Hit by a Pitch

When we moved into our house (in 2005!), the next door neighbors (the Isaacs — dad, son, and occasional visiting grandson) had lived there for like 30 years. They were awesome. They would tell us stories about the time our house was a crackhouse and they would sit on the front porch arguing about which of them had better weed. The son would watch loud satan-sounding action movies upstairs with the windows open while I would work in the yard. The dad drove a cab for Taxi Latino (they had a soccer ball on the cabs), which was very convenient for going to beer fest because we could just call him up and be like hey, it’s your neighbors, wanna drive us to the Convention Center?

They were great neighbors, but eventually they moved. (As dad-Isaac said, now that there’s two houses of white people on the block, it’s time to sell. This was very smart because he got a great price for that house, which plummeted in value shortly thereafter.) Some cousins of theirs moved in for a while, and they were cool too. Eventually they left and were followed by two sets of people (the house used to be divided into two units, upstairs and downstairs) who, as best I can tell, all worked for some day labor place that, in exchange for them working for ridiculously low wages, gave them this place to live. There were tons of people living in the house. Most of them were cool, like the older guy who would sit out front reading inserts from the newspaper, or even the guy with the rattail who peed in the yard, but some of them weren’t so cool, like the guys who got in a fight one night that resulted in a beer bottle being thrown through our back window. That was fun.

Anyway, the guys who lived upstairs during this time, which my dog Coltrane would refer to as The Golden Era When All Those Awesome Guys Lived Next Door, used to hang out on the balcony and throw Coltrane chicken bones with remnants of some kind of chili on them. This made Coltrane, as you might imagine, more happy than he has ever been at any other time in his life. I know I’ve used the Romeo and Juliet metaphor earlier in this blog, I think when referring to watching Colorado Rockies relief pitchers in the bullpen (This is true. It happened here. -ed.), but seriously, it’s even more true here. Coltrane : Romeo :: the chicken-bone-throwing guys next door : Juliet. It was a beautiful summer romance. Coltrane filled his days with the following activities: eating chicken bones, standing in the back yard staring at the balcony of the house next door, and having the shits. Ben would tell the guys next door to stop giving our dog chicken bones because it gave him the shits, but I don’t know if they did.

Eventually the bank foreclosed and somebody came and locked the bottom unit (but not the top, I think because they didn’t know where the entrance was or some stupid shit). So everybody lived upstairs for a while and eventually something went terribly wrong with the overloaded plumbing, which resulted in sewage and shit seeping into the arms’ length alley (our property) that separates our house from that house. We had to call some city inspector on that shit. Eventually everybody left and the house was vacant for at least a year. This was the era I would refer to as the time guys peed in the yard for a while and eventually the weeds took over and feral cats came to roost, which drove our other dog crazy as she wiled away her days with her nose poking through the dilapidated fence (since replaced) gazing at those assholes who are just hanging out over there OMGCATS woof woof woof yip yip yip yipyipyipyipyipyip. YIP!

For weeks after the tenants left the premises, Coltrane stood like a jilted lover, gazing lovingly at the balcony, waiting for his true love to emerge and throw him chili-encrusted chicken bones so he could eat them and then have the shits. It was kind of disturbing, actually, to see the dog in the yard, just standing there staring at an empty house. But that’s what he did.

Eventually he, like all jilted lovers, got over it and moved on with his life. He focused on new things like eating cat poo, licking peanut butter out of his Kong, barking at shit for no reason, getting agitated about fireworks (for the love of God why must everybody in the hood spend the entire summer shooting off fireworks), and doing normal things dogs do. Eventually, people came and looked at the house, but deal after almost-deal fell through because of things like foundation issues and, well, possibly the fact that there was raw sewage lingering somewhere in there. Seriously, that shit was gross.

Eventually, somebody bought the house and fixed it up (I am so, so, so happy we live in a hood where people buy houses and fix them up instead of buying houses, tearing them down, and replacing them with behemoth hideous duplexes that take up almost the entire lot and dwarf the surrounding houses, because that shit just pisses me right off). The balcony was removed during this process. Coltrane soldiered on, as dogs are wont to do.

Today there are new people living in the house next door. They’re nice. They ride bikes and take cabs and stuff. They don’t have a balcony and have never, to the best of my knowledge, thrown a chili-covered chicken bone over the beautiful new fence for Coltrane.

But I shit you not, ever since they first grilled something in the back yard the other day, Coltrane has been staring over there, waiting to be reunited with his love. You can even catch him gazing up where the balcony used to be, which now is just empty space outside the master bedroom window. There’s not even a kitchen up there any more. Right now, as I write this, he’s staring at the fence, wondering why these people aren’t throwing him something delicious to eat that will give him the shits.

On the days I work from home, Soren and I have breakfast together. (In terms of solid food, we feed him breakfast and dinner. We’ll probably add lunch soon.) As part of my new defattening project, I’m eating more like he does in the morning — a little bit and mostly fruit. Today’s breakfast featured a pear, berries, yogurt, and some “kids” bread.

We got “kids” bread because I’m allergic to wheat (not so much that it bothers me, as far as I know) so I don’t want to give Soren too much hard-core wheaty stuff. As a pretty much die-hard devotee of earthy wheat bread, I’m surprised I like this super-doughy white bread as much as I do, but it’s kind of delicious.

Soren really likes yogurt. We’ve been giving him plain Fage (no gelatin!) but to spice things up, just started adding fresh blueberries (microwave to make them squishy, mash them, let them cool, and then add yogurt). So he had the yogurt (I’m not sure I’m a fan of Greek strained yogurt), some pear, and toast (the toast is intended as a yogurt-delivery system more than anything). I had the raspberries and blueberries, some pear, and a slice of bread. And the coffee.

When I was learning about how to start feeding a baby solid food, I read a bunch of stuff on the internet and talked to our pediatrician. The general practice is to start off with something like rice cereal and then introduce other things, one food at a time. I figured we’d just make him various fruits and vegetables in some sort of mashed/pureed form — I’m too much of a smug hippie to buy packaged baby food.

The thing is, the rice cereal/puree process didn’t work for us. Soren didn’t like being fed with a spoon or rice cereal. As I learned from the glorious internet, many babies are like this. That’s when I learned about baby-led weaning, which basically involves giving your baby finger food and letting him eat it himself (or not, as often is the case). There’s a book about it, which I find pretty helpful; I refer to it sometimes but haven’t read the whole book yet.

We’ve settled into an approach that’s probably 75% baby-led weaning and 25% traditional spoon feeding. Ben has more luck with the spoon than I do, and I have more luck with the finger foods. Fortunately for me, I’m okay with the mess that results from, for example, handing a baby a piece of toast with yogurt on it. The cleanup process kind of sucks, but watching him eat a little and smear the rest all over himself is almost always hilarious to a new-ish mom who is easily amused.

He’s gotten much better at feeding himself over the past few weeks, but he still doesn’t eat a lot of solid food. I figure it’s more about learning than actually consuming anything right now, which is why I like the idea of baby-led weaning so much — he’s going to learn more about eating by actually doing it himself than he’d learn by having spoonfulls of stuff airplaned into his mouth.

One of the goals of baby-led weaning is to eat meals together and just give the baby some of what you’re eating. We’re not to that point yet — Ben and I tend to eat dinner too late in the evening, and sometimes we eat stuff I don’t want to give Soren yet (like fake meat products). We’re trying to give him as much natural, healthy, unprocessed food as possible. We’ve done mostly fruits and vegetables, yogurt, hummus, free-range eggs, blueberry pancakes (his favorite), French toast, a little cheese, bread, black beans, refried beans, and a little pizza. I’m going to make some homemade black bean burgers soon.

What’s cool is that, although we’re not always eating meals with him or the same things he eats, trying to feed him well is making us eat a little better, too. My goal is for the three of us to really enjoy eating really healthy food together. And for my defattening project to succeed (more on this soon).

Holy shit you guys. I posted a ranch dressing recipe a while ago, but I wasn’t super thrilled with it. Well, I made ranch tonight and changed it a little bit and it was really good. Here’s the new recipe:

Holy Shit! Awesome Ranch Dressing

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup mayonnaise (I use Hellmann’s/Best Foods — light is ok with me but Ben doesn’t like it)
• 3/4 cup sour cream (light is ok)
• 1 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1 teaspoon dried chives
• 1 teaspoon dried parsley
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper and/or fresh cracked pepper to taste
• 1/8 teaspoon dried dill

I use heaping measurements of the chives and parsley and barely heaping measurements of the garlic powder and onion powder.

Directions

Throw everything in a large bowl and stir like crazy until smooth and well-blended. Add extra buttermilk if you like a thinner ranch at any time. Refrigerate (duh). I store this in a glass jar.

For a low-tech version, leave out the green stuff (chives, parsley, and dill).

For chipotle ranch, omit dill and add 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons adobo sauce from a can of chipotle peppers.

My plan for Ben’s first Father’s Day was relatively simple — spend a nice day doing stuff Ben likes to do. This means the day started with Ben making us breakfast and then cleaning the garage (he’s kind of a weird dude). The highlight of the day was bringing pizza and beer to City Park Jazz. Pizza, beer, and City Park Jazz are some of Ben’s favorite things. It was fun.

I took some Hipstamatic pictures.

I wish I could install a filter on my internet that would prevent me from seeing all the shit people put on the internet that I don’t care about. (Sorry for ending a sentence with a preposition, but let’s be honest, saying “about which I don’t care” makes you sound like an asshole.)

This filter would prevent me from ever hearing about:

• sports teams from Boston or Los Angeles
• any pop-culture shit that has anything to do with vampires
• anything related to the weight of celebrities
• Sarah Palin
• conservative talk-show assholes
• stupid tv shows, including but not limited to Grey’s Anatomy, The Office (sorry, it’s just not funny), Glee (anything related to musicals makes me want to shoot myself), The Wire (I tried watching this and almost died of boredom; as a result, I don’t trust people when they tell me shit like Mad Men is good), Buffy the Fucking Vampire Slayer
• American Idol (this gets its own category, separate from stupid tv shows, because it’s so ridiculous)
• bacon
• the Denver Broncos
• dating advice
• the ridiculous movies that are being made, almost all of which are remakes of shit that was made when I was alive, which is my way of saying fuck you, Hollywood, get an original idea or just stop making movies, dumbasses
• beer that needs to be sold in bottles that change color or boxes that show you the bottles that have changed color, which means that the beer itself sucks ass
• Kobe Bryant
• that guy from that stupid tv show who has a bunch of health issues and really bad hair
• stupid shit people eat that will kill them
• bacon (this probably needs two filters because there’s so much shit some of it will get through the first one)
• anything related to the Jackson family
• any stupid-ass shit about reality shows about people from New York or New Jersey
• scientologists
• stupid-ass fuckers who commit crimes in the state of Colorado
• anything that has ever touched or encountered anybody who has ever had anything to do with anything related to Harry Potter.

In other news, I need a vuvuzela.