Mantivity with My Son #2: Mowing the Lawn

Few things are manlier than laboring for the perfect lawn. Instead of peeing on trees, we men of the bourgeoisie fulfill the primal urge to mark our territory by showing off our landscaped quarter-acre of property in the suburbs. Mowing the lawn also incorporates other manly things, like engines, gasoline, sharp blades spinning at high speeds, and dirt. What's not to love about mowing the lawn?

My son and I will mow the lawn together. I'll teach him the tricks for getting a mower started, the techniques for achieving a nice checkered pattern in the lawn, and how to edge around trees, sprinklers, and curbs. We'll take pride in the lawn together, laugh at the neighbors' ugly yards, and sweat in the sun. If I can teach my son to love mowing the lawn, then I'll have succeeded in part of my fatherly duties.

Still Want to Be a Lawyer

I'm in a clinic this year representing indigent criminal defendants in their appeals before the Maryland bar. Really neat stuff. Among the highlights:

• Traveling to a supermax prison smack in the middle of Baltimore* to meet one of my clients in a 4' by 8' cell. Though the guy has made some stupid decisions, he was a very nice and encouraging man. Saddest image of that day? Watching him fumble with the pen and paper as he struggled to sign the consent-to-representation form while being tightly cuffed.
• Traveling to another prison in rural Maryland and receiving the most thorough pat-down imaginable. Seriously, that guard went places I didn't know I had.
• Proudly printing the final version of the brief for the case I was arguing. It was the 17th draft. I think. I lost count there at the end.
• Doing my first REAL oral argument! So much of law school is faking it. We play lots of pretend. But this time, just two days ago, it was for real. A real man was behind the name on the brief, and he was hoping that I would do a good job for him. I did the best I could, and I had the time of my (professional) life. I really got into it and was this close to approaching the bench and yelling, "No! You don't get it! This is what I'm saying. This is why we win!"

Not having a job lined up (yet), has been messin' with me. What if I can't cut it as a lawyer? What if not having a job is the universe's way of telling me that I should work at McDonald's instead? Maybe I am fantastically talented a making Big Macs, and that I just have to give it a try? Well, the clinic pushed me back in the right direction. Yes, I can and should be a lawyer. I'm pretty good at it. I have fun doing it. I just need to find somebody to pay me to do this stuff.

*I'm not kidding about that facility being in the middle of Baltimore. One minute my co-counsel and I are driving through some shopping/office district, and the next minute we see an enormous dungeon-like castle with barbed wire all over it. C'mon, Baltimore! I want to like you! But you're not helping your reputation by keeping a large group of Maryland's most dangerous right next to the Bath & Body Works!

Just a House, That's All

There's this song by the Animal Collective that came out last summer called "My Girls." It's basically about this guy's desire to provide a simple living for his family, for his girls. While the timing and the source of the message are a little irritating-I don't need a rich hipster to tell me, the poor unemployed father, that it's really the simple things that matter in life-I relate to the sentiment:

There isn't much that I feel I need

A solid soul and the blood I bleed

But with a little girl, and by my spouse,

I only want a proper house

I don't care for fancy things

Or to take part in the freshest wave,

But to provide for mine who ask

I will, with heart, on my father's grave

Nice, right?

When I'm not thinking about finding a job, I usually think about owning a house to raise a family in. Nothing big. Nothing opulent. Just a nice house with a yard that I can take of, and a garage that I can work in. The yard will have incredibly groomed grass so the kids can run around barefoot with the dog, whose name will probably be Karl, or Bruce. The garage will have a work station for my bike stuff, and a big bench for my other projects. It will smell like gasoline and wood, and the kids can come in whenever they want to help me do things.

The day when we own a house will come. I'm sure it will. I'm just itching for it to be here sooner rather than later.

Merlin Kicked Me

Andrea read in one (of her dozens) of pregnancy books that by now a person might be able to hear the baby’s heartbeat if he puts his ear up to the pregnant woman’s belly.

I tried the other day and was greeted instead with a little bump to the side of my head.

“Hey!” I yelled at her belly. ”You can’t kick your dad!”

I put my ear to her belly again and immediately felt that same thing.

That little turd.