'You're going to be such a great dad.'

HUH!? WHAT?! Did you just say that to me? On the other end of the line? Are you a time traveler? If you are, did I manage to grow my hair back when you went to the future to see me being a dad?

Alright everyone i'm not kidding when I state this but I have no idea on how to be a dad. Shocking, right?

I think the main reason-and stop me here if you don't follow-is that I'VE NEVER BEEN A PARENT!

'You're being too hard on your self.'

'When you see your daughter for the first time it will just click.'

'You're going to be such a great dad.'

'You have the easy part.'

I am loathe to condemn anyone for stating these things I just wrote because of the fact that you are just being nice and it's your way of giving me 'big ups.'

Forgive me if I remain scared shit less.

But I am well on my way to finding out how to be a good parent, father etc.

This past Sunday at my step nieces birthday party, eight month old Darnell was placed on the floor in front of me after he had been fed and changed. After watching him babble at the floor and rattle his comically over sized plastic key chain toy, I decided to punt him across the...wait, I picked him up and placed him in my lap, assured that he would not poop all over me.

The coolest thing happened; I was gently rocking back and forth in the easy chair, and he slowly went backwards onto my chest, out like a light.

Parenting is easy!

I could get used to this. Darnell was out for almost an hour! I like to lie around and nap all day. And if our baby needs that contact and observation while she sleeps, I'm the one for the job!

Oh wait, there are the seven billion things that I need to learn about.

But I have a list of things to remember:

1) I've seen other people that have spawned before and my mental facilities are in much better order than they.

2) I'm not alone in this. My parents had a baby or two once. Or so they tell me.

3) I have been learning to try to stay calm in any situation. I'm going to need this as my happy place.

4) I have to be more careful in my decisions and actions as they not only affect Terri, as she is a capable human as am I, and a baby is defenseless against the world.

5) I'm sure there will be days when i'm at my wits end; but I've already been at my wits end and I know how to stay away from there.

6) I have refused to grow up and still hold a lot of the spirit of being young, so I'll be able to stay one step ahead of our girl at all times. (Yeah, right.)

O.K. the last one was a stretch at most because you never know what's going to happen being a parent but you can be assured that something WILL happen.

And the other 6,999,999,994 things will come naturally, right?

The other is the 'Team Awesome' moment.

Scenario #1: It's a nice summer evening around 6 p.m. I strap on that baby carrying-over-the-chest thing and harness the dog. I decide to go to Mt. Tom's down the street for some much needed sugar and head out. My friends are heading out of town in their van to gig and being the confirmed-bachelor-rock-stars-living-at-home they are, decide to point and laugh as they drive by on another adventure i'm going to miss out on.

My reaction? Rock on guys! I'm going to get ice cream with my daughter and my dog. 'Team Awesome' rolls on.

Now, I should feel left out. I should feel like my life is over and I have nothing to show for my self. What my friends in the van don't know about, is the great day I had showing Elsie a bunch of really cool art deco. And how we listened and danced in the kitchen to The Clash. And how more and more she's looking at me when I talk to her and brush her face with my hand.

Scenario#2 Miss Know It All:

Wow super educated lady we're encountering. You've had two kids and aren't using you degree from Smith that your parents paid $200,000 dollars for because you married a doctor. Now you are now trying to tell me what I should feed my kid, and how i'm holding her wrong, and that I should be less of a dad and more of a parent. HUH? If you want to approach the subject of parenting, please start you critique with: 'What I like to do...' or 'Can I make a suggestion..' not 'You need to do this...' or 'You don't know what you are doing...' because I don't want to get upset around the baby at least until i'm told that i'm 'the most unreasonable dad on the planet' because I won't let my now 14 year old daughter go to the 30th anniversary of The Warped Tour.

I'm really positive that your nanny gets frustrated too when you dole advice to her as you're heading out the door to pilates class.

O.k. so I went on a bit of a stretch on that last one. But you get my point.

In 'i'm getting old' news:
There's been massive rain down south. In Louisiana they were talking about opening a spillway to ease the swelling of a river. The last time they did it was 'almost forty years ago.' I was in bed watching the CNN's, engrossed in how that happened so long ago.

Then they showed the township that was part of the long ago flooding. Look, there's a piece of wall with a line on it where the water level went! Wow, that high! Oh and OH...the date above the line was 1973. The year I was born.

My heart sank just a little as I'd not been confronted so abruptly with my age before.

It used to be to me that the 40's and 50's were a long time ago. I now run in to people who are twenty and don't know about the L.A. riots or Reagan getting shot or Pac Man fever(they do wear a Pac Man t-shirt though) or The Challenger blowing up. Or the rise and fall of The Clash or Jonestown.

But I digress. We were much more free back then and our parents were freer. There weren't as many trappings socially and fewer distractions. A kid could be a kid back then and not a product. I just hope that my Elsie doesn't become one of these little brats that seem to be everywhere these days, clacking away at some stupid phone and wearing way too revealing clothes for her age, butchering the English language and demanding we shop at the mall for clothes.

Spoken like an old man!

Photo: unknown.

An assault on the senses?

The allergy gods have spited me once again.

Every morning over the past two weeks, i spend an hour in an itchy-eyed, stuffy whirlwind.

There seems to be no escape in sight!

But the cavalry does come in tow forms:

1) Each day the rotten crap outside dries up and the trees stop trying to mate, is one day less of this hell.

2) Loratadine.

As depicted in the image to the left, I went all the way to Russia to score some. Which isn't true at all.

I will have to give this wonder drug an a++ in the effective test. It really works and doesn't make me feel homicidal like Benadryl did.

It's been a half hour since I took 10mg of Loratadine and i'm already not itchy and my nose isn't as plugged up.

One thing that sucks is when a person loses or has half their sense of smell, they also have half their sense of taste. I love to cook and especially love eating, so it's been a bit of a drag.

In other news:

IT'S MOTHER'S DAY. Call your mom, she misses you.

Yesterday I went to a plant sale at the Vocational High School and was part of a bizarre right of passage called 'the picking of the plants.' I know very little of plants. My favorite kind of plant is the jade. It looks like it was made on the set of the original Star Trek. There were lots of people at said plant sale and they are not like me. It's some kind of down home countrified scene. There was even a quilt raffle!

In all fairness I scored two 'New Guinea Impatiens' as my patients was running out.

I would honestly like to get into making a garden, and I even managed to get two habanero peppers out of the six plants I planted at my last apartment.

Welp, now I am being forced by the mother to be verbally to get my ass in gear.

And I just was told that i'm re-potting the impatiens.

HARUMPH!