Behold, The Meat-Hound. All Hail, All Hail.

It was the way she sat, I think.

The other dogs at the shelter were leaping and barking all over the place. But she sat there calmly, ears up, taking it all in.  If it was possible for a dog to look placid and alert simultaneously, she nailed it.

Without belaboring the point too much, being both placid and alert is a vital pre-adaption to living in my house. Not so much because of me, but my children.

Squeaky (3, shown in pic to left) and Fang (6) are a handful. (We're training them too. Its an adjustment for us all)

Being placid would keep a dog from losing her sanity, and as to being alert --  the faster you see them coming with a Superman costume, a plastic pig nose, and a game of dress-up-the-dog on their minds, the faster you can hide in your crate.

Anyway, there she was, and something in my head said "that one." For a month, she lived in a shelter down in Dekalb County, Georgia that kills 85% of the dogs that go through it. I'm not sure how she made it to CT, but she did.

In the car home, we named her Max.

Debate rages on as to her heritage: Shepard, Akita (if you see her from the side, there's something about the ears) Sharpei. (I don't see it personally, but thats what makes this fun).

Anyone with good advice on how to make a 1-year old shelter dog adjust to a new home (with kids) quickly and happily, please post in the comments. Any and all advice accepted gratefully.

Best 50 Bucks I Ever Spent

So there I was, standing in front of the Christmas tree stand display at Stew Leonards.

"Should we really spend 50 bucks on a tree stand?" I asked the wife.

Flashback to last year: me, lying on the floor with pine needles in my eyes, tightening the bolts on our crappy old tree stand with a pair of pliers, as the wife holds the tree up. I stand up, she lets go, and tree falls over. Utter great obscenities. Threaten to convert to Judaism, Zoroastrianism, or any ism without a tree-in-the-house tradition. Repeat 6 or 7 times.

Dissolve back to Stews, Saturday night. We look at this Krinner tree stand with great hope. Fancy. New. It has a foot pedal and a cunning array of thick wire and clamps that are tightened and released by said pedal. The box says its easy. It looks easy. We buy it.

Once we hauled the tree into the house, it took maybe 15 seconds to set it up. We were so surprised, we did it twice, just to be sure. Feels like its countersunk into a foot of concrete.

Sure, maybe its a small thing, but not worrying that your tree will get knocked over by the kids or just fall over on its own is worth the 50 bucks.

Why I Hate Tinkertoys

I love to play with my kids, and build stuff out of lego and blocks and Lincoln Logs. But I hate tinker toys.

Tinkertoys come in a large cylinder about 4 times the size of a coffee can, the outside is emblazoned and festooned with colorful pictures of all the things you can build: a guitar, a tank, a spaceship, a series of spiky towers connected by blue tubes.

Alas, there are no actual instructions in the can.

So I end up peering myopically at the flyer that comes with the can -- much crumpled and drooled upon by Squeaky and Fang -- trying to figure out what connects into what so we can build the Impossible Tractor with Odd Protuberances, or Flying Shit Cart, or Coal Powered Space Rocket. The pictures are tiny, the colors are not accurately reproduced. There is no way a 5-year old can figure this out.

Which brings me to some specific issues:

QA at Tinkertoy Inc. is for shit. The wooden rods are not of uniform size, or maybe its the round wooden connectors that you ram the rods into. Some rods fit nicely and some slip out as soon as you shove them in. I don't know why in 2008, the idiots at TinkerToy Labs cannot cut wood the same way every time.

Finally, when you actually build the Giant Flimsy Airplane with Wings That Won't Ever Stay On, Ever, your kid will want to play with it.

But once you have built something with Tinkertoys, the proper thing to do with it is stand at a safe distance and admire it quietly and not breathe too hard. The last thing you should do is pick up the plane and attempt to play with it. If you do that, it will instantly fall apart. And even if it doesn't, because your kid is 5, he will bang the damn thing on the doorframe when executing a climbing bank and smash it to bits. And then Daddy has to fix it. Again, and again and again.

This is no fun for anyone. We should save crappy design and lousy execution for the professionals at the Pentagon.

Peace Through Bribery

Now Hear This:

Nothing quiets the angry yelling of two hungry little boys faster than the words "Who wants chocolate chips on their waffles?"

That Is All.

Ticking Away

Ever since my wife and I had our first child -- on this blog, I will call him 'Fang' -- I've been more conscious of my own mortality. Partly, I suppose it's because I see the next generation growing up so quickly before me as I get slowly older.

But now that my wife (The Lump) and I have had our second child -- I'll call him Squeaky -- I've realized that metaphysics or philosophy has very little to do with it.

Its all the damn timers. I've spent more time setting timers now that I have kids than ever before. Timers for heating things. Timers for boiling things to sterilize them. Timers for cooling things. Timers that let me know when to force open a tiny set of jaws and shoot another dose of vile medicine down a small throat.

And every time I set a timer and watch the numbers tick by, I think: "There is more of my life passing away."