A Good Daddy needs to sound like the Daddy I heard when I was inside of Mommy's tummy
A Good Daddy needs a DEEP VOICE that I can hear when I'm crying
A Good Daddy needs to have tasty fingers that I can suck on when Mommy's nipples are tired
A Good Daddy needs to be nice and warm so that when I'm cold, he can hold me close and warm me up
A Good Daddy needs to make good "shushing" sounds so that when I'm screaming, he can calm me down
A Good Daddy needs to have a good solid thump to make me burp when my tummy is sore
A Good Daddy needs to have lots of energy to bounce me around and rock me back and forth when I need to move
A Good Daddy needs to be sneaky, because I'm a Sneaky Baby and I will outsmart lesser mortals
A Good Daddy needs fast hands to pass me to Mommy when my diaper is dirty
A Good Daddy needs to be alert, because I'm going to try to pee on him when they take my diaper off, and Good Daddies don't get soaked in pee... very often
A Good Daddy needs to make a big shadow to hide me in when the light is bright and hurts my eyes
A Good Daddy needs to have no performance anxiety when he sings to me to calm me down
A Good Daddy needs to know when to take me on a walk because Mommy is tired
A Good Daddy needs to love me
The notion that I'm going to be a parent inside of the next 24 hours is truly terrifying. The introspection that it's given rise to is perhaps moreso.
For better or worse, I'm probably not the best reflection of the upbringing and education that I had to work with. I'm lazy, disorganized to a fault and generally the only way to get me to do something to the best of my abilities is to have someone else relying on it. Of course, this makes me at least passing decent at my job, but only because there are 4-6 people reporting to me and another 2 or 3 dozen to whom my work has some sort of impact. If it's just me, myself and I, I don't do such a hot job. Really, I'm a lot like Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities - I can muster almost limitless effort on the behalf of those I care about but only marginal effort on my own behalf.
And now, it's me and Anna... and even there, I'm certainly not taking care of myself like I should in order to be around in 20 years. Not that Anna needs me to take care of her, but I have a responsibility to her and now to our daughter and I'm nowhere near likely to be able to carry it out if I don't change something. I mean, let's face facts: I'm morbidly obese, a Type 2 Diabetic who takes bad care of himself, I guzzle Coke Zero like it's my job, I haven't seen the doctor in at least 6 months... hell, I can't even take care of my teeth very well. And now there's going to be a little person relying on me to get my act together in order to provide for her.
And that's where things get interesting... because it's not just the provide for her part. I mean, while I have an intellectual grasp of personal finance, this whole inability to set my actions to the march that my rational mind dictates isn't exactly a new theme... but I can usually fake my way to better finance through stumbling along the path of career development. No, the truly scary part is that there's going to be a little person doing some significant modeling of who she's going to be based off of who I am. And I can't honestly say that I'm a huge fan of who I am a great deal of the time. I wouldn't exactly put me forward as a role model... much less a freaking parent and basis for understanding reality.
Have kids with more screwed up parents than me lived and survived? Certainly... but I'd like to hope that my kid would have parents a benefit to personality development rather than an obstacle to overcome... and I suppose that's where Anna comes in. On two fronts, really: as a far better role model than I could ever hope to be and as a mitigating factor for my own behavior.
Because, let's face it... and people who have known me before and after the initial impact of Anna on my personality (and on-going sanding off of my rougher edges) can attest that pre-Anna, I was a real piece of work. Still am, really, but nowhere near to the extent that I was prior to that. So something's going to have to give, but for now, I think I'm done with this self-flagellation... so, telling though this is, I'm going to go ahead and quote Jules from Pulp Fiction in closing with the notion that I feel it to be at least somewhat autobiographical:
Maybe it means: you're the evil man, and I'm the righteous man, and Mr. 9mm here, he's the Shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the Valley of Darkness. Or, it could mean: you're the righteous man, and I'm the Shepherd, and it's the world that's evil and selfish. I'd like that, but that shit ain't the truth. The truth is: you're the weak, and I am the tyranny of evil men. But, I'm tryin', Ringo, I'm trying real hard to be the Shepherd.
"Stop the Takeover!"
According to this ad on Facebook, Speaker Pelosi and President Obama are taking over the country and the Republican Governors' association can help stop them. Alright, I'll stop to give your brain a second to work that one through. Did it make any sense to you? Me neither.
People are just stupid over healthcare reform. Really, from what I can tell, Americans haven't been this stupid about politics en masse since the Civil Rights Movement. An no, I'm not trying to draw moral parallels (though those of you who side with Glenn Beck ought to take a minute to consider which side of that argument "Social Justice" would come out on... I'm just saying) ... all I'm saying is that the American Public in general hasn't gotten this stupid riled up on an issue being decided by politics since the Civil Rights Era. Or maybe that's just how it looks to my relatively-young self.
My point is that right now, as in most mid-term election cycles, the party in power is losing influence and the party of the opposition is gaining influence. Why? Because Americans don't vote for a candidate, they vote against a candidate.
I don't know how this works out in countries with multi-party Parliamentary systems, but in 'Murrica, people don't even know what Congress is doing most of the time. And when they vote, they don't know what they're even talking about. According to a Pew survey, 44% of Americans who claim to be "closely" following the debate on Healthcare Reform don't even know that "public option" deals with health care and only 18% know that Senator Baucus is the chair of the Senate Finance Committee that is tasked with writing health care reform legislation (at least over half of those questioned knew that they didn't know.)
So this is what puzzles me: how can the electorate claim that they vote for people with any sort of modicum of responsibility or eye to ability to govern? And what's more, when people start spouting off about the "will of the people", why should I listen to them? Really, all I know is that after one political party gains control, they will do some things dovetail with their agenda and then the other party will get into power.
And really, my problem lies less with the notion that anyone is dissatisfied with the current regime and more with the claims by the loyal opposition that the candidate that they're voting for will do a better job than the current regime.
And really, I'm looking at you Republicans. Because right now you're trying to convince me that you'll do better than the current regime. You're going to encourage fiscal responsibility and fix the economy. And, honestly, I don't believe you, and here's why:
Over 8 years with a Republican president (6 of those with a Republican majority in all of Congress) with a budget surplus, somehow the country got 3.3 trillion dollars further into the hole. Those tax cuts that were supposed to fix the economy and help cut the deficit? Yeah, 3.3 trillion dollars further into the hole AND a giant recession that erased all of those gains.
Over the 8 years of a Republican presidential budget (and yes, as President Obama explained to the morons in Congress at the State of the Union, you write a budget for the upcoming year, not the one you're in), we went from $1.9 trillion in the last Clinton budget to $3.1 trillion in the last Bush budget.
It should be noted that only one of those years, ONLY ONE (2001), did the US Government spend less than it made. And, in fairness, President Clinton was the one who submitted that budget (though, also in fairness, under a Republican Congress.)
So what I would like to know is this: Would the Republicans like us to elect them because they've demonstrated an ability to govern? Because they've established their credibility in sticking to their core principles? Because their healthcare solution isn't the same "sweep it under the rug and pretend everything's just fine like we've done for the last 30 or 40 years?" Because really, all that I'm seeing is yet another volley in the "elect us because we're not them" game of political Hot Potato that has perpetuated American Politics for the last 3 or 4 decades at least.