Perhaps you clicked here looking for a distraction because all your kids were crying inconsolably and you couldn't take it anymore. Perhaps you were overwhelmed with December bills, and this wintry economic climate has you up at night, wondering if you'll be living out of a storage garage and an apartment come Spring -so you decided to read some blogs as an escape. Perhaps you were biding your time on the Internet while you were waiting for the pediatrician to call you back because this collicky madness needs some medication, any medication. Or perhaps you're me.

Oh, it's not so bad. It's just cold out. And by "cold", I mean Southern California cold, which is anything below 64 degrees and 85 percent cloud cover. We have nothing to be depressed about. It's little more than a disenfranchisement from a Sunset Magazine photospread, is all.

Truth is, Mrs. Ditchman tapped me on the shoulder in bed this morning with that look in her eye: you're up. I don't blame her, she was up all night. And then she went off to work today and I got a couple of squirts who refuse to nap like it's their right or something to be awake. Look kids: some things are rights, and some things are responsibilities. There's a difference. If you want the full benefits of our modern society, I suggest you learn what that difference is. And take a nap.

Ahhh, but they're too young. And I should be old enough to handle it. Still. A baby could cry all day in the room and I wouldn't notice -but the baby would wake up the other kid, and then they'd both be crying, and then come meal time: madness for mommy, I get the blame.

It's enough to drive a man to drink, and it all makes me wonder if alcohol was invented by men for just this purpose. You know the stereotype of the deaf old man with the flask of whiskey hidden in the garage? Let me clue you in: he's not deaf. There. The secret's out. (Oh, crap. I've just ruined it for old men everywhere.)

Or perhaps I've just been cooped up in the house for too long. Things aren't looking up: tomorrow they're resurfacing the street and we're not allowed to come or go for 24 hours. I think Mrs. Ditchman is going to "go" early, which leaves me here, imprisoned with the banshees in the Oceanside suburbs.

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Orson Bean in his inimitable role in "Being John Malkovich".

Saturday Afternoon Post!

You may not know who Orson Bean is, and it don't matta. But I heard him tell his story on the radio a few weeks ago and found it to be a totally enthralling and yet altogether simply-put story of redemption. He's quite a storyteller. PowerLine has a great write-up on him (he has a new book out), including most of what I'd heard him relay on the radio, and if you're looking for something worth reading for ten minutes this weekend, I suggest checking it out.

Link.

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I've seen Little Einsteins "A Christmas Wish" about a billion times this week. (Didn't everyone?) Still can't understand why they don't just wish for more wish boxes. I suppose it's like the First Law of Magical Dynamics or something: you can't wish for more wishes. I can accept that. But Santa being so wildly negligent as to let gifts just fall off his sleigh willy nilly? It's enough to compel a kid to be bad for a year. If a UPS driver let that kind of thing happen, he'd have to turn in his brown shorts.

ANYWAY. Friday has come and I have frittered away the week. Nothing was accomplished, excepting that patent necessity: the kids are still alive. I think the tree is mostly decorated. Our star broke, and there's nothing more demoralizing than a busted Christmas tree star. And I was never able to find the properly twinkling lights to finish up the house. Mrs. Ditchman came home with several boxes of flashing lights, but these were flashing lights, not twinkling lights. There's a difference. I went to every Lowe's in North County yesterday and found a few boxes of broken strings (I tested them there in the aisle) but was met at every aisle of lights by a hundred other North County folk in the same conundrum. It was nice though, people helping people, everyone generally in a good mood. Some of us know the difference between icicle lights and rope lights, and that tricky string length that accompanies the icicle lights (don't let the bulb count fool you) so we all worked together, a thousand points of light we were, but this week is like the Christmas Eve shopping day for Christmas lights -busy, crowded, bustling. I mean, hey if you can't get them up on the house by this weekend, then what's the point?

What's the point anyway? Joy. Cheer. Merriment. Clearly, I need to calm down and have some. The Little Digger actually slept through most of last night and this morning there's no crying. No crying! And no pus coming out of his left eye and a nice thickly yellowish stool, not liquified. Joy! Our baby is back, or gracious storks replaced him with a healthier boy last night in that few short minutes where we slept -no matter, we're going with the same name.

So the weekend is looking up. Tomorrow is the day we are invited over to the Jewish side of the family to decorate their Christmas tree. Yes, I know. Don't ask. It's become a tradition all the same. But I have the perfect soundtrack: "Oy to the World" by the Klezmonauts. Available on iTunes, it's worth the 10 bucks. I find it seriously awesome, though some may find it offensive (which, in my mind, is part of its awesomeness.) Don't let the silliness of it fool you, the musicianship on the album is quite good, and often stunning. Their hit single, a klezmer rendition of "Joy to the World", is here for free. Love it! (For some people, Christmas can be really depressing, and that minor key the Klezmonauts hit with "Joy to the World" is so perfectly ironic that it would make even the most sullen Christian look forward to seeing his dysfunctional post-modern American family at a full-tilt roast-beast carving.)

If you need a soundtrack for the car while shopping this weekend, I also suggest the same two Christmas albums I promoted last year, my favorites, Ray Charles' "The Spirit of Christmas" and B.B. King's "A Christmas Celebration of Hope" both available on iTunes this year, and the latter of which has nothing to do with Obama. Also, God bless them, they went back to the original album artwork for "The Spirit of Christmas" -the original vinyl I keep in my X-mess decorations box and bring out every year, and every year I snicker. I'm snickering right now just thinking about it! Here:


Ha! And here's the link to my review of the two albums last year. (No seriously, the music is great.)

Have a merry weekend! Don't cut in line. Complement the sales people. They're miserable.

And happy Martin Van Buren's birthday.


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Two kids means two kids who need to eat in two separate but equally demanding ways, two sets of diapers with equally demanding diaper rashes, two kids crying equally inconsolably -and all at once. Me: hungry, tired, can't pee holding a baby. It was a challenging one yesterday. When Mrs. Ditchman came home from work there was no cheerful "Hi honey, I'm home!" but rather an ass-handing, knowing nod: "Hard, huh?"

My work was passable: the kids were still alive. I tried not to complain. Everything else can be hard enough, but it's frustrating not to be able to get anything done you'd planned on. Oh well. Life gets hard so that your expectations are pointedly lowered -it's one of the things that makes the smiling child so significant as a be-all, end-all necessity. Also, tv is awesome.

Tv. Unless the sentence structure demands it, I try not to uppercase the thing because its never really deserved it, but I will admit that yesterday I was grateful for its empty, time-sucking existence. I had bought a new Little Einsteins DVD for just this occasion, when the Little Ditchman needed a goodly-size distraction while I managed the other digger. Yesterday's disc: "The Christmas Wish," which involves Annie not getting her gift from Santa because it fell off the sleigh. (Bummer!) The other kids all get "wish boxes," you see, in which you get to wish for anything you want and it happens right there in a *poof*! So did the other kids just wish for a million more wish boxes and hand one to Annie? No. They used their wishes in order to get to the top of Mt. Everest, where her gift was sitting, half-buried in the ice. So did they wish for extra oxygen canisters and climbing gear to get there? No. So did Rocket just fly them to the top and pluck it off with his grab-nabber? No. He turned into a snow mobile and plodded uphill through the snow. And then when Annie finally got her wish box, what do you think she wished for? She wished that she could be with her friends on Christmas, which she already was doing. Silly girl. What a waste of wishes. (Oh, Henry...)

So I was unimpressed, but everyone was quiet in the living room for twenty-five minutes and it was awesome. My legitimate wish of the moment came true, which may have been in the mind of the Disney producers all along. (And God bless them, every one!) I suppose there's a moral construct in which the wishing for what one already has is a good and upright thing, however it's nonsensical. It's enough to just be thankful, without which one can never be happy.

I'm thankful for my wife, who can handle this child-rearing work like a Tiger Woods golf swing. Me? I swing a hammer, and I doubt she'd much like that, either, though it's good to switch roles from time to time for the perspective. I suppose God created us to need each other, which would be a funny thing to be thankful for. I admit I'm not particularly grateful that God created me with needs, but I am grateful God created her, for my needs are she, and hers, me. (I hope. Which is another thing entirely.) And I suppose that without this Godly two-by-two construct of needs, there would be no wishing at all, and even less to believe in.


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BEHOLD! The mighty corkboard is complete! Sincere thanks to all those who contributed, especially to Grandma Ditchman, who donated her vast and thorough collection of Charles Shaw wine corks right at the end there. I had to line the bottom gap of the board with those oversized champagne corks that were vexing the precise symmetry of the project (not shown) and low and behold: I was one cork short! So we popped some bubbly, celebrated the finished work, dated the cork and glued it on. Beautiful.

I found it interesting that everyone who sent me a bag of corks had at least one bottle that they were particularly fond of, but on some reflection I suspect it was the price of the bottle that they were fond of. I was going to list the wines here, but then I figured it might embarrass us. That's not to say that I and my wine-drinking friends are cheap! Ho no! There are more than a couple hundred-dollar corks up there on the board. Anyway, come on over and gaze in awe at the glory of the feat.

Over 1100 corks in all. That's a lot of wine.

I will still be saving my corks. I suspect someone else will ask me for them some day. They're all yours.

Took the Little Digger to the doctor yesterday, as if we hadn't had enough of that lately. Seems he has a blocked tear duct. Now, before you lay the whole how-lucky-you-are-that-he-can't-cry nonsense on us, I assure you that it doesn't work that way. Anyhow, he's fine. Except for the additional lingering illness, which our doctor suggested might be the rotavirus, which is one that hadn't occurred to any of us yet. The Little Digger hasn't been quite himself in the past few weeks (whatever that means -he's only five weeks old) so we're going to get some tests done. Today we will collect stool specimens, in the comfort of our home. How fun. Maybe we'll make a family project out of it, with an accompanying lesson to boot.

I have been informed that we are not getting a robot vacuum until the robot technology traverses the stair-cleaning hurdle. It was a perfectly valid point, and one well taken, as cleaning the damn stairs is a pain in the stool-chute. There's no easy way to do it. Suggestions welcome.

In other news, the Little Digger is beginning to produce some legitimate smiles, which brings joy to all the house. This is great, because we could use that around here -but what, exactly, the little guy has to smile about is beyond me. His mother's dedicated ardor, I suppose, but it could be anything. I have to admit that when it was announced yesterday that we would be taking stool samples, I smiled too. It's possible he's laughing at us. So it begins.


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Well, December 1st proved to be something of a desultory start to the final month of 2008. Not sure why it didn't pan out. Yesterday's appointments were cancelled with the old we're-not-done-with-our-remodel-yet-and-not-ready-for-December-shade excuse. Then the new Christmas lights didn't twinkle appropriately. And The Little Ditchman had her first visit to the dentist, which by all accounts was like that Nazi dental torture scene out of Marathon Man. You never expect Josef Mengele to be hired as a children's dental specialist, but I suppose if you ask any child, they'll tell you that they're all Mengele. Later, Mommy and child went to the park where the memory was blocked out, forthwith. No, really. Last night I repeatedly asked her about the dentist, and she repeatedly told me about the park.

Also, I hurt my thumb some time ago. I think I sprained it, whatever that means. There is no swelling, only pain. It's the kind of thing where if you asked a doctor about it, he'd tell you there's nothing wrong with it. But what about all the pain, Doc? **looks at you with disbelief and contempt** Well, stay off of it then. So no thumb push-ups for me for a while. It hurts when I do anything, excepting -of course- typing and mouse rolling. It hurts when I turn the ignition, wash dishes, hold the baby. Hey, it even hurts when I hold a beer -but if you can stand the pain then, you can stand the pain now: so, hold the baby. No winners.

Yeah so, it was a Monday. We did get a tree, though! A nice one, too. Went with Douglas Fir this year, even though we usually go Noble. Tossed it in the back of the truck and brought it home, sore thumb and all, and set it up in the living room and then went to bed. Didn't bother decorating it, which is the first time that's happened. Why decorate it, anyway? The thing looks beautiful as is. It's a special tree, of course, unlike the tall, bristly, overpriced piles of sticks and needles it was surrounded by. Nay, this one has a special sheen to it that called out clear across the lot to us, beckoning our little family to take it home and set it up near the fireplace, where it will live out its last few days shedding its spiny self into a dusty pile. Said dusty pile will somehow end up behind the couch with previous years' dusty piles -a problem easily solved if only Santa would bring me that robot vacuum I've been longing for.

Robot vacuums have come down in price and are on sale, I noticed yesterday, for $150 dollars! It's about $100 more than I'm willing to pay, unfortunately. Directly next to them on the rack were the new model super-robot vacuum, which sold for $350, (and if you can afford that, you can afford a cleaning woman.) It looked like exactly the same robot, which depressed the future. Why the thing can't bring me a beer as it sashays across the hardwood floor whisking up dust mites, is beyond me. I mean, for twice the cost it should at least come with salsa.

Mrs. Ditchman is not convinced the robot vacuum will work. Not convinced that the technology is there yet. This from a woman who complains that the current broom doesn't work quite as well as the last broom. I did meet someone who had the robot vacuum and I asked them if it worked and they didn't answer. (But I believe they had a cleaning woman, so I should ask her.) Anyway, I know little of brooming qualities, but I have just the place beneath the stairs for the robot vacuum home base. I imagine it happily emerging from its cubby, twice daily, to make it's way around the house to suck up all the cat hair, children's snacks, and last night's spilled rice, while I sit on the couch and toast it as it rolls by doing its robot work. Some day robots will do all the work, and we'll wonder how we ever got anything done.

I hope. Today we'll decorate the tree, which is human work. No robot could ever do that right. Some things will just never take the place of other things.


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Didn't get everything done this weekend, so I'll have to finish it today. But, ayiieeeee, what about everything else I scheduled for today? I'll have to double up. And the year's coming to a close! There's only a twelfth of it left! (A twelfth? It sounds like an inch! This holiday will be over in no time!)

It was impossible to get anything done this weekend because there was a Star Wars marathon, (and on two channels!) I put it on a few times to see how the Little Ditchman would respond. She knows the dialogue ("Luke, I am your father!" -followed by familiar dark, heavy breathing sounds) but what good is it without context? It's time for her galactic education -you have to start the jedi out very young, you know. Mrs. Ditchman didn't much approve, thinking the stuff would be too scary, but it didn't seem to bother the kid -which was odd. Ratatouille gets swiftboated down a sewer and she breaks into a crying fit of fear lasting through a sleepless night, but Jabba sends an ugly to his gruesome death in the Sarlacc pit (where he will be digested slowly over a thousand years) and there is no reaction. Mrs. Ditchman drew the line of concern when the Emperor does the finger-lightning death zap to Darth in the end of Jedi, so I changed the channel. The real concern, though, was the fact that the original trilogy was being aired on SpikeTV with it's sickening fight cage commercials every ten minutes. I would change the channel, and the two-year-old learned what a commercial break was this past weekend.

Watching Star Wars for the billionth time was kinda fun for me, actually, and I got into it -mostly because SpikeTV was airing it in HD which Lucas has steadfastly refused to do on disc yet (greedy rotten bastard -he raped my childhood!) On HD you can really see all the eye shadow they put on space princesses and it gives you a sense of some of the risks they were taking with those prehistoric (uh, pre-digital) special effects. For example, there is this nice composite matte of Han and Lando standing in front of the Millennium Falcon:


But in HD it looks like Han and Lando standing in front of a government building's cafeteria mural of the Millennium Falcon, instead of the real thing.

Anyway, it was geeky sweet to watch on our 42" tv, even though it was obvious that though Lucas gave up an HD print to SpikeTV, he didn't give them the 70mm version, the jerk. All the same, I noticed several things I'd never caught before, like this one-second insert of a stormtrooper just tossing an Ewok aside:



Yes, it's amazing that the Empire was defeated in this, the decisive battle with the lovable Ewoks. (If they had put that particular stormtrooper in command of the galactic armies, the fate of the known universe would have been altogether different.)

Anyway, this is the month it all gets finished up for the year! I've got some planting to do, photo files to archive, home movies to edit for posterity, and all the rest of the 2008 business files and receipts to log and pack away, ready for tax accounting. And Christmas lights to hang! (I started this yesterday, but got some dead strings. Now I'll have to go a-hunting at every store for similarly colored strings that have lights with matching twinkle patterns.)

And then there's the small matter of the tree.


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