Scooter Chronicles

I know that life changes when you have a child. I was prepared for this, or as much as one can prepare for it. But the funny thing is that I didn’t realize that some things I wouldn’t miss. (My brother Brian and I were discussing this via email a month or so ago.) Like watching hockey. I have only watched one full game since Nigel was born. And that was because I was covering the game for DetroitHockey.Net. If I wasn’t, I probably would not have watched half of it.

Just this Saturday too, always the biggest hockey night of the week, I hardly watched much of the Flyers game, and saw only a couple of minutes of the Wings game. I did make a point of watching “Coach’s Corner”, but the rest was not as important.

Reading has been another thing. Though I do miss the escape on weekends when I normally would get three to four hours of reading on both days each. This Saturday I was just too busy doing laundry and cleaning the apartment and doing some shopping to find any time to read. But it comes with the territory, I know. And I find myself doing things to help take care of Nigel or the apartment and don’t realize that I haven’t had time to read, and it doesn’t phase me.

Speaking of reading, I was reading “Winter’s Tale” by Mark Helprin before Nigel was born, and had tried to continue reading it after. I have since given up on it. I hope to come back to it and finish, but it has just been a struggle. Sometimes it is riveting, and other times boring. Here is a snippet of a review by J. Blilie via Amazon.Com about the book, spoofing a famous line from the movie “Amadeus”:

This book is far too self-consciously artistic and stylish for me. All the fancy words really get in the way of the story. All of his books that I have read involve some “fantastic” writing - flight of fancy in a fantasy realm. And I love it, in small, measured doses. Here, it is the basic structure of the novel, and it’s way too much. The semi-magical protagonist of bizarre origin is here, like his other books. The wild and woolly life of adventure, the sexual encounters, the interesting characters are all here - but burdened with far too much fancy, flowery prose.

“Too many words, Mozart, too many words!”

This is an excellent description (in my mind) of this book. I have now gone full steam ahead on the January choice for our Brew and Book Club, “Notice” by Heather Lewis. This next meeting will be a double discussion since we cancelled December’s meeting.

Lack of sleep obviously has been a problem, too. Though I have been fortunate enough not to miss too much, or get a solid five hours on weekdays. (Though I still sometimes get up and help during weeknights.) But on weekends, I have been taking the “night shift.” I don’t know how Marcia does it during the week. Boy do I get cranky by the time 7:00 in the morning rolls around and I have only had four hours of on-again-off-again sleep. And on those days I also have Marcia come in for “relief” in the morning, and I get to turn in another three to four hours of sleep. She doesn’t have that option. Sure, she can nap during the day when he is napping, but that still only ends up being two hour chunks at the most. And if he was really fussy during the night, or taking a long time to feed, then that’s even more sleep she’s missing out on. Now I know why parents joke around about slipping brandy or whiskey into their children’s bottles at night.