Eaten by Bees Mondays

"I'm going outside to look at our cute little animal," announces my daughter.
"I'm not sure it's going to be so cute today, honey."
"Why not? Ewww—you're right."

(Photo taken with my Nikon D90. )

Sundaze

For the debate about who is happier—couples with kids (CWIKs) or couples without kids (CWOKs)—I undertook unscientific research at the zoo this afternoon by observing 1.) strolling couples unencumbered by children, shoulders jostling as they gazed into each other's smiling eyes, taut stomachs, casual weekend wear still fashionable and 2.) couples shoving toddler-laden strollers, bags under eyes, twenty extra pounds at their hips over which ill-fitting shorts hung shapelessly, staring blankly toward unknown motes on opposite horizons. The CWOKs had it! Definitely looked happier than the CWIKs.

But with a thumbs up to their easy happy luxurious unfettered Sunday, did the CWOKs get to play Guess-The-Animal-That-Crawled-Onto-Our-Lawn-This-Morning-And-Died with their 2 and 7-year-old?

 

"It's a mouse," said my daughter.

"No, it's a puppy," she corrected herself.

"How do you know it's dead?" she demanded.

"Oh, it's alive. It's an animal that doesn't need to breathe," she concluded.

Despite it all, today was one of those brilliant blue late summer days where the sun cuts a golden swath, rendering everything in its path magical, fleeting—including caged animals, rested couples, and tired parents (none of which appear in the picture below, you'll have to take my word for it).

Cycling Through

While our children ran up and down the aisles shrieking with joy, I asked the salesperson at the appliance superstore which of the three silver dishwashers she showed us was the most durable. She said:

"Durability is not a consideration with these dishwashers. They all last 5-15 years. You want to pick the dishwasher with the features that match your lifestyle."

She thinned her eyes at me then, on that word lifestyle.

What was she implying—we gays have some kinky way we like to wash our dishes that require special dishwashers? I was thrown back to Memorial Day weekend several years ago, when after someone spray-painted Queer House on our garbage cans, two gigantic detectives sat in our living room trying to figure out their motive. Apparently, stupidity and bigotry were not options.
"Do you have enemies?" one detective asked.
"No."
No enemies. They shook their heads. Puzzling.
"Do you guys make out on your way from your car to your front door?" the other asked, with not a hint of irony.

Now here I was in the appliance store, my lifestyle in question again.
"What do you mean by lifestyle?" I said.
"For instance, this one has the silverware rack in the door. This one does not. Which feature you prefer depends on your lifestyle."
It does?
"What other features are there?"
"Noise. You may want a quieter one, depending on your lifestyle."

She wafted away to allow us to ponder our lifestyle.
"I don't get this lifestyle thing."
"I do," my partner said. "Let's say we lived in a mansion on the North Shore and we wanted a quiet dishwasher with a short dry cycle to match our luxurious lifestyle."
Don't the maids run the dishwashers in mansions, I thought, but decided to let it go, remembering the sloshing, groaning noises our now dead dishwasher made, as if Charybdis were in there trying to escape.

"So no matter which one we select," I said to the salesperson on her return, "it will last as long as any other one?"
"Pretty much."
"We'll take the cheapest one, then."

There was my lifestyle.

Overanalytic

At my gym, wedged between a stream of Pink and Kelly Clarkson are little advertisements for the gym's add-ons, one being working with a trainer. "What gets measured, gets improved," says Mr. Bland-o blandly. I've wondered whether this is true. In high school physics they taught us you can't measure something without changing that thing. They were teaching us about the improbability of measuring, not the value.

In that spirit, I disabled the Google Analytics on this blog. I bet you noticed how much faster it loads now, didn't you? I spent two years using GA to divine the undivinable, which was basically—how can I get rich as a writer and how much am I loved? I've haven't remotely answered either question.

For a week I thought I was particularly popular in Washington, D.C., from whence I received an unprecedented spate of hits. After I received the cease and desist email from D.C. lawyers telling me to no longer refer my Chicago Area Wildlife Society in an abbreviated manner which might create confusion between my estimable wildlife society and their client's estimable wildlife society, my hits from D.C. also ceased.

After I quit Facebook in late May, my blog posts became longer and more personal with less links to outside sites. My stats took a 25% jump. They love me! I thought. All along, that's what people wanted, to hear from me. But of course. My confidence ballooned until I decided to take a look at this weird golbnet.com site that was sending me all sorts of traffic. It's a junky little page that looks like it was created by a third-grader. Google research told me these folks set up proxy ad sites around the world to "visit" blogs. An analytics spam, if you will, so stat-hungry bloggers like myself will go to their sites to see who they are. When I counted the hits from URLs with golb in them, guess what: 25% of my traffic starting late May.

That was it. I was done determining my value from a squiggly little graph. I used to blame my kids for  lack of any time to myself, but as I'm sloughing off my social network addictions one by one, I'm afraid it might not have been them, it might be me. The last two nights I've spent time with them, made a dent in the pretty good but not amazing novel I'm reading, gotten a my own writing done, and even gotten in my favorite forensic reality shows, and it's still not bedtime.

Did you like this post? I'll never know.