The Swaddle, and Implications Thereof

Elizabeth likes to be swaddled; that is, wrapped tightly in a blanket so her limbs are prevented from flailing uncontrollably, as the limbs of newborns are wont to do. A swaddled baby is reminded of the tight confines of the womb in the last few weeks before birth. She is comforted by the restrictions on her movements. Lately, Elizabeth has been more difficult to swaddle. She's bigger than she was at two days old, when the picture above was taken. More importantly, she's stronger and she fights the swaddle more. Thing is, although she fights the swaddle, she is only disturbed if she can bust out of the swaddling blanket. Wrap her tight, let her struggle to get out, and she will quickly abandon her efforts and go to sleep a happy, peaceful baby. But should she overcome the restrictions and get an arm or two free, she starts fussing and crying.

I was thinking the other night that this may have implications for the future. Just as with swaddling, she is going to fight against whatever restrictions Barb and I lay down -- but she'll only be truly disturbed if it turns out that our restrictions are so weak that she can overcome them.

It's the nature of kids to struggle against order, but that doesn't mean they don't need it.

A Magic Box of Terror and Wonder

My friend Gabriel is a computer repair guy, self-employed, who last time I checked charged $75.00 per hour. He once told me that something like half his house calls were for problems no more complex than showing the owner the power button.

I'm typing this on a Gateway laptop that Barb and I bought from a tenant in Mom's building who purchased it new in June of last year and was never able to activate Windows Vista and could therefore never even get to the desktop of his $650 machine. Poor guy – an octogenarian, but I don't think it would have made much of a difference if he'd been thirty years younger – got so frustrated that he sold the virtually unused machine to us for $200. I discovered that Vista needed to go online to assure its corporate overlords that it was genuine, and because Ed (the old guy) didn't have internet at home, it locked him down. Indeed, when I booted it up for the first time it displayed a message: “This copy of Windows is pirated.” But it wasn't.

I ended up calling MS and getting Vista activated, but it was neither intuitive nor effortless. I offered the machine back to Ed, but he wanted nothing to do with it. He took our two hundred bucks and went to Vegas. I respect his priorities.

I have often complained, “I never wanted to be a PC hobbyist!” I never did. But I wanted to own a PC, and it seems like the one follows the other. I don't understand how so many people own and use PCs when they have no idea how to solve their myriad problems. I imagine they must just yield to frustration, which I suppose may be a good lesson in Zen or something. Mom's friend Michael bought a new PC a year or so ago and impressed me with his ability to set up its DVR capabilities, to burn DVDs, etc. Then one day when he booted up he got a dialog box containing an error message of some kind. It didn't seem to cause any trouble, but it was annoying. He couldn't figure out how to get rid of it. I suggested googling the text in the box and seeing what resulted. He did (so did I), but no easy answers were to be found. As far as I know that same error message continues to annoy him to this day. As minor problems like that pile up, as his registry gets fouled, he's going to need to do a clean install. Then what? Either take the plunge himself, as I did one terrifying day years ago, or pay somebody hundreds of dollars to do it for you and continue to regard your computer as if it were the Ark of the Covenant – a magic box of terror and wonder.

Clearly, PCs aren't refrigerators. Our loyal Whirlpool has been chugging away, doing it's job, for three years without requiring any attention whatsoever. And it was used when we got it and is probably ten years old or more. I expect that kind of ease of ownership from my major appliances – stove, washer, dryer, microwave.

Perhaps cars offer a model of ownership that is more comparable for PCs. Cars need regular, expensive maintenance – brakes, belts, tires, etc. Buyers of new computers should budget for the $300 worth of yearly Geek Squad bills if they're not willing to sink dozens or hundreds of hours of their lives into learning about these irritating but seductively empowering devices.

Or just make friends with someone who has done so, which, come to think of it, is probably how a lot of PCs are maintained. Which is why last time I saw Gabriel he was wearing a t-shirt that read: No, I will not fix your computer.

Neologisms a la Mark

When Mark was here in Portland last year I exposed him to Aaron's and my Band Name Project. Over the course of a few years Aaron and I had come up with 700 band names. Mark started generating band names and then couldn't stop. One night of sleeplessness led to hundreds of names -- from great to not great. I'll try to dig up some examples, as I still have his notes somewhere.

Recently he got a forwarded email (not from me!) about a new word contest and his dynamo started spinning so fast it was throwing sparks and issuing smoke. With the following results (and more to come, no doubt):

1) Conflatulations (conflats, for short): saying
"nice one" or "good one" after someone breaks
wind.
2) Cereabral: having fruit loops for brains.
3) Constheorasy : a conspiracy theory.
4) Somerfaulting : making mistakes over and over agin.
5) Nutrilicious: both nutricious and delicious.
6) Sinistair: dangerous stairs.
7) Superfiscal: a minor money mistake.
8) Superspicious: suspicious for no real reason.
9) Regurgitaste: tasting like vomit. The taste of vomit.
The taste when you throw up a little in your mouth
while belching.
10) Terrorfied: scared of terror.
11) Hearesay: unsubstantiated testimony contrary to
church doctrine.
12) Hip-Slop: the fashion of Hip-Hop.
13) Vomic: a comic or comedian so bad they make you
nauseous.
14) Diaryhea: uncontrollable or non-stop journal
writing.
15) Dignifried: wasted (as on drugs or alcohol) and proud
of it.
16) Pursepiration: the immediate uncontrollable panic
reaction of one who thinks they have lost their purse
or wallet.
17) Asstorrhoid: a very large hemorrhoid.
18) Peniscuos: men who are unable to "keep it in their
pants".
19) Bladderuption: when you just CAN'T hold it any more.
20) Legalify: not quite the same as legalize.Claiming or
acting as if something illegal is legal. EXAMPLE:The
President can legalify anything using truthiness.

The Moby

In the picture of Baby Elizabeth below she's snuggled into a Moby wrap. It's a 15 foot long piece of fabric that can be wrapped around baby and parent in a variety of ways. We received it from Aaron and Wendy and it's fantastic. I urge all parents to use the Moby or some other method of holding baby close to the body, rather than dangling at the end of Dad's arm in the plastic bucket of a car seat. Baby wants to be close to her parents. That's a fact, Jack.

The Beauty, Pt. II

Renaissance Baby
Originally uploaded by andrew_larrison

Here is Elizabeth Rose Larrison at ten days old.

I have long thought that the driving force behind the rise of civilization was the desire by parents to keep their children alive, and now that I have my own, my belief is reinforced. There is an awe-inspiring wellspring of love that a baby reveals in its parent. It's unlike anything I've ever felt, and although it's been the subject of countless works of art, it's not understandable until you feel it yourself.

It's scary how vulnerable love makes you. But I think it makes you powerful, too.