Month: June 2007

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Dad Blogs Life in these United States

I’m sorry, I can’t understand what you’re saying with my hand in your mouth…

Consider the toothbrush.

Have you noticed how it has evolved in the last decade? It wasn’t too long ago that you had three choices, outside of the color, in your toothbrush selection: soft, medium and hard (bristles). Then, the most difficult decision was whether or not buying a purple toothbrush would be seen as a “gay” thing to do if you were a guy.

But today…well, today there are literally dozens of choices in toothbrushes. There’s ones with little rubber nubbies to clean your gums, there are some with the bristles in neat little circular patterns, presumably to appear more like an electric toothbrush. You have sonic toothbrushes that clean your mouth with sound and vibration–oooohhhh! Oh and let’s not forget that toothbrush innovation hasn’t stopped with the bristles. Nowadays, on the back side of the toothbrush you’ll find all kind of interesting little things that are designed to scour the inside of your cheeks as you brush.

Now, my personal favorite is the old Crest Reach toothbrush with a full-sized head made of medium bristles. You can’t find it today, but you can find similar models that contain its core details while eschewing newfangled additions such as swirlies.

I get that even toothbrushes must evolve, if only to support increasing the marketing budgets of the manufacturers. I mean, we simply can’t expect today’s youth to brush their teeth if we don’t provide them with “cool” tools. So I don’t really mind if the messaging around the new toothbrushes is a bit of a stretch. Do half as many swirly bristles really work as well as twice as many horizontal rows of bristles? I think not.

Therefore, I don’t mind being lied to by Johnson & Johnson, or whomever, but what I don’t get is why my dentist would lie to me…(it’s a logical jump folks…stick with me here….)

I recently had my teeth cleaned and as usual, “Your teeth are beautiful, blah blah blah.” In fact, they didn’t even take X-rays this time. So, imagine my surprise when a couple of days later as I’m shining a flashlight down my throat to count the number of puss-pockets on my tonsils from my sinus infection, that I find what appears to be the beginning of a very small cavity right smack on top of my back molar. Now, I’m no dentist but I think I can recognize a well-rounded hole in my tooth as a cavity. And I can’t for the life of me imagine that both my hygienist and the old feller (the dentist) would miss it when they poked their head in my head to look around.

The only thing I can think of is that it’s too small to do anything about right now, so they didn’t make a big deal of it. But isn’t that kinda like not telling someone they have an enlarged prostate? “Thanks for considering my mental health doc, but I’d really like to know if I’m prime for a colonoscopy.”

Perhaps I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but since I haven’t had a cavity since I was 8, and the whole thing has become a bit of a source of pride for me, I’m only slightly less than devastated. Of course, in the grand scheme of things it’s a very minor thing for sure.

I guess between now and my next cleaning I’ll try out some of those newfangled toothbrush gizmos and see if they help me dig down into my molar crevasses (what a great pluralization!).


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Dad Blogs Family Life in these United States

Artistically speaking, where would we be without drugs?

As a family, you tend to gather pictures like old habits. One minute your walls are bare, the next you’re taking down one picture in order to move it to a new location so that you can arrange a multitude of pictures on the wall. With two boys now in our house, I’m forced to look at a series of pictures taken over the last few years and I gotta tell ya folks, it ain’t pretty.

At some point, I went from a trim runners body, to a stocky weighlifter’s body, complete with a small belly that threatens to grow wider than my shoulders. Oh, I could make excuses, such as less leisure time to hike and exercise. I could blame my back surgeries which have all but made running (the one thing that really burned off the fat) a thing of the past. I could make several excuses, but if I’m being honest, there are other, equally valid reasons for why I put on weight that have nothing to do with my lifestyle.

Plain and simple, I eat more junk than I used to. When I was single, and before there were kids, you wouldn’t find leftover pizza or cookies laying around. Dinner was cereal or stir fry, not hamburgers or some gourmet chicken with a fabulous wine sauce.

This isn’t really the direction I meant to take with this entry, but these things tend to have a mind of their own. What I meant to get to, was how things change as you age–and not just physically–but mentally too.

For instance, someone commented on my last post where I admitted I’d never smoked pot. I didn’t say it because it’s something I am all proud of and want to force on the rest of the world. As someone who has enjoyed the benefits of hydrocodone for nigh on three years as a way to enable me to sit in an office chair, pick up my kids without hitting the ground in pain, and walking without a limp, I’ll be the first to admit that drugs have their places. And drugs is one of those areas where I imagine I’m not the only one to have a change of heart.

As much as I like to make fun of them, public service announcements do have an affect. I didn’t do drugs, not because they weren’t available, but because I morally felt they were wrong. Now, as an adult, I’ve known some very intelligent people who regularly smoke pot and get by in life just fine. Do I agree that they should come to work baked, or use it prior to a long roadtrip as a way of staying alert? No, I can’t condone that, but I also don’t see a problem with a person using pot recreationally. I realize this opens a whole can of worms regarding public safety and work productivity etc., which is probably why, more than any other reason, pot isn’t legal in this country. If you legalized it, then you’d have to have a slew of follow up laws regulating where, when and how it could be used.

Legal nightmare, I get it.

But times change, we change–our bodies, our minds, our morals. Sometimes when I look in the mirror, I wonder if I should continue to cling to that image of myself in my youth in some vain hopes that I’ll be able to some day get back to it when life isn’t so demanding of my time. Other times I think that maybe this person in last month’s picture IS me. It’s the new me, or…the old me depending on how you want to look at it. There is no going back, there’s only going forward. That’s depressing, but I don’t suppose it isn’t anything billions of people ahead of me haven’t gone through.

I don’t know. I’m not yet ready to give up my youth, despite what my hair and my bones are telling me. But some things can and do change, like your opinion on things. Whether or not those changes are for the better, or simply “changes”…well, only time will tell.

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Billions of government PSA $$…down the drain.

“Just say no.”
“This is your brain on drugs”
“The more you know”
“Give a hoot, don’t pollute”

Those good ol’ Public Service Announcements. Billions and Billions spent trying to persuade the public towards a viewpoint that someone in the government decided is the right one. And here we are, decades of PSAs later and as a 34 year old adult, I’m still falling prey to peer pressure!

Oh, I’m not taking drugs or setting forest fires or anything like that, but my wife and I have bowed to parental peer pressure and it’s just as insidious as anything you might find peddled on the streetcorners of today’s inner-cities.

At my children’s daycare, in addition to the activities that they provide in-house, they apparently also allow outside vendors to come in. One such vendor is a company called “Playball.”

For a paltry $80, your child can enjoy 8 weeks of 30 minutes playtime sessions (1 per week) with their friends. Do you see the genius here? If you don’t “let” your children take advantage of this wonderful program, then they must endure 30 minutes of exile while their friends have fun. Who wants to be that kid? What parent wants their child to endure such horror?

But let’s do the math. If even 8 kids per class of 14 does it, and they can do 4 classes each day, that’s a cool $360 a day for 2 hours of work. Not a bad racket.
And really, how much does each child get to do in an “instructed” play class in 30 minutes when there are several other children also involved? So really, for each parent that pays for their child to take the class, they aren’t paying so that their child can actually improve their ball skills; what they are really paying for is “inclusion.”

Peer pressure. Criminey! I never smoked pot and I never set a forest fire, but by golly, my children have caused my fall! But it doesn’t have to be so with you.

Remember, “You could learn a lot from a dummy!”

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Dad Blogs Family Fatherhood

Let’s talk about God baby…Let’s talk about you and me…

In keeping with the title of my blog (Postulates & Pasttimes), today’s entry is more along the line of Postulates–the religious kind to be more precise. Come, walk with me and let us talk about this religious stuff…

I was raised in a Pentecostal-based church. We moved around from Church of God organizations to Assembly of God organizations because basically they believe the same thing. In fact, I’m not sure what the difference is, once you stop concerning yourself with how they govern themselves. Although, the Assemblies of God do have a better Web site, so one point for AoG.

Among other things that Pentecostals believe, is the fact that as babies, we are born sinners and unless one repents of his or her sins, he or she cannot go to heaven. Now, there is a grace period that all babies and children get; meaning that if a child were to die before a certain age of awareness, then they automatically go to heaven. This core belief is fundamental and pretty much set in stone. You can go from one church to another and hear the same thing.

Another belief that is set in stone is the idea that Jesus will one day suddenly come back to earth, surprising everyone. He’ll then collect his people (“..in the blink of an eye…”), persecute the rest for a very long time, then basically bring heaven back down to earth where folks will live in peace for a while. Oh, also during this time, the Devil will be loosed back on earth in a last-ditch effort at turning folks and then he’ll be banned for all time. Even as a child, I found flaws in this belief. My biggest “oh right” is the idea that the Devil will be given a chance to convert people who are living in “Heaven on Earth.” Now, why would anyone who is in “Heaven” possibly follow the devil? Whatever…moving on.
(Note: If you’re really interested in this stuff, read Revelations.)

However, one area that there appears to be some gray area around, is what happens after you repent of your “original sin“. I’ve heard it preached that if I ask for forgiveness and I turn around and sin one time, and if after having sinned, and before I ask forgiveness again, the Lord should happen to come or I die in some horrific accident, then I’m doomed to suffer on earth until Judement Day.

Now, though I’ve never heard it specifically said, I’ve heard others hint at the idea that simply accepting Jesus as your savior and asking for his forgiveness is enough to get you into heaven as long as you strive to be good from there on out. This idea obviously holds more appeal for most people, which may be why the churches as a rule are integrating this into their theology, albeit unofficially.

So what does all this have to do with my blog entry you ask? Well, I’ll tell you…If scenario A (first one above) is true, then if the Lord comes while I’m typing this up, then I’m going to hell.

Yes, according to Pentecostal belief, I have sinned and “…come short of the glory of God.”

See, my wife is out of town and I’ve been watching the boys the last couple of nights. Monday night was fine. Both went to bed normally and the baby only woke up once.

Last night, however, was a different story. My eldest went to bed fine, but my youngest woke up four times during the night. On top of that, I have come down with a nasty little cold–in fact, all three of us have–and when you couple no sleep with being sick, well, let’s just say I would have fit right in with a compliment of sailors last night…and no, I haven’t asked for forgiveness yet.

Sleep well…