Curmudgeon takes stock at the end of a very long week

Luann comic, by Greg Evans, obtained from Yahoo! Comics.

If you saw last Saturday's post, you know why this comic struck home with me.

I'm still angry about what happened. How could I have let myself deteriorate to such an extent?

Mind you, I'm not sufficiently motivated yet to do anything about my evident physical decline -- I'm still in the hand-wringing stage -- and, besides, things are too hectic at home for me to take on some sort of conditioning venture. And what would I do anyway? The Chicago Marathon takes place this weekend and thousands of people, many of them older than me, are going to run 26.2 miles. I can't run 26.2 feet.

The good news is that I can bend my legs again without any pain. It only took several days.

Younger Daughter has already called this morning. Whatever is lurking in the fireplace chimney, just above the (thankfully) closed flue, is active again this morning -- not quite dead yet, apparently. Long Suffering Spouse heard it first. It's hard to describe my wife as she hears something alive and amiss: She gets entirely rigid, achingly alert, and waves of tension, maybe like sonar waves, emanate from the vicinity of her head and shoulders. But she was soon satisfied that, whatever it is, it isn't coming in the house anytime soon. Thus, we were able to leave the house and go to work today.

Younger Daughter was not mollified in the least when I related this to her. Long Suffering Spouse predicted how she'd be. "This is unacceptable," she told me. "Call someone to get that thing out of the chimney -- and be here when they get here," she demanded. I suggested she turn on the TV instead so she couldn't hear it. "I had the TV on," she said.

Of course, Younger Daughter's frayed nerves never had a chance to stop twanging: The Beast in the Chimney arrived Wednesday morning. Yesterday afternoon a giant wasp got into the house. (These things happen as we transition from Summer to Fall.) She used about 18 gallons of wasp spray in an effort to dispatch the creature -- she must have missed badly for some time -- and then couldn't find the wasp's carcass. "This is unacceptable," she told me yesterday afternoon. I suggested that, if the dead wasp had fallen to the floor, her baby would find it for her. Just keep an eye on the kid, I said.

Younger Daughter didn't like that one little bit.

Youngest Son is expected home sometime today. He has a week-long Fall break; he has graciously agreed to spend at least parts of three days of that with us. He has to go back to school early next week because he has to begin winterizing the baseball field. It's been gorgeous in the greater Chicago area the last couple of weeks -- but the one certainty about Midwest weather is that, now we're in October, Winter may begin at any moment. There's no transition required.

Long Suffering Spouse had a brutal week at school. She had an evaluation scheduled for yesterday and her principal is using a new method this year requiring the kind of detailed lesson plan that education majors don't have to write in their most paper-intense class. She's been up late every night this week stressing about the evaluation -- and trying to keep up with everything else she has to do. And then she had to schedule a conference with a problem student as well; that was supposed to take place at the end of the day yesterday.

The parent meeting did take place -- but the evaluation didn't. The principal had gotten behind. When Long Suffering Spouse found her later in the afternoon (giving her the lesson-plan-on-steroids) the principal was surprised. "Why didn't you send someone to get me?" she asked. "I figured you must have had someone in your office or that something else had come up," my wife said. Leafing through the massive lesson plan, the principal said, "Well, thank you for being so considerate." She promised to drop by some other time, assuring my wife that she needn't do another of these lesson plans.

My wife is not happy. "She's going to drop in on me unannounced and I'm going to look totally unprepared." I tried to reassure her -- she's always prepared -- but she wasn't buying.

We'll see how things go today. Fortunately, she has Monday off. Courts are closed Monday, too.

And I actually had some legal work to do this week. I'd tell you about some of that, too, except I still have legal work to do and the morning is getting away from me. Again.

And, thanks to modern technology, we can get jarring telephone calls even on the train!

Wireless signal is spotty along the CTA's Blue Line train tracks, especially when the sometime-elevated train becomes the Subway. Maybe that's why the caller ID on my oh-so-smart phone said "Unknown."

The last time the oh-so-smart phone said "Unknown" -- also when I was on the train -- it turned out to be Long Suffering Spouse. This time it was Younger Daughter. And, yes, thank you, I do have my wife and daughter -- all my children and children-in-law, in fact -- in my Contacts list. So I should have seen Younger Daughter's name and her number when she called yesterday, although I saw neither.

"Hello?" I said, tentatively. (One of these days, I'll answer a call from Unknown and it will turn out to be a sales call. From that day forward, all Unknown calls will be denied.)

"You're going to have to turn around and come home," Younger Daughter announced.

"What's the matter?"

"There's something in the fireplace and it's alive."

"What do you mean, in the fireplace?

"Well, I can hear it. It's moving and scratching -- here, listen." She must have held the phone near the fireplace -- pretty brave of her, really, considering -- and, over the roar of the train and the fading signal, it is entirely possible that I heard some sort of skittering noise.

"It's a bird or squirrel," I said. "It must have fallen in the chimney. But the flue is closed. It can't get in the house."

"Are you sure?"

"If the flue is closed, I am. And the flue is closed."

That was about when the signal gave up the ghost.

But several texts accumulated while I was out of range.

I called Younger Daughter back when I got in the office.

"I agree with your plan," I told her (having read through the several text messages). "Today seems like a fine day to take the baby out for errands."

"Well the noise stopped," she said. "Maybe it climbed out."

"Or died."

"Yeah." Younger Daughter did not seem comforted by this possibility.

"Well, don't open the flue to find out which it is," I suggested. I didn't mean to be rude, I told her, but I actually had stuff to do yesterday -- including telling you about the first phone call yesterday morning -- and I had to go to court as well. (Imagine that: I sometimes still go to court!) Younger Daughter seemed mollified by the end of our conversation; she outlined an ambitious itinerary that included retail therapy and a visit to Abuela. I said OK and plunged into my day.

Three hours later or so I was in the lobby of the Daley Center looking for someone. The person I was looking for was allegedly looking for someone, too. But the person I was looking for was nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, the court had been waiting 45 minutes. I pulled out my phone to check messages -- I didn't expect to find this man hiding in my voice mail, but there might have been a clue.

Instead, there was only a frantic message from Long Suffering Spouse. "Where are you? I've called your cell phone, I've called your office and I can't find you! There's some sort of animal in the house!"

Apparently I wasn't the only one Younger Daughter had texted. My wife keeps her phone off during the school day -- she doesn't trust the 'mute' button -- but she must have had a moment to switch it on during her lunch break yesterday. The message had just been left a few minutes before, though, so I tried to call my wife.

She answered. "Where are you? I've been trying to find you everywhere."

"In court."

"Oh. I'll hang up."

"No, I'm outside the courtroom now." (I'd gone back up on the elevator as I was dialing the phone.) "I already talked to Younger Daughter. It's not in the house. It's in the chimney above the fireplace. It can't get through the flue. Whatever it was stopped moving a couple of hours ago now."

"It probably died."

"That's what I said."

"Well, we can't use the fireplace!"

"We haven't used the fireplace in two years."

"Sure we have. Haven't we? Once?"

"Look, bottom line here is the noise is stopped. Whatever it was is dead or gone. Younger Daughter and the baby are going out on errands. We can figure out everything later."

I had to get back to the courtroom to report the outcome of my unsuccessful reconnoiter. Sometimes work intrudes on the steady stream of family phone calls.

Some people wonder why I long for the days when we weren't accessible 24/7/365. But, just once, I would like to start in on a project and work on it without interruption.

Do you know the surest way to get a client phone call? Start in on a different file. If you can start in on a different file -- if all the crises at home are being managed....

Late afternoon, early morning phone calls shatter your nerves as well

It is always a nervous time in the Curmudgeon home, don't get me wrong. A young Woody Allen would complain that we're all too neurotic, even for him. A young Robin Williams would complain that we're far too manic for him to be comfortable.

But we have been even more on edge than usual for the past several weeks because Older Daughter has tried her luck again with IVF -- a different doctor -- different medications -- same old roller coaster ride (for more about Older Daughter's past IVF experiences, click on the IVF tab at the bottom of this post).

Except.

Except maybe -- this time -- there may be a different outcome.

No, I haven't written about this latest attempt before. I've written about others and they all turned out badly. I won't write about the details now. I don't believe in tempting fate. But I have to mention -- to tell this story -- that, despite an inauspicious beginning, and some very dark moments along the way, things had progressed, as of yesterday, to the point where an ultrasound was scheduled and it was anticipated that a heartbeat would be clearly visible.

Older Daughter is in Indianapolis; the rest of us are in Chicago. We had to wait for her report. Nervously.

She got hold of her sister first. "Hello?" said Younger Daughter. "What's the news?"

There was silence on the end of the line.

"Hello?" repeated Younger Daughter. "Are you there?" (She wanted to ask, are you OK? but there was no way to frame that question in a way that would get a 'yes' answer if the news were bad -- and the continued silence was really getting to her.)

"I'm really pregnant," came the response, finally. Oh, so softly.

So understated that Younger Daughter had to consider an extra second or two whether the news was good or bad.

Long Suffering Spouse later reported a similar lull at the outset of her eventual conversation with Older Daughter. "I couldn't tell if it was good news or bad at first," she told me later. "But she's so happy -- and I'm so happy for her -- but, I have to tell you, if she said 'it's surreal' one more time, I was going to reach through the phone and strangle her, happy or not."

No, she wasn't really threatening her child; she was venting pressure. We all were. Older Daughter called six more times or so. Long Suffering Spouse had her on the speakerphone at one point as Older Daughter was talking about really wanting to eat salty foods and drink milk.

"Pretty soon you'll want pickles and ice cream," I said. No, Long Suffering Spouse never had bizarre cravings like that, but I've watched my share of sitcoms, back in the day.

"They both sound good," Older Daughter said, "but maybe not together."

"So is it official?" I asked. "Can I start drinking for two?"

"Well, my husband is," she said. "I bought him a bottle of 10 year old Bushmill's this afternoon on my way home from the doctor."

Older Daughter had told her husband she'd buy him a bottle of good whiskey when she knew she was pregnant. This was actually bottle number two -- she'd bought another one a couple of weeks ago when a prior ultrasound demonstrated a fetal pull (the precursor of a heartbeat). In her excitement at the time, she'd confided all this to the salesman who waited on her in the liquor store. She saw the same salesman yesterday afternoon, she told us.

"And he said 'so this means things are going well?' and I said 'you remembered?' and he said 'I told you I'd be praying for you.'"

"You have no idea how many people have been praying for you," Long Suffering Spouse interjected at this point. "So many."

Yes, there was a general lessening of tension in the Curmudgeon household yesterday evening -- great happiness and joy (and relief) for Older Daughter and her husband Hank.

And, then, this morning, at about 6:40 or so, the house phone rang. Long Suffering Spouse was already downstairs; I was still getting dressed. She beat me to the closest phone. I had no doubt about who was calling; I ran down the stairs half-dressed. Fortunately I did not trip on my untied shoelaces.

Long Suffering Spouse heard me coming and met me in the dining room.

"She's going to kill me," she said.

"What's wrong?" I asked. I didn't really want to know, but I knew I would have to listen.

"Nothing," my wife said. "She just called to say she hopes I have a nice day. I almost had a heart attack there."

"Me too. Was there anything else?"

"Well, yeah, she said she must have been so stressed yesterday that this morning she could hardly move."

"I'll just bet."

Younger Daughter stumbled down the steps a moment later. "Who was that, as if I didn't know? What happened?"

"Everything's fine," Long Suffering Spouse and I said at once. Long Suffering Spouse continued to explain about how Older Daughter complained about being unable to move this morning."

"At one point yesterday," Younger Daughter told us, "she told me her co-workers must all hate her. She kept looking at the clock. Six hours to go, she'd tell them. Five and a half hours to go. If even she realized that she was making everyone around her crazy, it must have been awful."

"How are we going to survive until May?" asked Long Suffering Spouse, but neither I nor Younger Daughter have an answer to that one.

Calls after midnight are the ones that are supposed to scare us, right? Nothing good happens after midnight? But now, we see, calls in the middle of the day -- and certainly first thing in the morning -- can be just as frightening.

And that was just the beginning of my day.

Tomorrow's post will cover the next crisis that arose -- all before I got into the office....

A very scary moment on an el platform

I've tried to come up with someone else to blame for this one.

Some of you may think that's the lawyer in me, locked by habit and temperament into a never-ending quest for a deep pocket. I think it's the human in me: Which of us wants to accept responsibility for our own shortcomings?

OK, granted, I was at a reception Thursday night and I spent a good deal of time talking to a man just a few years older than me, a retired Marine officer, who was telling me all about the ten marathons he was running this year -- 10! -- including some abomination he'd already run called the Old Farts Marathon, held in Michigan in the woods over what amounts to an obstacle course. Climbing walls, rocks to be scaled, and somehow the course seemed to be almost entirely uphill. I don't understand the idea of running marathons. Having at least a rudimentary classical education, I keep remembering what was traditionally reported as the fate of Pheidippides, the messenger who ran from Marathon to Athens to inform the city of the glorious victory over the Persians: He supposedly wheezed out news of the victory, then dropped dead. I know that I'd be winded running from the back of the house to answer the front door if the doorbell were ringing. I know that, so I can't blame the man with whom I that pleasant conversation for what happened.

It had been a pleasant gathering. I'd had nothing stronger than water, you understand, and it was a beautiful evening, not too warm, not too cool, humid, but not oppressively so. The reception was in the West Loop and I was planning to take the el back downtown, where I could pick up the family van and get home. I was under orders to buy jelly on the way. Still, because it was so pleasant (the rain forecast for the evening had so far held off) I was toying with the notion of walking back.

Then the phone rang.

It was Long Suffering Spouse. "You said you'd be home by now." I looked at my watch -- yeah, I know, I'm supposed look only at the phone, but old habits die hard. Long Suffering Spouse had a difficult day at school and she had to go talk to her principal about the behavior of the 8th grade boys. My wife didn't get out of school until around the time I was planning to leave for the reception -- so I started a half hour late. And I was leaving only a half hour later than originally planned -- not so bad, I thought. But Long Suffering Spouse had a different opinion. "I'm on my way," I told her -- and I was. I terminated the call and put the phone back in my suit jacket pocket.

It was at that point I noticed my umbrella was missing. I'd brought an umbrella to the reception because of the weather forecast. I'd been carrying it in a side pocket. I hadn't noticed when it fell out.

Maybe it fell out when I reached into my jacket for the phone, I thought, and backtracked a block or so looking for it, without success.

Well, that took some more time, didn't it? And my wife had already chided me for being late. So I abandoned any thought of walking back and started again for the train.

Still, I can't blame my wife for what happened -- or even the umbrella. I knew better.

The el station had been recently remodeled. It had all the modern doohickeys including the little screen suspended from the ceiling that says when to expect trains. The screen refreshed as I was looking at it -- and it said the Pink Line train to the Loop was due. I'd catch that train if I ran up the stairs. Lots and lots of stairs.

But I can't blame the sign. I knew better.

And yet... and yet... there I was charging up the stairs like Teddy Roosevelt up San Juan Hill. Without the horse, of course (a horse's ass, perhaps).

My legs became increasingly heavy and were largely useless by the time I was about a half dozen steps short of the platform. The train was in the station. I grabbed the railing and started pulling myself up.

Ding dong! came the noise from the train speakers, doors closing.

A couple of younger men passed me up as I huffed and puffed those last couple of stairs.

I let go of the railing, lurched onto the platform, and toppled over faster than a pagan idol at a missionary convention.

The thud stopped the young men who were heading into the train. One held the door while the other came back to offer assistance.

"Are you OK?" he said.

I tried to stand, but my legs would not work. "I can't stand up," I said.

He offered a hand, but I couldn't pull myself up. My legs would not work.

Doors closing, said the train speakers. The man's companion successfully blocked the doors again.

The train was only a few feet away. The doors were open right in front of me. I just couldn't get there.

My good Samaritan got down and gave me his shoulder. With his help, I got on my feet. I wasn't really walking, though. He more or less dragged me into the train. "Thank you," I managed and threw myself into a bench seat.

Two young women were sitting across from me, watching.

"I'm so embarrassed," I said.

"I didn't see anything," one said.

"Me either," said the other.

I spent the train ride silently calculating my chances of being able to stand unassisted when I got to my stop. Then I was wondering if I'd be able to walk to the parking garage. Then I wondered if I'd be able to sit in the car. I imagined myself calling from the Jewel parking lot. No, I didn't buy the jelly, I'd have to say, I can't get out of the car.

This was one of the first times I'd ridden in one of the CTA's new cars with mostly bench seats. I hate the whole idea of these cars -- but, on this one occasion I admit that the hanging commuter straps allowed me to hoist myself upright when my stop came. I must have looked like Frankenstein's Monster shuffling stiffly to the parking garage. I winced folding myself into the car. I took a deep breath and discovered I could drive, after all.

I even got the jelly.

But I had to tell my wife about what had happened. I had resolved to tell her even before I discovered that I had ripped my new pants at the knee when I crumbled onto the el platform. I knew I'd been bleeding. I didn't know about the tear.

Long Suffering Spouse and Younger Daughter tried not to call me an idiot, though they both thought I should have known better than to try and run up the stairs like that. And I did know better. Honest.

*Sigh*

After all that, I didn't have the heart to tell Long Suffering Spouse I'd lost an umbrella, too.

It's a rainy, autumnal day in Chicago...

It's a rainy, autumnal day in Chicago. The temperature is supposed to reach 82 this afternoon, but I doubt it will. There's more rain in the area than was forecast, I think.

The lawn, I noticed this morning, needs cutting again, so it's really not yet Fall, but there's the whiff of decaying leaves in the neighborhood these days, a smell magnified by the damp. The minutes are flying off the days now. Even if it's not entirely here, Fall is surely coming.

I'm late arriving at the Undisclosed Location this morning. Oldest Son and Abby are on their way to Texas for a brief visit with her folks and then to Dallas for the Notre Dame - ASU game. I had to drive them to the airport. They were supposed to be at our house at 6:30 for their 8:30 flight. Oldest Son texted his sister (Younger Daughter is the nominal sitter for their dog, Rodent, who will be staying with us this weekend) fairly early, updating their ETA to 6:45. They showed up around 7:25. I got them to O'Hare, weather and all, in 10 minutes.

But the van needed gas and traffic into the City was incredibly snarled. What is it about rain that causes cars to spring up out of the expressway pavement like mushrooms in a low spot? I got gas and headed home for a few minutes before plunging back into the traffic. (No train today, not this late, and not when I'm planning to show up at a reception tonight, if only for a little while.)

Rodent greeted me at the door as if I were a conquering hero. It was all an act, you see; Rodent was trying to make Younger Daughter jealous. Rodent can't quite understand why Younger Daughter insists on paying any attention to her daughter when she has a perfectly lovely Shih Tzu dog to pet. Younger Daughter explained it all to me.

The Baby to Be Named Later needed to take a nap and Younger Daughter put her down just before I left. "Rodent looked so happy when I came down the stairs by myself," Younger Daughter told me. "She really doesn't like the baby. But she hates it when the baby cries, so she's not all bad."

We got the mail late yesterday, but today the mail came early.

Either way, there was no money.

And the rent is just about overdue. Again.

Like the advancing season, I continue to move ahead. There's no where else to go.

The Stupid Party strikes again

Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010 by the slimmest of margins, securing the necessary votes by methods that were (at best) dubious, and without bothering to read the stupid thing. We have to pass the bill so you can find out what's in it, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously said.

The process was so partisan and (arguably) so tainted that there was a backlash and Democrats were swept out of the majority in the House of Representatives in the 2010 mid-term elections. Speaker Pelosi was reduced to Minority Leader. But, just as it takes both the House and the Senate to pass a bill, it also takes both houses to repeal a bill.

The Republicans did not recapture the Senate. So despite the House Republicans' voting to repeal it nearly every other day since taking over the majority in 2011, the Affordable Care Act, now universally dubbed Obamacare, remained on the books.

Remains on the books.

You have to start at least from there in evaluating the current debacle in Washington.

Actually, you could go back a couple of decades and note that many of the key components of Obamacare have Republican roots, including the now-hated individual mandate. There are a number of Republicans in Congress today who were for individual mandates -- who viewed them as nothing more than a tax, just as Chief Justice Roberts would do much more recently -- before they decided they were unconstitutional abominations. (Repeat after me: The Supreme Court is not final because it's right, but right because it's final.)

Mr. Potter would have loved the Affordable Care Act

And you can see why many Big Business Republicans might have been for Obamacare at one point: It looks like it was designed by a committee of the most cold-hearted, miserly MBAs ever assembled.

Let's see... health insurance for an employee's family generally costs $10,000 to $15,000 a year. And businesses have to hire people to assist with employee claims (when the insurance company inevitably messes up) and negotiate with the insurance company on annual rate increases and benefits provided. Or, under Obamacare, they can pay a tax -- ooooh, a penalty -- of $2,000 an employee and let the workers fend for themselves. Gee, that's a hard one. Hmmm. Save as much (or more) than $10,000 per employee and avoid the hassles of dealing with insurance or pay a negligible penalty? Now, of course, penalties will go up -- so give everyone $6,000 (for example) and send them into the exchanges to fend for themselves.

Obamacare was designed to fail. Do not kid yourself otherwise. Private insurers will benefit in the short term (idiot MBAs again, lured by the fool's gold of government subsidies) but when the dust clears the government will be paying most of the nation's insurance tab, whether through income-based subsidies or as the insurer of last resort.

Many Democrats want this to happen because, they believe, the nation will then demand a more "equitable" single payer system instead.

Meanwhile, many large companies -- Big, Big Business -- have applied to the Obama Administration for waivers for a year or more before assuming the burdens (and -- for them -- the benefits!) of Obamacare, and the Administration has granted most of the requests. Some unions and some states (apparently even some "Blue" states) have requested waivers of certain Obamacare provisions as these apply to them in whole or in part.

But there is one group that has definitely not been granted any sort of waiver: The Little Guy. The currently uninsured. They must plunge into the exchanges (ready or not) and fend for themselves.

Instead of shutting down the federal government, the Republicans might have highlighted the unfairness of this: Giving breaks to Big Business while throttling the Little Guys' necks.

Of course, a lot of Republicans (just like a lot of Democrats, apparently) think that sort of thing is just fine.

So... the Republicans decided to play "chicken" with the Senate and shut down the government.

Except... Obamacare implementation is not affected by the shutdown! It continues, while tourists are turned away from museums in Washington and campers are turned away from our national parks.

All the Republicans had to do was call press conferences to read constituent complaints about Obamacare. There'd be a lot of press conferences. But, no, the Republicans decided to shut down the 'gummint.'

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Another guest post from the Baby to Be Named Later

The following post was found underneath the baby's high chair this morning. My granddaughter's printing isn't the greatest, but I think I've been able to faithfully transcribe it....

-- Curmudgeon

Grandpa C found out that I know all about his blog back in April when I left my first guest post. But I haven't blabbed to anyone. It's good to have something I can hold over the old guy... just in case.

Just in case of what, I'm not sure.

And, speaking of not sure, I'm not exactly sure about what's been going on around here the last couple of days.

Mommy got some balloons from the store -- they're huge! -- and they stay up in the air all by themselves. One is giant number 1 -- I know this because I watch Sesame Street videos these days on everybody's phone or on Grandma's iPad.

I don't know why it's Grandma's iPad. Grandpa always seems to have it. He thinks he can play word games when I'm in the room, but I soon put him straight.

Anyway, the other balloon is a giant cupcake. I didn't know about cupcakes before but Mommy baked up a whole bunch of them, and I got to eat some of them. They're pretty good. She puts frosting on some of them, too. That's even better -- but every time I eat one with frosting, someone takes my picture.

The last couple of days my picture has been taken so many times; I'm getting pretty concerned about it. Has my appearance suddenly changed? I know my hair has grown in some -- Mommy puts bows on me now -- but that's been pretty gradual and doesn't explain all this sudden activity.

And I've been standing more, lately, too. Crawling is still faster, but when I stand I can get at anything they leave on the coffee table in the den -- food, glasses, phones. You'd think they'd discourage this -- they're so picky about my picking up their glasses, for example -- but they cheer me on. Last weekend Mommy and Daddy got me shoes. Grandma and Grandpa and Mommy and Daddy all wear shoes when they go out of the house. At night, Grandpa will come home and take his shoes off just as soon as he can. They must affect his hearing because when he takes them off he says something about dogs barking. They also keep you awake: Grandma takes her shoes off and promptly falls asleep. But now they want me to wear shoes -- and in the house, too.

But this standing and edging along the furniture has been pretty gradual. The shoes are recent, but, like I said, that was the weekend. And all the pictures and all this other strange stuff started towards the end of the week.

My first guess was that it had something to do with teeth.

I have got to tell you, growing these things are murder. I know grownups walk around with whole mouths full of these things, but I can't imagine how you can stand the pain of getting them all.

It's soured my disposition, let me tell you. It's given me fevers and I wake up at all hours and Mommy and Daddy say some of my diapers are terrible.

Growing teeth hasn't hurt my appetite, though, and I can eat bread now.

Grandpa says I beg for table scraps worse than any puppy he's ever seen. He tells me that he doesn't try to take any of the food off my plate when I eat -- so why should I be trying to take food off his plate?

Grandpas are so silly, aren't they? Have you seen the mush Mommy and Daddy try and palm off on me?

Anyway, after Mommy got me those two giant balloons, Daddy came home with an Elmo balloon, too.

I'm a big Elmo fan, which Grandpa says is kind of creepy. I don't think I want to know what he's getting at. I'd rather watch Elmo sing the "Elmo Song" with Big Bird and Snuff -- Snufflup -- Snuffleupagus -- you know, that's a pretty big word for a little kid to write -- and I like Elmo and the Ducks and Elmo singing with Adam Sandler, too.

Yesterday, Abuela came over and she brought some more balloons. No more Elmo balloons though. Grandpa came home last night and said he's figured out that we're the cause of the helium shortage. He's always saying strange things like that.

After thinking about it, I couldn't figure any connection between this flurry of activity and my teeth. Now I'm afraid something much more sinister is going on: Last night, after strapping me into my high chair, Mommy gave me a cupcake -- with frosting -- just like I like it -- but this time she set it on fire. And everybody, Mommy, Daddy, Grandma, Grandpa -- they all sang some sort of song at me.

I started crying. I don't think a kid my age can be a heretic. Why, then, are they trying to burn me at the stake?

And there's something else, too: Usually, when I crawl around and find a magazine or a book or a newspaper on the floor, I like to open them up and read it. That's what Grandma and Grandpa do with these things; I've seen them. They can turn pages without tearing them, though, and they seem to get upset with me when I tear pages out. I try and quickly eat the evidence so they won't notice, but that only seems to get them more upset. I've gotten picked up and carried out of the room unceremoniously more than once for doing nothing more that that, I can tell you.

So... what is going on with these people?

Yesterday, they gave me boxes wrapped in paper and they told me to tear it up. (They still wouldn't let me eat it, though.)

And here's the scary part: They let me tear the paper but they kept taking pictures.

Are they setting me up for something?

Arrogant or tone deaf? Regardless, the new pastor is brave

We begin this morning's exercise by giving a name to our new pastor. In his case, for reasons that will shortly become apparent, we will have to give him a first and last name.

As always, this is not the pastor's actual name. Nobody that appears in these essays is called by his or her actual name.

I do this to protect my own anonymity -- and, more importantly, my family's. In this particular case, the need for anonymity takes on a special relevance because my wife teaches in the parish grade school. Her job provides our health insurance benefits; there have been months where hers is the only income we've had. Too many months, lately. So -- while I'm not saying retaliation would be likely were I unmasked -- I live in fear. My last tenuous toehold on the middle class could be lost, at least for awhile, if I make my identity, or the new pastor's identity, too obvious.

In providing a name, I have searched the Internet, confirming (as best as I am able) that there is no person named Fr. Timothy X. Warnn. That said, I hereby dub the new pastor, Fr. Timothy X. Warnn. I apologize to anyone named Timothy X. Warnn, living or dead, and assure you that I'm not talking about you personally.

Heck, I even apologize to our new pastor. I know I'm not being nice. I much prefer to be nice. But I think I'm being fair. You, dear readers, will not be able to judge whether I am being fair, because you only know my side of the story. You can only decide if you like the stories.

And, so, without further ado, today's stories....

Attendance at Saturday's 8:30 a.m. Mass was larger than usual because the school football players were in attendance, along with at least some of their parents.

It is a tradition in our parish to have the junior varsity and varsity teams attend Mass on game days, when possible.

In the old days (when Oldest Son was playing) this was easy: All the games were on Sunday, and the teams attended 9:00 a.m. Mass, with all the boys in uniform, and the widgets (what we called the JVs then) in their jerseys and pads because their game was played first and they would go directly from church to pregame in the school gym or (if it was a road trip) possibly to the park where the game would be played. The kids all sat together in the front pews, on either side of the center aisle, the widgets on one side and the varsity on the other. Coach Gallagher and all the assistants would be in attendance, too.

Over time, this became complicated. Coach Gallagher had children of his own. As each new little one came along (Coach's oldest is a year older than Youngest Son), the logistics got harder and harder and, eventually, the 9:00 a.m. Sunday Game Day tradition had to be scrapped.

But it all worked out. Conference alignments changed and games were sometimes played on Saturdays instead of Sundays. One memorable weekend, when we had a Sunday game, we had a special anticipatory Mass on Saturday afternoon in the Monastery next door to the church. It was a very nice, intimate service... until one of the kids, who'd been battling a flu bug but didn't want to tell anyone lest he not be allowed to play, suddenly -- and dramatically -- lost the battle.

The real virtue of the kids coming to a regularly scheduled Mass, however, was that the parish could see the boys and feel a tie to the parish school (which the parishioners have so generously supported over the years). It never hurts to renew and reinforce those ties.

So it was on Saturday that the teams were in church for the regular 8:30 a.m. daily Mass, sitting down in front (just where, you'd think, the new pastor would want them) with their coaches. Yes, they were wearing their game jerseys.

Fr. Timothy X. Warnn, the new pastor, presided at this Mass and, to no one's surprise, he mentioned the boys sitting down front in his Homily.

What surprised, and angered, the kids' parents was how he mentioned them.

I never liked football, Fr. Warnn told the congregation. It's just one group of thugs beating on another group of thugs.

Oh, my.

There have been priests before in our parish who were not great football fans. They were easy enough to spot. But they had enough sense to offer a few words of encouragement for sportsmanlike behavior, cooperative teamwork, determined effort -- all the positives that football -- or any organized team sport -- can provide. At the very least they offered a prayer for the safety of the boys and for their opponents.

When we heard the story, we asked our informant about any qualifications (as above) that might have been offered by the new pastor. Nope, we were told, none whatsoever.

"How arrogant!" I fumed. "Well," said my wife, "maybe he's just a little tone-deaf." (Blessed are the peacemakers.)

But there was no making peace with the next person we ran across who mentioned Fr. Timothy X. Warnn.

She is, shall we say, a lady of a certain age. And she knows her own mind. Sometimes rather forcefully.

I think this is characteristic of many women of a certain age. Take my mother-in-law the other day. She was livid that someone had had the temerity to tell her what she should, or should not do (it was in regards to a social matter). "I will not be told what to do," she fulminated. "I'm 80 years old and I can do what I please."

And you'd better let her, that's all I can say.

Anyway, this other woman of a certain age said she'd come up to Fr. Timothy X. Warnn after Mass to ask him about something or other.

She addressed him as "Fr. Tim." In our parish we have traditionally addressed our priests as Fr. [First Name]. You've read here about our last pastor, Fr. Ed, for example. (Having a touch of the anti-clerical about me, I will often address a priest by his first name alone, dropping reference to his occupation. After all, I am not generally referred to as Lawyer Curmudgeon.)

But this lady of a certain age called the new pastor "Fr. Tim."

The Sun went behind the clouds. The temperature dropped 20 degrees. The pastor actually bristled. "You will call me 'Fr. Warnn,'" he said.

The lady of a certain age told us all this and asked if we knew yet of any petition drives to get rid of this new pastor. "I'll sign," she said.

Well.

Our new pastor may be un-American. He certainly is a control freak. And he may be either arrogant or tone-deaf -- but no one can deny that he is b-r-a-v-e.

Deliberately ticking off the ladies of a certain age? The core constituency of any parish ever? He must be brave.

The new pastor preaches an un-American sermon

Despite my best intentions, I've developed a deep and abiding dislike of our new pastor.

When my mother-in-law declared that she couldn't stand the new man, I defended him. Well, that was only his first week on the job. First impressions are hard to undo... but you have to give someone more of a chance than that, especially when it isn't going to be easy to get rid of him.

Because I wanted to keep an open mind, and form my own opinions, I wanted to hear the new pastor himself. I wanted to hear him preach; I wanted to take his measure from his own words, not from disgruntled parking lot rumors.

This turned out to be more difficult that you might think: My wife and I go to the early Mass on Sunday; the new pastor has offered that Mass exactly twice since he started in July. (Gosh, I wonder if my 7:00 a.m. Mass might be on the chopping block? Eh?)

But when he was there, I was prepared to listen.

The first time was inoffensive. Indeed, although he didn't cite his source, the first Homily I heard the man preach drew heavily on Book VIII of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (on friendship). Ah, I thought to myself, here is an educated man, one who has had some exposure to -- and is influenced by -- the Classics. That, I thought, counted in his favor.

But then came last Sunday.

I suppose I should have taken notes, but I'm not in the habit of bringing a pen to Mass. And I had no idea, coming in, what I was in for.

Sunday's Gospel reading was from Luke, the Parable of the Dishonest Steward. And, again, the pastor started out innocently enough -- and with a take on the tale I'd not considered before: When the shifty steward called in his master's debtors and allowed them to write down their notes (in the hopes that he'd be welcomed in their houses after his pending dismissal), the pastor said, he was probably doing no more than writing off his own commission. Well, I thought, that would explain the master's almost bemused take on discovering his steward's actions on his way out the door ("the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently").

I won't pretend to remember exactly how we got from that to the statement that sent me through the roof. But, somehow, he got from this interpretation to this flat statement, "For a Catholic, there is no separation of Church and State."

What?!?

Of course there is -- that is a bedrock principle of the United States of America, one of the things -- and I'd argue it's the single most important thing -- that has kept us from importing the world's religious wars even as we've imported citizens from every corner of our sorry globe. It is one of the things that makes -- and keeps -- America an exceptional nation (sorry, Mr. Putin, but it is so).

Now, if you want to say that a person should operate in the public sphere according to the morals and values he has learned from his church, I will agree. A person who pretends to profess one set of values at church and who jettisons them on exiting the parking lot of said house of worship is, at best, a hypocrite. That has always been my problem with the "Born Again" crowd of some other Christian sects -- "accepting Jesus Christ" can't be a free pass to Heaven, especially if one proceeds, despite being "saved," to lie, cheat and steal thereafter.

In fact, as I have argued before, it is how we live our lives, not what we preach, and certainly not what our priests and bishops preach, that attracts converts.

I listened carefully to see if the pastor would walk that statement back -- as I have just tried to do -- but he did not.

A priest who doesn't understand that church and state are separate is an Osama bin Laden wannabe. The late, unlamented Osama and the various "Islamist" sects are also contemptuous of the concept of separation of church and state. Religion (according to their own twisted lights) is the ultimate authority. Persons are not free to act in the public sphere according to their consciences which have been formed by their religious beliefs, but, rather, must act according to the dictates of their religious leaders.

That may not be as dangerous as it sounds for most Muslims because Sunni Muslims, the largest sect of that faith, do not have a rigidly structured clerical hierarchy -- although adherents of any number of 'schools' can do (and have done) terrible things, allegedly in the name of their religion, spurred on by the leaders of those 'schools.' But Shiites have imams and ayatollahs that parallel, in many ways, bishops and cardinals in the Roman Church. Thus, with no separation of church and state, the person acting in the public sphere must be guided in all things, not by his conscience, but by the current whim of the Ayatollah -- or of the Cardinal. Or of the pastor?

Actually, Jesus Himself provided a basis for the separation of church and state when He wriggled out of a trap that the Pharisees had set for Him. Matthew and Luke both tell the story: The Pharisees and Herodians (in Matthew's account) asked Jesus if it was lawful to pay taxes to the Roman state. The Roman occupation was not popular (the Jews frequently rebelled, ultimately resulting in Rome's decision to destroy Jerusalem, and the Jewish Temple, in A.D. 70). If Jesus said that paying Caesar's tax was not lawful he was preaching rebellion against Rome -- and could be dealt with as a political enemy. On the other hand, the Pharisees and Herodians, who collaborated with the Romans, at least when it suited their purposes, calculated that Jesus's popular support would instantly vanish if he said that paying taxes was lawful. You remember how it all worked out: Jesus asked for a coin and, when one was provided asked whose image is on this coin? That is an image of Caesar, came the response. And Jesus said, well, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's." (The Catholic Bible uses "repay to" instead of "render unto," but however faithful that translation may be to the original text, "render unto" just sounds so much better in English, at least to my ears.)

Anyway, careful listening to the new pastor's sermon merely drove up my blood pressure. And it occurred to me: The wholly wrongheaded idea that church and state are not separate, and all the picayune, entirely unnecessary changes he's imposing on the distribution of Communion, or at the Sign of Peace, and the meat cleaver he will shortly take to the Mass schedule (despite the pretense of publicly welcoming 'input') -- it all fits together. This man is an Authoritarian-on-Steroids, drunk on his own Authority.

He can either sober up -- or go away -- or watch his large parish become small overnight.

More tomorrow.

Pope Francis gets it; new pastor doesn't

Back in March, when we were awaiting the election of a new Pope, I said that it was all rather exciting, but not particularly important.

Far more important, in my opinion, was the sort of new pastor we'd get at my home parish in Chicago. We've just become an Archdiocesan parish; the order of priests that served our parish for over a century has abandoned us because of the increasing age and infirmity of its dwindling membership.

Although I'm a Curmudgeon, I was not reflexively predisposed to dislike the new man; there would be changes, I knew, but I was ready to welcome the new priest. I wanted him to succeed. I was worried not just about him, but for him, too, when the rumor circulated that he would be the only priest assigned to our large parish, a parish that had been served by three priests until just a few years ago. Then we went to two priests. Last year, with the departure of the religious order imminent, we had our long-time pastor, Fr. Ed, and an octogenarian who volunteered to help out as much as he could. Even so, between them, we had our three weekday Masses almost all the time (four on Holy Days) and six weekend Masses, including an increasingly popular 6:00 p.m. Sunday Mass that brought people in from around the area.

Well, the rumor was that the new man would want to cut back on the Mass schedule. And, much as most of the parishioners thought that would be a shame, there was, I think, an understanding that one man alone could not keep up that schedule and do all the other things that the pastor of a modern Catholic parish must do.

Then came the good news! We'd get a curate -- a younger man, fresh out of Mundelein, newly ordained.

Things were looking up.

But the new pastor is still looking to cut back the Mass schedule, even though the cumulative age of the new man and his newer assistant probably don't add up to the age of the senior citizen priest who helped Fr. Ed maintain the supposedly 'grueling' schedule this past year.

The parish bulletin has been running some self-serving gibberish about why we need to cancel Masses. Some examples (rather freely translated):

• It's all the Cardinal's fault (the new guy manages to blame both Cardinal George and the late Cardinal Bernadin -- unless the church is 50% full, the Mass should be axed);
• Fewer Masses = better, even 'inspired' homilies (actually, if a priest would prepare a sermon just once it could be repeated two or three times that same day -- it's not as if the readings have changed);
• People sit too far apart -- they should gather 'round the altar (but have you ever seen how people 'fill in' seats on buses, trains, anywhere, really, where people gather? -- they leave as much space as possible) -- and, besides, wasn't it the Pharisees who crowded down front, beating their breasts, while the truly devout widow stayed in the shadows? God could see her, too.
• They should all sing (that sounds suspiciously Lutheran, but I'm willing to let that one slide since my wife likes to sing in church).

Now that the new pastor has had his say in the Bulletin our feedback will allegedly be appreciated -- but the word on the street is the new schedule, which is already set, goes into effect on the First Sunday of Advent regardless.

We have a big church -- not too big on Christmas or Easter, of course, when the joint is filled to overflowing -- but, according to the new pastor's statistics, there is no normal weekend Mass that even comes close to meeting the 50% "requirement" he has repurposed for his own selfish ends.

He can cut the weekend Masses down to one or two -- and he still won't fill the church. Most of the parish (yes, the ones who come out on Christmas and Easter) won't notice anything until Christmas anyway. That's when they'll show up and find the doors locked. Then they won't come back at all.

In the movies, Fr. O'Malley sang,
"I hope you're going my way, too."
In my parish, the new pastor
has quite a different approach.

The only thing our new pastor is going to accomplish by this wrong-headed scheme is to drive his regular parishioners away. My wife and I are already looking around.

But isn't that the exact opposite of what the Church says it wants to do?

Pope Francis, God bless him, has likened the Church to a field hospital, treating the spiritually wounded. He gets it; our new pastor doesn't. Do we close hospital ERs because the Chief Resident would like to get a couple hours more sleep on Saturday nights?

Fr. Robert Barron, now the Rector of the Archdiocesan seminary at Mundelein, is launching a new video series on evangelization this month. What would Fr. Barron say about our new pastor?

Evangelization involves filling empty seats, not cutting back on the opportunities to fill the seats. And how do we fill up the seats?

One thing we should do is welcome people -- and provide as many opportunities as we can for that purpose.

Frankly, the offering of the Mass, while it is something that only a priest can do, is among the less demanding tasks that a Catholic pastor is called upon to perform.

When the new guy sends up clear signals that he is hell-bent (and I use the term advisedly) on messing up the easy part, how can we expect anything but disaster from him on the tough stuff?

Our new pastor is a control freak that makes me -- a lawyer, and therefore a control freak myself, by definition -- look tame.

He's decided people reach too far with their Sign of Peace (a greeting ritual, usually a handshake, during the Liturgy of the Eucharist). The new pastor decrees that this should be only be given to the person immediately next to, or in front of, or behind. Don't wave at someone across the aisle, or nod across the church (you should be sitting next to each other anyway!) and, whatever you do, don't stretch across a pew to shake hands with someone. Oh, and those Eucharistic Ministers, the ones who help distribute Communion? Don't come up to the altar until the priest has concluded leading the prayer immediately before Communion ("Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof...) and, for God's sake, don't greet your fellow ministers! And no more Eucharistic Ministers may be dispatched to the back of the church (we have a central aisle which my church architect son-in-law may or may not consider a modern transept), even if Mass is crowded. (You don't want those people coming back anyway! We only want people who want to sit down in front.)

I could go on, but I think I've conveyed the gist: Rules, Rules and more Rules! Bing Crosby's fictional Fr. Charles O'Malley asked if we were going his way; our new pastor says 'Go My Way or Hit the Highway.' Compare this attitude to the one conveyed by Fr. Barron in the video below.

Which Church would you rather belong to?

And it's all the same Church!

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Readers will have to indulge me for one more post about this new pastor, which I'll hopefully get out of my system tomorrow. I told you that I wanted to give this guy the benefit of the doubt -- so I really wanted to listen to his Homily last Sunday. What he said outraged me, as a Catholic, yes, but also as an American. But that's tomorrow, real world permitting.

Fr. Robert Barron on evangelization

This video has been out since February 2012 but it strikes me as particularly applicable to the situation in my home parish these days -- a parish in transition, as some readers may recall. I'm working on a post about it -- hopefully even general readers may find it amusing, even if it is quite serious to me.

But this nine minute (or so) video by Fr. Robert Barron stakes out the position I'd like to advance. Even as I try to be humorous.

Does it make a difference to your opinion on Syria that President Obama is seeking authorization from Congress before acting?

It makes a difference to me.

I'm still far from enthusiastic about what I'm convinced will be another well-intentioned, ill-fated and ultimately-helpful-to-al-Qaeda misadventure in the Mideast.

If I were in Congress I'd be asking the brass hats and policy wonks how any proposed action won't help al-Qaeda as much or more than it hurts the Assad regime. I'd need to be persuaded. I don't know that I could be persuaded on this one.

But, for all that, I'm really encouraged that the President is asking.

As the United States stumbles into Syria...

We'll be at war any day now with Syria. The Assad regime has (again) crossed that 'bright line' that Mr. Obama warned about: gassing his own citizens.

Probably. Apparently.

I mean, Syrians were gassed -- murdered in carload lots -- and the government has been blamed. There are witnesses and everything.

Britain's Parliament voted yesterday not to join us in this new adventure. The Obama Administration has no plans to give Congress a chance to take a position one way or the other.

I have just one question: Who does our government think we'll be helping when we launch our missiles or unleash our bombers?

There are, in the uneasy coalition of forces arrayed against Assad, persons with whom we in the West could do business. Tolerant, reasonable, democratic people who are just naive enough to think that they may have a say in how Syria will be run after Assad goes.

They can be referred to as Dead Men Walking.

No, when we attack Assad, we will be helping out al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda sympathizers and even operatives have taken leading roles in the anti-Assad coalition. The professional jihadis intervened a long time ago, back when the United States and Europe were just starting to dither. They know an opportunity for expansion when they see it. For western media consumption, al-Qaeda will keep a low profile. But, locally, al-Qaeda will loudly condemn every bomb and every missile and exploit every civilian death, furiously fanning the flame of anti-Americanism among their Syrian allies -- and when Assad is driven from power, with the aid of the aforementioned bombs and missiles, they will rush in like a flood tide, kill their moderate allies and assume absolute control of poor, doomed Syria. The once-vibrant Christian community in Syria will be quickly and completely dispersed (or eliminated).

Frankly, I wouldn't put it past al-Qaeda to have provoked or even to have staged (via infiltration into Assad's own forces) the gas attack that now has forced President Obama to back up his unfortunate promises. I know how cynical that sounds.

But it's a cynical world, especially in the Middle East.

As Americans, we think of "good guys" and "bad guys." Westerns were the most popular entertainment when the good guys wore white hats and bad guys wore black hats and you could tell, at a glance, who should win the inevitable showdown. And, of course, the good guys always won. Westerns went out of fashion when shades of gray were introduced. Bad good guys. Good bad guys. Indians who just wanted to keep their lands as promised to them by solemn treaty.

Unfortunately, much as we wish it were otherwise, the real world is not black and white. Assad is a bad, bad guy. And while there are some arguably good guys who are fighting to see him gone, they have made common cause with guys who are arguably worse than Assad on his worst day. And it's a safe bet that some guys we think are good guys are really pretty bad guys who are just pretending, awaiting their chance.

What are we doing getting involved in this? Has America learned nothing in 20 years of involvement in the Middle East?

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I think sometimes The Onion must be on the verge of putting itself out of business. It's supposed to print humor -- sarcasm -- satire. This fake column by Bashar al-Assad, for instance. But if you follow the link and read it, you'll see: It's really not funny -- because it's absolutely right. When The Onion analyzes foreign affairs better than our elected geniuses in Washington, we have ourselves a real problem.

The nation remembers a "dream;" Curmudgeon watches a nightmare

Yesterday the nation remembered the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, the occasion on which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his memorable "I Have A Dream" speech.

Anniversaries provide opportunities to measure, to assess, to evaluate. How have we progressed, or failed to progress, in the area of civil rights?

Some answers are obvious: The legal barriers that barred African-American progress began falling within a couple of years of the 1963 march. We have an African-American President now.

But I went to a deposition yesterday afternoon and encountered a world so alien from my own, and so very different from the promise and the progress shown yesterday on the National Mall that I am compelled to write about it this morning.

I can't tell you details of the case, of course, but our deponent yesterday was a 19-year old African-American woman. Pretty. Soft-spoken.

She dropped out of her Chicago Public High School in the middle of her 10th grade year, three years ago. Since then, according to her testimony, she has held exactly one paying job, lasting for about three months, earlier this year.

Her "best friend" is now in jail on account of a fatal accident. Our witness yesterday and her BFF (also a young African-American woman) were with an older man -- he's in his mid 50s -- at the time. Both our witness and her BFF had a sexual relationship with the older man. The young woman yesterday insisted that she "was sexual" with this man only on the first day she met him. (She would have been 17 at the time, just like her BFF.) Her BFF had "intercourse" with him, but it was not a relationship. The older man installed our witness's friend in an apartment; our witness stayed over four or five times a week. The older man stayed over, too, two or three times a week.

No, our witness said, the older man did not pay her and her friend for things they did (allegedly, they sometimes helped clean the building where the BFF was staying and another one that the man appeared to own). But the older man would take them shopping, buy them clothes, take them out to eat.

The older man had a number of young girlfriends. Sometimes our witness would hang out ("just kickin' it") with her BFF and some of these other girls. Once, after the BFF got into trouble, our witness went to a wedding reception with the older man -- and two other young women. They all stayed together in the same hotel room.

He bought them marijuana. Our witness yesterday had a lot to say about getting "fried" and how a high progresses; she and her BFF often smoked marijuana with the older man.

She stated that she stayed friendly with this older man because he was so good to her and her family, "a big help."

I could go on, but I might stray too close to the relevant facts of the case or inadvertently supply potentially identifying information. Suffice to say, I was cringing, even queasy, when left the other attorney's office yesterday afternoon.

The thousands who marched on Washington in 1963 wanted to make freedom ring for all Americans. I saw yesterday how some Americans are using that freedom.

I might feel better if I could believe that I have only stumbled on an isolated instance, that there are very few people who are living life this way. But I don't think I can believe that.

Long Suffering Spouse heads back to school in "the Year of the Parent"

Duplex comic by Glenn McCoy, image obtained from Yahoo! Comics.

The Chicago Public Schools are starting up today. Even if you're not in Chicago, you may have heard about this because of our school strike last year, the controversial closing of 50 schools this Spring, and the creation of alleged "Safe Passage" routes for CPS students to follow as they wend their way to new schools this morning. It's not surprising, perhaps, that policemen have been detailed to these routes, some of which traverse hotly contested street gang borders, but the City has also assigned firemen to these routes, and employees of Streets and Sanitation, and employees from other City departments, too. Oh, and there are 'paid volunteer' escorts -- an oxymoron on the level of military intelligence -- armed with government-issued phones. They can call for help if the gangs start shooting. Unless, of course, the gangbangers are shooting them.

And all of this -- somehow -- is supposedly saving taxpayer money.

Oh, to be a child again! Not that I'd be anxious to re-live my school days, mind you. Once was surely enough. But, if I were as innocent as a young child maybe I could believe such a ridiculous claim.

Meanwhile, some of the Catholic schools in these parts are also starting up this morning. Long Suffering Spouse's school opens for business today.

In the Catholic Archdiocese, this is Day One of "the Year of the Parent."

Now, you had better believe that parental interest and involvement is integral to the success of Catholic education. If all parents were as interested and involved as your typical Catholic school parents, there would be far less need for saturation of "Safe Passage" routes. There might not be any street gang borders to cross.

And parents of Catholic school children make a tremendous sacrifice to send their kids to Catholic schools. A determined parent can find less costly options for his or her child than a Catholic school. By many metrics, several Chicago Public High Schools (the 'college prep' schools -- North Side, Payton, Jones, Whitney Young etc.) are better than anything the Catholic high schools can offer. And there are some excellent 'magnet' schools for CPS students in grades K-8 as well. No, parents who choose Catholic education want a sound foundation in both intellect and character and they want their traditions passed along to their children.

So the Archdiocese had darn well better cater to the men and women who dig deep into their wallets to send their kids to the parish school.

But....

You knew there would be a 'but,' didn't you?

Perhaps you read my Priscilla Pigdahl post earlier this year. If you didn't, maybe you could read it now.

Some well-meaning parents value success for their children more than real learning.

It's a terrible, terrible mistake. But young parents don't always understand that a kid who flounders now can flourish later. It's better for a kid to fail in 5th grade than to fail in life. We learn from our mistakes more than we ever do from our successes. So let's get those mistakes made sooner rather than later.

But it's easy for teachers and administrators to become cynical. It can happen to anyone. I certainly am cynical. Look at the start of this essay: I couldn't be more jaded. I think something similar has happened to the principal at Long Suffering Spouse's school. I'm speculating now about what's may be in her head:

Enrollment is the lifeblood of the Catholic schools. If enrollment goes down, the school fails. It closes. If it goes up, the school succeeds. Test scores don't really matter -- tests can be taught -- high school performance doesn't really matter -- the struggles of our graduates are not necessarily going to be blamed on us. Really, grade school doesn't matter. Pass everyone through, make them feel good about themselves and hopefully they'll learn something in high school when they're more mature.

Meanwhile, my wife teaches. She has standards. Some of her kids struggle. Some struggle mightily.

And then they go to high school.

The good ones, the successful ones, are placed in honors courses, a full year ahead of their peers. They wind up in AP classes.

Some of the kids who did just OK in my wife's Spanish classes breeze through their placement tests anyway and wind up in accelerated Spanish I or even Spanish II.

And the ones who struggled? Even the ones who struggled mightily? Those who start over in Spanish I find that it's easy; they were well prepared. They get A's and B's. My wife hears from them; they are grateful.

This should be the model in English, in Math, in Science, in History -- and it's not.

Because the principal gets complaints.

She hears complaints about Long Suffering Spouse from parents who have one child or whose oldest child is one of those struggling. If my wife gives a C to a student who gets (undeserved) A's in every other class... who looks like the outlier? My wife's principal doesn't hear complaints from the parents who have multiple children once their oldest begins succeeding in high school. But any complaint is one too many.

There has been friction.

No junior high kid is dreading the start of this school year more than my Long Suffering Spouse. The Year of the Parent? My wife feels she's in danger of losing her job because she's too good at it.

Some days, I just hate the world.

The more contact numbers one has, the harder one is to reach

Click to enlarge or follow link below to original cartoon.

In a post earlier this month I mentioned in passing that the more contact numbers someone has, the harder they are to get hold of (I'll have to remember to include this in my next installment of Curmudgeon's Laws). Anyway, it appears that one of my favorite webcomics, xkcd, has noticed the same thing.

Naturally, I only understand half the references here, but I'm pretty sure I'm interpreting this correctly....

Everything I need to know I get from the comics, part 4,796

From the comic Bliss, by Harry Bliss; image obtained from the Chicago Tribune Comics Kingdom.

OK, I'm on deadline on a project and I don't have time to blog. But I still have to read the comics. And this one made me laugh.

Sometimes dreams do come true....

Curmudgeon gets a smart phone, proves how dumb he is

It's official. I now have an appliance that's smarter than me.

There is, of course, an argument to be made that most of my appliances, and some of the furniture besides, were already smarter than me. I try to ignore that sort of thing.

The first proof that smart phones are smarter than we are came in the way we were manipulated into getting them.

Youngest Son, it seems, was missing important text messages. Even on my old dumb phone, I could set up a message to be sent to multiple people. And when I pressed 'send' they all got the message. But a smart phone -- being smart, and also wanting to place its relatives -- sends messages to multiple recipients that can't be opened up on the dumb phone. Youngest Son would get notification that he had a message, but the contents thereof would remain tantalizingly beyond his reach.

What's that you say? He could have seen that Coach Smith sent a message, which he could not read, and responded by calling Coach Smith? "I can't see your message. What do you want?"

Yes, I suggested that, too.

Many, many times.

But apparently there were notifications from professors and deans and regional fraternity councils and such like where calling would not be an option. Youngest Son complained bitterly that he was missing job opportunities as well.

He knew that would get me.

Still, I was going to hold out. Lawyers laughed at me in the courthouse when I pulled out my dumb phone to make a call. They pulled out their oh-so-smartphones to schedule, to post on Facebook, to read vital emails that they could see in two minutes when they got back to their office. But I was resolute. I didn't need a phone with all this stuff on it when I had computers with large, easy-to-read screens. No one was going to swipe a newspaper from me, or a book, as I rode home on the subway -- could these peacocks say the same for their very smart phones? No, sir. Not at all.

In the end, of course, it was Long Suffering Spouse who crumbled. You will get him a phone before he goes back to school, she finally told me. Youngest Son did his best not to turn handstands with glee.

Perhaps she chafed more than I realized at the thought that her students, seeing her ancient phone, did not recognize it as such. "Is that a phone?" one would ask. "Really?"

And, of course, our old phones were useless for storing and displaying pictures of our grandbaby.

Well, we took Youngest Son back to school on Sunday. His tuition is not paid. My real estate taxes are not paid. I pointed out that adding new expenses was not a good plan at this time.

My defenses held until Saturday.

There we were, at Costco, buying phones. I had one hope. They had to run my credit. Surely my credit rating must have cracked under the enormous weight of over $50,000 in credit card debt!

But, no.

Now I have over $51,000 in credit card debt and a smart phone that sits here mocking me.

What? You think I'd buy him a fancy-schmancy phone and not get one for me and the missus, too?

In the event, Dr. Doom did not show up

I didn't really think she would.

And, in the end, no blood was spilled at Abuela's 80th birthday party. She seemed happy enough -- she'd been poised over her phone all day long and was entirely in her glory when we arrived in the early evening, having heard from (apparently) everyone she knew with enough strength and presence of mind to lift a telephone receiver.

Aunt Josephine commented to her husband Ferdinand that I certainly seemed to be drinking a lot. The interesting things about that are (1) I really wasn't -- no, seriously, I was using a small glass and I was cutting my scotch with ice and soda -- and (2) a Cuban stage whisper is just about as quiet as an Irish one, meaning pretty much everyone heard her. I asked whether the black olive and mushroom and pineapple and bacon pizza came with a hazmat sticker. But, for the most part, everyone was on their good behavior -- and I stayed awake until we got home, too. I sat in my chair, turned on the late news, and immediately fell asleep -- but I did get home first.

On a Friday, that's no mean feat.

My wife continues to say that no one would believe our lives. I know different. I can't cover half of it, of course, and my wife might think my perspective hopelessly skewed, but those of you who have been with me for awhile probably could believe.

Things are, however, a tad hectic at the moment and I'm finding that real world matters are keeping me from blogging here (I'm barely keeping up with The Blog of Days and I set that up with the thought that it would be much less time-consuming). If these were profitable things that were keeping me away from here, I'd be happier. But, of course, they aren't.

More soon. But probably not until next week.

Abuela has an 80th birthday, sure to be a grand occasion

I seldom write about family functions before they happen. If I do talk about the planning the went into an event, I still generally wait until after the fact. I do this because (at least in my own mind), after the fact, I can tease out a more-or-less coherent narrative.

(I'm not putting that up for a vote.)

But today I want to write about the chaos preceding a family event while in the midst of the vortex.

Well... not exactly.

I'm safely at the Teeny Tiny Law Office for now. Today is Abuela's 80th birthday and tonight as much of the entire family as can be assembled will gather at her house for pizza. My job will be to carry the boxes inside. For these sorts of events, in-laws are reduced to beasts of burden. And that's just fine by me.

I browsed the Archives this morning before getting too far into this essay and I notice I hadn't mentioned this upcoming birthday before.

It has already spawned one family crisis.

You'll recall that Long Suffering Spouse has a younger sister, Josephine, and an older sister (of whom I hardly ever speak) that I call Dr. Doom. One reason why I call her Doctor Doom is that she is a medical doctor, a psychiatrist (she left a surgical residency when she had kids with her husband, Dr. Nick). The other reason... well, she may be one of the more negative persons I have had the privilege to know (and you, dear readers, who know from experience how negative I am can just barely imagine what she must be like).

When I had polyps in my 20s Dr. Doom told my wife and the rest of her family that I was going to die.

When my wife had chicken pox, years later (and was terribly sick -- don't get chicken pox as an adult), Dr. Doom told her mother that, not only was my wife going to die but that I was killing her.

Nor was this the first time, apparently, I tried to murder my wife, according to Dr. Doom. I've forgotten the details over the years, thankfully, but I have a recollection of Dr. Doom skulking on the back porch of the first apartment I shared with Long Suffering Spouse, peering in, because Long Suffering Spouse was ill and I was killing her.

Thankfully, Dr. Doom resides mostly on the other side of the world, in Cyprus (although she has places in Florida and Italy, too).

My wife hasn't spoken to Dr. Doom since their father died, 15 years ago. My wife, who was there pretty much every day during my father-in-law's last battle with congestive heart failure, wanted him to go out with the dignity with which he'd always carried himself. Her position hardened irrevocably after a badly botched attempt at kidney dialysis (his kidneys had shut down in the course of all this). My father-in-law was a retired doctor. Even at nearly 86, he knew the shunts or ports for the dialysis were improperly installed; it wasn't just that he was complaining about pain. The persons performing the procedure, however, told him to shut up and may have strapped him down. It must have hurt dreadfully, and my wife still talks about how black and swollen her father's arm became where his blood was taken and returned. Dialysis wasn't going to save him anyway; his heart was giving out. And he eventually sank into a coma, intermittently at first. Hospice arrangements were made (and he'd approved them when he was able).

And then Dr. Doom swept into town.

For all their money (Dr. Nick, her husband, had already retired as a plastic surgeon by this point), Dr. Doom and her husband never stayed at a hotel. Always at my mother-in-law's house. Her father was dying across the hall, but she came and expected lodgings.

Dr. Doom took one look at what was left of her father, saw his grossly distended belly, filling with fluid as his organs failed, and decided that he had been given inadequate care. She proposed to tap her father's belly, like a beer keg. It would hurt like hell, but it would keep him alive a while longer. A little while. Maybe. If it didn't kill him outright.

Long Suffering Spouse put her foot down. That was not going to happen (you can forgive, I hope, my poor mother-in-law for leaving it to my wife to be the assertive one -- my mother-in-law didn't want to lose her husband, but she knew he was going and she was badly torn).

I must have been home with the kids. I don't know exactly what happened. But words were exchanged. Loudly. There were threats, imprecations, probably damnations. In the end, Dr. Doom backed down. And she and Dr. Nick left town. I can't remember for sure, but they may not have even been at the funeral. And my wife and Dr. Doom have not spoken since.

Oh, I've spoken with Dr. Doom. It was on the occasion, a few years ago, of Josephine's marriage to Ferdinand. (Ferdinand and Dr. Nick have to be close to the same age; maybe Dr. Nick has a couple of years on him, but only a couple.)

Drs. Nick and Doom weren't at Josephine's wedding in person; they were in Cyprus. But I was walking through the church, tending to some assigned task (as in-laws do) when I heard a disembodied voice say, "Hello, Curmudgeon."

Well, hearing disembodied voices in church, especially disembodied voices that call you by name, is generally not a sign of vigorous mental health. But eventually, after some repetition of the greeting, I realized that the voice sounded familiar... instead of looking at the ceiling, I started looking at the pews... and saw a laptop, opened up. Dr. Doom would be attending the nuptials by Skype. We exchanged pleasantries on that occasion.

But, really, we don't hear much of Dr. Doom, and my wife doesn't care to.

Of course, my mother-in-law would like it much better if her three daughters all got along, at least for her sake. Every parent wants their kids to get along. Sometimes it happens. Sometimes... well....

But skip ahead now to earlier this year. Josephine decided that Abuela's 80th birthday should be a big occasion for celebration.

But she proposed to celebrate it in March or April, mainly because (we found out) that's when Dr. Doom would be in town.

Well, we couldn't gather more than a token group from our clan. Older Daughter would be unable to come up from Indianapolis. Hank, her husband, is an architect during the week, but a paid church soloist and choir member on the weekends. And Older Daughter was working every other weekend at the hospital (she's a nurse). Youngest Son was in the middle of his college baseball season. If I dropped dead, maybe he could come in for the funeral. Maybe.

Oh, and as far as Abuela was concerned, no party in April -- no matter how elaborate -- would count toward her August birthday. My parents eventually didn't worry too much about seeing the kids on Christmas Day; there were 12 Days of Christmas, after all. And if a birthday fell on Wednesday or Thursday, the celebration could easily be transferred to Saturday if that was more convenient. But my mother-in-law has always been a stickler for doing things on the day. You could wish her happy birthday the day before, even bring a cake, but if you didn't also call on the day she said you'd "forgotten" her birthday. And she'd be miffed.

And then there's the age wrinkle. Hmmmm, how can we put this sensitively? If you give someone an 80th birthday party four months ahead of schedule, aren't you really saying you don't expect the person to be around on the actual natal day? My mother-in-law would not have seen an April birthday party as a birthday party -- but as a death sentence.

It fell to me to try and convey this -- delicately -- to Josephine. Long Suffering Spouse assured me she could not possibly be civil if she tried. I did my best. I tried to explain why the kids could not all be rounded up in April. They were aware of their obligation in August, but they didn't anticipate this early party business. And I tried to express a general unease with the whole early party idea, saying that it stirred some sour notes in my deeply ingrained peasant Irish superstitious nature. As events would show, these efforts were apparently inadequate to mollify Josephine.

But there was no party in April.

As the big day has drawn closer, Abuela became the problem.

"I don't want to do anything," she'd say, repeatedly.

It all started when, for the second year in a row, Cook County got its 2nd installment real estate tax bills out on time. They were due yesterday. My mother-in-law's taxes were more than she expected. Like so many seniors, when interest rates crashed, she was no longer able to live off of income from CDs; she's had to spend down principal. My mother-in-law has a pension and Social Security (my father-in-law worked for the State but both of them worked in the private sector long enough to qualify for Social Security). However, taxes only go up and she can see a time when she'll be lucky to buy food and pay taxes both. There'll be no money for extras. QVC will probably go out of business (she has a direct line).

Anyway, the shadow of her forthcoming tax bill cast a pall on her birthday. "I won't be home," she finally said. "I will be gone all day and I won't tell anyone where I went."

"But Mom," my wife asked, "how will you get your phone calls?" Everyone Abuela knows calls her on her birthday (everyone she knows -- except her daughter Josephine, apparently, and perhaps Dr. Doom, knows that calls on any other day don't count).

"I don't care. I'm turning off my machine, too."

Here matters stood for a month. Long Suffering Spouse got increasingly anxious. She got so anxious she actually called Josephine to seek her counsel. She almost never voluntarily calls Josephine. Josephine did not call her back. I counseled patience.

This sounds, I suppose, like I'm trying to pretend to be wise. Nonsense. I'm an in-law -- so none of this bothers me except that it bothers my wife -- and I'm lazy. Saying don't worry, she'll change her mind may sound wise and soothing, but it was also a good way to do nothing.

And doing nothing is what I do best.

My wife, on the other hand, always is doing something.

A couple of weeks ago, she spent all day Sunday with Taxedo and Wordle, two 'word cloud' programs, trying to create a suitable design she could have printed on a sweatshirt for Abuela's birthday gift. The idea was to put the names of all the grandchildren and great-grandchildren (there are three, I'm a great-uncle twice) into some sort of a design. I spent a couple of hours on the computer myself, but to no avail. (Of course, eventually, last weekend, my wife found some tips online for keeping certain words together and eventually was able to come up with a print she liked. She got the sweatshirt printed yesterday.)

And then the next crisis arose.

While Abuela did finally soften on the idea of being at home on her birthday, she revealed that she would nevertheless be unable to be home all day. Josephine and Ferdinand were bringing Josephine's kids and taking Abuela to dinner downtown. Maybe, she said, maybe we could come over Saturday?

This is where Older Daughter lost it.

Remember, our kids were told to hold August 2 open on their calendars. Four out of five actually did (Youngest Son is at a fraternity leadership conference today somewhere in Indiana -- he says the dates got changed after he was committed to attend). For Older Daughter, though, Friday was the only possible day she could participate in birthday festivities. She was asked to stand up to a wedding of a friend she's known since high school this weekend. The wedding is Sunday. Wedding-related festivities, however, commence tomorrow morning. Early tomorrow morning.

Younger Daughter broke the news to her that a Friday celebration was looking doubtful -- and received a full blast of ear-splitting profanities for her trouble. These weren't directed at Younger Daughter, mind you; she was just the innocent bystander. But Older Daughter was ready to kill her Aunt Josephine.

So was Long Suffering Spouse. "That's why she wouldn't call me back," she fumed. I think she must have thought her sister had a skin rash, too, because she used a string of words that ended with what-sounded-like "itch."

My wife did what any sibling would do -- she tattled to her mother.

Abuela said she'd call Josephine right away.

Long Suffering Spouse grabbed Younger Daughter and the baby and they all took a walk, at turbo speeds no doubt, around the local park. She had to burn off some of her anger.

Thus, it was left to me to field the subsequent phone call from Abuela.

"Josephine is very busy," she told me. "I had to call all her numbers" -- have you ever noticed it's the people with the most phone numbers who are the hardest to reach? -- "before I got her to answer. She's still at work and she has five people in her office. She told me she couldn't talk. But she said she'd text your wife."

It was already dusk.

Long Suffering Spouse returned from her walk.

"Were the mosquitoes bad?" I asked, looking for a safe topic of conversation.

"No," said Long Suffering Spouse. (No mosquito would dare bite her in her present mood.) "Well?" she asked.

"Josephine is very busy," I told her. "Very, very busy. She had five people in her office and hung up on your mother. But she did tell your mother she'd text you."

"She did. She'll call me when she's driving home. She says."

I poured myself a stiff drink and watched the White Sox lose again.

The phone rang. My wife grabbed it and stalked off into the living room. I curled up in the fetal position, sucking my thumb.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The reason Josephine didn't call back? Well, she didn't know about the call. She never listens to the message on her home land line.

And why was she going to take Abuela out on Friday without involving anyone else? Well, she'd tried to put something together earlier, she reminded my wife, but there was "no interest" in our family to do anything for Abuela's 80th birthday.

But, oh yes, plans are changed. Now our family and Josephine's will show up at Abuela's this evening for pizza and drinks. (I've warned my kids that Ferdinand will be there and we've all agreed the best way to handle that is to drink heavily. I plan to.)

And then there were the subsequent phone calls.

Josephine's oldest wants pineapple on his pizza.

Josephine's two daughters won't eat pizza at all. So order plain pasta instead for them.

Josephine and Ferdinand will want black olives and some other disgusting thing on their pizza, too.

And last night, Older Daughter's husband Hank broke his foot at a softball game. She and Hank were at the hospital ER until 2:15 (their time) this morning. Hank had to work today on a project that must be finished by tomorrow. So he's allegedly refusing to take pain pills. And now he may not be coming at all, or he may be coming by bus tomorrow. On crutches. Maybe someone will watch their giant golden retriever, Cork, if he goes. Maybe Cork will be coming up with Older Daughter. (An hour ago my wife wasn't sure. I haven't heard anything since.) But Older Daughter will be bringing a 10-week old golden retriever puppy. She and Hank got the puppy as a playmate for Cork. We met the dog last weekend -- I've spared you that. So far. Anyway, Cork is jealous.

And Abuela says she doesn't want either dog at her house.

Oh, it's going to be a grand occasion.

Who knows? If we're really lucky, Dr. Doom will show up, too. After all, you don't turn 80 every day.