Always having to get a word (like glurbschmidt) in regardless of topic, I’ve turned to our bevy of political-minded posts (one) and brought back this timely and timeless classic from December 2007. In it, Cool Boy (then Cool Baby) offered his pick for the 2008 GOP presidential nominee.

Futurama Cat Lady actually bears a resemblance to the lady I overheard.

Last month, I was blessed with a free ticket to see a Broadway show called Relatively Speaking. Cool Mum was out of town with the boys, so I went by my lonesome. Not only was the price right, but so was the seat: orchestra middle right, just 5 or 6 rows from the stage.

During an intermission, a woman leaned against the stage and surveyed the audience milling around. Then I heard her declare to a bystander, who may or may not have been with her party:

“Look at everyone, just texting, texting. Stupid world! Texting, texting.”

As she made her anti-technology rant, her cheeks seemed to flush almost as red as her fuchsia shawl. She was genuinely upset. I looked around and confirmed that about half of the audience was occupied with their phones. In the middle of checking Twitter myself, I was already thinking of how to report the situation in 140 characters.

But then I recalled a camp that my band played at a few years ago. I had already moved to NYC, so this was a sort of reunion. During lunch, a few of us were checking our phones, eager to divide our attention between the here and now and the elsewhere and now.

One of my bandmates called us out on it, and I’m glad that he did. It’s something that I often remember when I start wandering online instead of focusing on the present. I still need discipline in that area. Or it’s just that I’m making sure to get my money’s worth for my data plan. Yeah, that’s the ticket…

Do you text/tweet more than you should during social gatherings?

We’re pulling our traditional double duty in Florida right now, enjoying quality family time in the warm weather. Over the last few days, we doubled our caloric intake in case a freak blizzard snowed us under at home. Or maybe it was because there are 154 times as many Chick fil-As in the state of Florida (154) as there are in New York (1).

We essentially completed our shopping before Christmas Eve, which means, of course, on the 23rd. The Cool Bros made out quite well this year, “spoiled” you might say, though I prefer the term “materially blessed.” I could say the same for Cool Mum and me.

Here’s Cool Newbie rocking his favorite gift, a Disney toy electric guitar.

I wonder where he gets it from.

How was your Christmas?

• short fiction
• n+1
• more weight or more reps
• [unrecognized phone number that called me; turned out to be a business contact]
• zelda skyward sword
• reset acer aspire one to factory
• wii no signal to tv
• applu boric acid
• kids car seat plane
• tsa baby food
• do kids need identification to fly
• cvs pelham bay
• alvin and friends menu
• pocketbook

What does your recent search list say?

Mom mentioned in passing that I write a blog. What blog? It’s called ‘Are We Still Cool?’ The woman proceeds to freak out a little. It turns out that she’s an AWSC reader! She found us while searching Google for an apartment.

I met up with the group briefly, and it was surreal talking about specific posts and stories with someone I’d never met. Most of my friends don’t even follow the blog. I’ll admit that it was nice validation, seeing that people are out there, reading and remembering my half-asleep ramblings (just like this one! *yawn*).

Have you ever randomly met a fan of your blog?

We debated stopping in New Jersey to stay with my mom’s friend. And then we considered partying at State College, home of Penn State University. Pittsburgh looked promising, given reports of an emerging arts and culture scene, but we steeled ourselves to go on. We had friends further west that we wanted to see, and after someone (not CM) called it a “stupid” idea, my mind was made up.

We left NYC around 5:30am on Saturday, August 27. We pulled into friends’ Indianapolis home at 10:13pm. One car, two kids, 17 hours for what Google Maps asserted was a 12-hour jaunt. Driving with two kids will do that to ya. Either way, I think we were well out of Irene’s reach. (click map to enlarge)

We had a fabulous time with our friends Ben and Polina, who were actually the first (and only, for now) Truly Cool Parents. We felt spoiled, enjoying sunny weather in the 70s while our friends in NYC were soaking under constant clouds and rain. While every grocer and drugstore in the city had a crowd snatching up batteries and beer, we had supermarket megaplexes that we could drive a car through.

While in Indy, we visited downtown, had lots of incredible food cooked for us, went to church, hit a cool playground, and just enjoyed time at home. Ben and Polina’s girls were fascinated by Cool Baby and Newbie. Moment of the week was a question by their youngest before she met CB (he was napping): Is Noah brown?

We were having too much fun to leave any earlier than 9pm on Tuesday. We wanted to drive through the night to minimize stopping for I-HAVE-TO-GO-PEE-PEE! breaks. And it worked! It only took us 16 hours to get home. And that crazy last week of August-slash-first week of September was just getting started.

Here’s a video recap of our drive out to Indy (3m,05s).

Maybe it’s because we don’t get the Weather Channel, but we haven’t heard the term ‘hunker down’ thrown out that much. That was official hurricane-speak in FL. Unfortunately, not getting WC means that we’ll also miss the live coverage of correspondents standing on the beach, confirming that hurricane-force winds and rains are indeed strong while dodging flying tree branches and turtles.

We have two options for dealing with Irene:

1. Hunker down. Load up on fresh water, batteries, non-perishable food, and red velvet cupcakes. Prepare to deal with power outages, blocked roads, and possible flooding.
2. Get outta town. Pack our stuff and head west to somewhere safely out of Irene’s path like, say, Indiana.

We’re definitely not assuming anything, storm tracks included. A few years ago, Hurricane Charley rumbled in the Gulf of Mexico and was predicted to make land in Tampa. However, it quickly jumped from Category 2 (110 mph winds) to Category 4 (145 mph) and landed further south. It hit my hometown with devastating force. Thankfully, the Cool Grand’rents were okay, but their property was wrecked.

So, we’ll see what we decide. The one sure thing is that we’re not taking Irene lightly.

Who is a better driver?
Men and women disagree on who’s the better driver, though 85% of men think they rule compared to only 57% of women who claim the wheel as theirs.

CM and I both agree that I’m the better driver. I handle all of the driving around the city and the extreme lunacy that comes with it.

Who requires more pit stops?
Results are even here, with either women needing more stops or an equal split. It’s pretty balanced on our end, too, but with the two kids, the breakdown is more like this:

|| cool dad
|| cool mum
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| cool boys

Who has a better sense of direction?
Both men and women believe that men have the better sense of direction. I’m losing Man Points here, but CM has the far better sense of direction. I have Google Maps GPS on my Droid X phone, but it frequently reports us in the wrong place – like in the middle of the East River – or just crashes the phone. (It’s ironic/infuriating that Google Maps works so poorly on my Google Android “smart”phone.)

So when Google Maps has us Springfield, IL instead of Springfield, MA, I can depend on CM to “feel” how to get us back on the right path.

Who drives more during long trips?
Both genders point out that men drive more during long trips. I definitely do the majority of driving for road trips. Confession: It’s not because I love cruising the open road. It’s just that Cool Mum is SO much better at handling the boys’ needs for food or someone to complain to than I am, amirite?

Some other fun (or frightening) facts

> Twice as many men than women admitted that they have driven a vehicle with their knees at one point.
My friends do this. I never do. I wouldn’t dare risk driving in such a hazardous manner, especially given my lack of knee-fingers. And I’m so short that I can never get my knees to reach the wheel.

> When asked if they had ever groomed themselves while driving (put on make-up for women or shaved for men), four times as many women answered yes than men.
I’ve never seen CM do this. I wouldn’t. The shaving cream would be murder to get out of the upholstery.

> 21% of all respondents have eaten a meal that required a fork or spoon while driving.
This is just crazy. I’ve had my fair share of handheld eats while driving, but come on. What’s next? Crock pots that plug into your lighter? As good as in-car Swedish meatballs sound…

OK, I think I need to drive to IKEA.

We love NYC, but there are definitely things about Florida that we miss. Our family and friends. The temperate February weather. Chick fil-A.

And how deeply do we miss those massive whirring, banging, leaking boxes of metal: our washer and dryer.

When we lived in a 3-bedroom house with a washer and dryer in the garage, I never realized how good we had it. Even though the occasional black widow would be hiding behind our washing machine, I look back upon laundry times with utter fondness.

That’s because none of the 8 apartments that we’ve occupied in NYC have had laundry. For a year and a half, we carried back-breaking bags of clothes to and from the laundromat. For the 6 months that we lived in the Cool One-Bedroom, we also lugged those loads up and down 4 flights of stairs.

Our friend gave us a granny cart last year, and that helped tremendously. The task was still hard, especially in cold or wet weather.

Once Newbie started blowing out his diapers with regularity (and how regular he is!), something had to give. As much as CM loved the social aspects of laundromats, we couldn’t go as much as needed, so CM turned to her superpower, online research.

And she may have found our answer in the form of the WonderWash. It’s a portable, hand-powered washing machine that is made to fit in small places. It was only 40-something bucks on Amazon, so we ordered it, along with some other accessories.

This could be a real gamechanger. Stay tuned as we find out just how wonderful the WonderWash can be.

photo: muffet

On June 15, I was elated about my new brown Gola sneakers, and I announced them in this post. The post was summed up perfectly by Raquel in her comment:

Leave it to CD to once again make a baby-related announcement in the most casual way.

I confess to being sneaky. The prior 72 or so hours had me a little loopy.

I told the story of Newbie’s birth in this post. Well, here’s the post again with added details (kind of like the audio commentary in our Joe Millionaire DVD set (which we don’t really own)).

SATURDAY, JUNE 12

It was supposed to be our last normal weekend – as normal as we could be with CM’s torpedo belly preventing her from walking outside of a 3-block radius of our apartment. On Saturday the 12th, she would do brunch with her friends while I watched CB all day. On Sunday, we’d relax and go to church.

–I was especially looking forward to church because I was playing guitar on the worship team. I even had a killer 6-minute solo all practiced up in my head.

Well, I don’t know what CM munched at brunch, but when she got home, she felt like she was having contractions. The body goes through “practice contractions” leading up to birth, so I told CM that her uterus was just in rehearsal mode. We were having our baby on the 21st.

–These practice contractions are known as “Braxton Hicks contractions.” Now you won’t be caught off-guard if your doctor tells you that you’re having those. That is, unless you didn’t know you were pregnant.

CB had worn me out, so I was feeling sluggish, literally laying around the apartment. CM alerted me that the contractions were getting closer together and that we should go to the hospital.

–We were going to deliver at Mount Sinai Hospital, a historic and highly esteemed medical institution which we were looking forward to patronizing (because it would say “New York, NY” on Newbie’s birth certificate).

Hospital?! I protested; it was a waste of time. They would just send us back. I had good plans for the weekend. There was too much to do at work this week. We were having our baby on the 21st!

–When CM was prego with CB, we went to the hospital early one morning thinking that it was Time. It ended up being kidney stones for CM. The girl has had some hard pregnancies.

Despite my airtight logic (and because of the advice of CM’s doctor), we went to the hospital. We got there and an army of doctors and nurses attended to CM. She was the only patient in the whole labor & delivery ward. Of course, that just meant more people to tell us to go back home due to false alarm, as it was not yet the 21st.

–Children were not allowed in the L&D ward, so we had to leave CB at home. For anyone thinking that we just left him with a phone, a menu, and $20, you’re wrong (I didn’t have any cash). Instead, our Cool Roomies kindly offered to stay home with CB on their Saturday night. I got home in the wee hours, so they stayed up waaay late in case CB woke up. We are so grateful for their help that night and for their friendship overall.

After various tests, a nurse strolled in and declared, “It looks like you’re having a baby.” And I thought Yes, we are eventually having a baby, but then my brain caught up and realized that the smiling nurse had said “today” at the end of her news. I was not ready to have a baby “today.” I was not ready to have a baby until Google Calendar sent me an email reminder for our C-section appointment on the 21st.

–One of the nurses helping us before we went to the OR was a little more spastic than I was. I had to use the bathroom, and I asked if I could use the one in the room, which was labeled “PATIENT USE ONLY.” She said it would be okay. When I came out, she interrogated me, “What took you so long? What were you doing in there? Someone could’ve come in!” So much for a calming bedside manner.

But despite my lack of emotional readiness, there I was an hour and a half later, holding a freshly-wiped, squinty-eyed brand new boy up for CM to see as she laid on the operating table.

* * *

Our Cool Newbie was here, and so was our Top Memory of 2010!