Twins, twins 9/16/21

Twins are nature’s way of saying, so nice, let’s do it twice. On the one hand, you get over the process of having a complete family more quickly, but on the other hand…

What if they’re not on the same sleep schedule, feeding schedule (well that would be technically challenging since there’s only one mom and two kids) or pooping schedule? So John and I decided to have a go at another three part series, called Twins Come Home, parts 1, 2 and 3. So why do they appear on the website in reverse order, you ask? That may be because someone has not figured out how to put them in, in the correct order. One of us, but that particular person, if it happened to be me, should be given a pass today because it’s Yom Kippur and because that person happens to be fasting, and because being hungry makes that person pissed off and because that same person is expected to write a sunny and funny blog while he’s hungry and pissed off, capiche? I’m not saying that person is me you understand but if it were, that is how I’d react.

Oh yeah, the comics. Part one was last Friday featuring the exhausted parents and the calm, cool and collected grandparents. We can afford to be cool because we get to sleep through the night and not be awakened every 3 hours or so. So we imagined what would happen if the grandparents offered their services as babysitters for a night. We imagined the bedraggled couple would accept their offer rather quickly.

This summer, my wife and I shared a beach house with our daughter, son-in-law and their new baby. They wanted nothing more than a night off to feel human, go to dinner and a movie, and we wanted nothing more than to hang with the baby and put her to sleep. A win-win if there ever was one. Which leads to the part 3 comic, in which no sooner do the parents leave, than the baby starts shrieking. This too comes from personal experience. I recounted to John how my daughter asked me to babysit for one half an hour while she got on a phone call about a potential freelance job. My wife was working, my daughter and son-in-law were working so it was just me and the baby for 30 minutes, from 2pm until 2:30. I couldn’t wait. As soon as my daughter got up from the living room the baby started crying. I picked her up to soothe her. She cried louder. I rocked her in my arms, she began to shriek. Doors opened from other rooms, what are you doing to her? Nothing! I swear! I took her outside so nobody could hear anymore then when she calmed down I walked back into the kitchen to see how much time had passed. It was 2:08 This went on for the rest of the time, outside, inside, me: oh look, this is a tree, these are branches, want to shake the branch, go ahead, shake it…2:12

Finally, mercifully, my daughter’s phone call was over a few minutes early and she came out to her daughter who suddenly was all smiles and sunshine. When my daughter asked how it went I said, “Fine,” even though everyone in the surrounding zip codes could hear it wasn’t fine. John turned this story into Twins, part 3, even though you see that comic first, is that clear? Yeah, I don’t understand it either.

Enjoy the weekend a lot more than I am enjoying this freakin’ fast. And we will see you next week with two new ones, not about the twins.

Andy and John

You Can't Be Too Careful 9/10/21

Actually, you can. In the case of our hand sanitizer comic, Craig was allergic to it. Seems the stuff is everywhere now, drugstore counters, supermarket check-out lines, restaurants - but then they swipe your card in a machine that has everybody else’s swipes and hand you a pen that 2,000 people have used before you and, more hand sanitizer. But this comic doesn’t come from that insight. It comes from John’s wife Linda who mistakenly confused the sanitizer with bug spray. Turns out hand sanitizer doesn’t do a damn thing for preventing mosquito bites. Nor does bug spray do a particularly good job of cleaning your hands. Who knew? One of the most memorable cases of mistaken bottles occurred when my children were 7 and 4. One day when my wife was out of town, I was driving to a rollerblading rink and both my kids were in their car seats. My 7-year-old daughter was playing with her stuffed animals when I heard her say to her brother, “Uh, I don’t think you should be playing with that.” Then I heard the sound of an aerosol being sprayed. I was driving, so I said, “Can you please hand me that, having no idea what it was. It turned out to be a bottle of pepper spray. I exclaimed, “Fuuuuuck!” before I realized what I was saying. The genesis of this story is my wife worked in an office building that was quiet and dark come nighttime, where she went back to work, once the kids were asleep. So I got her a bottle of pepper spray to carry, just in case somebody surprised her. She put it in the center console, just in case…) Two hours and a long shower after, the situation was resolved, the pepper spray washed from our son’s eyes. My wife had just come home from her trip as I was towel-drying our son’s hair. She said to our son, “Hello honey, how was your day?” And he replied, “Guess what, Daddy said fuck!” So much for mistaken bottles.

As for the twins, we had a gender reveal party for Al and Joanne’s daughter a couple months ago and we figured it was time to deliver the twins. Turns out the delivery process is a lot easier to draw than it is to live through.

My wife and I were fortunate enough to spend a good part of the summer in a beach house with our daughter, her husband and their new baby girl, Charlotte. Though my daughter and son-in-law were overwhelmed with love for their daughter, I observed Charlotte not sleeping through the night, my daughter giving multiple feedings, both she and her husband never getting a full night’s sleep, and the toll it took to carry strollers, car seats, diapers, etc. When I explained this to John, he said, “Now imagine if you had twins. They might not have the same nap schedules, feeding schedules, etc.” (He didn’t actually say “etc.” I just put that in because I forgot the rest of what he said.) The comic that followed was what we imagined having baby twins would feel like. Turns out I just got a taste of the real thing. We just came home from a wedding in Denver followed by a few days with our niece, her husband and her kids, an 11-year old daughter and a pair of 5-year-old twins. One twin said to me, “Pick me up!” Followed by the other saying the same. Then the first one asked again and the second one said, “Hey, not fair, you picked her up two times!” You get the idea. The good news is that if you wanted two kids, you get it over at once. The bad news is, as the old Doublemint gum jingle said, “Double your pleasure, double your fun…’

See you next week with two new ones hot off the New 60 press. (There isn’t really a New 60 press, but I just like saying it.)

Andy and John

Expanding Families

This week we devoted ourselves to expanding families. Al’s family expands as his daughter Emily is about to give birth to twins. And Marv’s family expanded, or actually, Marv expanded by eating donuts, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But first to the upcoming birth. My own daughter gave birth to our first grandchild, Charlotte, back in April. We raced down to the hospital and when we got there, were told we couldn’t come in due to Covid-19 protocols. I suggested we go back home, because there was nothing we could do by being there. My wife refused and wanted to hang out there, “Just in case…” I could try every logical argument I could think of, but no, she wasn’t biting. It was clear I wasn’t winning this one. She was going to be there for our daughter and son-in-law come hell or high water. Finally, the baby arrived, and thank goodness everyone was okay and we eventually made our way back home. When I told John about this he instantly turned the idea around, saying we didn’t need the Covid part. The essential story was when it comes to the birth of a child or grandchild, mother (or grandma) knows best. So we just focused on the act of driving to the hospital. We all have our emotional connections and if they make sense to us, that’s all that counts. When I am watching a Mets game and it’s a tense situation, I give the pitcher or batter instructions. To the pitcher, “Throw him a curve ball, he’ll ground into a double play.” Or to the batter, “Don’t swing at the next pitch, let him walk you!” My wife will ask, “Who are you talking to?” I know my words have no effect, but what if they do? In a similar vein she knew she had to be there just until the baby was delivered. She knew there was nothing she could do about it, but just in case…

The second comic came from another observation. I shared with John, a story about our rental house this summer. A guest came up with two large cookies. Not just cookies in the traditional sense, but huuuuge cookies with all sorts of goodies baked inside. The guests were staying for a long weekend and for two days the cookies just sat there, still wrapped in plastic. Nobody wanted to be the fatso who committed to an entire cookie which must have contained at least a full day’s worth of calories. So I unwrapped the cookies and broke them up into 40 or 50 bite size pieces and put them out on the counter. Within one day they were gone. Everyone who passed through the kitchen, which was everyone, stopped and grabbed a bite size piece on their way to wherever it was they were going. “Oh, on my way to the pool, a little piece won’t hurt.” “Oh, on my way to the bathroom, what the hell, it’s just one bite.” “Going to run an errand, let me grab one while nobody’s looking.” John shared that he does this with the occasional donut and we had our second comic. Here’s a helpful hint, DO NOT try the broken cookie routine at home. 8 extra pounds later, you’ll be cursing us out.

One last point. The Mets finally won a game Wednesday night and you know why they won? Because I told the batter, Kevin Pillar, to hit a game-winning 3 run homer in the 11th inning and he listened. The fact that I recorded the game earlier and watched it hours after it had actually ended had nothing to do with it. The batter heard me! Everyone has their little emotional tics. And no two people have the same ones. But in the end, they are what make us, us.

Have a great weekend,

Andy and John