9/1/03
Good morning. It's Labor Day, 7:45 am and I have been awake for two hours already. I've spent most of my adult life getting up at around 11:30 am or noon, but now there is a baby inside of my house so those days are over. Sometimes I miss it, sometimes I don't. I like being with the baby alone in the morning, while her mother sleeps. But I love to sleep late. Wow do I love to sleep late. Holy shit do I love to sleep late.
Whenever I go out of town, I fantacize about all the things I will do. I'm going to see lots of movies. I'm going to play poker, I'm going to a strip club. But when I finally get out there, on my own, I stay in the hotel and sleep. I sleep and sleep and it feels sooo good. I never thought I would see the day that I'd prefer sleep to a lap dance. Not to say that I ever really cared for strip clubs (in case my wife is reading this), I actually find them boring and they smell bad. In truth, I've only gone to one or two strip clubs since I've been married. Even before getting married I never got much out of it. Why would you pay fifty dollars for a naked woman to dance in front of you for three minutes, when you can murder a hooker for free? Just kidding (in case my wife is reading this).
Here's the funny thing about being married. I always thought, when I was single, that once I was married, going to strip clubs would make me feel guilty, because I'm spending time with lots of naked women who aren't my wife. The reality is that visiting these places now does make me feel guilty, but for an entirely different reason. The reason is that they're very expensive. Now that I'm married, our money is OUR money and if I go into a strip joint, I have to consider how I'm going to justify spending fifty bucks to have Tina rub her ass on my knee, after telling my wife that the stainless steel refridgerator was too expensive. Just another way that marriage and parenthood are challenging in entirely different ways than what you anticipate.
That's what I try to explain to my friends who are thinking of having kids. They always say things like "I'm afraid I'll be a bad parent, that I'll drop my baby or hurt it." Or whatever. What they don't realize is that, none of the things that scare you about having kids are real. None of the hazards you imagine will come true. Instead, an entirely different set of horrible fears lay in wait. Things will change in ways you never could have anticipated. That being said, I wouldn't trade it for anything. I'm looking back at this and realizing that it reads too much like a smarmy NPR humor piece. I'm going to post it anyway and hope that, as I write more of these, they will get better. Thanks for reading and, for now, I support Howard Dean for president.
LCK