52 Novels

At seven o’clock this morning Mrs. Novels woke me from a dead sleep, a shout from the bathroom as she got ready for work.

“Can you come take a look at this?” she asked.

Half asleep — not in frog pajamas — I rolled my ass out of the sack. The bathroom’s just a few steps from the master bedroom, so I didn’t have the chance to wipe the nuggets from my eyes yet.

“Look at that,” she said, pointing to the counter top. I thought it might be a spider or some other multi-legged creature that’d wandered into the house.

I bent down for a closer look. No contacts, one-quarter asleep by now. “It looks like a plus sign,” I said as I stood straight again and smiled.

I looked at her.

No smile. Instead, the look she had was much closer to abject terror.

I hugged her.

She trembled.

“I have to go sit down,” she said and walked away. She flumped herself into a nearby comfy chair.

It sounds worse than it was. Really. In fact, I couldn’t stop laughing. Not bad for an old guy with underperforming hormones, I thought. As she sat there in the chair, her hand shook as she tried to put on mascara.

“I’m seriously flipping out right now,” she said.

“Why? This is a good thing.”

“I know it’s a good thing. It’s a very good thing. But—”

“But, what?”

“Every time I’ve taken one of those things, all I’ve ever seen is a minus. Now it’s a plus and I don’t know what it means.”

“It means you’re the Mommy.”

“Oh, God.” A a few breaths, of what could’ve easily turned to hyperventilation, escaped. “Remember my dream?”

I should back up a little here. A few weeks before her friend Jay’s planned Vegas wedding weekend, Mrs. Novels dreamed that his intended left him at the altar. They got married on May 10th. The new bride moved out their house by May 13th. Catching up, Mrs. Novels had another dream a few nights later that hit a little closer to home.

“What? The one about the kitten?” I asked. She’d dreamed she gave birth to a kitten.

“Yeah. I dreamed about Jay’s wedding and that mostly came true. Now this.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re not gonna have a kitten. But if you do, we’ll be famous for the rest of our lives. Medical researchers will pay big money, Diane Sawyer will come knocking, there’ll be a Lifetime movie.” I paused. “We’ll go on The Tonight Show!”

At last. A crooked smile emerged.

So, there you have it. Seems I’ve gone and gotten my wife pregnant.

Wil Wheaton dropped this nugget on his blog yesterday:

… Sure, it’s great to have the convenience of buying and instantly downloading records and stuff, but the damn kids today who will grow up without ever setting foot in a record store or talking to a hardcore music geek who works there just don’t know what they’re missing.

And they’re missing a lot.

It really doesn’t get any simpler — or truer — than that. Believe me, I love the things the Internet affords us all. And you know what I mean: instant this, access to that, location independent blah blah blah.

But there’s something wonderful about spending time in the record store, mixing with the music and the people there in a tactile way that browsing the super-shitty iTunes just can’t reproduce.

As cool as Apple wants to make you feel about owning one of its pretty pretty products, the record store thing ain’t gonna happen while you’re sitting on your ass listening to 30 second snippets through shitty speakers.

No chance of strolling the aisles and flipping through the stacks and talking to the scruffy kid, who’s filing new arrivals, about what he likes better, THIS YEAR’S MODEL or LONDON CALLING. Or finding that you both dig bagpipes, klezmer, or John Denver… as much as you dig Johnny Rotten.

Maybe it’s just stupid romance for me, but the record store is where I learned to love Sonny Criss and Josh Bell and R.L. Burnside.

It’s also the place where I met each of the four men who stood up for me at my wedding… and the place where I met the woman I married that day.

(If you haven’t guessed already, I worked in a rec-a-sto once upon a time. For the better part of the 90s, I schlepped my ass to a stand alone shop for miserable pay and tons of promo CDs and comp tickets to just about every rock and roll show that blew through town.)

Unlike Wheaton, I’m not sure I miss my record store geek days… at least not from a consumer’s point of view. There’s so much out there and I don’t have the dough to discover one percent of what I used to know, and I’m not convinced — even if money wasn’t an object — that half of that stuff is worth discovering anyway.

What I share with Wheaton, in addition to lamenting the demise of the record shop and what that means, is the connection of music to significant parts of the past. It’s more visceral for me than movies are. More than books, too.

Maybe I don’t always remember the exact event connected to a song or record. Sometimes, yes. But I do remember the time and what it represented for me while I was in it.

Is it the same for you? What are some of the things you’ve really connected with like that? Drop a comment… let’s discuss.

A local Denver strip club (rhymes with motgun sillies) has been using its marquee advertising to entice people to bring in their stimulus checks for some good old fashioned stimulus of a different sort.

A buddy and I mapped out the economic cycle it might spawn:

1. Dudes bring in their checks, spend every dime in the VIP.
2. Dancers pool the money, buy blow.
3. Dealer buys new rims.
4. Guy he buys the rims from rents the VIP for private party.

Puts a whole new spin on guns and butter.

If you paid minimal attention to the YouTube post here a few weeks ago — and an ancient post at Elephino Creative — then you may have noticed a microtrend. If not (why would you?) I’ll spell it out:

Mrs. Novels and I are trying to have a kid.

In a month — almost to the day — I’ll be forty. That means, even though my wife and I have a good feeling about May, I’ll probably see another birthday come rolling around before the as-yet-unmade ankle biter squeezes from the dark and into the light… so make that forty-one.

Geezer dad.

Obviously, we’re having a great time with it all. And it’s only been a few months that we’ve been trying to get her pregnant, so I’m a long way from being one of those strange men who say they felt like a piece of meat after a while, that their wives treated them like little more than a sperm factory.

I told my wife I’m expecting her to punch me in the mouth if I ever get that way.

Of course, waiting for so long to start a family has it’s disadvantages. For starters, our ages put a damper on the process. Teenage girls these days seem to get pregnant just thinking about unprotected sex. Mrs. N and I figure it’ll take us six months to a year.

Also, it turns out I’ve got a pituitary disorder that’s putting the kibosh on my testosterone. Actually, it’s not exactly a disorder.

It’s tumors.

There. I said it.

Tumors.

Okay, technically, I have brain cancer.

But to say that insults people who have Brain Cancer.

No, what I have are two benign masses — each about 2.5 millimeters in diameter — on my pituitary gland. Two-and-a-half millimeters may not sound like a big deal, but considering the gland itself is the size of a pea, the tumors are big enough to seriously mess with my hormones.

For now, my doctor and I are using the “watchful waiting” method of treatment. He takes my blood every couple of months to monitor my testosterone level, which, by the way, is normal… for a sixty-five year old man.

I’m going back for another MRI later this year. My nads doc also takes a sperm count every three or four months. It was seventy million — give or take — last time around. That’s normal for a man my age. And I’m thankful (thrilled!) I didn’t have to count them myself.

The real irony here is that we’re going this route because of Operation Yard Ape. If I started drug therapy (legal anabolic steroids… woo hoo!) it’d raise my testosterone and shrink the tumors.

But it’d also squash my swimmers. Can’t have that. Not right now, anyway.

The good part is that I feel fine. But I do have some manifestations.

I gain weight like it’s nobody’s business.

Back in December of 2006, I’d been holding steady at about two-thirty… a great spot for me. By Memorial Day weekend of 2007, I’d jumped to two forty-five, more or less. By February of this year, I hit two sixty-five.

Makes sense. Part of the thing that testosterone does is regulate body fat.

I’ve since been able to trim my weight down to two fifty-eight or so, provided I watch my sodium. Seems I’m overly sensitive to salty foods these days. Maybe that’s another manifestation. In any case, if it’s salty and I eat it, I’m up about four pounds the next day.

That rules out everything that tastes good.

I can’t exactly stop eating so, for now, I’m not worrying about it so much. Besides, once my old lady gets pregnant, the manabolics get switched back on.

I’m losing muscle mass.

While I wouldn’t call myself a gym rat, I do like lifting heavy things in interesting ways and I do my best to make sure I’m getting to a weight room three or four times a week.

On the plus side, I’m not losing strength… in fact, my strength is holding steady or increasing. But I’m getting a little mushy, especially in my arms and chest.

And belly.

Legs, too.

Speaking of mushy, I get super-emotional during movies.

I’ve always been a bit of a softy. Just ask my wife about what happens to me when I watch the movie FLY AWAY HOME, especially during the part where Anna Paquin flies over the field just in time to save the goose refuge from the evil real estate developer.

Cue the Mary Chapin Carpenter song and forget about it.

Yeah. Just call me “blubbering mess.”

But these days it’s ridiculous. If what’s on screen hints at being even remotely touching, I get a lump in my throat the size of Oklahoma.

It’d bother me if it wasn’t so freaking hilarious.

So there you have it. Too much information.

But there are also advantages.

Advantages to waiting until now to start a family, that is. First among them is that my wife and I have a lot of wisdom these days, way more than we had when we got married a decade ago.

Don’t get me wrong… the wisdom tank’s not full. Not even close. We know there’s no owner’s manual for life in general and child rearing in particular — despite the book store’s teeming evidence to the contrary on all counts.

I was talking to my mom a few weeks back and she said, “You’ll swear to yourself that you won’t make the same mistakes your own parents made. But you will… plus a whole bunch of new ones, too.”

I’m sure she’s right, but whatever. I have to think we’re better equipped now.

And even if we weren’t it wouldn’t matter because Mrs. Novels and I are as excited as, well, we’re pretty damn excited about this new part of our lives.

And it ain’t even happened yet!

People who know me are well aware I’m ready for the first of this year’s summer Hollywood blockbusters. Since June of 1995, I’ve had this etched into my left leg:

And speaking of comic book tattoos, here’s a guy who’s really dedicated.

While I’m on the subject of comics, don’t forget about this:

It’s tomorrow at fine comic book shops near you.