My blog is officially popular now. I can not be stopped, blogzilla I. I'm reasonably certain that whatever new readers have been attracted through the birth of Rhys will eventually realize that they don't want to be here. But for now they are mine and I will do with them as the wanton spirits of impulse instruct me.
We shall see.
Downton Abbey is a soap opera. I admit this. I have a friend that is in some sort of paroxysm of denial over it. He insists that because the show is thought provoking and that it deals with more than just who is sleeping with whom that it can't possibly be a soap opera. Very little could be more silly, or wrong. It has open narratives bridging each show, develops plot themes across each installment, it is episodic romantic fiction, often shows are ended with a "cliffhanger"... It is the very definition of a soap opera. This only increases my guilty love for it. Apparently the suggestion might have the opposite effect on others. The last show had so many borderline absurd "Ooohhh" and "Ahhh" breath inhalation and exhalation moments that I considered editing them together and looping them for my friend just to prove the point, but my tears prevented me from doing so.
When I typed the word "cliffhanger" above I accidentally typed "cliffganger" instead. I just might be onto a new type of plot device.... when all of the unresolved issues pile up on one character, or conversely, characters upon issue. I might start an episodic tale here and attempt it.
More on soap operas and their effect on people later.
Rachel and I are becoming more bold with taking little Rhys out and about. We are also learning our lessons in doing so. There are often unexpected tasks involved in these miniature outings that represent a magnitude of difficulty that exceeds our patience. Well, mine anyway. I am having to learn the new rules, the new time-frame involved in travel. Things simply take much longer than they used to. Any event can be suddenly and easily disrupted. Or, an urgent need to abandon our plans altogether might arise without previous sign or signal.
No, I'm being dramatic. I have to be careful. Rachel reads this blog and any exaggeration concerning Rhys, no matter how useful exaggeration is in this endeavor, no longer seems to quite work for her. I must either exaggerate to the point of absurdity or not at all. The middle ground of our lives has become increasingly literal out of sudden need, some of it imaginary. It is important that my changing feelings concerning life not be misrepresented in any way, so as to inadvertently create confusion among my many thousands of adoring readers, or Rachel.
An example of how life is changing... Yesterday we went to Murphy's Pub. It is a pleasant enough place and is not too far off from some of the Irish pubs in NYC that we used to frequent. It's a nice place to sit and have a beer, or three. The main feature missing is any semblance of a happy-hour, as far as I can tell. All beers are charged to your account, which is presented to you at the end of your time there on a printed, computerized receipt. The East Village at least has the decency to not have computers in bars. Most of them anyway. To be fair Murphy's also functions as a restaurant so I suppose my criticisms are misplaced in this regard. Moving on....
Instead of sitting at the bar we now sit at a table, sensibly. We chose a table in the corner where there was plenty of room for whatever needs might arise. The waitress took our order. I had a Harp lager and Rachel had a red soda of some sort. As wonderful and beautiful as breast-feeding is it still represents limitations in some ways, as alcohol goes straight into the bloodstream and subsequently into the breast milk. It is to be avoided.
The waitress wanted to see the baby boy so we lifted the fabric we had in place to reveal his little napping head. Immediately she said, "Well, I see where he got his hair" smiling at me in mock familiarity...
Rhys came out with a full head of hair but it's not as if he had been lifting it directly from his lineage while I wasn't paying attention. Listen, if you look carefully you'll see that he's also combing it forward. I mean, yes, it is a little fuller in the arid off-center spots of the front, on each side of the central "Phil Collins" peninsula, but one must consider that I have much more territory to cover. Just look at the shear size of my enormous helmet. It is hideously large and as such difficult to sheath with flowing locks.
I think my hair distribution is far more sensible than his, all things considered. Just think of all the hair that has emigrated to my back through the years. Consider it. That must account for a few hundred each year, easily. Also, my face steals precious hair-energy from the top of my head every single night while constructing my weekly beard. It's like a nocturnal tug-of-war that culminates in the nasal passageway, echoing through the recently forested nostrils. Some mornings I wake up and I can hear the tiny calls emanating from the front of my face, " Pull...!!! Pull...!!! Pull...!!! "
I've long considered the possibility that the hair on either side of the front of my head merely set out to find its own fortunes, to perhaps stake out a spot in my ears and have a family of its own. Can you blame them, really? When the head is used, often as it is, as either a helmet or a battering ram... their position was located in the danger-zone, the undesirable outlying region, the suburbs of decrepit tresses, my mane cul-de-sacs, etc. Many of them were surely lost in battle, either in unexpected collisions or from doing too many u-turns under the sheets.
Oh gentle christ of amethyst past..... Is there anything worse than a newly made father trying to somehow posit his sexual worth? I mean, to anybody other than the mother. Even then it should be done in as searching and as self-deprecating a manner as possible, if at all. Such overt suggestions are for my younger years, the fog of the past, when I was a more dangerous man.
I'll stop there. I'm certain that there's somewhere around the house that I could be feeling useless right now.
I have, however, included two pictures to illustrate my point about our competing hairlines.
(Sean)
(Rhys)
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