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January 5, 2008

I'm sorry, so sorry...




Alright, I’m a little surprised by the vehemence in some of the emails I’ve received concerning my January 3rd post about my diapering techniques. Yes, I admit it, I’m new to the whole daddy thing, but I’m doing the very best I can and if anyone has any suggestions, I’m willing to take them under advisement and do my best to upgrade my parenting skills. With that said, I’d like to take this opportunity to respond to a couple of the emails that took me to task for being an uncaring father.

Trailer Gurl in Festering Sore, Arkansas wrote: Dear Mr. DorkStar: I can’t believe what a lazy father you are! Even my husband has the decency to go outside and hose down the baby after the diaper falls off. You are probably too busy sucking down your double Mocha Latte snooty Espresso coffee to show the slightest genuine iota of caring towards your son.

Dear Trailer Gurl: First off, I am lactose intolerant and simply cannot drink Lattes. Felicia is insistent about this and says, “If I’d wanted a house run on gas I wouldn’t have installed all the electrical appliances.” As for being too lazy to hose down my son once his diaper has fallen off in the yard you have sorely underestimated my attention to details in perfecting my diapering technique. You see, it has been a bitterly cold winter here in Ohio and it has been my experience that every time I hosed the boy down from the comfort of my back porch he became encased in a block of ice and froze solid to the ground. The dogs just couldn’t pick him up and return him to the warmth and safety of the house. As a caring father I just couldn’t continue leaving him outside like that until his momma got home from work.

Granola Mom in Mother Earth, California wrote: Dear DickStare: It is because of dung-hole fathers like yourself that our planet is in the shape it is today. Have you no consideration of the planet at all? If you weren’t so busy sitting on your sofa, sipping your Highlander Grog coffee and reading Cigar Quarterly magazine while polluting your mind with Rush Limbaugh on the radio you wouldn’t be wasting God’s precious gift in your little one’s diapers. Don’t you realize how easily recycled your baby’s poop is? House plants are a wonderful way of recycling baby poo-poo and as an extra bonus they fill the home with fresh oxygen. Surely you want your baby breathing clean air.

Dear Granola Mom: First off, you clearly are not a regular reader of my blog or you’d know that I would never expose my son to the toxic ruminations of Rush Limbaugh. I’d like my son to grow up with a healthy and poison free mind. I did run your house plant idea by Felicia and once she stopped laughing at me she sent me to the computer and had me type out one thousand times; I will not take advice from bloggers on the Internet. Yeah, it took me all night to do it too. Thanks, not!

Jeez, you people act like I’ m Brittney spears or something...


January 3, 2008

Cause I'm mobile...





It is one of the great mysteries of parenthood that although you go to sleep knowing who your child is, upon waking you have no idea who will greet you. You can’t imagine it until you have a child of your own. They change faster than the patterns in a kaleidoscope. They go to sleep having loved green beans for a month and the next day they’ll never eat them again. Yesterday’s favorite toy is tomorrow’s forgotten relic.

Watching a child grow and develop intellectually is a marvel to behold. As you spend time with them there are moments where you can watch the light come on in their eyes. One second they are flailing and wailing and the next they’ll reach out a tiny finger as deftly as a concert pianist and push a button on a toy again and again and again. They’ll squeal with joy and give you a look like they just completed their college thesis and are bursting with pride in the achievement. It is a magical process that occurs on a near daily basis.

As I sat on the sofa this morning nursing my first cup of coffee I knew from the moment he worked his way through a three hundred and sixty degree spin what was coming next. I saw the lights go on in his eyes. As quickly as possible I sprinted for the new video camera and prepared to catch the magic moment. No sooner had I turned on the camera and adjusted the focus he crawled for the very first time. It was simply amazing...

On the darker side of parenting, there are things beginning to appear in his diapers that simply cannot be the result of any natural biological process I’ve ever heard of in my lifetime. When I open his diaper to confirm my olfactory suspicions, as God is my witness, cockroaches come crawling out their hiding places and die in writhing agony. Neighborhood rodents have placed tiny signs on lour lawn that read: Abandon all hope ye who enter within.

I left one sitting on the front porch a while back and we haven’t been bothered by a door to door salesman in weeks. We haven’t had much mail either but hey, no news is good news. I just can’t figure it out. We’re putting only the purest of ingredients into him. Where are the hot-steaming, foul-smelling, toxic piles of horrendous byproduct in his diapers being produced? This is the apple of my eye, the very fruit of my superior loins we’re talking about here. Surely this can only be the result of something contributed by the mother.

I’m working on a technique where I undo one of the Velcro fasteners, scoop him up with a snow shovel, roll him out of the back door on to the lawn and wait for the diaper to fall off before sending one of the dogs out to fetch the boy back inside the house. (The snow we’ve had lately has proven to be a Godsend because now he’s clean when the dogs bring him inside.) If anyone has any other ideas on dealing with the situation please don’t hesitate to pass them along because at this point I’ m willing to try most anything.

This home fathering thing is definitely not turning out to be the cakewalk I envisioned it to be when Felicia first agreed to the idea. (I should have known something was up when she kept grinning and chuckling all the time.) She thinks she's so smart, but what she doesn’t know is that I’ve been saving up my allowance and I’m going to hire me a nanny. I just hope she doesn’t quit on me when I ask her to change one of his diapers.

Now do you people see why I’m so cranky about my politics?

December 31, 2007

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose...

The yuletide holiday has been pulled down, put in boxes and put away until next year. Only moments remain in 2007 and I hope they are filled with merriment for all of my blogger friends across the world. Felicia and I will be bringing in the New Year with Micah. It will prove to be an evening free of lead contaminants, drunks, Neocons, illegal aliens and Christian conservatives. Oh, sweet serenity.

Did you have a good Christmas? It was a fine one here in the Bauman home, filled with lots of goodies under the tree and a warm and loving spirit in our hearts. My favorite gift from Felicia was a camcorder the size of a pack of cigarettes called Flip Video. Within minutes of unwrapping it I was taking videos of Micah. It is easy to use and connects with both the television and computer so I can post them to my blog. How cool is that?

Our trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee was fun and Micah seemed to have a good time too. It was fairly crowded and at times it was a bit difficult to maneuver through all the people walking through the strip but we still had a good time shopping and eating at some fun restaurants. The weather could have been more cooperative, but again, we worked around it just fine.

It has certainly been an interesting year for Felicia and I and I’m sure we’ll have our fair share of adventures and learning experiences. I’m sure most of them will wind up as posts of one sort or another. Speaking of learning opportunities...

Spending a week with Pepper and her mother Jane was one of the best times of my entire year. Truly I mean it when I say they are two of the most incredible women I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. Several days after they departed for adventures further on down the line I began to experience a spiritual malaise. For weeks and then months I felt as if something had been taken from me and I was spiritually wounded. I couldn’t figure out what was going on with me and for the life of me I couldn’t put a name to the aching in my soul.

I couldn’t blog. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t leave the house. I took care of my son and that was about the full extent of my life. It was as deep a funk as I’ve ever dealt with in all my fifty plus years. Then one night the answer began to percolate in my mind and at long last bubbled forth into my consciousness

The epiphany I’d been refusing to accept was that I found myself filled with a terrible jealous envy of Pepper and Jane. I was shocked...

All of my life I have journeyed with the wind. Whenever the breezes have beckoned I have hoisted my sails and traveled wherever whim or fancy has called me. I’ve always had the option of leaving wherever I am for some other adventure. Even in my marriage Felicia has always left me the option of moving on if I’m not happy. I have lived free and unfettered for a very long time. All that ended when the little man entered my life. My journeys with the wind ended with his birth and it wasn’t until I ran wild with Pepper and Jane for a week that the realization of it truly dawned upon me.

Don’t get me wrong. Yes, the option of running with the wind is a wonderful freedom, but Micah is not something I can ever leave behind. No option exists, he is my son and I have no choice but to love him and spend as much time as I have remaining to me loving him and preparing him, as best I can, for his journey with the wind. I have no regrets about losing my options. I just had to grieve a bit for something lost that had been an important part of my identity for a long time.

Fatherhood and being a husband to Felicia are the best experiences of my entire life. Period. Love and a son are more than ample compensation for the loss of a little freedom. I can let go of the wind...

My dad died Christmas Day leaving me as the oldest living survivor in the Bauman family. I find myself this New Year’s Eve thinking more about time than any illusion of freedom. Will I have enough time to spend with my son? Will I have enough time as the patriarch of the Bauman family to mend old wounds and heal broken familial ties? Will I have enough time for Felicia’s love to bear fruit and bring forth the best in me she sees but which I still have trouble believing exists in my broken soul?

Family...

A word I thought I’d never understand let alone experience.

It is the greatest freedom a man can ever know.

Thank you, everyone for reading my blog. I know that I anger people sometimes. I know I perplex people sometimes. I’m just an enigma trying to make sense of things and sometimes my frustration gets the best of me.

Happy New Year, everybody. I hope we all find the time we need this year to tell our loved ones how much they mean to us and how much we love having them to share our lives with.




December 30, 2007

2007 Eddie Award Winners

2007 Eddie Awards


Winners may click on the Eddie Award at the top of the page and collect the code for your award. Simply copy the HTML code then paste it in your page or sidebar and the Eddie will be there for all the world to see.


Welcome to the second annual Eddie Awards presentation.


As the year 2007 draws to an end I again wanted to acknowledge a few of the blogs that I believe surpass the normal standard. Some of the awards are based on content while others are based upon the characteristics of the people who post the blog.


My first award goes to Rookie of the Year-Aileen. The "Horch Family Blog" is a wonderful example of free thinking and even freer writing. You never know what you'll find at the Horch Family Blog and I always get a kick out of reading whatever Aileen is talking about on any given day. I've had the great joy of meeting Aileen and her family and let me tell you they are a wonderful group of folks. Check out her blog. Its a hoot!

Congratulations!


My second award again goes to Best Travel Blog of the Year-Little House on Wheels. There are no greater people on the face of the earth than Pepper and her mother. Felicia I had the pleasure of spending one of the best weeks of our entire year journeying along the roads of Ohio with these two delightful women. Felicia and I will never forget these two incredible souls and if they are ever in our area again we will never forgive them if they don't come visiting. This continues to be a inspiring story that will truly enrich the daily reading of us all.

Congratulations!


My next award goes to Most Inspirational Blog of the Year-Meander. What hasn't this girl endured? On top of all the other challenges life has tossed her way this was the year she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. What I find most inspirational about this woman is the way she deals with each and every new day. Whether in a good mood or bad you can be sure that each is faced with verve and passion. Meander lives in the moment and speaks of her life with honesty and integrity. I admire her because she does not waste precious moments trying to answer the unanswerable question, why. Life isn't about why, it is about how. Why things happen isn't as important as how we live the moments we are granted. Do we waste the wonder of our daily lives constantly dredging up the past and sobbing why or do we accept the reality of each moment and live it as best we can? Meander lets me know it is ok to have both good and bad days. I don't have to know why, I just have to live as best I can.

Congratulations!


My next award goes to Best New Voice of the Year-Wizened Wizard. Last year I awarded this blog for being the best nature blog of the year. I loved her photographs and marveled at her photographic skills. This year I have marveled at the way her writing voice has come alive. I may not always agree with her views, but I have become increasingly impressed with the way she expresses her opinions. This blog is as interesting to read as it is to look at and I highly recommend reading her blog on a daily basis.

Congratulations!


My next award goes to Hardest working blogger-Cynical Bastard. What can I say about the cynical bastard that hasn't already been said by almost every other blogger handing out awards? What trophy hasn't this man been awarded? What possible recognition is this man lacking? What accolade has this man been denied? Only one and now that oversight has been corrected. Seriously, I love the humor and the joy this man brings to the blogosphere. His mom is pretty cool too.

Congratulations!


My final award goes to Best Blog of the Year-Brokeass Weave. I love the writing on this blog. This girl presents a richly detailed world populated by vibrant and entertaining characters. Whenever I need a laugh to brighten my day this is the blog I visit. Please visit this amazing site and spend some time with Lurlene and her friends. Warning: This site is adult-in-yer-face-funny. Christian Conservatives should read only with a faith healer standing by.

Congratulations!


I hope you will display your award with pride. You earned it with your creative efforts.

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