Happy Meals kosher at all, but if not that’s okay because we aren’t really observant. Then she checked the bags thoroughly twice. Then she slowly drove away.

I got my food and was out of the place in the wink of a lamb’s butt.

I guess what I’m saying is: the drive-thru is a place where speed counts. If you are slightly stupid, don’t really know what you want to eat (or have finicky children in the car, which amounts to the same thing), or have special requests, go inside to the walk-up counter, which can handle a lot of parallel processing and therefore can make you a vegan sproutwich Big Mac, or whatever, while I snag my #1 meal with diet coke and roll out.

Here are some basic rules to follow for Drive-Thru usage:

1. You need to know what you want before you get to the ordering box. Ideally, you’ll know what you want before you pull into the parking lot. If you’re like me, you’ll know what you want before you go to bed the previous night. Fast food menus don’t change very much; if you were there a month ago, you already know what they have. They don’t have a daily filet mignon special once a month for which you need to keep an eye open. I’m considering stopping at Wendy’s on the way home, and I already know that if I do, I’m going to order 5 junior bacon cheeseburgers and a Diet Coke. Just think ahead, damn it. Every minute you sit there staring at the menu is a minute that I’m sitting behind you wondering how hard it would be to convince a jury that delaying my french-fry-related gratification was severe emotional distress and resulted in me blacking out and strangling you with your own seatbelt.
2. Keep it simple. If you don’t like a certain sandwich topping, you can probably pick it off. Also, every special request you make basically doubles the chances that the employees will screw it up and you’ll have to go inside anyway and make them fix it. They don’t need any more opportunities for mistakes; I love them dearly, but one does not decide on a career in the fast food industry because being, say, a Forensic Pathologist was unfulfilling. I have witnessed two instances of McDonald’s orders having been supplied WITHOUT MEAT ON THE BUN.

   Even more important, while you’re sitting up at the window waiting for them to make a fresh batch of fries without salt on them, I’m sitting in the car behind you knowing that my order, which came straight from the warmer and is in plain sight sitting on the counter not 4 feet from you, is getting colder by the minute.

3. Have your money ready. Many fast food empires now offer the ability to pay by credit or debit card; I’ve read that some McDonald’ses on Long Island now have the ability to accept payment via EZ-Pass, which may be the greatest fast-food-related development since some bright-eyed intern at Wendy’s said, “Hey, is there any technical reason why we couldn’t make a sandwich with four 1/4 pound patties on it?”

   If you get up to the window and only then begin to get out your wallet, and then spend an eternity rooting through your ashtray for exact change, I might well get out and piss through your open window. It’s just a matter of time before I snap.

I just think it’s common decency to not make me have to spray asparagus pee all over your lap and expensive leather interior, you know?

Happy Happy, allzayallzez! I hope that 2006 is as righteous as 2005 was, assuming that 2005 was heck of righteous, and if it wasn’t, then here’s hoping that 2006 is a vast improvement.

I guess what I’m saying is: I hope you are well in the coming year.

Me? HW and I spent the New Year’s holiday at the beach with our usual crew again this year, and misbehaved admirably. Poor HW sadly had to remain sober the entire weekend, so I had to be sure to drink her share, which unsurprisingly led to my saying regretful things, but which VERY surprisingly led to little nudity on my part. Everyone else at the house thanked me for this.

On Sunday we just hung out and played a riotous game of football on the beach, during which I embarrassed myself athletically in my usual manner, although oddly enough my team did end up winning, mostly because Doug and Kris stepped up masterfully, and Pedram, Ryan, and Aaron contributed some good plays as well. I, uh, well, I laid a hit on a guy that may or may not have had something to do with Aaron being able to strip the ball out of his hands after he bounced off of me.

Monday I was sore and mildly overhung, so we wandered Rehoboth for a little while, hit up a maternity outlet at which Sarah bought some hott stuff, and meandered home, where we ignored the filth that coats all the surfaces of our house and sat down to eat food and watch TV for the better part of 7 hours.

In other news, Brian Smith has resurrected his website and promises that he’ll update it more than twice before disappearing for a year again. So, good stuff, there. And now that my busy Xmas season is over, hopefully I’ll have a night or two free to actually get some stuff up on my own website, instead of leaving you poor fools hanging for days on end and making you suffer through with just Achewood, Lileks, and Penny Arcade (all of which you should be reading daily (or thrice-weekly in the last case) ’cause that jaun is mad rad).

Game: on.