Raising and training your human puppy
Until your baby is two years old, just apply everything you know about dog training. That’s because until he can talk, your baby will be more or less like a dog in terms of social skills and reasoning ability. In fact, for the first year he’ll make Mouse seem sophisticated. And, like a dog, he will be surprisingly able to manipulate and train you.

I’m sure this idea will offend you once you have your brilliant, perfect, human baby home and your instinctive motherly indignance kicks in. But trust me, future self. When he goes through some difficult phase or develops a terrible habit, don’t spend a lot of time agonizing over what to do. Don’t bookmark all the parenting web sites and join the discussion groups or spend hundreds on expensive books by parenting experts. Just do what you did when Mouse used to run around in a circle like a total spaz when you tried to put a leash on him, or when he decided one week that housetraining was for suckers.

Just get a little baggie of baby treats. Use clear, consistent commands. Give immediate, clear feedback. Say No like you mean it, swat him if you need to, and give him treats and lots of melodious praise when he does the right thing. While you’re at it, some of the basic commands sit, stay,and down will probably make life easier too.

And if that doesn’t work, you can always just put an ad in the paper: Free baby to good home with plenty of room to run.

Pico has been moving a lot more throughout the day lately, even though I’m not really stressed out or anything. I like it. It’s like instead of just having a big gut I’m actually in a weird way spending time with this little person. I can’t really explain it… it’s just neat.

I’ve been dreaming about him. Last night we were giving him a bath and he was newborn but he was huge. About like an 18 month old, and for that matter he was babbling like an 18 month old. I was talking to him and telling him the names of everything, like teaching English to a space alien.

I had another dream a few nights ago about the birth. It was very peaceful and easy, despite the fact that Kevin and I were on a canoe in the middle of a lake. Or maybe because of that fact. Hospitals freak me out.

Lately when I see him in my dreams he’s huge and has blonde curly hair and big, calm hazel eyes. Like Tony as a toddler but with Kevin’s lighter features.

“I have far more respect for the person with a single idea who gets there than for the person with a thousand ideas who does nothing….”
Edison said that. Of course, that son of a bitch had a thousand ideas and got there.

I was driving today and listening to the greatest variety of today’s hits on the radio when I was hit with this feeling, the kernel of which was a horrible song and the thought “my brothers and I could make songs that kick way more ass than this”.

This feeling washes over me sometimes. It’s sort of a realization of all of the things that I want to accomplish and a frustration at knowing that instead of changing the world today I will go home, feed the dog, become overwhelmed by my own dinner options, and end up just sitting in the living room trying to balance the laptop on my lap until bedtime.

I want to understand, really understand the inner workings of things. Lots of things. I want to really understand complex systems: our government, how the body works, how traffic light timing works. I want to read, or rather, I want tohave read, past tense, the Bible, the Constitution, everything written by Galileo, Darwin, and others, alongs with hundreds of their contemporary documents to get the context. I want to know without thinking the parts of a car, an insect, the rules of algebra.

And those are just the hobbies. Devoting energy to stuff like that changes me, but doesn’t contribute anything to the world. People who knit for fun at least produce scarves. I want to learn, but I also want to contribute something that reverberates through generations. A classic science fiction novel. A better system of education. A new way of looking at the world through a unique artistic vision. A new genre of pop music that makes people dance their asses off.

Like I said, this wave or whatever it is happens occasionally. For a second I see all of my potential all at once and it excites, scares, and depresses me.
And here I am on the couch with my thousand ideas, and I’m too lazy to get up and figure out what to fucking eat.

Why do people say they feel blue when they feel down? I think feeling grey would be a much better term. Or cloudy.
But today there is a big beautiful windy blue November sky outside, and all my work for the day is done.

You’re so jealous of me right now.

Stupid client argh can’t make up your rarrarryar freakin frackin
This is not a business problem!
This is not a design problem!

I was hired to design pieces for 26-32 year old women who are getting married! Not for 45 year old never-been-married entrepreneur control freaks who don’t know what they like and don’t know what they want and don’t care about the common sense business goals but by golly know that they know that they< i>don’t like when web pages have different areas with different background colors.

Then I get an email from her business partner saying “Why is this costing us so much? You haven’t produced very much.”

Well no duh. You won’t give me any idea of the budget and then you want dozens of mockups and rounds of ridiculous changes, and once a week you change direction, priorities and deadlines. It’s fine to do that, but it’s not a very efficient way to work. Lucky thing I charge by the hour or Pico would be in danger of developing fetal alcohol syndrome by now.

The good news is that stress makes the baby move around more. Kevin doesn’t think that’s good news but I find it reassuring, given the lack of movement lately.

Sigh… okay. Time to quit bitching. Eat lunch. Call client; fix things again. Go register for silly, expensive stuff at Pottery Barn Kids.