Crossed-eyed babies, dead dogs

My daughter turned 8 weeks old today--hurray, haven't broken her yet--and she continues to get more and more interesting every day.  She smiles all the time, and is trying her best to laugh, but it comes out sounding a little like a donkey, I think because she only laughs while inhaling.  And now you're thinking about how you'd hee-haw, yup, I can read minds.  

The other slightly worrying thing is a face she makes.  She can somehow manage to completely cross her eyes, and only does so when her tongue is stuck out.  It looks hilarious.  I told my wife today that I thought that our daughter only did it because I laugh when she does--she's just that smart.  I got: "well honey, maybe that's true (eye-roll, eyebrow-raise)."  She's a great mom.  I mean wife.  Okay, both.

I read today that the University of Georgia's mascot, a bulldog, died this weekend.  In a good use of state funds, the university is planning a funeral service for the dog in its football stadium, before it is buried in some decorative tomb in front of the stadium, next to its ancestors, the previous mascots.  

This dog really summed up what it means to be a southerner.  He died with no pants on, of a heart attack, at the age of 9 (That's 63 in dog-years, so he did way better than his kin folk).  He also couldn't read, had funny looking teeth, never finished high school, and hated black people.  If that's not a portrait of a fine southerner, I don't know what is.  Rest in peace, bulldog, its values like yours that General Lee fought to defend.

Cookware, southern-ness

About two years ago my wife decided that we should only cook with cast-iron pans.  Apparently, all the non-stick pans that have been popular for twenty years actually cause global warming, or leach carcinogens into your food, or something like that.  Anyway, I've been married long to enough to know to pick my battles, so it wasn't a big deal.  Plus, cast-iron looks nice.  Sort of backward and romantic.  Like the south, except romantic.

What I didn't know is that when you buy new cast-iron pots and pans, they aren't ready for use.  Actually, first things first, my wife decided to order them online, which seemed like a plan to me--where do you even get cast-iron cookware in Chicago?  The gun store?  Guns are illegal here!--until it arrived all in one box, which I swear weighed over 100 pounds and I had the pleasure of carrying up 4 floors of stairs.  So I got all this stuff upstairs finally and sweatily, and started unpacking it and putting it away.  No, no, no says the wife, We have to "season" them first.  What the hell?  Are we eating the pans?  Is this a suicide cult?  Do they teach little girls this stuff in home economics in the south?  Remember to season your pans!  Wouldn't want your collard greens to stick.

So seasoning a pan, how the fuck do you do that?  Well, the idea is to slather the thing in fat of some kind (this is one of a southerner's favorite games) and bake the fat into the pan.  Again.  And again.  And again.  We did this is mid-summer and had the oven blasting all day.  It is wastes of time like this that may be to blame for the confederacy's demise--"these'n guns is ready, Hoss, but we's justa got season 'em first."  And then Atlanta was burned to the ground by Sherman.  But, the fire helped the seasoning and those guns made some tasty biscuits 'n gravy so it wasn't a total loss.

While you think all our seasoning must have been in vain, because god knows I can't tell a difference, you're wrong.  My mother-in-law was in town (crystal meth sales convention) and used the cast-iron cookware.  I was brushing my teeth at the time, but heard some commotion in the kitchen and decided to investigate.

"Oh, honey, your cookware is so perfectly seasoned!  Its like a 90 year old great-grandmother's!"  She was beaming, beside herself over how HER daughter had perfectly seasoned cast-iron.  That may be the proudest she has ever been of any of her children.  Incidentally, I think most southern 90 year olds are actually great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, or Eve, take your pick.

Funnier than that, my wife looked and me and said "See, see?  I told you I was right to season it," with a look of a prideful child whose parent has just approved of, and validated, their life's work.  Apparently, praising another woman's cast-iron seasoning in the south is one of their highest compliments.  It is right up there with "your grits are so smooth," "your flag is so big," "your church has a Starbucks!" and "your slaves are so well-behaved."

In all seriousness, I really like cast-iron cookware.  I highly recommend it, but I suggest you wait until winter to do the seasoning.

Thank You Notes

Southern people do all sorts of weird things.  And yet, they don't think the things they do are strange, because they grew up in the middle of a strange-acting place thinking they were normal.  

Now, as you may know, I am married to a southern lady.  And I wouldn't have it any other way.  Sometimes though, these weird southern behaviors become a real pain in my ass when I am expected to do them, and act as though I think they're perfectly normal.  

Among the weirdest of these practices, and one I seriously hate, is writing thank-you notes for everything.  In my book, if someone saves your life, that deserves a thank-you note.  If someone sends you a gift for your baby, not so much.  I would say a friendly email would suffice.  But god-all-fucking-mighty forbid that a thank-you note does not get written.  That would be a serious snub, and talked about in hushed, scandalous tones at the gun show.  

So why am I all bent out of shape about this?  Well, I'll tell you why.  When I started working in the trading industry right after college, aged 23, I worked on the trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.  Among my duties was to be on a headset--I looked like a helicopter pilot--with one of the craziest motherfuckers I have ever come across.  He was a broker who worked for my boss.  My boss would tell me what to have the broker do, and I would relay the message.  The broker was across the trading floor, I could see him, so even though he wouldn't acknowledge me half the time, I could see him work the order I gave him.  Sounds not so bad, but when hundreds of thousands of dollars are on the line and you're 23 and have a negative net worth that sure seems like a lot of money and things can get a little hectic.

Well, on one of my first days wearing this headset, I guess I fucked something up.  The broker I was on the line with went absolutely apeshit.  He was a good 200 feet across the room from me, but I could see his face turn bright red--it matched his trading jacket--and he started berating me over the headset, though he was screaming loud enough that I could hear him across the room, as could the thousand other people standing around listening to me get verbally raped.  He continued on his tirade for at least a minute, and the icing on the cake was "If you ever make a fuck-up like that again I will fucking come over there and fucking kill you."  And as the "fucking kill you" came out of his mouth, he pulled a huge knife out of his pocket and waved it my direction.  Nice, normal psychopath.  

The great thing about the trading industry is that if you're smart and good at what you do, you advance at a rate that seems ludicrous to people outside the business.  The broker and I established a pretty good working relationship, and the last two years that I worked at my former firm I was his boss.  Anyway, he is a really good dude, and today in the mail we got a package of baby gifts from him and his wife.  Very nice of them.  

"You need to write them a thank-you note, hun" says my wife.

Are you fucking kidding me?  I'm going to write an Emily Post-esque thank-you note to a guy who once threatened to kill me?  

"Yes, its the only decent thing to do."

So I guess I'm writing a thank-you note.  I have twenty bucks that says it makes the rounds at my former office.  I can see it now:

Dear Bill and Mary, [lots of grins]

We were excited to receive Alexandra's package in the mail today. [FAG!]  Thank you so much for your sweet gift. [FAG!]  She looks so cute in her onesy, and pink is a great color on her. [Dying laughing: onesy? Pink? Great color? FAG FAG FAG!] It was so thoughtful of you to send her such a nice gift--I hope you're able to meet her soon. [Well, I hope she's not as big a FAG! as her dad!]  This is going to suck...

I've just devised a counter-plan though.  Every time someone does something that my wife says merits a thank-you note (Dear Mailman, Thank you for only fucking up our mail 74 days this past year...) I am going to demand that she takes two shots of tequila.  Seems ridiculous, honey?  Well that's just how its done in Botswana, its only decent, I just don't know what to tell you.  Guess you weren't raised right!  If someone sends you a gift, you pound tequila.  Everyone knows that.  You can even mention it in the thank-you note if you'd like.