Crockpot Therapy

I like to cook, and I enjoy browsing the cookbook section at Powell’s bookstore (a city block of books!). I’ve looked through every cuisine of cookbooks from Armenian to Zimbabwean but haven’t yet found any quick and easy recipes for keeping a marriage fresh where the ingredient list includes two kids, two professional careers, a never-ending list of household chores, and 14 years of accumulated baggage. Also, if possible, I’d like it to be a Crockpot recipe so I can just throw it all together in the morning before work and have it be ready by nighttime.

I remember the first day that Jen and I met – it was on a Tuesday – September 26th 1995. I was 27 and she was 23. It was the first day of graduate school for both of us, and I sat down (naturally!) next to the cutest girl at the orientation meeting. It didn’t take very long to realize she had no romantic interest in me, particularly when I would ask her out and she would say, “I have no romantic interest in you”. But eventually I won her over with my manly good looks, my tremendous charisma, my masterful guitar playing, and my overwhelming sense of modesty. Also, I helped her with her statistics homework.

We started living together two years later, when we moved from Washington State to Pennsylvania, where I’d been accepted into a PhD program at Penn State. We crammed all our junk into her 10 year old blue Volvo sedan we called Uduff (after his license plate, UTF 101) and tent-camped our way cross-country.

I’d had to sign a yearlong apartment lease sight unseen before leaving Bellingham (the rental market is tight in State College, PA; at least it was in 1997). Before signing, I’d asked my faculty advisor to check it out for me, which he graciously agreed to do, assuring me that the place was just fine. Unfortunately, gracious though he was, the guy apparently suffers from near blindness and anosmia, because that apartment was the darkest, coldest, dampest, smelling-of-mildew-and-cat-pee apartment either of us had ever lived in. We got there and Jen cried for hours. We had arrived to our dingy little apartment, 3000 miles from home in a town where we knew no one, living on my $8000 per year graduate assistantship, and she was unemployed.

Who could imagine a better way to start a relationship?

Real Men Don’t Buy Electric Spleen Agitators

The other morning I tried to borrow my wife’s GTI to go to the gym (I have the responsible Dad car, she has the fun car...still not quite sure how that worked out). When I started it up, an annoying alarm sounded, along with a dashboard indicator saying, “Shut Down Engine Now. Oil Pressure 9 PSI”. I never made it into the gym, but I definitely got my heart rate elevated.


That car gets its oil changed every 5000 miles. Even use the full synthetics, so I have no idea what could be the problem. No pool of oil on the ground below the car; no advanced warning, no nothing. I called up our service guy and he just told me to put a couple of quarts in and drive it in.

I think what really pisses me off about this whole deal is that it reminds me that I am a complete ignoramus about most things car-related. I know how to jump a dead battery. I can put in a quart of oil, and 9 times out of 10, I won’t pour it down the wiper fluid intake. But that’s about it.

The service guy told me that VWs can burn a lot of oil. Sometimes up to a quart every 1000 miles. But it’s a 2007 with only 27,000 miles. It makes no sense to me that it could be burning that much oil. But what do I know? He could tell me it needs a new electric spleen agitator, and I wouldn’t know the difference.

I’ve thought about taking a basic course in auto maintenance at PCC. Probably should. But I’m just a little bit embarrassed about being there with a bunch of 15 year olds that all know more than I do, and they’re all laughing at my ignorance. How could someone get that old and still know so little?

Maybe I don’t know enough about cars to be a real man, but at least I can drive a stick shift. When my wife lets me borrow her car.

Living with a Vegetarian

I’ve been a pseudo-vegetarian for about 14 years.  There are two primary reasons for being a pseudo-vegetarian:  1) you’re sleeping with a vegetarian; or 2) you’d like to be.  The third reason, my reason, is when you’re married to one.

A pseudo-vegetarian isn’t quite like being a real vegetarian.  Sure, we don’t eat much meat (at least not when she’s there to see), but your heart’s just not into it.  Sort of like the early Christian converts in Scandinavia who had to choose between conversion and death at the hand of their Christian king, "Saint" Olaf. With pseudo-veggies, it’s your love life that’s under threat of execution.

In fairness, the lifestyle really isn’t all that bad, unless you’re living with a hardcore orthodox vegetarian.  My wife belongs to the reformed church, and they’re a bit easier going.  I keep a bag of chicken breasts in the freezer for emergencies, and I still get the occasional burger eating out with friends or co-workers.  But the rest of the time, it’s legumes, cheese, and vegetable proteins in our house.  And ice cream.  God help me, I couldn’t do it without the ice cream.  I’d probably join a radical fundamentalist carnivore sect, and set off a Bolognese bomb at a local salad bar.

The hardest part is deciding how to raise the children.  Should they be raised as veggies or gentiles?  We haven’t had to choose yet:  Our older daughter is basically a carbivore, and the younger one only has two teeth.  Hopefully a burning bush will speak to us soon to lead us out of the desert.  The question is, will we be led to the land of milk and honey, or will it be the golden calf for them?

Mmmmm…..veal.

Man Crush

A facebook friend recently posted a link to a youtube video proving that Tom Selleck’s mustache improves everything. And I’ll be damned if it’s not true. I showed the video to Jen, and she didn’t get it.

“But it’s Tom Selleck’s mustache. It makes everything look better”

“If you say so.”

“Aw, c’mon. Don’t you think Tom Selleck’s ‘stache makes everyone look better?”

“I think someone has a thing for Tom Selleck”

“Yeah, right!”

“You do! You have a crush on Tom Selleck!”

“I don’t have a crush on Tom Selleck, okay?”

“You totally do. You want him to kiss you with that mustache”

“No...well, if I had to kiss a guy, maybe it would be Tom Selleck. But I don’t want him to kiss me. I just want him to be my poker buddy...and maybe take me for a ride in his Ferrari.”

“So, that’s what they’re calling it these days.”

Women don’t understand anything.


Here’s the link in question. Tell me that mustache doesn’t make everyone look better:

And Baby Makes Four...

This is my first new entry in almost two years. I enjoyed writing the earlier ones, but somehow I stopped making the time. I need to be more disciplined. Anyway, some things have changed a lot, others things not so much. We had another girl last year...Victoria Karsten...born on Christmas day. She’s lovely, and possessing an easier disposition than her sister. But, Jesus Christ, two babies are a lot harder than one.

Both girls are lousy sleepers: Neither my wife nor I has more than five, maybe six hours of sleep on any given night. At least half the time, I wake up to find both girls in bed with us. In my youth, I used to dream about sleeping with three girls¹, but the reality is nothing like what I imagined. Who knew there would be so much crying? By me.


With two children under three years old, you don’t get many breaks. Tori takes two short naps in the mid-morning and late afternoon, while Viveca takes one long nap in the middle of the day. So it’s hard to get out of the house much. We sometimes split them up, but then it’s hard to get chores done around the house when you’re also entertaining a baby/toddler.


Before, when it was just Viveca, we used to spot each other when the other person was ready to lose her/his shit. That person would go to the gym, go to drinks with co-workers, catch a movie, or just get the hell out of Dodge for awhile, while the other one took over. But that doesn’t work with two kids, unless one is left alone with both kids. Then, when you come back, the person left home is so exhausted and pissed off that it almost isn’t worth it.


It would be nice if we could afford some extra help at home. I was thinking a cute little au pair from Sweden or Brazil might be nice. Jen agreed, but her stipulation was that he had to be under 25, with a nice ass. The hell with that shit. We’re not getting no stinking au pair.



¹This is pure conceit on my part.  In my youth, I would have been thrilled to be sleeping with even one girl.  The possibility of three at once would have been utterly beyond comprehension, like Sanskrit or trickle down economics.

Movie Night

The mail at our house consists mostly of grocery store fliers, a few bills, credit card applications, and the occasional letter.  But about once a week we'll receive a Netflix mailer with a new movie or television show in it. My wife and I don’t always have the same taste in entertainment, so there is usually some negotiation involved. We can usually find something we’re both interested in, but there are some film genres she simply cannot abide.

Last week saw the arrival of the new Star Trek DVD, and I couldn’t have been more excited to watch it. Her reaction, however, was less enthusiastic:

“Well, I guess tonight is Geek Night”, or something to that effect.

Well, yeah. I’m a geek, but she knew that before she married me. She didn’t mind so much back in graduate school, when she needed help with her with statistics homework. Thing is, you don’t get the Statistics Help without the Star Trek Love. It’s the Full Package. I think she understands and accepts this, up to a point, but when I asked her to watch Star Trek with me, no dice.

“C’mon. You might like it. There’s some really good looking actors in it. You know that guy who plays the villain in ‘Heroes’? He's Spock.”

Stupid me, but “Heroes” wasn’t helping my cause. She’s more the “Ugly Betty”, “Grey’s Anatomy” demographic. If only they’d cast America Ferrera as Nurse Chapel, I might have had a shot.

And Grey’s Anatomy? Now there’s a show I should like, but no. It’s set in my native Seattle, in a hospital staffed primarily with gorgeous women, and I enjoy medical dramas (ER was a mainstay with us for years).  But the vapid, soap opera melodrama just leaves me cold. Maybe if they performed all their surgeries topless, I’d watch.

This week, “Terminator Salvation” came in the mail. I’m a little worried that someday my wife will realize she can log into our Netflix account and modify the queue any time she wants to. Then it’ll be “Made of Honor” and “Julie and Julia” for me. Oh well... I wonder if Julia Child ever cooked in the nude?

Social Transitions

There was a time when I used to pride myself on my punctuality. Now I’m happy when I’m only an hour late, and with relatively few visible puke stains on my clothing. This is just one of the ways that parenthood is like being an alcoholic. Unfortunately, such tardiness has put a damper on our social lives. Movies? Plays? Drinks? Fine dining? Fuggedaboutit! (Hmm…which sounds dumber? White boys from the Pacific Northwest trying to sound like NJ Mafia or LA Gangbangers? That’s a quandary, fo’ shizzle).


These days, it’s mostly 4pm get-togethers with other parents of infants. These are folks who aren’t turned off by discussions of diaper services vs. disposables, swimming lessons, teething, and who understand that socializing must end by approximately 7pm, at which time our precious little bundles of joy turn into levitating, head-rotating, pea-soup spitting little demons.

These are good people, and I really enjoy their company. It’s just that I see myself turning into a kind of person I never wanted to be – someone incapable of carrying on a conversation about anything other than my own kid. Oh, sure, my F.W.K.s (friends without kids) are very polite, and some will even add sweet little comments to my endless stream of Facebook photo albums depicting “Baby’s Latest Bowel Movement”. But somewhere in the back of my mind I can’t help but wonder if they’re not just a little bit turned off by this new me.

And so I make it a point to try to keep up on current events and to discuss interesting adult topics with my friends whenever possible. Take the senate health care debates, for example. This is an important topic. I can’t imagine how bad off my family would be without health care insurance. Every American family should have coverage, regardless of employment status. Our daughter has her one year well baby check up tomorrow afternoon. She was at the 60th percentile for height and the 80th percentile for head circumference at her last appointment. Hopefully tomorrow she’ll hit 90th percentile. I feel sorry for all those poor tiny head babies with no health insurance. Congress needs to get their acts together.