Apparently, we have *a lot* of Isabellas on the way. Quite a few Sophias, Avas, and Olivias.

What’s really interesting about this list is how much naming is apparently a national phenomenon. I would not at all have been surprised to see different names in different regions. One name popping up over here and expanding. Another popping up over there. Instead, Isabella is #1 in California to New York, Oklahoma to Rhode Island. I actually know one baby named Isabella and another named Sophia. Truth be told, I consider both of these names (almost all of the ones listed, actually) to be vast improvements over the names I am seeing in classrooms. My concern is that there is less here than meets the eye and the main reason that Isabella shows up and Brianne doesn’t is because the latter is broken down into fifteen spellings. Here is hoping not!

I actually know a little Isabella and a little Sophia. I didn’t realize that they were on the cusp of a tidal wive (if it’s that). Interestingly enough, in an alternate version of my life, my old flame and I (who got married in this timeline) named our daughter Sophia. I actually chose the name solely due to its gnostic significance and not because I’d heard anybody else that had it.

I am curious where the names came from, if anywhere. I mean, other than the fact that they have been around a while. Why the resurgence now? That’s one of the great mysteries of names, though.

The boys names are almost all straight from the Bible. And William. Clancy actually wanted to name our son (if we have one) William/Will (and I actually have a fondness for Truman and it was my brother’s pick!) (I mean William as in William and Truman as in Truman, not William and Truman as in my actual first and last name - both William and Truman are family names). We’d actually sort of had a girl’s name picked out, but recently Clancy discovered there is a family name very similar to what we chose (in the same way that Caroline is similar to Carolyn) and so we might be changing course.

And for your enjoyment, music!

This past weekend, Clancy and I flew back to Delosa and attended a wedding in the town of Genesis. Genesis happens to be where Clancy and I were married, a surprising number of years ago. We got married on the plantation*. Clancy’s cousin got married at the local Catholic Church.

Being in a Catholic church is always an odd feeling for me. All of the trimmings so closely mirror that of its Episcopalian counterparts, and the services take on the same structure, but the rules are different.

The priest started off giving what may have been the best wedding sermon I have heard to date. From there, things sort of went off the rails. Where, precisely, they went off the rails is a subject of disagreement amongst the Corrigan/Himmelreich/Truman clan.

He started off talking about relationships and the transition between a relationship where mutual needs are being met to a relationship where you plow forward even when your needs are not being met. He did so in what I thought was a very good way.

There were some murmurs when he defined plowing forward or not as the choice between “you split up or you grow.” This bothered some people because the bride’s mother was divorced and they felt it as a sort of slap in the face.

My thought was… what is he supposed to say, exactly? Leaving aside the Catholic views on divorce, it is the goal of most marriages - certainly those with a religious component - that they endure. There are exceptions to this, but they are (in my view) rightly viewed as exceptions. To an extent, “it’s okay to get divorced” is not what couples want to hear, as they get married. It certainly isn’t what I wanted to hear, even know I was and am fully aware of that option.

This is one of the stresses of a diverse culture. Society itself legally permits divorce - and rightfully so - but one of the things that allows for freedom are the cultural pushbacks to abuses of it or resistance of the utilization of the freedom to begin with. To argue that all legal options should be considered equally valid from a social standpoint actually becomes an argument against things we disapprove of being legal in the first place.

As far as the parents of the bride are concern, they had one of the most benign reasons for divorce there are, in my book. One of them had a life-altering experience and was altered. The other was not altered. This resulted in genuinely irreconcilable differences.

But even when we accept the rationale for a divorce, it can still be chalked up as a disappointment. As something that did not go as planned. And, to a degree, not something that we should tip-toe around when giving sagely advice to a newly married couple that hopes not to meet the same fate. For most, even if it’s the least-bad option when the time comes, it’s still an undesirable fate.

And without the condemnation or prohibition of law, it’s up to society and social institutions - including churches - to say so. The undesirability of divorce ought to be a part of our dialogue of marriage.

Of course, a Catholic priest would say the same thing about the next part, wherein he incorporated God into it. As I would say to the others, what should I expect from a Catholic priest? Even an Episcopalian one would bring it up. I guess my objection to the next part - which involved a married couple’s primary duty being to God and not to one another or society or future children - is an example of why I would not make a remarkably good Catholic.

* - It’s called such, and you are probably envisioning something more grand than the venerable-but-quaint cottage - occupying a field - that it is.

So, you may have noticed over the last couple months in particular that posting has become rather… anemic. One of the main reasons has been the little Jumping Bean. Named such after that ultrasound when the little guy/girl seemed to be jumping around, in and out of the view of the device. Prior to that, we made a habit out of referring to it by whatever size it was (One week it was the size of a lentil, and so we called it The Lentil. Right now it’s the size of a lemon. I initially wanted to name the little thing “Kung Fu” because it looked more to me like it was practicing in the martial arts, but Jumping Bean, or JB, stuck.

A couple months back in Virginia there was a bit to-do about a law that required what is called a Transvaginal Ultrasound. That basically means sticking the camera up in there. It is frankly a rather horrifying concept, especially when doing it to a woman that doesn’t want it done. It took on a punitive air that I was not a fan of. Anyhow, after doing the traditional abdominal ultrasound, they did the transvaginal and Clancy reported that she actually found it less uncomfortable because on the abdominal the tech was really jamming it into her tummy while the abdominal was performed with more care.

Anyhow, what this has to do with Hit Coffee is that I couldn’t write about The Biggest Thing going on in my life. Clancy and I had made the decision before this started that we would wait until the end of the first trimester. The main concern being the possibility of miscarriage. It’s still a very real possibility, but the likelihood greatly diminishes after the first trimester. The only people we told were our respective parents. Mostly to head off the asking of The Question. Anyhow, even things that weren’t directly related to the pregnancy* were difficult to talk about. For instance, we’re staying in Callie until sometime next year, but part of the reasoning involved the little one. Her job situation, my job situation, it seems to come up a lot in any post that talks about the future.

I did comment here about a pregnancy, though I implied it was part of a lie. There would have been a lie involved, as we were not going to see an obstetrician, but the pregnant part would have been true. Ironically, Sheila picked up on it as true, forcing me to imply again that it was not. Initially, we were going to seek obstetrical care in Alexandria, despite the 2+ hour drive. The only other obstetrical doc in Callie is a man that she does not really click with and Redstone’s obstetricians are all male and its medical community worries us for other reasons. Also, as far as Callie goes, Clancy is one for privacy and the clubby atmosphere of Baxter Hospital is such that everyone feels free to walk in on their coworkers.

You may be wondering about Clancy’s age and the risk of malformity. You can never fully account for these things, but the ultrasound was actually an attempt to determine the likelihood of it. They can’t test for it yet, but they can do a blood test and some measurements (something about the naval cavity and excess skin around neck) and give a good estimate on the likelihood of a chromosomal disorder. The ones we’re looking out for are Down Syndrome (Trisomy 21), Trisomy 13, and Trisomy 18. The results on all three were very positive. The likelihood of Down is 1-in-1200 and for Trisomies 13 and 18 1-in-7500. Broadly speaking, you can estimate the likelihood of getting any abnormality by doubling the likelihood of Down. So we’re looking at 1-in-600, which is within normal range. Unless paranoia sets in, there will be no amniocentesis.

I spent last weekend making calls to inform the people I wanted to inform personally. I had to tell Clint that I would not be making his wedding, which is set for two days before the late-October due date. I also called my brothers, a particular Aunt, and my college roommate Hubert (who had called me when his wife had become pregnant - hopefully he will not be returning this particular favor).

Let’s see, what else? We’re going to try not to find out the sex of the baby. The likelihood of succeeding in this is not great, given that ultrasounds will be a regular thing and Clancy looks at these things for gender all the time. But if anyone can do it, she can. We have names tentatively picked out, though they are subject to change if the baby comes out and just doesn’t fit it at all.

* - Don’t worry, HC will not become a daily account of this. There’ll be a number of posts on the subject coming up, but mostly that’s to clear the deck of clutter I have been keeping in.

** - And even that I worded very carefully, implying but not stating that she was going to see the obstetrician. She was pregnant, but we were not actually going to see the obstetrician.

(more…)

Tim Noah suggests that Romney’s attack on the light bulk regulation that will retire the incandescents is misguided, and that he should instead focus on toilets:

A much more vulnerable target for anti-regulatory ire is the low-flow toilet, bequeathed by a law–passed in 1992 under President George H.W. “Poppy” Bush, so you can’t blame this on Democrats either–that mandates a very stingy 1.6 gallons per flush, as compared to the traditional three to five gallons. For at least the first generation of post-regulatory toilets, one of which I have the misfortune to own, 1.6 gallons is not sufficient. (Thank God I don’t live in California, where you get only 1.28 gallons.) This problem doesn’t get discussed much, even by conservatives, because the details are disgusting.

As someone who deals with toilet overflows on a regular basis, I am rather sympathetic to this. I have before recommended that we embrace two-flush mode toilets. As long as most trips to the restroom are urinary in nature, it does make sense to limit the amount of water being used (they do save water, extra flushes notwithstanding). However, a lack of water can fail to force large deposits through. And I tend to leave large deposits.

Really, though, bigger than toilets and lights (the new ones don’t bother me at all, though Clancy doesn’t like them) are low-flow showers. I have recommended in the past that we go with two-mode showers as well. You basically have a limit to the flow except when you’re pushing a particular button, which would send a rush that would slow back down (not unlike public sinks use to prevent people from leaving the water on. That way, less water when you don’t need it, but more water when you’re washing your hair. I don’t know how easy or difficult this is to do technically, however.

Bigger pains to me than that, though, is the phosphate ban. This does have some negative environmental repercussions, because it means more time is spent hand-cleaning everything before putting it in the dishwasher (and hand-cleaning uses a lot more water than dishwashes do).

The biggest pain on the horizon are the potential for plastic bag bans. For the most part, movement is towards a tax. I can actually live with a tax. I’ll pay five cents or ten cents for each bag. I’ll pay even more if they would make the bags just a little bit sturdier and larger. But bringing my own bags to shop with is rather problematic. Maybe I can get in the habit of it and I’ll wonder why I ever hated it, but until I started putting it on my phone, I was lucky if I made it out the door with my shopping list.

One of my (admittedly many) quirks is my desire for variety of soft drinks. What’s particularly odd about this is that I am not much for variety otherwise (at least when it comes to food and drink). When going to an Italian restaurant, I always order the fettuccine alfredo. When I go to a Mexican restaurant, my “big choice” is between cheese enchiladas or chicken ones. Every now and again I will try something new, but it’s pretty rare. Why should I ever eat B when I prefer A. But when it comes to soft drinks, I have about twelve boxes open at any given time. Half of them are some variation of Mountain Dew. At the moment I have: generic red cream soda (swapped out with vanilla cola), generic blackberry citrus drink (swapped out with black cherry drink), Citrus Drop (Kroger variation of MD), Citrus Drop Extreme (their attempt at Mello Yello, which is MtDewish), Pepsi Throwback (which I alternate with Coke), Mountain Dew Throwback (I alternate between that and regular MD until I finally rid myself of the Throwback), Voltage (MD Blue-colored), Whiteout (MD smooth-white), Gamefuel Red (MD citrus cherry), Gamefuel Green (MD of undisclosed “Tropical” flavor), Code Red (MD cherry, which I get only on occasion), Supernova (MD strawberry), Livewire (MD orange), Hawaiian Punch (which I swap with generic fruit drink), generic strawberry, Sprite (which I swap with Ginger Ale), generic root beer (which I swap out with generic cream soda).

One of the reasons I duplicate on some flavors is because I like having a horde of both caffeinated and non-caffeinated drinks, depending on the time of day. Although, with the exception of red cream soda, cream soda, Sprite, ginger ale, and root beer, I actually use the non-caffeinated drinks as a part of mixture with non-sugar coolade. It’s a way of not doing away with the sugar entirely (which has too detrimental an effect n the taste) but cutting back all the same. I may have been the only person in the world who liked C2, Coke’s attempting at bridging Coke with Diet Coke. When I get fountain drinks, I’ll usually fill it with 2/3 diet and 1/3 regular. Just a little sugar. As for my contraptions, it becomes an ongoing thing: as my bottle starts getting empty, I will refill it either with more coolade or soft drink as it requires, so I will have the same bottle in the fridge for a week with rotating flavoring.

So I keep this army in the fridge, taking up half of the second shelf. Every couple of days I’ll go through and restock whatever I took. I have a definite hierarchy or preference (Livewire is better than Supernova is better than Gamefuel Green is better than Voltage is better than Gamefuel Red is better than Whiteout (and anything) is better than Code Red. This is reflected by how quickly I go through a particular can, though sometimes I will go through something I don’t like faster than something I do because I want something sugary but don’t want to waste one of the “good” drinks. There is little logical reason why I even get Citrus Drop Extreme when there is no circumstance in which I favor it over regular Citrus Drop. And I dislike Code Red 99% of the time, but it alternates with Pitch Black as the go-to flavor if I want something that tastes putrid. But not V8 putrid. That stuff is nasty.

I’m going through a bunch of old links that I meant to write posts about, so if you’re wondering why I am writing about things written a year ago, that’s why.

Megan McArdle suggested, in the strongest possible terms, never to cosign for a loan:

When the primary borrower defaults, you’re on the hook, not just for the loan, but for any late charges or collection fees that may have accrued. If it’s a car, the repo man will sell it for cheap at auction, and then sue you for the difference–there are no “non-recourse” auto loans. Meanwhile, your credit will be trashed. Contracts don’t always include notice requirements for the secondary borrower, so you may not even find out about late payments until it’s in collections.

Even if they pay, the full amount of the outstanding loan will be counted against your debt-to-income ratios for the purposes of both calculating your credit score, and obtaining loans for yourself, since after all, you are responsible for paying it off. That may hamper your ability to get a mortgage or other financing.

If you can’t afford to pay off the loan, then–no matter how much you love them, how great your need, or how much you want to believe they will pay–you must “just say no”.

Moreover, many people mistakenly believe that cosigning makes them the payor of last resort–that they will be on the hook only after the collections department exhausts every possible effort to make them pay. This is almost the opposite of the truth. You are fully liable for the debt, and while my understanding is that it varies by state, in many places the collectors get to choose who to go after. Who do you think they will choose: the deadbeat with an empty bank account, or you, with your sterling credit and well-padded savings?

Now that I think about it, the vast majority of friends I’ve had that has had a parent cosign a loan for them have been friends that - though I love them dearly - I would never cosign for. I would, as McArdle suggests, loan them to money first. And probably write it off in thinking that I am never going to get it back.

Because my college was paid for and there was always a hand-me-down car if I needed one, I never had to take out a loan or refinance or consolidation for my parents to cosign. If I had needed a new-to-me car, and my parents didn’t have one, my parents probably would have used the opportunity to get something newer or nicer for themselves so that they would have a car to hand down to me. I would attribute this generosity to my parents’ nice income, but actually Julianne’s parents did the same thing. The only difference was that her parents would buy a car with a down-payment and five-year loan while mine would buy a less expensive car outright.

While my parents never cosigned on a car, they did cosign on my first apartment (that was how I found out how much Dad made, twice as much as I thought). McArdle doesn’t really comment on that, though a lot of what she’s talking about applies to apartments, too (and there is a discussion in the comment sections about how that is also not a bad idea). Really, though, I don’t know how I would have been able to get my first apartment otherwise. Somebody’s father was going to need to vouch for us. In retrospect, signing that was probably a hard thing for them to do because they didn’t want me to get an apartment. They wanted me to move back home. But that was not what I needed. And I am much better off for them having done so.

Megan McArdle has a piece on why people like to own their homes. It’s well worth reading.

I personally have mixed feelings on home ownership. Due to some professional experiences in a pertinent industry, I had a rather strong foundation to believe that we were in the run-up to a housing crisis (I predicted 2010). I did not realize it would do to the entire economy what it has, but I decided for myself “I’m not going to buy a home until 2015 at the earliest, or possibly 2020.” And intellectually, the reasons I picked those years remain. I fear that we might be looking at another couple of tumbles, though I won’t say why publicly (email me and I will give you more information, if this really matters to you).

It’s been a few years since I came to that proclamation, and my views on the subject have changed for many of the reasons that McArdle outlines (as well as the fact that we’re unlikely to live in a place that got hit particularly hard last time and will get hit particularly hard next time). We might even be buying a house now, if not for the determination that our stay in Callie will be shorter than initially anticipated. Whenever we land someplace we intend to stay, however, we will be buying a house.

One thing that McArdle doesn’t really discuss enough is that outside of certain areas, the options for renting are comparatively limited once you’re looking for family-sized abodes. There were a good 30 or so houses for sale when we moved here that met our specifications, but only three to rent. One of which was taken off the market while we were looking, one of which we could only get a one year lease on, and one of which was 40% more per month than we wanted to pay. We settled on the second. We had so little leverage that we had to pay a separate $3000 deposit for our dog.

Before I started getting the desire to really set up somewhere, I was getting big into the idea that we should swing back to being much more of a renter’s society. I think there is a good chance that it will happen. I think there is actually likely to be good for the economy if it does (though it could exacerbate inequality problems). On the other hand, I am an American. And Americans believe in home ownership. I am not immune. While I hope an increase in rental property would bring with it more options for renters as it pertains to pets and such - for instance - and even property management (Painting your own walls, longer-term lease options, a treehouse in the back yard), it’s hard to say if this would come to fruition (I suppose I would need to look at places where large numbers of people rent houses).

Clancy and I are sort of at odds when it comes to housing preferences*. I want to live in town, she wants to live out of town. Prior to this, I thought apartment complexes were great, while she wanted something different. These sorts of things matter less when it comes to family-sized places, though, where with the exception of intown vs out, I agree that back yards are good and that apartment buildings are not entirely desirable. As it stands now, in most places I have lived, which you want makes a big difference on buying or selling. Yes, you can buy a condo/apartment, and you can rent a house (we have), but the market is definitely geared in one way or the other. So a part of the crunch is giving Clancy the kind of living she would prefer (it matters more to her than to me, so with the exception of intown/out, she wins) while not getting bogged down in a mortgage. It would be nice if it weren’t so clear cut. I am hoping that we do reach that point. Though it would likely be too late for us, because we will hopefully be settled down somewhere in a house that we own.

* - There is a huge condo near downtown Colosse. The east side of the condo faces the skyline and society. The west allows you to see way off into the distance and watch the sunset. There are two kinds of people, those that would want an eastern view and those that would want a western. It should be pretty obvious where Clancy and I disagree on which we would get (if I could convince her to get a condo in downtown Colosse to begin with).

Somewhere along the way, I read that rapper Pitbull (the guy who does those Dr Pepper commercials) named himself such because pitbulls are banned in Miami-Dade County, where he is from. As good a rationale as any, I suppose.

Soap opera actor Nick Santino killed himself after euthanizing his pitbull:

Last week, soap opera actor Nick Santino euthanized his beloved five-year-old Pit Bull, Rocco — a decision that he said was forced on him by his New York condo board, which has a policy that bans residents from owning the breed.

Just hours later, Santino took his own life, writing that he had “betrayed his best friend,” reported the NY Post. “Rocco trusted me, and I failed him. He didn’t deserve this.”

A board member told the newspaper that Santino’s death had “nothing to do with the pet policy.” Apparently, the dog had been grandfathered in and wasn’t subject to the policy, but Santino claimed that he’d been harassed about the dog by members of the board.

As much as I love my dog, I can’t imagine going this route. Fortunately for us, we have such a sweet-natured pet that I don’t think we would have much problem finding her a home if push came to shove. And, to be honest, it could. It took a lot of negotiating, some luck, and a $3000 deposit to be able to have our dog where we live. We suspect it’ll be easier next time because we already have the dog and can vouch for the fact that she is house-trained and well-behaved. Some of the resistance was due to the fact that we were going to be getting a puppy and it was an unknown how many accidents would occur on the way to house-training. Even so, we couldn’t get the second dog we intended to due to lease restrictions and circumstance.

And it seems likely the case that Santino had… issues, apart from the dog. It’s not uncommon for there to be some confusion over implementation of something like a pet ban where people who should have known didn’t know that his was (allegedly) grandfathered in. It is my position that any and all pet bans should have grandfather clauses. Telling someone they have to get rid of their pet to continue to live where they are living is a bigger deal than telling someone that they can’t move in with a pet. I say this as someone that has moved to a place, and may move to another place, where pickings are slim without a pet and slimmer with one.

I am rather resistant to pet bans on the whole, when it comes to entire cities, towns, or even developments. It’s one thing for an apartment owner to ban something on their property, but another for some a city or an HOA to ban it on property you own. On the other hand, I can only imagine the problems with a parrot in a condominium, or a horse in a residential neighborhood (you should see the stuff they lay on our sidewalk…). And poultry. So I am not absolute on this. But dogs, cats, and pigs, among other things, I would not only vote against but might even get involved in (even if it was only cats, which I am not a huge fan of).

Tangentially, but “pitbull” should be one word. I think our language fails in combining words when they should be. Meatloaf should be one word. Barenaked, too. And, alot should be one. Firefox’s spellcheck only agrees with me on one of the three. Actually one of four, since spellcheck should also be a single word.

So I just finished taxes and got them sent off the other day. The taxes for 2010, that is. We had a heck of a time getting information on student loan interest payment history, and there was a few hundred dollars hanging in the balance and so we decided to wait. The downside to this is that because we missed the October deadline, we couldn’t efile. That meant that once I had the information, I had to re-start from scratch. Among the less helpful things:

1) The student loan problem.

2) My wife’s credit card company, which doesn’t grant online access to history more than a couple months old. In order to get old statements, I have to snail-mail a request form in and pay $10 per statement. This mattered because we had some moving expenses to deduct and they were paid for on her credit card.

3) If Bank of the Northern Hemisphere sent the 1099, we didn’t get it or we lost it. And they didn’t have a copy of it on file. Nor could they simply look the information up. Instead we had to track my account and try to calculate/estimate. But even then, we only had access to the information on the open account. We closed an interest-generating account in 2010 and we couldn’t retrieve information on that. I would say that it is our fault for expecting them to have 1099 that are so old, but they were more than happy to give me copies of 1099 forms for 2008 and 2009. I guess after that, they stopped keeping them? Nobody could say.

The good news is that we will be rewarded for our efforts. And I will have to start complaining a little less about taxes. We’re getting a 5-figure refund. 2011 taxes should yield less of a return because of some “debt-forgiveness” involving her initial sign-on bonus (the one we used to buy the Forester).

We have not yet received our 2011 1099 from BNH, though we didn’t close any accounts that year, so there shouldn’t be a problem.

One of the nice things about the house where we live is our yard. It’s just over a half-acre. It’s a wonderful yard.

The problem is that we have this wonderful yard that we can almost never use. It is constantly being watered.

Last summer, it started around 3 or 4 in the morning and was done by the time I got up, unless I was getting up early to make the drive to Redstone for substitute teaching. But they went in and made some changes, and the result is that while it’s not literally on all the time, it’s on far more than it’s off.

It works in rotation. This part of the lawn is being watered. Then that part. The rotations don’t last all that long, so it’s not like from 7-9 it’s here, 9-11 it’s there. Instead it seems to go on 15 or maybe 30 minute intervals. So this means, even if you are in a part of the yard that is not being watered, it’s liable to go off and any point.

I’ve gotten nailed twice, smoking by the side of the house.

It does make the lawn look fabulous. It’s far greener this year than it was last year. But last year, at least, I was able to go out onto the yard.

If I have any daughters, there are a lot of things where I just don’t know how it’s going to work out. Partially because I was raised in a male family (even my mother had a tomboy streak).

There’s also, of course, the nail polish issue. Longtime Hit Coffee readers will recall that I have an unusual aversion to nail polish. So of course I would never want any daughter of mine wearing it. Ever.

But as my wife continually points out, in the greater scheme of things, that’s a pretty poor battle to pick. All too true. But still. Gah!

Well, I think I’ve come up with a solution. The same one that Clancy came up with and boys with long hair. You’re free to do it, so long as you take care of it. So with boys and long hair, they can have it but they have to keep it well-groomed. Otherwise, they have to get it cut off.

Well, the same would be true of nail polish. I’m not going to object, unless they do a half-arsed job with it. I don’t like nail polish in any context, but I particularly hate it when it’s half peeled off and not maintained. So if I could avoid that, I would be coming out ahead. AND, perhaps more importantly, it would make having (and maintaining) nail polish a pain in the ass. A disincentive.

So I think that will be my solution.

Now, if they want a nose ring, that’s the part where I suspect Clancy objects and I take the opposite tact.

“We need to choose our battles, sweety, at least it’s not nail polish.”

Among other things, being a Truman means accepting a degree of criticism. Sometimes spoken, sometimes not. The only real way to avoid it is to set your entire life up around avoiding it, doing things that don’t make sense on any level but that the folks think it should be so.

When Clancy and I fly down, my parents like to pay their air-fare. Clancy doesn’t particularly care for accepting help from either of our parents. So what to do? This is only one layer of the problem, though, because even if we do let them pay, it doesn’t end there.

Clancy and I both have long legs. We suffered our knees at the hands of small airline seats for some time. Now, we can afford the extra leg room. If we’re paying. Mom and Dad can afford the extra leg room, too, for us or for themselves. But they view it as an extravagance.

Now, we could say “Don’t worry, Mom and Dad, we’ll take care of the extra leg room.” But then it sounds like the seats they would have bought us is just not good enough for our spoiled little selves. So no, no, they will take care of it. But they will be a little bit surprised at the decision we made with their money.

So the main way to please them is to spend the entirety of the flight in pain and be appreciative that they supplied us with what we didn’t exactly want.

Another example is when it comes to going out to eat. The only time I can visit Happy Burger is when I am back in the south (or southwest). And I am appreciative when Dad takes me. It’s an old custom that he and I go to Happy Burger together and order from their great breakfast menu or whatnot. We used to do this every Saturday. It was bonding.

Periodically, Dad would have coupons for something in particular. When he did, I would usually get whatever the coupon was for. Since Happy Burgers were everywhere around, I could always get what I want next time.

It’s a little more complicated now, though, becuase there are only a limited number of “next times” before I return to the northwest where HB isn’t available. And, since I am gone so much, they could have a coupon for every day of the week. So I want to make every visit count. I’ll pay the $4 on my own to get what I want. That, of course, would disappoint them for not being as appropriately accepting of his generosity (and breaking tradition).

So the main solution is to squander half of my visits to Happy Burger eating foot I don’t want in order to save money that I would be more than happy to spend.

There are other solutions to each predicament. In the past, I’ve ordered the plane tickets and then sent Dad an edited bill that eliminates the extra-legroom surcharge. Last time we went to Happy Burger, I simply stole the coupon that he was going to use, so we could “wing it” (aka ordering what we were in the mood for).

UPDATE: Brandon Berg points out that a link to my Dinner With The Trumans post is an appropriate linkage here. I agree.

Clancy and I had long considered it a tragedy that any children we had would not have any cousins. My brother Oliver seemed to be too jaded by his first marriage to want to try again and have a family. My brother Mitch’s wife declared that she did not want children. Clancy’s sisters declared that they did not want to have children.

Truth be told, we had our doubts about Clancy’s youngest sister, Zoey, who we did believe would settle down and have kids if she could just find the right guy. And Ollie found the right woman shortly after it appeared that he was never going to marry again and they now have two kids. Ellie’s second husband has a couple of kids and she has become a step-mother who is taking the role seriously.

What’s strange, though, is that it’s becoming entirely possible - if not probable that every one of our siblings will end up having kids. Zoey was recently devestated when her long-distance relationship with a guy stateside was terminated as she arrived home. To hear her talk of it, it sounded like he might have been the one. And, as she rapidly approaches thirty, the subject is weighing differently on her mind as it did when she was twenty. That was the easy one.

When Ellie first posed a hypothetical “If I have a child” I was rather shocked, because she never struck us as the type of person that would consider it ebven hypothetically. I passed it on to Clancy with a “There’s hope?” header. She dismissed it. I figured she was right. But when she recently visited us in Arapaho, she made it explicit: she’d like to give her husband another child. I’d honestly thought that she’d had a tubal ligation on her 25th birthday.

Then there’s my sister-in-law Brynne. The Truman family’s relationship with Brynne remains somewhat complicated, in large part because of the children question. Mitch is a natural born father and it flummoxed us that he would marry someone who discounted the notion of children. But not only did Brynne do so, but we also kinda-sorta determined that it was probably for the best. She, like Ellie, didn’t really seem motherhood material.

And yet, she’s apparently been talking to some members of the Charles Clan (the group we go to Shell Beach with), saying that she is considering it. She also used those words… “if… I… have…”

And perhaps more shockingly still, it’s appearing that she might not be a bad mother after all. One of the little Charles girls has absolutely latched on to her, and she’s really good with her. Now, being an “aunt” is not the same as being a mother, but that she actually has the warmth with kids came as a surprise. Mom and I are both thinking that she would do it — if she was sure that she would get a daughter.

These are all varying degrees of possible. Zoey likely will have kids. Ellie is somewhat less likely, and Brynne less likely still.

Even so, it’s all quite heartening. One of the things that Clancy and I have wondered about is who we would leave our future kids with if something were to happen with us. Even if Ellie and Brynne decide the other way, we now have little or no doubt that they would take our children in in a pinch. Prior to all of this, we were honestly considering cousins and non-relatives.

It’s all a weird unfolding of the maxims about biological clocks come true. Wheter they change their minds or not, that they are considering it, all approaching thirty or in their early thirties, is just not what I expected. Clancy has always wanted kids, though it’s become a more urgent matter in recent years. Not just for logistical reasons, but also because of the way that she melts when she sees little ones. There’s been a pronounced change.

We live in a retty ratty side of town. Whenever Clancy meets a new patient who lives within proximity to us, she internally groans. We have a really nice house, but it’s on a quadruple lot. A couple blocks down are trailer parks and houses that were smaller than I thought they made houses that weren’t trailers. Most of our neighbors seem to either be older folks, young folks who inherited property they couldn’t otherwise afford to buy, or groups of young people living together.

The houses to our south have a more suburban and family sort of atmosphere, though. But our house faces north and is on the north side of the yard. So they’re mostly people we just see through the back window.

It’s a shame because the location is pretty handy. We’re catacorner to the elementary and middle schools. We’re less than a five minute walk to the high school. Maybe a ten minute walk to downtown. On the west side is a neighborhood of large and expensive houses, a little bit closer to downtown though farther from the schools. It seems likely that if we were to stay in Callie, that’s where we would end up. If I got my way, anyway. If Clancy gets hers, we’d end up on some vast stretch of land outside of town.

Strangely enough, three of the four people who lived adjacently to us do not live adjacently to us anymore.

Across the street was a family that just seemed to disappear one night, leaving their dog behind. The dog would howl up a storm. I would have been worried, but someone was stopping by to take care of him. So I was more annoyed. I wondered if it might be a vacation, but who vacations in March in a place where there’s no Spring Break? They finally came back and started moving stuff. They were replaced, very briefly, by a couple of military guys. They didn’t stay. I don’t think they were meant to, as there was a “For Sale” sign up a day or two after they arrived. Now it’s a vacancy.

Next to us on the west is a college professor who is part of a really, really small gay community. Possibly a gay community of one. He drove a Cooper Mini, which is not a common car in these parts. We got along with him pretty well, though we didn’t have a whole lot in common with him. He’s retiring and moving to New England after having lived here for a whopping twenty years. Interestingly enough, Buck Branson lives next door to him. Buck was until recently a right-wing city councilman (and the reason we have a 15-mph speed limit on our road). Buck and Gayprof actually got along, though. The new occupants are a couple of young twenty-somethings that I have almost never seen.

On the other side was, until recently, an elderly woman. She and I have talked on occasion. She’s told me some about Callie’s history, her family, and so on. She’s also talked about our health care system, intimated that doctors these days are a lazy bunch (yes, she knew my wife is a doctor), and was in general someone who has determined that, at age 93, too old to keep any of her opinions to herself. Which made talking with her difficult, if informative about the town’s history (which, of course, includes a mysterious murder). Her house was invaded by her extended family that were picking the place clean and it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen her in a while. Sure enough, she died. The turnaround on the house was very quick. The new owner is apparently going to divide-and-rent it. It honestly seems like a pretty small place to try to do that.

Clancy and I took a trip to Alexandria last week for some health care related issues. Her coworker, Sharon Alvarez, and her husband Jack, were in California taking care of their injured (adult) kid and couldn’t sit the dog. Fortunately, I knew of another neighbor, Buck Branson, who was able to check in and let Lisby out during the day and back in at night. After we got back, Buck stopped by to return the key with cigarette in hand. That latter part is a bit of an issue because we have an enclosed sun-room and the smell lingered throughout the house for a while. Buck has seen me outside smoking and probably thought it was a non-issue. Given the smell of the Branson house (smoke+pets) he has simply lost his sense of smell. Or possibly, it’s that he is of a different generation and has not updated his social convention.

That last one wouldn’t surprise me as a key component. It’s not just that he’s elderly, but he’s rather old school. A right-wing former marine with a door mat espousing his patriotism and contempt for anyone that doesn’t share it. Until recently he was a city councilman and a strong supporter of a far-right candidate for the state house in the last election. But he’s not a bad guy. Very friendly towards me. Even friendly to the guy who lives in the house between us, a gay fellow with alternating colors of dyed hair and ear rings. But he has his people, and if he knew more about me he would probably know that I, like our mutual neighbor, am not really one of them.

Which seems to be how it goes in Callie. I’ve met some pretty great people out here. I’ve met very few rude people. There’s very little to be concerned about. It’s really not a question of whether or not the people here are nice. They are. And I don’t care about the junk in the front yards as such. But they’re emblematic of a background that I was raised apart from. They’re nice, but we’re not their people. They seem to be people that have been in Arapaho for generations. Or people that specifically moved to Callie for things that don’t interest me all that much, like this whole “outdoors” business.

A year has passed since we’ve moved to Callie and I’ve been trying to think of ways to meet people with whom this problem does not exist. Perhaps if we relocate within town (Callie actually has a lot of college grads as a portion of the population) we’ll have neighbors we are more in sync with. I’m still thinking that they exist, if I could only find them. As it stands, I feel like we’re on the losing side of homogeny.

I was counting on the bowling alley. Really counting on it. I didn’t realize how much I was counting on it until I found it out closed about six months before we got here. I was thinking, join a bowling league, get randomly assigned, meet some people. Easy enough! If only there were a bowling alley.

I’ve thought about going to church again. I actually mean to. But Sundays come and go and I end up sleeping in. I am also a bit anxious about joining a church and not liking it there. It’s a small enough town that I would be seeing many perishoners around town, wondering why I haven’t been coming to church lately. I feel like it’s just as well that we sold the car that had the Episcopal shield on it, because I was afraid that I might get recruited.

I thought about Toastmasters once, and even drove to the bank where they hold their meetings, but they didn’t have it that week. I went to a couple of high school football games last year. Had fun, but it was more something to do rather than a social event.

It could be that my social network will end up in Redstone. There are more people and, I would think, clubs that can be joined. Or… something. Redstone is pretty similar, though, that the people that live there are from there. They’re the people that couldn’t leave there, even. Almost everybody our age is married and has kids. And though I’m married, Clancy doesn’t really have time to do couple’s things. And since I’m married, there are a lot of single young male things that I can’t do. And others that I won’t do because I’m not 20 anymore in any event.

It seems increasingly unlikely that we’re going to be staying in Callie. Partially for all of the reasons above, but also due to the job demanding more of Clancy than she’s going to want to be giving once there are kids in the picture.

Of course, the kids might change everything. Social isolation no matter where we are, so less in the way of opportunity costs. Or actually improvement, by being a family in such a family-oriented place. Which wouldn’t be the worst thing since the town is safe and the schools are good. It’s a good community, if we can manage to find our place within it.

One of the things that has struck me since getting back to Colosse is how strong the economy is down here. All of the headlines and statistics about the lack of jobs out there did not leave me thinking that I would get down here and see what I’ve seen. There’s a huge billboard, saying “Know Linux? We want to talk to you?” The “Now Hiring” signs for retail jobs and the like, that I figured may have disappeared with the recession, are still there. Those are crummy jobs, to be sure, but still jobs. My friend in the pacific northwest struggled to find even retail work. And such jobs are not well publicized in Arapaho. A part of me thought Colosse might be different, and to some extent it actually is.

Granted, a lot of what I see is in the IT sector, which in Colosse and elsewhere is doing better than a lot of other sectors. But what I have seen has been pretty astonishing. And it keeps coming up. The Colosse office of Commodus, my sorta-employer, is apparently hemorrhaging employees. There are some reasons why the employees are dissatisfied, but even so, I figure in this American economy, you hold on to what you have for dear life. But they’re either finding jobs elsewhere or confident that they can. My brother Ollie changed jobs to shorten his commute. I thought quality-of-life job changes were a thing of the past.

On Saturday night I went to a party and struck up a conversation with a guy who was very interested in my professional background when he found out I was in IT. His employer is desperately looking for people. He gave me his card and told me to give him a call if I moved back to Colosse. I told him that was unlikely, but that I knew people. He hoped that I would let them know about his company so that they would send their resumes in. They have unfilled positions across the board, and those new employees they have gotten, they’ve picked off from other employers. Which, if they are able to do that, means that the problem isn’t that they are offering uncompetitive wages.

On Sunday I spent a few hours with my friend and former roommate Hubert. Hubert is part of recruiting as his (IT) employer, and the problem they’re seeing is not being deluged with applicants, as I would have guessed, but rather that the people they interview are apparently comfortable asking for astonishingly high wages (wages that I would be uncomfortable asking for despite a much better background than they seem to have). Things seem here like they felt in the mid-naughts. Far less spectacular than the nineties, but not like they are in most places.

I still get emails asking me about various contract positions in the Pacific Northwest, so I know it’s not limited to Colosse. When I get down too hard on myself for not being able to find work in Arapaho, I realize that I am not excuse-making when I talk about the local economy. There might not be many places that are hiring, but there are at least some.

Of course, critics of Colosse and the south have rejoinders. The main reason they’re having trouble staffing people is that the south doesn’t educate their population worth anything. This is a pretty crude and inaccurate generalization, though it makes me less dismissive of Richard Florida than I was a couple weeks ago. Given the state of the national economy, people should be flocking to Colosse for the jobs out here. And maybe Colosse’s unswippled nature is making it harder for employers to find people than might be the case in certain Creative Class cities (or places that aren’t so scorching hot).

As someone that has struggled to find work, it’s nice to know that my talents could be of use somewhere, if not a place I am likely to move. It was the emails from Cascadia (as well as the knowledge that Mindstorm has a great file on me if I ever wanted to work there again) that kept me going there for a while.

Megan McArdle wrote a poignant post a little while back about the psychology of unemployment. I want to write a complete post on it, but realize that I probably won’t, so I’ll just link to it here. For people, and men in particular, the inability to find work is one of the most dispiriting things there is. It’s one of the main reasons why I was not nearly as down on the naughts as a lot of people. Yes, wages may have been stagnant, but as long as there are at least jobs, you have a place that you can build from. The lost human capital that comes from chronic unemployment, particularly when employers are free to discriminate against the unemployed, is immense. The hopelessness of realizing that “No, you are not qualified for a better job than one in the service industry” is particularly devastating for people who have much more to offer if given the chance.

We don’t even need the money, at the moment, but it’s still something I’ve felt pretty keenly in my unemployment. Even though my work for Commodus isn’t full-time, and my substitute teaching job is/was… well… substitute teaching, it was at least something. I think back to the people I knew at the dilapidated Belle Rieve apartment complex in Deseret. In some ways, far more pernicious than the… chem lab… and crime was the inability of the people there to find and keep work. Maybe we need to give them bus tickets to Colosse.

I tend to like my showers hot. Very hot. As with so many other things, I rarely go halfway and if I’m not red when I get out of the shower, I’m disappointed. It’s a bit different when it’s 100 degrees outside, though. Whereas I usually cannot get the water hot enough, tonight I couldn’t get it cold enough. And one of the unfortunate things about the humid south in general is that when you get out of the shower, you never really dry off. And I don’t try off that much to begin with. I have no trouble putting clothes on when I’m still damp. It’ll dry off eventually. Except down here I won’t, necessarily. Especially when Dad keeps the thermostat at 80.

I did finally get a shave. I kind of made a quick job of it, on account of the very hot water (I shave in the shower), and have some razorburn on my side.

But it’s good to be clean. I had gone a couple days without a shower, which is socially dangerous in this weather. I also, much to Mom’s amazement, did laundry. I’m much more hawkish about it when my clothes all smell of sweat.

One thing I’ve forgotten about the south is how loud it is outside. The accumulation of bugs make a lot of noise. And there are a lot of furry creatures making noise. Last night I saw a family of racoons. A mother, a father, and six little ones. Actually, I don’t think that racoons are monogamous so it probably wasn’t the father. But there were two large ones and six cubs (or whatever baby racoons are called). Maybe one of the cubs just grew really, really fast. Tonight I saw two possums.

Oh, and there is a bigkillermobile. It’s a truck that makes its way through town periodically, spraying something around. Very noisily.

I’m not particularly sound-sensitive, since I’m hard-of-hearing, but it’s still just weird and requiring some getting used to.

The Corrigan Compound is a series of properties owned by the Corrigan family, which is Clancy’s mom’s side of the family, in Genesis. A rural town in eastern Delosa. Every July 4th they have a family get-together there where cousins and the like all make the trip.

I picked up Clancy at the airport and we headed straight out, arriving to Genesis at two in the morning. Just before I left, I twirked some muscle in my back. The result was that my neck was extremely stiff and I couldn’t easily look behind me. Navigating through Colossean traffic in this condition is not much fun at all. It also meant no croquet (which was fine on account of the heat) and that I was of limited help when it came to moving things (an upside, though not worth the pain).

Probably due in part to the lack of croquet, but no chigger bites this time around, despite the fact that I didn’t use much sulfur.

I’ve found myself getting quieter and quieter at these get-togethers. This time I actually had more things I could talk about, from the job opportunity at Commodus to the substitute teaching, but still often kept to myself. Some of it is because with the Corrigan clans you have to be aggressive to be a part of the conversation. Some of it, though, is an increasing slide into introversion on my part. I think I need to start drinking more.

I did get into a conversation deep into the AM with Hiram and his family. That worked out well because it became a philosophical discussion touching on subjects that I have thought a lot about. It’s easier for me to talk about ideas than me. Except here, of course, with posts like this.

Any time I think of staying there for an extended period of time, I remember… no Internet access. That’s a bitter pill. This time I had to drive a half an hour to the nearest town to be able to get on the Internet. The connection was lousy. I need to figure out tethering, though the 3G on my phone cuts in and out. Also, being out there absolutely kills the battery life on my phone as it continually looks for a better signal. I brought a separate charger and two spare batteries, but even that wasn’t really enough.

Though there is no Internet, there’s finally satellite TV. But there’s no DVR, which makes TV almost unwatchable for me.

Despite my various successes in the dieting arena, I still don’t do moderation very well. I keep telling myself every time I go down to Delosa that I am going to take it easier on the stomach, but it never seems to work out that way. Everyone, from my parents to her extended family, keeps throwing food at me. Not to mention all of the good restaurants I rarely have access to.

The heat has been good for my smoking. Or bad for it, depending on how you look at it. I’m smoking less because while there is pleasure in lighting something on fire and breathing the smoke, doing so when it’s 100 degrees outside and humid just seems… stupid. If I take a soft drink with me, it’s warm within minutes.

I could have told them this for free:

A sample of 477 commercials featuring domestic chores that aired in a week of primetime television programming on all of the broadcast networks was analyzed. Among the key findings: Male characters’ performance of chores was often humorously inept as measured by negative responses from others, lack of success, and unsatisfactory outcomes.

It makes a good point that the result of these ads, other than to elicit a laugh and poke fun at men, is to reinforce stereotypes. I’ve mentioned this before in the past, but there are reasons that women should be wary of this sort of thing as well as men. Men do not like doing things we are not good at. The notion that we will fail, that our wives will roll their eyes at us, and so on, discourages us from trying.

Of course, it works out for me. I score major points with Clancy for my willingness to try to do the household chores. And I told her early on - and she completely understood - that while pointing out how I might do better is welcome, being critical in any sort of harsh way is a good way to get me to give up and stop doing it. And Clancy is great about this. I think that sometimes women forget this.