Blast from the past: June 24th 2010

Netflix is an interesting creation. You can think of any movie on any topic and chances are you will find something to watch. Let's say that you want to watch a film about Snowboarding, you can find it there. Now if you want to watch a specific film about Snowboarding starring....let's just throw a name out at random....Corey Haim...and you want this movie to co-star....Jim Varney (From the hillarious Ernest movies such as the classic 'Ernest goes to the Vatican' or the equally funny 'Ernest kills a man for a Klondike Bar') sadly you can find such a movie. And yes, it also stars Brigitte Nielsen from Red Sonia and whatever she did with Flava Flave that I am trying to block from my mind (I shudder at the thought). So, it is a scientifically proven fact that you can find almost any type of movie on Netflix, even one based on the Pregnancy For Dummies book. Guess what my wife and I watched yesterday...No, not Snow Boarding Academy...although that's in the queue and we shall watch it soon! While the title may sound somewhat offensive, Snowboarding for Pregnacy...I mean Pregnancy for Dummies was actually a very in depth, well thought out program that eased a few fears that Mercy and I both have. It also scared the hell out of us. The thought of seeing the ultrasound image of our see through baby and all of his or her organs was kind of terrifying.
So, after watching parts one and two of this four part series, I began thinking....If this is a good movie to watch while you are expecting, I wonder what movies are really really bad to watch. The obvious movies that sprung to my mind were Rosemary's Baby
Where Mia Farrow is secretly selected to have the devil's spawn by a satanic cult. And no, this has nothing to do with Woody Allen.
The only other movies that I can think of that would be terrifying to watch when you are expecting are the films fromt he "It's Alive Series".

These shlocky horror films are about a couple who somehow give birth to a fanged mutant baby who goes on a killing spree. With hillarious results. I think they were produced by the Walt Disney Company, but I am not sure.
If anyone else has any other films to add to the list, please let me know. Now, I must go and write my new Screenplay entitled Snowboarding babies from Hell.

*All images are property of their respective owners and used for parody purposes.

Blast From the past: June 25th, 2010

Tummy touching

As my wife and I continue on our journey to parenthood, we have heard from many people, movies, magical talking cats who wear top hats, and other sources that pregnant women are victim to a strange phenomenon. It seems that no matter where a pregnant woman is, someone wants to touch her belly. Of course, since we are so early into the pregnancy, we have not come across this situation, but the whole idea is kind of odd to me.

As human beings, we have been going through the human experience for ages, we all know how babies are made(The stork comes in the middle of the night and plants a seed in the woman's belly button and a baby grows inside her. You all know that!)and we all know what pregnant women look like. This has been a very common occurance that has been going on since the dawn of man, so why do random people act like the monkey at the beggining of Space: 2001 everytime they see a pregnant woman walk into the room? It's like some mysterious monolith appearing and radiating a magical beam of curiosity. What do random people think they will gain once they have touched a pregnant woman's belly? Wisdom? Insight to the meaning of life? No, they just create a weird situation.
Before you ask, no I am not talking about family of the pregnant woman. I think it is perfectly normal for the father, grandmother, cousin, aunt, uncle of the baby to want to touch the tummy. Afterall, it is their little relative inside there! For me it is amazing to know that my future child is living in my wife's stomach not too far faway rom the Bacon Avocado sandwhich she had just eaten. But why do strangers think it's okay to gawk at and even touch the tummy of a pregnant woman they don't even know?

Sure, I don't know if this will really happen to Mercy yet, I have no idea what adventures this pregnancy will bring. My only real source of information comes from television, movies, old cartoons, stories old people have told me and things I read on weird websites. However, I think if some random person just springs out of the bushes and rubs my wife's belly for goodluck or something, I may punch them in the eye.

Blast From the Past: September 16th, 2010

     If you read the last post, you probably know that the baby mooned his or her mother and grandmother during a space age ultra sound picture show last week. Well, in an unrelated, yet similar sounding turn of events, last night I just found out about something called Babymoons. Any guesses on what that involves? No, it doesn't involve baby butts like the previous post. It's like a honeymoon that you take before the baby is born. Hence the term Babymoon. And no, there is not a pregnancy version of a Bachelorette party. Pregnant women should not drink and stuff dollar bills down the speedo of a guy dressed like a sexy police officer. It's just plain wrong. That's for after the baby's born.

It seems that these Babymoons are quite popular and many people even travel abroad. Can you imagine this scenario: You and your wife are traveling to Sydney, Australia for a Babymoon with lots of fun and sun. Mix that equation in with the fact that your wife is five months pregnant and has to pee every thirty five seconds during your fifteen hour flight. Sounds like a smashing good time! Those trips are for crazy people. I am all for celebrating the baby's arrival with a small vacation (I do not want to write the word Babymoon anymore! Even though I just did) but a plane trip or a long car ride is just insanity. How about this for a Babymoon (I did it again!) we wade in a small kiddie pool in the front yard while listening to the Beach Boys and the Beatles. I'll get a small BBQ and grill up some hot dogs and give my wife a massage, hoping that she won't notice that I confused the mustard for lotion. That sounds nice, right?

Blast From the Past: September 13th 2010

The Baby Mooned My Wife....

Well, the title should speak for itself. Its been a long time blogies. But absence makes the heart grow fonder and I am back with plenty 'O news. New news not old news. As of today we just found out that Mercy is 20 weeks rather than the sixteen weeks that we thought last week. Yes, for those of you new to the baby world like I am, everything is broken down into weeks. So 20 weeks = 5 months. So at age 28 I am 1456 weeks old. So today, Mercy had her space age super sonigram baby scope picture day. Sadly, I was not able to be there. I was there for all of the previous tummy pictures, but work was in the way today....CURSE YOU WORK!! Anyway, today was the day that we were hoping to learn the baby's gender, Mercy's mother, who I lovingly refer to as Mini-mom was my surogate today...and what did they see? Tiny baby buns! Yes, the baby mooned his momma and grandma and is now coming on January 31st! A smart ass baby who flashes the camera and arrives earlier than expected? Has to be a boy, right? So the great debate rolls on! What do you think? Boy are girl?

Update 8/13/12:  In case you didn't know, we had a baby girl, Luna Catalina Castro-Miller on Feb. 10th 2011    

Blast from the past: Also July 28th 2010

Lucy on the tv with diamonds

Television makes everything seem so easy. Corrupt politicians and their hired crooks are oppressing the citizenry? No problem, the A-team just builds come custom made tank like vehicle and busts on the scene beating the bad guys into submission (How come the A-team has that awesome van, yet every episode involves them building some crazy home made vehicle?) Did you use too much soap in your wash and have suddsy water overflowing onto the floor? Don't worry about it. Alice the maid would waltz in and fix the situation in just seconds.

What I like about I Love Lucy is that nothing was EVER easy for her. Yeah, the situations were complicated in an unrealistic, funny way, but at least Lucy had to work her way out of a problem. Just like you and I do! Well, I never accidently got really drunk during a commercial shoot or ate a bunch of chocolates off of a speeding conveyer belt.
Today, my wife and I watched the episode where Lucy found out she was pregnant. No, Lucy didn't run out of the house screaming. She planned to break the news to her husband Ricky the way she had always imagined, in a comfortable, romantic and private setting. Of course, all of her plans fall apart and she is forced to go to Ricky's nightclub, hide in the audience and secretly request a song for a woman who wants to tell her husband that they are having a baby.

That husband is Ricky and in a classic comedy moment, hey yells 'It's me! It's me!' It's a cute moment and I hate to admit that I got a little teary eyed. (Don't tell my wife. I told her I had something in my eye.) This led to me trying (and failing) to do my best Ricky Ricardo impression. I sounded more like Janosz Poha, the Peter MacNicol character from Ghostbusters II. "Oh, Dana you're going to have the baby for Vigo!"

If life were a television show, my horrible impression would have been spot on and I would have received a riotous round of canned applause and laughter. Instead my wife just told me to stop the bad Ricky Ricardo or I'll be sleeping on the couch. I regret choosing the couch option.

Blast From the Past: July 28th, 2010

A rose by any other name is still a rose...unless it's not..

Baby names. It seems like parents to be always bat them around before finally coming to a name that they both love. At least that's how it was for my wife and I...about a year ago before the baby factory even started production. You see, we talked about hypothetical baby names before we planned to have a child.

We're both weird that way, I guess. If you know me, you know that I am hardly serious about anything. The initial baby names I proposed were no exception. If it the baby was to be a boy: Thaddeus (As in Thaddeus 'Thunderbolt' Ross from the Incredible Hulk comic books) Mortimer, Gomez (As in Addams), and of course, Kal EL. If the baby were to be a girl: Scarlett (From G.I. Joe not gone with the wind), Lynda (As in Carter) Magdellena (From the comic book about the warrior nun) of course, none of these names were really my serious canidates. For the longest time, my wife and I shot baby names at one another, just as a game, when we finally came across two that we loved. Bowie (As in David Bowie) Francisco Castro-Miller for a boy and Luna Catalina (As in Catalina Castro, the grandma to-be. See, I mentioned you!) for a girl.

Those were the names we chose before we even knew the baby was on his or her way. We love those names. So of course, there are others who would disagree. Others who shall remain nameless. You know who you are! One of my grandmothers had a hard time with Bowie and thought I said Bow Tie or Bootie. The standard reaction from most of my family was: Oh, that's....interesting. Since when did interesting become code for 'I really hate what you just proposed, I find it vile and stupid'?
So, as an alternative to people who disapprove of the names we have selected, I have come up with an alternative name. This name is uni-sex and can be used for either a boy or a girl. Ottoman Lampshade Nightinggale Castro-Miller. See, doesn't it have a ring to it?

Blast From the Past: Also from July 12th 2010

Other People's Children...

Sometimes you experience things that make you just want to shake your fist vigerously in the air like that cranky old man that screams "Damn kids, git offa my freshly mowed lawn!" (Even though the lawn has long since dried up and you are no longer a kid, but a 29 year old who continues to cut through his yard because it's much quicker than walking all the way around the block) My wife, Mercy and I had such a fist shaking experience yesterday, and like all things chaotic and mayhem related, it involved Shrek.

A few years ago, I discovered the wonder of the magical, two dollar theater. Ever since then we have tried to watch all of our theatrical released films at this budget wonderland. Yesterday, we decided to take the extended family out to see Shrek the fourty third or whatever the last film was called. Our crew was kind of like the characters in the magnificent seven. Only there were six of us, counting the unborn future baby. There was me, Ryan the renegade leader with no desire to pay Twenty two dollars for movie popcorn, My wife who now has super senses thanks to her pregnancy. She can smell fake popcorn butter two miles before we even enter the theater. There was my brother Joey, visiting from Chico who has the ability to find two crumpled up dollar bills in any pair of pants he is wearing (Which makes him a god at the two dollar theater!) There was my brother in law Matthew with all the powers and abilities of a teenage boy and of course, there was my little sister with the power to be in the fantasy land of unicorns and pixies every waking second of her life.
So, our motley crew arrived at the movie theater, ready to see our money's worth of a movie that had been running in theaters for about a month. We nestled into our seats and began enjoying ourselves as the movie started. Then it happened. A family of chatterboxes and yuppie wannabes descended on the ciniplex like popcorn starved locusts, talking loudly as they approached the seats behind us. Thus it began.

Through most of the film, the snottiest of snot nosed little boys decided to wage war against everyone, including his weak willed servant of a father. This exchange actually happened. FATHER: "Here's your soda, son." BRAT: "This is Mountain Dew! I don't want Mountain dew, dad!" There was a moment of silence. Then.... BRAT: "Dad! Can I speak to you for just a second! I don't want Mountain dew!" In front of us there was a little child, probably no older than three who was really loving the movie. He was laughing and carrying on like three year olds do. Levity and laughter was not approved by the snot nosed Brat. The little brat continued to shhh at the three year old, while he was complaining to his weak father about his poor soda choice. Even the father tried to quiet his annoying son, but his weak attempts were futile. The three year old laughed and said EWWWWW after Shrek and Fiona kissed. Everyone in the theater thought that was hillarious. Everyone but the brat who Shushed him loudly. I had enough!

I turned back and tried to see the brat in the dark, but I couldn't make him out and I said: "Hey, he's just a little kid, he's having fun, chill out." Then there was silence. Glorious, splendid silence. Then suddenly: "Dad, I really hate Mountain Dew!" Other people's kids suck.

Blast From the Past: July 12 2010

As we walk through the valley of the shadow of future baby, I can't help but think about all of the influences my child will soon be subject to. The aforementoned horrors of the Cyrus Virus, The Ga Ga ca ca, any movie starring an Efron or a Pattinson, all things from modern Nickelodeon and modern Disney, and pretty much all things contemporary. All of these sub par forms of entertainment will assault our poor little innocent child much like they assaulted our slightly jaded, mildly cynical brains. (Okay, I was being modest. I am very fraking cynical! Yup, I said Frak. Battlestar fans in the house...er..blog!)

At this point, I should warn you, I may risk sounding like a grumpy old man, but frak it, pop culture is just not as cool as it used to be! Back in our day ('our' day being the era of children who grew up in the 80's and early '90s, back before Sesame Street became the Elmo show) pop culture was not just entertaining, it was informative. Look at G.I. Joe for example, not only was it fun to see the evil Cobra goons get clobbered by a bunch of soldiers that thought having a sailor with a talking parrot and William 'refrigerator' Perry on their team was benificial, the show also served a real purpose. As part of some glorious form of action community service, the G.I. Joe episodes always featured segments where some dumbass kids almost kill themselves during acts of stupidity, only to be shown the light by the Joes. "Now I know never to rub bacon on my crotch and go streaking through the bear habitat at the zoo, Mr. Shipwreck!" "And knowing is half the battle, Billy. Seriously though, put some damn clothes on!" Cartoons of today are rubish! Pure rubish!

They even ruined Star Wars! No true Star Wars fan would dare to watch the pile of crap that is the Star Wars: Clone Wars cartoon. Blasphemy Lucas! Blasphemy! It's bad enough you made the Jumper guy Vader, but you had to unleash this steaming pile on us? Bleach! Obviously, I could go on for days and days about this subject. I find it very concerning. I can't change the outside world. My solution? We are going to surround ourselves with enough vintage toys, classic music and television shows that we convince our child that we are living in the past. 1995 at the latest. I have even decided to make the Toyota Corrola look like a Back to the future inspired time machine. Everytime we venture into the world outside of our safe and secure time bubble, we will convince our child that we have traveled into the future.

Am I being ridiculous, probably, but if anyone reading this is about to be a mother or father, know this...it will happen to you too!

Blast from the Past: July 11th 2010

Every week for my family and I is a busy week. My wife and I both work, my little sister is enrolled in summer school and at the end of the day we all meet at the house and run around babbling like lunatics about our own respective days. Wednesday was by far the most memorable day this week. We saw our first baby pictures! YAY! Okay, keep in mind that the baby is incredibly small at this point, but to actually see the little person inside my wife is simply fascinating. The ultrasound just adds a whole new depth of reality to the pregnancy. There is a freaking little person sharing my wife's body!!!!
Of course, we were both astounded, and the doctor had to bring us back down to reality. It seems that as we go on this path for the very first time, we meet people who are jaded by being on this same path for a very long time. Our doctor was a stinky sucking poopeyed buttnose. (Keep in mind, while I can have salty language in person, I am really trying to edit this blog into a family friendly experience) Now, I realize that most OBGYNs see a billion and one pregnant ladies and go through the motions, but I imagine these very same seasoned doctors understand that this is an exciting experience for the families they are serving. This doctor hardly cared. For all she was concerned, this visit was something as mundane as changing the oil on her car. The problem of course was that she was treating my wife as the car rather than a beautiful, life giving goddess. Needless to say we have changed doctors.
Regardless of the poop sniffing fish faced lint sniffer doctor we were still excited to see the little picture of our tiny, tiny baby. Of course, the baby doesn't really look like a baby right now. More like a small gummyi bear with a beating heart. Seeing the baby's beating heart was amazing!

Compare and contrast. Can you tell which picture is the baby and which is the gummi bear? This trip that we are on is amazing and while we may encounter some jaded and annoying forces of darkness, only one thing matters: We are having a baby...or a gummi bear and our hearts could not be filled with any more love or happiness.

Blast from the past: July 3rd

I knew that having a baby takes time. It's a nine month process, anyone who has ever had a sex ed class or watched that horrible Hugh Grant movie knows that. What they fail to tell you is how long it takes to get to the fun parts of pregnancy. Sure, my wife gets all the nausea and sick feelings, but what do I get?

At this point in the stage I can touch her stomach and pretend I feel something, but it's too soon in the game for that. "Oh, babe! I felt the baby's heart beat!" "No, that's my heart beat!" And so on, etcetera. The real waiting game is seeing the doctor. Everything from Look who's talking with a pregnant Kirstie Alley to Juno with a pregnant Ellen Page and Junior with a pregnant Arnold Governator has taught us (Well me, anyway) that as soon as you find out you are pregnant you are magically beamed away to a nice happy doctor who whips out the ultrasound laser beam spock gun and shows you a picture of your baby smiling contently for the camera in a weird, see-through fashion. (Remember the creepy fetus puppet they used in look who's talking too and Rosanne was the baby's voice....uh...me neither.) Well, it doesn't quite happen that way.

For real people, like my wife Mercy and I we are first given an appointment to see the doctor on Monday, June 29th. Only to check the calander and find out that there is no Monday, June 29th. So we wait another day to see the doctor. Tuesday rolls around and we happily approach the doctor's visit with glee and anticipation. But, we do not see the doctor. We see a nurse with a check list. A check list with questions we had already answered. Answers that were already on file in the computer. So, after re-answering the same questions and getting snooty replies by a tired and snooty nurse who has had to deal with a thousand pregnant ladies that day, we are given another apointment for the ultrasound. One week later. As for our first doctor's appointment....one week after that! So now, we anxiously await our baby's first pictures on July 7th. Movie characters have it easy, they don't have to wait for anything.

Blast from the past: June 23rd 2010

It is now officially the fourth day of my impending fatherhood and I still cannot believe it! Everytime I sit next to my wife, I do that cheap move where I pretend to yawn and then I stretch out my arms, but instead of attempting to cop a feel, I am trying to reach for her belly, hoping to feel something other than the gurgle of the fruit and oatmeal that she had for breakfast. Right now she just smiles at me whenever I do this, but I know that before to long I am going to be missing a hand if I keep this up. I am very fearful of the day when Mercy buys a scimitar on ebay.
Yesterday after we both had returned from work, Mercy initiated the stage that I call impending Mommy Madness. Mommy Madness starts subtle enough. It begins with the phrase "I have a person growing inside me!". This phrase is usually followed up with something like "We have created life! Can you believe that? Weird!" In a matter of seconds this is followed by a barrage of "Can I..." questions. Such as "Can I still eat popcorn?" So as the two of us sat at the dining room table, I was multi-tasking on the laptop, writing, reading comic book reviews and watching weird videos on youtube. (Did you know Richard Pryor had a kids show called Pryor's Place? We're talking about the same Richard Pryor who had a crack pipe blow up on him! Someone gave him a kid's show!)

Of course none of my internet use was the least bit baby related, but that lasted 3.4 seconds with the following question. "Can I still eat chocolate?" So, a quick internet search proved that yes, pregnant women can eat chocolate. The sources (Probably OBGYNs at both Hershey University and the prestigious M&M Academy of the Sciences) claim that the occasional chocolate treat can be benificial to the pregnant woman, it even helps prevent high blood pressure. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkup/2008/05/bad_news_for_pregnant_women_ea.html
So now I am safe to continue my meaningless internet use, right? Wrongo, buddy. "Can I still eat peanut butter? Can you please check Google. I want to know if I can still have a PB&J." So I stopped reading comic book legends revealed http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2005/06/23/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-history/ and began an exhaustive two second search on the effects of peanut butter and peanut butter accessories on pregnant women. Oh, George Washington Carver would have been ashamed. http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20080714/nutty-diet-in-pregnancy-asthma-risk It seems that pregnant women cannot have daily doses of nut related nutty nuts and nut like nut foods. A daily dose of peanuts and other nuts can actually increase the likelihood of asthma by a whopping %50 percent! My wife, who is very fond of her PB&Js and Reese's Peanut Butter cups was not at all amused by this news. After this slight round of baby related internet searches, I continued to absorb all the comic book related geek stuff I could. I took my eyes off of the screen for a second and saw my wife staring at me. "What are you doing?" She asked. "Oh, just looking at Golden Age public domain super heroes. I want to use some of these old characters in the novel." I said. She sighed loudly. "Can you..." I froze the moment in my mind. "Can you..." questions were the second stage of Mommy Madness. It had only been three days and we were already in stage two! "Can you look up pregnancy related movies on netflix for me?" I just smiled and quietly began scouring netflix for movies on the subject. Man, there are a lot of pregnancy related documentaries and movies. A lot! My search lasted a moment before my wife shoved me aside and began searching for herself. "You know, when we are together you should be spending your time researching baby related topics. You can write your novel when you are alone or when I am sleeping, okay?" She said with a coy smile. I still am not sure if she was being sarcastic or if that was a genuine request. Now that she is in the grips of Mommy Madness, how can I ever be sure again?

Now please excuse me, I have to do an internet search to see if my wife can still eat the avocados that she loves so much. http://www.avocado.org.au/mothersgroup/mothers_health.aspx (The answer is yes, by the way. Avocados contain folic acid which is very important in a pregnant woman's diet!) Wow, now I have Mommy Madness!

Blast from the past: post from June 22 2010

What the pee-stick said....

I found out on father's day...I am a father. Here was the scenerio, I woke up as my wife, Mercedes headed into the bathroom with the robotic, digital super computo, error free pregnancy test. My response was to roll over and emit a groggy gurgle and nod my head. I promptly fell asleep only to be woken up by my wife holding the super computo pee-stick inches away from my face. Her beautiful brown eyes lit up with both fear and excitement. "Happy Father's Day!" She said with a smile. I shot out of bed wearing nothing but my superman boxers (Yup, my wife is a lucky woman). "Whaaaa?" I said in a stupor. We spent the rest of the morning soaking in the amazing new truth...we were about to have a baby.
  
Since Mercedes and I have been raising my eleven year old sister, Michelea for the past year, we are not completly new to the whole parenting game, however the fact that we had created life, a child all our own is an insane concept for both of us to comprehend. How is it possible for this little character to grow inside her stomach and emerge 9 months later looking like a composite of both of us?
So, most of the day involved the two of us waiting for the right moment to tell everyone and holding the secret in as long as we possibly could....that lasted about six hours.

  After looking at each other and giggling nervously for most of the day, we just couldn't handle it. So, at the father's day BBQ held by Mercy's step father, Diego we decided to let the baby out of the bag. Mercy was convinced that her mother was going to leap over the table, grab a toothpick from the cheese tray and stab us both in the neck until we were dead. I convinced her that she could kill me on grounds of temporary insanity, but no jury would be forgive a woman who killed her own pregnant daughter.

Instead of murdering us with table top impliments, Cathy just stared at us....and stared....and stared some more. "So, what do you think, mom?" Mercy asked. Cathy pushed her jaw closed and smiled. "Well, I am just waiting for one of you to say 'just kidding'..." So after talking about baby names with the new grandparents to be, we headed home, wondering when we should tell the rest of our family and friends. Facebook and grandma to be beat us to it. After hours of phone calls and tucking Michelea in bed, we ended Father's day the way we started it...staring at the ceilining. "Holy crap, we're going to have a baby!" quietly I began to think to myself....Now that we're having a kid, can I still act like one...just a little?