Oatmeal for Breakfast » just plain weird

Weird fatherhood dreams

jonathan — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 17:10:26 +0000

As we mentioned in the last post, we’ve been reading a lot of books about being pregnant and one or two about having a baby. The amount of information available is overwhelming. One of the books–I cannot, as usual, remember which–mentioned that there was a good chance that all that thinking about parenting could cause a mother to have lots of dreams about her baby while she was pregnant. It failed to mention, however, that the same thing might happen to the father.

While Kelly has not reported an unusual dream life in the last few months, I probably have bizarre baby dreams 2 or 3 times a week. Here are some bits of the stories my subconscious has come up with:

We are about to have the baby, but 150 of our relatives and friends are at the hospital. They are having a party, or at least talking and laughing a lot. I feel bad for leaving them, so I stay with them. Then I miss the birth, and I feel worse. But I feel worst of all when I finally go to the delivery room and discover that we already have a second child.
We have our baby! I miss the birth. The baby is is the size of a toad. Thankfully, we are completely unconcerned, since it will get bigger.
The baby has to stay at the hospital for weeks. This is totally normal, and what every baby does. When I finally go to bring our child home, he is already mobile. Instead of learning to crawl like a normal child, he propels himself by scooting forward on his knees. He is very fast. We are sad that we missed this important developmental milestone.

… And that’s why I’m sometimes very glad to wake up and discover that we don’t have a baby yet.

To the parents who read our blog: did you have weird baby dreams?

Retraction

jonathan — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:15:34 +0000

About a year ago, I insinuated that Third Day, a Christian alt-rock band, was guilty of blatantly ripping off a Radiohead cover design. Here’s the Third Day disc cover for Revelation:

And here is the Radiohead cover for Hail to the Thief, which predates Revelation by several years:

The resemblance is uncanny, isn’t it? You can see how I jumped to conclusions?

Well, the other day I came across a photo of a place called Salvation Mountain. Here it is:

I think we can both agree that the resemblance of the Third Day cover to this image is even more striking. If the Third Day cover designer was guilty of copying, it certainly wasn’t from Radiohead. I retract my earlier comments–sorry, guys! I wish you all the best.

(Oatmeal for Breakfast strives for accuracy and completeness in all our reporting. We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.)

Judy the travel nurse

kelly — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:57:33 +0000

As Jonathan mentioned in an earlier post, we signed up for life insurance. I know, it’s big, scary and too grown up for us. We agree. Regardless, we were (rightly) advised that our insurance premiums would be higher if we waited until after we traveled this month so we signed up for some life insurance, thought about how much might be required if one of us perishes and I cried a little because I don’t want to be a widow.

This morning we had Judy the travel nurse come to our house to give us the requisite exam. She asked if we had gone sky diving, scuba diving, mountain climbing and various other activities we haven’t done (yet!). She also asked about our general health, weighed us and measured Jonathan’s belly and hips! (I found that part hilarious!) The most interesting part was that we had to provide fluid samples. Have you ever peed in a cup in your own bathroom? It’s totally weird. Weirdest yet was having a cup of my own “fluid” sitting on my kitchen table, telling me the its temperature, just sitting there completely uncovered. Once Judy had poured the sample into the vials she’d be sending in, she gave me back the cup and the leftovers so I could dispose of it. What? So strange. I will hand it to Judy though, she didn’t spill a drop. Way to go!

And now I’m at work. To celebrate the fact that I wasn’t super crabby after having been up for two hours without food, I splurged on a bacon, cheese and egg sandwich in the cafeteria. It’s going to be a good day.

Ewww. GROSS!

kelly — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 22:27:14 +0000

Okay, I realize I’m not a mother. I also know I’ve never experienced the wonder of child birth and I know I kept my wisdom teeth when I had them removed oh, eight years ago (actually the tooth fairy took them-the tooth fairy gives you 20 bucks for wisdom teeth!), but this, this is too much:

Matthew McConaughey says the birth of his son will help bring a little joy to others in the world someday. The actor kept the placenta from the July birth of his son and plans to plant it in an orchard, he tells CNN’s “House Call with Dr. Sanjay Gupta” in interview scheduled to air in two parts Aug. 9 and Aug 16.
McConaughey says he hopes it will fertilize the land, a ritual long followed in several cultures.
“It’s going to be in the orchards and it’s going to bear some wonderful fruit,” he says, according to an interview transcript. “When I was in Australia, they had a placenta tree that was on the river … and all the placentas of all that tribe, all that clan, whatever aboriginal tribe that was, all the placentas went under that one tree and it was this huge behemoth of just health and strength. “This tree was just growing taller and stronger above the rest of Mother Nature around it. It was gorgeous.”
McConaughey also says he and his girlfriend Camila Alves have enjoyed integrating their new baby, Levi Alves McConaughey, into their lives. Already they’ve started introducing him to the “sights and the sounds” of the world — including a John Mellencamp concert.
“You’re never told in our house, ‘Shh, Levi is sleeping.’ No. Get used to the ambiance. Come with us. That’s how I was raised,” he says.

A few questions: Where are you storing said placenta at this time? It’s what, a month old? Where do you keep that? In the fridge? In a freezer? Is it in a bag or some sort of box? Does it smell bad right now? How bad does it smell? Does it smell more like old socks or old garbage?
Did it ever occur to you that the tree you saw in Australia might be slightly larger due to its location near a river? WHY?!?!?

Other Entertainment Photos

McConaughey to plant son’s placenta in orchard