“You’re going to be fine,” my friend stammers going into panic after I inform him my wife was pregnant with our third child. “Just know we’re here for you.”
“I mean, it’s shocking, but I’m not like that ups-“
“A lot of these things at your guys’ age don’t even take. You might be out of the woods,” he quickly retorts in an attempt to calm me.
well you see, you’re out of your darn mind
“Well, i-i-I the woods is probably ok? I mean a couple of crows, some crackling twigs/legos when you walk, aren’t that ba-”
“You have a great support group, and just don’t do anything irrational you know what I’m saying? Listen – what are you doing right now?”
“I, well I’m in my pajamas, it’s 7 am on a Sunday.”
“I’ll pick you up in 15 minutes, we’ll head into the city, get some cocktails, and by tonight you’ll forget any of this ever happened.”
When you tell people you’re having a second child, they look at you like you’re half-crazy and forgive you because you probably just forgot how insane it was with the first. They think it’s cute.
On a third they think you’re borderline psychotic and quickly gather your other friends for an intervention like they can still make a difference. For the 4th I imagine they’ve already given up on you like a family giving up on their rescue dog adoption after it killed and ate 7 of your neighbors’ cats.
“What happened?” They ask. I mean did your vasectomy not take? I’m going to get that doctor on the phone right now, that son of a –“
“I didn’t get a vasectomy.”
<ring ring>
“I’ll tell you how you can help me Dr. Gustaferson’s office, you don’t know who you’re messing with.”
“Steve, your jokes are not funny right now, of course you got one, hold on someone’s coming back on phone…”
“Yes miss, you tell that doctor of yours that he’s going to pay every expense for this thing for let’s see 18 years or 216 months, carry the one, add a six…”
I think every parent with two is always one bad experience away from closing up shop.
“Oh we thought we wanted a third, but then it was – yeah that weekend at the coast, when Billy shat himself, then flung it out the window at that trio of nuns walking, remember that honey?”
“Remember it? I had a shat stain on my earlobe to remind me of it for 3 months. I was in the very back seat remember? Downwind?”
“Yes that’s right hon – After that we thought, nah, we’re good.”
Because we’re all basically one bad weekend experience away from not adding another human to the planet. Really. That’s all it takes. And it doesn’t have to be something as egregious of flinging feces at godly worshipers. It can be like, eh Johnnie didn’t want to finish his chicken tenders (again)and we decided, we’re good. And that’s that.
The birthing experience is always an interesting one as it brings up some things you remember and some things you purposely forgot. The hospital stay for example – I’ve written in past entries just how many people somehow manage to come into your hospital room completely unapologetic or even acknowledging there is a mostly naked human sprawled out on the bed. And then of course there is the new mom in the room too. (Don’t judge, the birthing process can be tiring for dads and sometimes we forget to put pants on as a result).
It usually went a little like this – clock hits 3am, you’re in a deep sleep dreaming of when life was simpler, like 25 minutes ago when you didn’t have a third child and then bam – door slams open, lights come on and you shoot up like a deer in the headlights.
So since you are jolted out of bed and what appears to be some sort of nuclear fission experiment with the sun appearing in your hospital room out of nowhere you expect the worst.
There’s a terrorist attack at the hospital and they’re clearing everyone out?
Someone’s vitals have hit dangerous levels?
Your baby has realized they can do better and they’ve high-tailed it out of there for a better family somewhere else in the hospital.
What is it man?! Comet about to hit the hospital?
My god what is it?! What’s happening? Is the world ending?
Quick I’ll gather my things!
“Hi I’m the nurse here to conduct the hearing test.”
“The -the – the- the hearing test? At 3 in the morning?
“That’s right.”
“And this isn’t something you could do at I don’t know, like any other hour of the 24 hour cycle?”
And a hearing test? Do you think that humans should be doing complex testing immediately after waking? I don’t think we’re waking up bears after six months of hibernation and forcing them into a mathletes competition.
One of the painful parts of having a new child years after your others is buying all new stuff when you know you had exactly the same item just fours years ago but you left it on curb for someone to pick up for free. However I wasn’t about to sit there and let those freeloaders take advantage of me now that the baby shoe was on the other foot now was I? I got on the phone.
… hello Ingrid, yeah remember you came to my house 4 ½ years ago and bought that rubber giraffe for $3 from us? I’ll buy it back for same price plus interest, what do you say? What’s that? Who dis? This is Steve we sold you that giraffe? What’s that? This isn’t Ingrid? This is Bruno? Oh. So listen, enough with the games, do you or do you not have giraffe? Hello? F me. So I suppose the stegosaurus onesie with drool guard is out of the question? Bruno? Hello? Fine $4, final offer.
One thing you notice when you have a baby sleeping at home is how inefficient at getting from point A to point B your older kids are. Instead of walking up the stairs they literally will drag themselves up them, hop, jump or just fling themselves at a wall and then let gravity pull them to the bottom of the stairs making a loud thud with each stair they hit. Repeat. Again. And Again. All this while a baby is sleeping. Have they been doing this for years? No clue.
So now that I have a third, what beer am I drinking? Well, everything is really the answer here. Everything. Ipas, Stouts, wine, Cider, old stew, fermented cheese now liquified, jars of glue, arsenic capsules, But if I’m picking one this time it is…
Emerald Bae West Coast IPA
Movement Brewing Company
Established 2020
Any brewery that has the cojones to open a new establishment in one of the most flooded industries in America during a global pandemic and still be around to talk about it two years later is already a winner in my book. (Also some kudos to TommyTwoToes Distillery out of Brooklyn during the Spanish Flu – don’t think I forgot about you lads oh, and how can we forget Muhnshofer Meadery during the 1300’s bubonic plague. The list goes on… ok where were we exactly? ).
Right.
Movement Brewing company out of Rancho Cordova, California (20 minutes outside Sacramento for those who haven’t memorized all 482 cities in California), dry and wet-hopped onto the scene (see what I did there?) in late 2020 and has been making quality beer ever since. This satisfying west coast IPA brings me back to childhood trips to Lake Tahoe and my friend’s dad’s wooden boat he’d work on in his driveway at home and bring up to lake only to have it break down most days on the actual lake upon use. (The can shows an entire map of Lake Tahoe with a 1950’s style boat in one of the most iconic spots of the Lake – Emerald Bay, I’m not that good at imagery folks)
This beer, aptly named Emerald Bae seems logically named after the term all the hip kids use for their loved one, however in using a quick keystroke on the ole’ google machine I found several other beers named Emerald Bay so may have been more infringement than a creative play on words but we may never know. So, yes the nostalgia of this geographical, topographical, hippopotomiphacal and nonsenscialophical beer takes me back to a time and a place where the water was crisp, the air was perfectly warm and the wooden boats were nostalgically memory-inducing.
The cover of the can features said boat along with a 1950’s housewife in a sultry, seductive pose who seems to be asking a very good question. Why am I on this old crappy wooden boat when I could be on a yacht with you? And that my dear, will be a real possibility for drinkers of this beer (in their minds at least) once they drink two more of these because this beer is a 7% throttler. Anything will be possible really- You’ll be on a boat with a walrus on a unicycle before long.
Its a crisp and really well-balanced West Coast IPA which in my opinion is still the king of IPAs. Pick it up at your local bottle shop if you can find it and most of all it can only be consumed while on a wooden boat, so pick one of those up while you’re at it.
pampersnpints.com 