I smell Pepere

Sometimes, after my kids visit with their Pepere, I will hold them later in the day and smell my father-in-law's cologne on them. Over the years, I have become used to this.

But today, when no one was home but me, I smelled Pepere and obviously no child was in my arms. I had the smell of Pepere on my sweatshirt, a residual scent from holding my son and/or daughter when they were at church together this morning. (I was sleeping.)

This was confusing today, smelling this in the kids' absence. I began to feel that my father-in-law is truly omniscient, which is a little weird. I think every father-in-law at some point has visions of this, a guy maybe a little less intimidating than Robert DeNiro in "Meet the Parents", but I've been married now for almost nine years, and I think my father-in-law generally trusts me.

I should also mention here that my father-in-law is a very good guy, and it's not just because he paid when we played tennis yesterday.

I remember when we inherited my father-in-law's armoire when we upgraded our bedroom set a number of years ago - this was at our old house in Wethersfield - and for a few weeks afterwards I kept asking my wife, "What's that smell?... It smells like your dad." We quickly learned that the scent of my father-in-law's cologne had become part of the wood. Perhaps some spilled, like a whole bottle, one day.

So this scent has been around. I always know when kids come back from their Pepere's. Their hair, usually, smells like his cologne. It's quite endearing, actually, and a symbol of his love for them.

Today was just slightly more weird than usual. For a minute there, I thought I was smelling things. And then, in a quiet and confirming way, I realized that it was just the smell of my wife's father, and went back about my business, even keeping my sweatshirt, which smelled like him, on.

Sharing a clementine with my darling

A little poetry, inspired by our resident food thief..

My feet are resting,
one on the other,
on an ottoman, and I can feel
my torso sinking into the leather chair.
In this rare moment of early afternoon peace,
I begin to unpeel a clementine, among the last in the box,
as the few that remained were growing soft
and possibly rotten.

As I eat pieces of the orange fruit, my daughter,
who is one, tramples over and blurts out a series of noises,
which I have learned to interpret that she wants my food.
But I cannot give the child pieces of clementine because
under my supervision my son nearly choked on an orange slice
when he was her age.

So, like a robin feeding its young with regurgitated worms, I set aside
pebble-sized bits of fruit that I’ve already chewed, and place them in a line
onto the arm of my chair. She stands beside me, knowing all along that I would do this,
and she happily plucks each tiny clump of food in between her increasingly sticky fingers,
satisfied for the moment that I’ve obliged her.

Genetic testing for $399

Spit into a tube, send it to a lab, and 6-8 weeks later, you get a DNA analysis that can tell you if you have an elevated risk to have some cancers, diabetes, Parkinson's, and other diseases.

As one who would like to know this sort of information - it seems unbelievable that it
is even available - this is very tempting. But suppose you get some difficult-to-take results, and then brace for a particular condition at some point in life, and then it never materializes? Tough, tough call to make. Is it better to not know? What if precautions one takes in hope of avoiding getting a disease don't work?

https://www.23andme.com/

No more pens from drug companies to docs

Interesting story in New York Times about many drug companies voluntarily stopping the practice of giving away to doctors trinkets and freebies, like pens and tissue boxes, with their names emblazoned across the side. Many doctors agree it had to end, but some, according to this article, will miss the goodies.

The question is: do items like this have any effect on prescribing medications? Most say no, and you have to believe them. Doctors have a greater responsibility to their patients to prescribe the right drug, or determining if their patients even need a pill.

But, does having posters of the human body in examining rooms with drug companies' names written on the bottom, magnets, pens, and pads, have perhaps a subconscious effect on doctors' decisions? Does having a likeable drug rep influence prescriptions that doctors write? Hopefully, the answer is no.

But there are some greedy doctors out there. Medicine is a business. And there are some unethical doctors - as in any line of work - who take kickbacks from drug companies, and commit fraudulent acts like misbilling insurance companies. At the same time, there are also docs who serve on advisory committees for drug companies, positions that are well paid, like consultants, and yet that's not a conflict of interest?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/business/31drug.html?hp

Scrubs returns!

New shows of the quirky hospital sitcom - arguably one of the best comedies on TV - will appear on ABC, beginning Jan. 6. How cool is this? Nice!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/30/arts/television/30scru.html

(Too bad they couldn't have done the same with Ed a few years back.)

Reckless and happy vs. Conservative and dull

Sometimes, a simple observation like seeing the guy who works at the town dump smoking a cigarette and holding a Dunkin' Donuts coffee can spark a deeper question of philosophy. That is, does it pay to be excessively careful with your life and risk ever feeling contented, or is it better to live life on the edge and perhaps die early, but happy?

This seems like a classic debate to me, so no right answer. But this guy today was clearly satisfied, at least at the moment. You could see it in him. Cigarettes cause cancer, and coffee, while not a hazard in and of itself, is not exactly health food. Who knows? It could have been this guy's fifth cup of the day?

There are many things that people do that aren't socially acceptable, like riding a motorcycle without a helmet, or riding a motorcycle in the first place, overeating, gambling, spending too much on your credit card, whatever. Yet, these things can yield happiness to people. Critics to my theory would of course say they bring temporary happiness. But I would argue that many people are never, or possibly only occasionally, happy, and this is possibly because they live too carefully, too boringly. Most everyone lives this way, sometimes, but maybe we should be this way less often.

It seems that people either need to give in to some wicked thoughts now and then, or change their idea of happiness and maybe not kid themselves that acting politically correct all the time or eating salmon and brown rice nightly is very fun.

My %$#@!% snowblower

This past weekend, we got a sizable snowstorm, about 10 inches, dumped on the area - school was cancelled on Friday, Saturday was okay, but then on Sunday we got more snow and ice and sleet and freezing rain. School was delayed on Monday.

Whenever there is more than a few inches of snow, I believe I owe it to myself to use my snowblower, a very heavy, very expensive (at one time) machine, to take care of the snow removal on my driveway, which is long, and exhausting if I'm shoveling it. My snowblower, which is only five years old, has a big engine, and is imposing, for a snowblower. It should rip through snow like a hot knife through butter.

The problem is that it doesn't do that very well.

It gets clogged whenever there is the slightest amount of wetness to the snow. That means snowblowing the end of the driveway is problematic, since the snow plows add salt and dirt to the street and then plow it at the end of my driveway.

On Friday night, another bad thing happened involving my snowblower: I pulled the cord to start the engine, and the rope broke in my hand. The remaining part of the cord snapped back into the engine, disappearing in an instant.

So then I had to use the electric start feature, which sends about 90 million volts of electricity through an extension cord to start the machine. Problem was, I couldn't find the cord that came with the snow blower. I ended up using this weak little inside extension cord for a floor lamp, probably putting my life at great risk, but it worked.

Unfortunately, the snowblower later stalled a couple of times - at the end of my driveway, because, possibly, the snowblower was clogged with wet snow and slush. So I'd have to push the snowblower back to my garage to start it again. It became a cruel cycle, one that almost caused me to lose it.

I probably need to get the snowblower serviced, which I haven't done since I've owned it. I treat the snowblower as I do with most other machines I own with engines. I pour gas into the tank, and sort of expect everything to work. I pour oil into it occasionally. I don't check the spark plug. And anything else that the engine needs to work is a mystery to me.

I am dreading the next snowstorm that brings rain or is heavy snow because my snowblower will get clogged again, likely stall, and prove to be useless. We may have to purchase some better shovels if this is the case.

Otherwise, the snow plow guys may find my snowblower during the next storm in the middle of the road, abandoned, ready to advance to the big snowblower party in the sky, where snowblowers of the past are swearing at their owners for not taking care of them the way they should have.