fine whine

I returned to work today, earlier than I had originally planned to do so because I can't count and Jessica didn't want me home if I weren't getting paid. My plan was to return next Wednesday, but these things happen. Some people were surprised to see me and all of them seemed happy to see a couple new baby pictures (I had, of course, sent a good number of them from the hospital lobby). I got through much of the day just talking about the delivery and what the first week of a new baby is like.

Which is not to say that I was neglecting my work. As they weren't planning for me to return for another week, my team didn't have all that much that I could really do. Moreover we're in something of a holding pattern at the moment, as some of our people are overseas doing last-minute (and after-the-last-minute) approvals and changes, and there isn't much we can do here in the home office until they return anyway.

So I ended up cleaning and organizing and telling people baby stories. All in all, the only measurable* thing I did today was answer emails, and even then, I only sent two.

And after I sent it (to people not in our Exchange system, so I couldn't recall it), I realized that one of them was from last week, and had already been answered at least once.

But at least I got paid, or rather, will be, at the end of this week or the next.

* I.e. trackable by my manager, or more specifically, a deliverable.

This sounds cruel, but is it bad that I can't stop laughing when my baby daughter hiccups?

She's been doing it a lot more lately*, and it just cracks me up. Especially when she's trying to cry while she's hiccupping.

Waaa-hic!-uhwaaaa-hic!-waaa-hic! and so forth.

Of course after I've had a good laugh (around seven or eight minutes) then I'll try to figure out why she's crying, and change her diaper or whatever, all the while still chuckling because she's still hiccupping.

It'd be worse if there were something I could do for her, but as much as I have heard, there's nothing that conclusively cures adult hiccups, let alone anything safe enough to try on babies. So all I can do is let her do it, and try not to laugh too cruelly.

* Please understand I am using the term 'lately' very loosely, as in the last day or so, since we're only talking about a week total here.

We left the hospital Thursday morning, and surprisingly Jessica let me go almost a whole 24 hours before driving our baby to a store.

Of course, according to pretty much everything I've read and heard, the newborn brain is incapable of learning anything more complicated than sucking or peeing for the first six months*, so we probably shouldn't be worried about her inability to find the freshest gallons of milk or know if the cashier has short-changed her yet. She's got a little time before we can really brush up on basic consumer skills; after all, you've got to learn to walk before you can push a shopping cart. I think.

But the experience was relatively painless, but I'd been thinking about writing about shopping stuff many weeks ago (you know, the ones in months that are blank in the archives) but never got around to actually putting fingers to the keys.

I'm not a big fan of shopping in stores, whether it be for something I want (DVDs, small toys) or need (groceries, socks). Grocery shopping in particular is a source of many annoyances:

Items that are shelved in a haphazard fashion, in aisles that have no discernable heirarchy

I never know where to go to find kidney beans. This is not the only food I can't find, just the one I remember most (searching for them, not where they are). I realize there is a good reason - for the store's bottom line - to send me searching every single aisle that has anything like "vegetables" or "cans" on the index-board, but it always seems to me that sorting the store by color could well be easier and faster for the shopper. Cereal and bread would all be together, more or less, but all the tomato products (diced, salsa, paste, ketchup, juice) would all be together, as well. Of course this would still be troublesome for things that have indeterminate colors (I bought prune juice once, and I think it was either purple or brown) but the store associates would only need to say which color to check, not send shoppers down aisles for which they may or may not know the numbers. Yes, I realize this is completely impractical and dumb, but you tell me why every store has the potato chips five aisles or more away from the crackers.

Whoever picks the music has horrible taste

If there's music blaring, more often than not it sucks. It's either eighties revival (i.e. the same five songs that comprise every bad eighties mix), lite rock (Celine Dion and bad Elton John) or cartoon ballads (again with the Elton John, and so forth). I miss hearing Muzak - at least then I have the fun of trying to figure out which popular song is being mangled, but sadly grocery stores don't seem to use it.

Unit prices aren't always in standardized units

I shop based primarily on price and value. If I can determine that I get a better price per ounce buying one box instead of another, I'll reach for the first one as long as its something that doesn't change much vendor to vendor. However, if one has the price per ounce given and the other is price per hogshead or some such, then I'm outta luck and end up shaking the boxes and making up mathematical conversions to make a decision. Then I generally pick the box that has better graphic design, since a company that spends more time and money on presentation of the box must logically have better stuff therein. This, of course, is foolishness and I know it.

No concessions are made for competent shoppers at the checkout lane

Having long ago realized that the "15 or less" rule for Express lanes is merely a suggestion, I doubt there's anythign the store would be able to do about my idea, but here it is anyway: a checkout lane for competent customers. Like me. When I get to a checkout lane, I'm ready to go. I know more or less what every item should cost, I have whatever coupons I need to use ready, and I've got my credit card and pen ready too. I preempt most of their questions ("Hi, doin' fine, thanks, here's my card, and no bags for the milk") and often will be out of the store in less time than it took to find the kidney beans. I'd almost be willing to pay a little fee or endure some sort of licensing test to have exclusive access to a true 'express line', since half of the time I try to check out quickly, something ahead of me in line has happened, and then I'm screwed. Nine times out of ten it's somebody paying with a check.

Now don't get me wrong - just because it takes me over a year to get through that first fifteen checks the banks give you for opening an account - I'm not anti-check. I am, however, firmly against people who wait until every item has been scanned and bagged before that crucial moment of "Gee golly, I guess I'm gonna have to get out my checkbook and pay for these groceries. Now where did I leave it in this bottomless purse... and now where's that pen..." after which the checkbook is found, and the cashier begins the twenty-point checklist of personal items required to be written on the check and/or signed in triplicate from a notary public.

And yet, to these people, this isn't hassle enough to get them to stop using checks, or to figure out how to streamline the process (like filling them out in advance, or at least having the checkbook out and ready by the time it's time to pay), and as such I think the stores need to step it up and get these people in line. Since they're not going to implement my competent checkout license idea, I'll give them another: go for blood.

Why not get one of those pinprick blood test things that the Red Cross uses (and also as seen in Gattaca)? I'd imagine that a drop of blood would be more conclusive to a person's identity than writing some numbers on the check.

This would speed things up considerably, and make paying with a check that little bit more annoying to discourage the slow people in front of me from doing so.

I'm not suggesting that people sign the checks in blood - that would be going a bit too far, at least, at first.

* It may in fact be the six week mark that changes her from stupid to studious. I can't say for sure; lack of sleep makes me a little dumber too.

I haven't quite mastered this business of sleeping when the baby sleeps. That phrase seems to appear almost verbatim in all of the books and other materials I've encountered about the first few weeks of raising a newborn.

None of them of course suggest any methods to do this, of course. I have a difficult enough time sleeping when my wife sleeps, and she formerly would get many more hours of sleep a night than our daughter does, so far*.

She doesn't get that much anymore, of course, so I'm trying to make up for it by being rested cooperative, and helpful.

One of the things I try to do is make sure she gets sleep between feedings. Tonight I let Natalya sleep laying on my chest as I watched a movie**, so as to keep her quieter.

It seems that's the most sure-fire sleep position for her (and sometimes Jessica too), but I haven't quite gotten the hang of dozing off with this tiny little baby laying on me.

There's really no way to describe what's going through my head as she lays there, occasionally burping or grunting and shifting around. She's a person, a little person, and I'm her dad.

These things take some time to sink in, you see, and I'm more than aware that all too soon she's going to be too big or too, well, not a newborn, to be falling asleep on me. Until then, though, I'll probably do this sort of thing a lot, prevailing advice or not.

* "So far" being somewhat of a laughable conceit since she's only three days old.

** That movie being 50 first dates, which I may discuss later when I'm not trying to be heartfelt and sincere.

Yesterday morning, in the wee hours*, a baby was born. Actually, I can vouch for a more than a couple babies being born yesterday morning and the night before because I could hear them crying somewhere down the hall from me - I spent the night in a Labor and Delivery room at the hospital.

Which would seem an odd choice to spend a night, except for the fact that I was there to coach my wife through having our baby daughter, Natalya Anne.

"Coach" seeming to be an odd term, since I really had no idea what it was she was supposed to be doing, and moreover physically how she could do it.

But back to the room. It was a pretty nice room, though some of the chairs might have been a little more comfortable. Jessica had a nice bed, but I was stuck fending for myself in what I could piece together from what I could scrounge together.

Surprisingly we both got some rest (apparently I was actually snoring at one point) after Jessica received a much-needed epidural, though to her credit she toughed her way through a considerable amount of pain (or at least made noises like she was, and squeezed my hand rather convincingly) before having it administered.

These are the sort of battle stories mothers trade. For my part the guys compare stories of shouting and squeezing and little else.

But that's for later on. For now I'm spending some time quality time with my family, in a smaller room with considerably less (comfortable) seating. I think we're going to be here for a couple days, and nights in which other people will be more than willing to take care of our (presumably) crying baby for us. This, I have heard, is a good thing.

* 3:48 AM to be precise, and furthermore she weighed 7 pounds, 1.5 ounces and measured 20 inches long. Why do these numbers matter so much? And not any others, like width, or volume?