This Whole Baby Thing, Continued

This is great: Tara's started a baby blog, or actually a real virtual baby shower, over at babyjacobs.blogspot.com. Yes, I said "real virtual"; it's not a contradiction if you expand the meanings of both of the words. Anyway, yes--it's like a real baby shower. You know, balloons, singing, cake eating--all of those are things you can be doing while you're reading the blog.

There are games, stories, contests, and the like. We're having a baby pool, the winner of which gets a fabulous prize. But remember, it's not about winning and losing. It's about participation...and losing.

Feel free to pop on over and sign the guestbook and give the advice and check in on the progress. Plus, welcome Tara to the blogosphere. Maybe she'll stick around afterwards and tell us what she thinks about windmills and casinos. Or restaurants. She definitely has opinions on some of the local chow houses, for sure.

And welcome our child to cyberspace, too. I like to think that 17 or so years from now, Li'l Peanut will be able to look up this old stuff, read what was said about him/her by loving parents, family, and friends...and be as embarrassed as s/he would be if we showed a bare-ass baby-in-the-bathtub picture to his/her junior prom date. And make no mistake, Poindexter, we WILL have bare-ass baby-in-the-bathtub photos. Mua ha ha ha.

As for the two of us grownups, the nesting urge combined with the winter hibernating urge has basically resulted in us...um...hibernesting...for the majority of the past season or so. Lots of doing stuff inside while the Berkshire snow, ice, and mud have made venturing outside an unappealing proposition.

On the other side of that rather lethargic coin, we've gotten the kitchen pretty close to finished. So I've really been getting my mise en place on with the help of our cool stove, a white 1952 Chambers Model 90C, rescued from a house in South Jersey whose owner began lusting after a brand new Viking. Feel free to insert your favorite tasteless "hot Norseman" double entendre here.

But call it reconnecting with my Inner Hashslinger. Cooking is a very humbling experience. It's a lot like golf, in fact. You have to execute; you know how to, and you've done it a thousand times, but every few shots you just blow it to hell and send an 8-inch clod of something foul-tasting towards your partner. So while most of it is a pleasant experience, at the end of the round you're always wishing you got around more on that standing rib roast or not hooked that asparagus souffle into the drink. Sometimes you get the course; sometimes the course gets you, and at the end of the day you're standing there wet, with a spatula in your hand, wondering what the hell went wrong.

I made a spinach and phyllo pie tonight, for instance, that came out like an overweight, pissed-off quiche with a chronic lung condition. It wasn't inedible, but it wasn't really what I was shooting for. Kinda like sinking a birdie putt on the 5th green after teeing off from the 4th.

But I'll be up and swinging for the next day's challenge, as this whole fatherhood thing will undoubtedly prove to be.

So I'll just wrap up this paean to overwrought metaphors by trusting that like all the other fathers in the world, I'll do what I can to knock it stiff, sink it in one, and pick up a round for the house at the end of another honorable day.