Bath Time

Among my many duties as a husband and father is bath time for our kids. Now, I don't mind bath time (well, usually), because the kids have a great time in the bath and it always puts me in a good mood when they laugh and act silly. Plus, as most of you know, I'm a bit of a sap, and I can already see the time coming when my oldest announces that she is too old to have a bath with the other two and wants to take a shower. Now, I know that is part of growing up and all, but man, I am just not ready for a lot of the "growing up" milestones that we encounter as parents. Actually, the silly thing is that I am ready for them, but then when they happen, I immediately want to turn back the clock and pretend they didn't happen. Take, crib sleeping for example. When one or more of our kids were sleeping in cribs, it meant getting up in the middle of the night, usually several times a night to comfort a crying child. This involves dragging yourself out of bed, inevitably cracking a toe, shin or other more sensitive body part on some darkness-hidden hazard to come to the aid of my child. At this point, I am secretly praying for the day that they have their own bed and can come and go as they please. Then that day comes and I regret it instantly. First, good luck keeping a rambunctious three year old in bed at bedtime. Second, when they have a bed they don't stop crying in the middle of the night, they just bring the crying right to you - sort of like a crying delivery service. I should actually have them publish a menu, so I know what I am getting when they come in. They will come in wailing and before I ask them what's wrong they hand me a crying menu and I can pick the reason: nightmare, fell out of bed, sore throat, rolled over on doll and snapped off head of said doll, just threw up, just wizzed the bed, just crapped the bed, sister hit me while sleepwalking. (This way, my two o'clock in the morning wake up can go something like this: "Yes Julia, I will take an order of sore throat with a side of have-to-go-potty, hold the just-wizzed-the-bed. Thanks.")

But, as usual, I digress. The topic at hand is bath time. And (probably since it is summer and they are outside playing all day) I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing more disgusting then having a bath. OK, that's actually not true, there are probably dozens of things more disgusting, but there is nothing that claims to be a cleaning ritual as disgusting as having a bath. And I think that is why there are billion dollar consumer product corporations that produce all manner of bath gels, bath salts, bath lotions, bubble bath liquid - because without that cornucopia of perfumed bubble stuff, we'd quickly realize that we are spending twenty minutes wallowing in our own filth. Who has kids out there? Have you seen the water after your child(ren) takes a bath? On a good day it looks like puddle water after a rain storm (and I don't even want to talk about the bad day scenario) with dirt, pebbles, hair, glitter, grime, sand, various unidentified sticky substances. And they sit in this stuff for twenty minutes and allegedly come out "clean" at the end of the bath. How does this work exactly? You get into warm, clean, bubbled, bath salted water, filthy it up for twenty minutes and then emerge clean? At least in a shower, you are constantly being hit by clean, warm jets of water. In a bath you are soaking in a bacteria farm. And don't get me started on hottubs - when I want to soak in a bubbling cauldron of urine and bacteria soup I'll let you know. I suppose I'd make an exception if I knew the person to whom the hottub belonged - and were comfortable with their cleanliness and personal grooming habits. But, the idea of going to a hotel or lodge and climbing into that hottub - dear God, just save me the time and douse me in human pee and hair follicles and let me go shower.

I'm Too Dumb For Classical Music

Recently (and by recently, I mean April - I really have to get these things out on a more timely basis), my wife, Mother-in-law and I went to see the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. For you Neanderthals and uncouth readers out there, that means we went to see some classical music. More to the point, we saw some people who have more talent in their little pinkies than I have in my entire body. It boarders on the ridiculous. This last time, several of the musicians couldn't have been more than twenty one. When I was twenty one I could barely play the juke box, never mind a cello in a Chamber Orchestra. And their biographies are already six pages long: "When Gunther was sixteen he had graduated from Julliard and composed his first opera. When he turned twenty, he began conducting the New York Philharmonic." My most satisfying achievement at twenty was having a fake ID that looked enough like me that I didn't get hassled trying to go into bars (but it wasn't just the fake ID, it was the back up. Man, if you had a library card or a blood donor card with the same name as your fake, how golden were you!? You walked up to a bouncer with the confident gate of an Oscar winner on the way to the stage. And if your back up also had a picture on it that looked like you - better than hitting lotto. And if you didn't have back up, or if your ID was less than stellar, you had to have your A Game with you at all times - you needed plausible excuses as to why this was the only thing you possessed with your name on it, you needed to know everything about the person on your ID - name, address, birthdate, astrological sign, favorite color, shoe size. But, not only that, you had to be the wing man for your friends. So you had to know their fake names, addresses, birthdays, astrological signs, and three stories about how they just lost their wallet last week with everything else in it except the piece of ID in their hand. And you had to rehearse it all right before you approached the bouncer. Getting in to a particularly difficult bar under these conditions is the twenty-year-old version of a jewel heist. Once everyone got in, you all were so ecstatic that the first half hour on the bar was spent high fiving and recounting the harrowing adventure that had just transpired. And looking back on it, those were some of the greatest nights of my drinking life because of the adventure surrounding the whole thing. It wasn't just going out drinking, it was the jewel-thief caper that preceded it. Anyhoo, to sum up, these are talented people we were watching. And they all play instruments from 1625 or so - how can it be that an instrument from that long ago is better than something that is made today? Technologically speaking, isn't every single thing better now (or at least made better now) than it was in the 1600s? Think about it, medicine, transportation, heating and cooling mechanisms, watches, clocks, footwear, clothes, roads, bridges, architecture - all better now than in the 1600s. How is it that musical instrument manufacturing peaked in the 1600s? Can you imagine going to a physician's office and asking to be treated with methods and medicines used before 1700? "Yes, Doctor, I have a cut on my leg, but I don't want anesthetic and a few stitches, I'd appreciate it if you'd cut my leg off with a bone saw while I bite on this piece of leather." That, in my opinion, is one of the fascinating things about classical music - how technology peaked 350 years ago. But I digress.

I am not ashamed to admit that I really enjoy classical music. I was first introduced to it without my even knowing it - pieces like Beethoven's "Ode To Joy" and Handel's "Messiah" are hymns that have been played at church forever. Then, a great high school music teacher really broadened my appreciation for it. It is soothing and relaxing, and to watch the musicians play their instruments is pretty phenomenal (our seats are in the fourth or fifth row). But, one look at the program that they give you when you sit down reminds me that I am too dumb for classical music. Because the authors of these programs will not let me sit there and enjoy the beautiful sounds emanating from the instruments. No, they scoff in a very haughty way (one that shows contempt for my feeble mind) at my attempt to listen to music. I have to understand the music in order to properly appreciate it. For example, here is an actual quote from the program about one of the pieces we listened to: "The formal unfolding of the Phantasy Quartet follows an ingenious transformation of the traditional sonata structure through which is carefully woven a set of unifying motivic cells, most pervasively the small interval that the cello draws from the silence at the beginning of the work" Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Whoops, sorry, I think I dozed off while writing that. What does that sentence even mean? That's the type of sentence that should be written in Latin, so the four people in the audience who speak Latin can appreciate it, while the rest of us can just listen to the music. Here is how I would analyze the same piece: "I liked it, it was pleasant to listen to."

The people who wrote this program are probably the same people who publish Wine Spectator magazine - you know cork dorks - people who can't simply open a bottle of wine and enjoy a glass or two. No, it is a process. First, you open the bottle eight and a half hours before you are going to drink it to let it "breathe" (I always picture that scene from "Raiders of the Lost Arc" where the nazis open the Arc of the Covenant and bad ass God-protecting spirits melt the bastard nazi faces. But maybe that's just me). Then you pour it into a decanter to release the enzymes it the wine. (By the way fun fact: there is apparently more releasing and breathing in opening a bottle of wine than in childbirth. And where is all of this stuff going when it is released? I don't want to be cleaning wine enzymes off my walls for the next month.) Wait another two hours for enzyme release. Next, pour into an aerodynamic red wine glass and swirl it around until your hand falls asleep. (This is the toilet bowl effect. Oh, come on, you never noticed that toilet water tastes better when it is swirling? Uncultured boors, all of you.) Then stick your nose deep into the glass to capture the aromas that haven't escaped while you let it breathe for eight hours. No drinking until you can identify at least four distinct smells (and "smells like wine" doesn't count as one). Next, take a small sip and swish it around in your mouth for an hour and forty five minutes so that the full oaky, nutty, oily, apple, cucumber, fallafel tastes rest on your palate in order of importance (or alphabetically, it really doesn't matter, but decide before you sip to avoid inter-mouth confusion for the enzymes). By the way, don't even think about swallowing that sip - that sip must be spit out to allow your mouth to calibrate the flavors, something your throat could never hope to accomplish. Now, once you have completed these short steps...you may finally, after all of that hard work, finally...have a three hour discussion with the others at the table to see if they picked out the same flavors and aromas as you.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and open a bottle of wine and listen to a little Mozart.