3:45AM: cries of Daddy! Daddy! from the other room. Glancing at the clock I felt it was safe, all the little demons back in their respective household spider holes, and I fumbled into the Little Ditchman's room to try and do... what? What am I gonna do? Stroke her back, comfort her, offer her some water, pray she goes back to sleep -and soundly. She did.
Welcome to parenting. There's no way out. It occurred to me last night, in the middle of the night, that I had no idea what I was doing. If the child had not fallen asleep, I would have just waited until my wife slogged in to hand me my ass. I did the job well enough, however, and headed back to bed. The last thought that floated through my head before the train to Sleepytown arrived was that this child would die if it wasn't for Mommy. I'm just not capable. The survival rate in my fish tank isn't even 70 percent.
House is still the best written show on television, despite the fact that last night's episode (rerun) broke the glass ceiling of total barfing shots in a one-hour television drama. Rerun! Striking writers be damned! I have no sympathy for these people (sorry). It's clear that everyone in Hollywood is overpaid (just look at the sum product) and furthermore, there are plenty of struggling writers out there who would do the job for less (me).
Last night's rerun of House, by the way, almost lost the title of "Best Written Show on Television". The trophy fell off the mantle when the patient was going under the drill for an obviously unnecessary brain surgery, and one of the diagnosticians was at her house, investigating her basement. When he found that fumigation pesticide was coming through a drain pipe from the neighbor's, why, she didn't need brain surgery after all! He picked up his cel phone and called the surgeon in the OR, stopping the drill just as it was being sunk into the patient's skull -in the nick of time!
Sheez.
It wouldn't have been so bad if they hadn't had all these set-up shots of the doctors shaving her head and powering up the drill,cue the moody music and cross-cut with the diagnostician at the patient's house, putting on a gas mask and discovering her dead cat. Anyway, Hugh Laurie saved the show, as he always does. The guy is terrific, though I'm having a hard time taking him seriously since I noticed him as Jasper, the greasy henchman in the remake of 101 Dalmations (1996).
Hilarious. And talk about writers deserving more money! This is evidence that there is both untapped talent in the universe, and horrible overpaid writers. For every remake and sequel in Hollywood, there is a hack cashing a hundred-thousand dollar check. Still, they strike! I think we should have a viewers strike, but then that would be called a protest, and it would smack of politically incorrectitude. I'll protest bad work all the same. You pay these people to entertain you. If they were working on your house and did a bad job, you'd complain.
Well, today is a day off of work so I can bust my ass around the house! Packing for a trip is an exhausting endeavor for the Ditchman family, and it always provokes ire. It doesn't help that everyone is feeling under the weather in one way or another. I was informed last night, when I got home from work, that my sister's family in Hawaii is experiencing a household epidemic of the stomach flu, causing my brother-in-law to stay home from work for the first time ever.
It almost moved me to tears.
