RobZazueta.com - I Shouldn't Be Saying This

Have I been so self-absorbed this last year that I didn’t know one of my former newspaper rivals and all-time heroes died? Like, a year ago?

Apparently.

I was looking through my Facebook stream and saw this link posted by the folks at Ale Industries: Beer of the Week: Ale Industries Bill Brand Brown. Among other things, Bill Brand was a hugely successful beer writer who touched the entire craft and home brewer community. Given this, I thought it was an appropriate gesture for Morgan and the gang at AI to honor him. I imagined Bill being both modest and honored about it.

But he apparently passed away a year ago. A YEAR AGO! He was hit by a MUNI train while leaving the 21st Amendment (next door to where I now work) on February 25, 2009.

When I first heard that Bill was a beer columnist, I laughed. See, the name “William Brand” holds special significance for me. When I worked for the Daily Cal in college, he was both my hero and my friendly nemesis. I was the assistant editor in charge of city news at the time and the crime beat reporter. Whenever a story broke in the city, it passed my desk. And, the next day, I would always open the Oakland Tribune to see how Bill covered it. And, damn, was he good.

I got the opportunity to meet him in person only once to my memory. We were covering a homicide trial at the Alameda County courthouse. During one of the recesses, I retired to the press room – a run down, out of the way office that had a couple of discarded desks and one phone. Bill was already in there. Being the excited young pup reporter I was, I introduced myself. When he told me his name, I about hit the floor. I told him all about how I read all his stories, about how I felt the need to compete against him, etc. He seemed mildly flattered by the adulation, but was incredibly modest. He completely fit my mental image of the jaded, hardened longtime reporter that I secretly wanted to become. At the same time, he seemed like some of the life had also been sucked out of him by his job.

We shot the shit for a few minutes and he gave me some career advice (“Well, you’ll never get rich as a newspaper man, I’ll tell you that.”) I felt like I was sort of bothering him, though, so when he ran off to lunch, that the end of the connection.

It was a small connection, but I remember it to this day and have it marked as a hallmark in my short journalism career. I had previously wanted to go work for the New York Times or Washington Post or one of the other major dailies as soon as I could. After meeting Bill, I decided that working for the Tribune as a career wouldn’t be such a bad life.

Not that it mattered. I wound up working as a news editor for AOL’s Digital City San Francisco, which lasted all of four weeks before they decided there was no money to be made in it and they transferred me to be a community builder. Then I got swept up in the dot com boom, went back to my programming roots… If you know me, you know the rest.

I’ve been asked what would I do if money no longer mattered. What job would I take, if any? If I could become a full time news reporter on a daily newspaper, news web site or some other long-form news medium (the rigid brevity of TV and news radio never appealed to me) I’d do it in a heartbeat, no question. And when I imagine myself doing it, I always see myself as Bill Brand, sitting there in that dinky press room banging on his laptop.

It’s that time of year again, folks. Time for “little people” everywhere to dress in green and get their moment in the sun, then get exploited by TLC. Time for us to ponder how much of that stuff in our glass is egg, how much is nog and how much is just off-colored rum. And, of course, time for the annual Zazueta Family Christmas Letter

This is a rather special year as it’s the first one that has featured the latest addition our family – the ants in our pantry Dustin. You’re saying to yourself, “Wasn’t he born in October of 2008? Why didn’t you mention him in last year’s letter?” The answer: Did you remember to buy him a birthday present? I mean, clearly, you remembered his birthday. That’s probably why he cries all the time, you heartless, selfish bastard. Read the Full Post »

For the past three years I have been self-employed working for my company TechKnowMe. Starting October 12th, I’ll be working full time for another company again. My feelings about this are mixed – the job is an astoundingly fantastic opportunity with a great company, but I kind of feel like I’m walking away from my dream.

So, first, the scoop on the new job: I have been hired to be the Partner Integration Manager for VerticalResponse in San Francisco. VerticalResponse’s primary focus is offering email marketing services to small businesses. I have long recommended them to clients and friends over competitors such as Constant Contact, iContact, and others. VerticalResponse, to my mind, simply provides a more professional product in a highly competitive space. What really impressed me in the process of interviewing for this job, however, is how amazingly hands-on they are with their customers.

My primary role will be to promote and support the VerticalResponse Application Programming Interface (API). The API is a set of programming functions that allows developers to write software that directly accesses the VerticalResponse email marketing system without using the standard login and user interface. That software can be as simple as a script to sync a custom database of contacts with the email lists hosted at VerticalResponse or as complex as completely bypassing the VerticalResponse user interface to, for example, allow users to manage and send their email marketing campaigns through something like Joomla or even Quickbooks.

As I said, this is an amazing opportunity for me. It will allow me to take my strong technical knowledge and apply it doing what I love to do most – help small business owners and developers do incredible things. It’s the first non-programming job in my career, which, as much as I love to code, is also exciting to me. It has been my goal all along with TechKnowMe to extricate myself from the day-to-day programming tasks.

So, why am I taking on a full-time gig? And what’s going to happen to TechKnowMe?

I’ll probably do a deeper analysis of this elsewhere, but the short of it is that I have found it increasingly difficult to keep TechKnowMe running the way I want it to be run. Revenues have dropped off dramatically, and my ability to serve my customers in the way they deserve to be served has been severely compromised. To blame this entirely on the state of the economy would be a bit disingenuous and would prevent me from learning from the experience. I made a number of rookie mistakes early in the business that continue to plague me. Had the economy remained strong, I may have been able to recover and survive, but there’s very little room for error in the business world at the moment and, sadly, I needed that room.

I’m currently closing out the active projects sitting on my desk, and doing a fairly fine job of it. I’m looking for solid PHP developers with strong backgrounds in object oriented programming to contract with to help maintain some of the ongoing work. But the focus of TechKnowMe going forward will change dramatically.

I originally founded the company to provide professional-level website design and development services to small businesses – a wildly underserved market in this area. As part of this, I built a full-featured content management system – the TechKnowMe Website Manager – that I think is a highly valuable property. Going forward, I think my focus is going to be on promoting, extending and supporting that product rather than taking on full custom-development projects. To maximize acceptance and support for the website manager, I’m considering releasing it as an open source product and monetizing it via a hosted version available to non-technical business owners, similar to the model WordPress uses. I haven’t had the time to sit down and completely strategize those next steps, so it’s all conjecture at this point, but I genuinely believe my website manager is a best of breed product that needs to get out into the marketplace. Releasing it open source gives it the potential to grow dramatically, which will be a huge boon to those clients already using it.

Of course, my work at VerticalResponse must come first, which relegates a lot of this to my “free time”, of which there is precious little. However, I think I’ll have more free time now than I have in the past three years – TechKnowMe has been an all-consuming, 24-7 thing for me since I started it. I’m looking forward to some breathing room.

I love pizza – I don’t care whether it’s deep dish, thin crust, New York style, Chicago style or Diamond Bar style – I love pizza. A recent frugal streak, however, forced us to stop ordering it for delivery for a while, and I suffered withdrawal. It turns out pizza is WAY easy to make (especially if you have a stand up mixer, which I’m lucky to own) and FAR cheaper than ordering it in.

I’ve been experimenting with different crusts and toppings, and all have elicited surprised “Wows!” from my wife, who now claims this is the best meal I make. I’m now turning pizza night back into a weekly tradition. The recipe that follows is the most recent – and, so far, best – incarnation.

I’d love to hear your recommendations for improvement.

Crust:

Thanks to the Internet, I found a recipe that was apparently handed down from Frugal Gourmet Jeff Smith and may accurately reflect the same crust recipe used at Uno’s Pizza. Which is to say, Chicagoans may laugh at this and go on about how it’s not real Chicago pizza (and I don’t claim it is) but I don’t care – it’s tasty!

One thing I do differently than this recipe lists is to use whole wheat flour for half of the total 5 1/2 cups listed. We’re on a whole wheat kick at our house and it produces a nice, slightly chewy texture that I love.

You should have some dough left over from this recipe, unless you’re using a REALLY large pan. I recommend making garlic twists with it – dice some garlic and melt butter over it, then spread it on flattened dough. Twist it up and bake it until lightly brown. Yum!

(Thanks goes to http://www.pizzamaking.com for the recipe)

• 2 tsp rapid rise dry yeast
• 2 cups warm water
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 cup cornmeal
• 5 1/2 cups flour

In the bowl of a stand mixer (e.g. KitchenAid), dissolve the yeast in the water. Add the vegetable oil, olive oil, cornmeal, and half of the flour. Beat for 10 minutes. Attach the dough hook and mix in the remaining flour. Knead for several minutes with the mixer. (Note: because the dough is very rich and moist, it would be difficult to do this by hand.)

Place the dough in a bowl lightly greased with olive oil (you can use the same bowl you mixed it in), cover with a kitchen towel and set aside in a warm place to rise until it doubles in size – about an hour.

Punch the dough down and knead it a little bit. At this point, if you have more dough than you’ll need (I usually do), cut it into the amount you’ll need. I find half the dough works for a 10-in diameter pan about an inch and a half deep, with some left over for making a couple of garlic twists. You can freeze the rest.

Let the dough rise a second time in the bowl – about a half an hour or so this time – then punch it down again. Pre-heat your oven for 475 degrees. Spread the dough out to cover the inside of your baking pan – a tall-sided pie pan will work nicely, as would a casserole dish. Press the dough thinly around the edges and bring it up all the way to the top on the sides. If you’re not cooking it right away, you can place the crust in the fridge for later that day.

When you’re ready to start assembling the pizza, bake the pie crust for about seven minutes or so until just cooked before adding any sauce or toppings.

Sauce:

I keep it real simple here – the less the you do, the better it will be. Be sure to follow the directions and actually use canned tomatoes – the canners pick them at the precise right time to preserve their flavors and, unless you already have a knock out tomato sauce recipe, you’d be hard pressed to do better than this. You’ll have sauce left over from this recipe – use it to dip your garlic twists in!

• 1 can (14oz.) diced tomatoes
• 1 can (14oz.) crushed tomatoes or tomato sauce
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 tsp finely chopped fresh basil
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• salt

Heat the olive oil in a sauce pan on medium heat and add the garlic, cooking just long enough to release some of the scent and flavor. Add the tomato sauce, diced tomatoes and basil. Cook until sauce thickens a bit, about 10 minutes. Salt to taste.

Toppings

Obviously, you can do whatever you want here – it’s your pizza, you’re the boss! But, here’s a really decadent set of toppings that are also reasonably healthy that knocks my family’s socks off.

• partial skim ricotta cheese
• pepperoni
• fresh spinach
• zucchini, thinly sliced
• a mix of mozzarella, parmesan and fontina chesses, shredded.

Put a thin layer of sauce on the pizza crust, then spread out a layer of the ricotta cheese. Layout the pepperoni in concentric circles, overlapping to completely cover the ricotta cheese. Lay out the spinach as individual leaves, completely covering the pepperoni. Layout the slices of zucchini in overlapping concentric circles, completely covering the spinach. Spread out another layer of sauce and top high with the cheese blend.

Bake the pizza in a pre-heated oven at 475 degrees for about 12 minutes or until the center is cooked (use a thermometer if you used cold ingredients) and the cheese is fully melted and lightly browning in spots.

Want to feel some outrage and finally get a grasp on all this monkey business with AIG, the bailouts, etc.? Rolling Stone has a fantastic article that does a good job of explaining the current financial crisis in relatively plain terms exactly what happened and how we got here.

Anecdotally, however, I think we’re on the way out of this. My company TechKnowMe, which designs, develops, maintains and markets web sites for small businesses, hit bottom a few months ago – no new calls and no response to my marketing efforts. In the last couple of weeks, however, it seems I’m getting more calls and more interest in people looking to get their websites up and running. This indicates to me that they have the necessary capital to invest and that they’re not giving up on their businesses but actually pushing to improve them. I take this as a good sign.

At the end of the day, it will be the small businesses that save the economy. The big businesses are already looking for ways to get easy money from the government and are suffering dramatically because of their reliance on big banks to float them when times are tough. The big banks don’t have the capital to float the big companies, so they;re not as eager to lend. The government, in theory, is giving money to these big banks so they CAN float the big businesses, but the banks are so up to their eyes in obligations for the bad bets they made on dicey securities that most of that money is flowing right back to pay for those debts.

Small businesses grasp the conept of bootstrapping. They’re still close enough to the early days of scraping for capital from all directions and relying on self discipline and good sales tactics to have not forgotten how to do it. Small businesses are a little less reliant on the banks to help them out because they have other means to stay alive. And, sure, the mortgages will be late, the 15-day shutoff notices may come, but at the last minute they’ll make the sale they need to get them going for another month. It may be like this for a little while, but I anticipate that, for most small business owners, we’re really only a short time away from taking in enough money that we can float ourselves.

So, have courage and keep moving forward. It’s not really as bad as it looks on TV. Though I’m having a hard time not advocating violence against the scheisty investment bankers whose uncontrolled greed and arrogance got us to this point.

I’m not a Trekker or a Trekkie or a … Trekster or whatever the hell they’re calling themselves this year, but I do appreciate me some Star Trek now and again. And, while visiting the ESPN site (no, seriously) I saw a banner ad for the new Star Trek movie slated to come out in May. So I clicked. And the trailer is very cool. This is going to be a decent movie, I can tell.

Then I saw the cast credits. Kudos for casting Sylar as Spock – the comparisons are obvious – and the guy they got for Kirk seems passable… but check out who they got for Sulu- Mr. John Cho!

You know Cho as either “The MILF” guy in American Pie or “Harold” in the “Harold and Kumar” movies. I know him as the lead singer to super group Dylarama – a tiny bar band I roadied for in my college days with the other John Tchoe.

Cho was the lead singer of the band and, though a bit full of himself at times, a pretty good, easy going guy. He was a lot of fun to hang out with, had an amazing stage presence and it didn’t hurt that the chicks loved him. Dylarama broke up in part because Cho left to go to LA to appear on stage in a large theater production – I don’t recall which one, though I want to say it was “Phantom of the Opera”. He did it because he got an opportunity and wanted to pursue his acting career. At the time, we thought his natural charisma would get him pretty far, but doubted he’d rise up in the cut throat Hollywood acting business. Silly us.

To go from Dylarama to the MILF guy (I damn near puked my popcorn when I saw him on the big screen) to Harold to Sulu… I am impressed. And I’ll say it again – all told, Cho is actually a pretty good, decent guy. It’s really nice to see someone like him make it big.

I haven’t spoken with him in more than a decade – I sincerely doubt he’d even remember me – but I like the idea that I am, essentially, two degrees away from Captain Kirk and one degree away from Sulu. That is too damn cool.

I have a real problem with Atheists. It doesn’t faze me that they don’t believe in God – everyone experiences the world differently and, as far as I’m concerned, there’s about an equal chance that there is a God as there isn’t or that there are many. I respect the Atheist point of view because I understand it, and the recent surge of hard-core atheism promoted by the likes of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins seems like a rational answer to the atrocities committed in the name of a god.

But, just as I hate being pushed in a corner by some doe-eyed Evangelical insisting that I need to be “saved”, I’m sick and tired of being talked down to by Atheists, as if a belief in a religion is a mental deficiency. I’m thinking of the advertisements that went up on buses in and around London recently (I heard about them on Boing Boing).

I’ve never been overly religious – as I said above, different people view the world differently and your interpretation is ultimately as valid as mine, so I have no problem with the different belief systems out there, so long as they’re ultimately compatible with a peaceful society. I have had experiences in my life and been exposed to things that I can not easily explain through simple science that are, in some ways, compatible with many of the religious beliefs out there. I believe in the power of prayer, even if I do have a scientific, psychology-based reason for it. At the end of the day, I like the idea of some ethereal force that connects us all and guides us when we call on it. I like the idea of God and, therefore, am a believer because it makes my life a little easier to comprehend.

In college, a good friend of mine had just finished reading Ayn Rand and was, therefore, going through the post-Rand douchebag phase of unjustified superiority. Among other things, reading Rand had convinced him that Atheism was the right belief and it somehow became his duty to promote it. He expounded on the philosophy of Objectivism over and over, of how self-interest is the highest virtue, etc. etc. When we got to talking about religion, though, he dismissed my beliefs and my experiences out of hand. I told him when I was very young, an angel appeared in my room. I wasn’t sick and I wasn’t asleep. She stood before me, beautiful, radiant, just smiling down on me. It was such a jarring experience I can still see it in my mind’s eye clear as day. I called to my mother, who was just across the hall, to come in and see. As soon as my mother crossed through my doorway, the angel was gone. Mom hadn’t seen a thing.

My friend immediately dismissed it as a child’s overactive imagination, or that I was actually asleep and didn’t realize it or I was hallucinating. I said that all were possible, but it had such a profound effect on me in my life and has affected the way I choose to live. It gave me some sense of hope and made me feel special. Any explanation one could give for the experience could be considered valid, but only one explanation gave the experience meaning, and that was the one I chose to believe. He, of course, dismissed me as being willfully ignorant.

I asked him if he had ever experienced anything like that. He could not in all honesty say yes. And here is where I think the biggest failing in Atheism lies – an inability to relate to another’s experience does not invalidate their experience. A more pedestrian example: I love hamburgers made out of ostrich meat – they’re REALLY delicious. But, if you’re weirded out by eating an ostrich or are just not into eating animals, you may think ostrich burgers are absolutely disgusting, even if you’ve never tasted one. You may even go so far as to think I’m an idiot for enjoying them, though you have absolutely no basis for making such an irrational judgement on me. Until you’ve eaten an ostrich burger yourself, you have no right to judge me. And, if even after you’ve eaten that burger you think I’m crazy, the most you should be able to rationally say about me is that I have weird tastes, but it doesn’t make me a bad person.

If you have had no experiences in your life that equal the ones that have convinced me there’s something more going on out there than science alone can explain, you have no rational basis on which to judge me as an idiot or mentally deficient. A belief in God or the beyond is not the enemy of rational thought, nor necessarily is religion. Intolerance and a willingness to follow only those parts of a belief system that fit your narrow-minded world view are the real enemies, which is why I have such a problem with most fundamentalists who believe in the Bible as infallible truth. The Bible is full of contradictions, sometimes within the same passages. If you believe it is infallible, you must also believe that, in Genesis, God placed an upper limit on human life as 120 years, but a chapter later he allowed Noah and some of his kin to live for 600 years plus. In that same story, God admits his own fallibility – he destroys all life on Earth with a massive flood, then apologizes, regrets his decision and promises never to do it again. Therefore, God makes mistakes and, if you believe that God made the Bible, the Bible could contain more mistakes and is, therefore, not infallible.

But religious fundamentalists aren’t the only enemies of rational thought – fundamental atheists are just as bad. Atheists have no right to dismiss the beliefs of others as wrong. While there is no tangible evidence in the existence of God, neither is there any evidence to disprove such an existence. The absence of proof is not proof of the opposite and, therefore, Atheists stand on the same shaky ground as believers when it comes to defending their position. Both are valid points of view worthy of debate, but neither are absolutely right or wrong.

Now, there are folks who will call me a lousy Christian. Christ told us to go forth and spread the Gospel. By allowing Atheists to exist and not trying to convert them, I’m, therefore, doing some harm against Christ.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The Gospel of Christ is his teachings, which can ultimately be boiled down to “Be good to each other, respect each other, respect yourselves and strive for peace and justice for all people.” Christ condemned a lot of people in the Gospels, but he condemned them for the way they treated other people. One famous example is the parable of the rich man, whose likelihood of getting into Heaven is that of a camel fitting through the eye of a needle. The moral of that tale is not that rich people are bad, but people who make their riches by subjugating others and looking out only for themselves are. And, sadly, it’s difficult to become extremely wealthy without compromising your morals.

Christ’s message is ultimately one of love, tolerance and inclusion. This is, after all, the guy who told us to turn the other cheek should someone smack us on the face. It’s a message shared by Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and even socially-conscious Atheists, even if the source of the message is not the same. Christ’s message has been perverted by zealous followers, many of whom see an opportunity for self-aggrandizement in their public acts of piety. The shame in the pro-Christian, anti-Christian debate is that far too much argument has been made over improper readings of the teachings of Christ. Improper in the sense that many of the folks arguing have never actually read the teachings. The Bible itself has been famously censored and altered over the years – the Council of Nicea determining the ultimate codex 1500 years ago, the various reinterpretations deemed true by groups of cardinals at the Vatican summits – so arguing its infallibility is really a fruitless effort. Which is not to say that the messages in the Bible are irrelevant – speaking of Noah again, if you get too caught up in the inconsistencies of Noah’s age and the practicality of fitting two of every species on a boat, you miss the message of God’s passion and compassion for His creation and how his regret over killing off so much of his creation affects our relationship with him.

Go ahead and be Atheist if you want. If you fervently believe there’s no God, nothing beyond what science can tell you of the world, that’s a perfectly valid point of view. I tend to think it’s a rather unimaginative view of the world, however, which is why I’ll continue to content myself with the belief in something beyond what can be directly observed and measured, and I’ll expect you to continue to respect me for it. Together, we can rise up against those people who use their faith as a sword to punish those they disagree with, who close their minds to the boundless possibilities of the world so that they can feel safer in an artificial, controlled life that shuts out all things that bring them conflict. Religion is not the enemy of reason. A closed mind is.

Before Dustin was born, I went through some of the stuff we took from Mom’s condo looking for my baby book. As a child, I loved looking through it as it was a book all about my favorite person at the time – me! When I got older, I even entered some of the milestone information myself. I wanted to look through the baby book because I knew it had some interesting information that I thought might give me a clue about raising our own kid. Since Mom is no longer with us – and, I’ve tried really hard not to think about that fact since Dustin came along because the mere thought of it makes me tear up, like it is right now – this is the best I have in the way of motherly advice.

When I found it, though, I discovered something new. Apparently, for the first couple of years of my life, she kept very detailed journals on loose-leaf paper about my day-to-day and week-to-week development, including all of the foods she fed me, my sleep and eating schedules, tips and tricks she discovered, etc. with the intention of referring to them when my parents had their second child (which never happened). These were never in the book to my memory when I was a kid – she probably wisely left them out to keep them from falling into my well-meaning but destructive hands. What gets me is how each entry is longer and more detailed than a simple chart, but not quite as long as a diary entry. In other words, my mom paper blogged my first year of life. This has been an astounding find that I still haven’t been able to totally read through because it makes me inconsolably weepy.

It inspired me to want to do the same but, between caring for the wife and kid and trying to keep a flow of money coming through the door, time is a more precious commodity. than ever before. Mom took care of me by herself during the day for most of my early life while she recovered from a C-Section, so it’s amazing to me that she had the time to keep such detailed journals.

In lieu of that, I’ve been writing down quick tidbits here and there as I’ve stolen time from my other duties to record them. I’ll periodically post them here, likely in some aggregate manner as I am in this post. They’re not necessarily as well-written and organized as most of my other writings – they are pretty raw – but I want to preserve and share them all the same.

• Among the chief changes in my life is that I actually have developed brand loyalty to – of all things – diapers. We’re still in the newborn stage, so it’s possible this may change, but Pampers are leaps and bounds better than any other diaper we’ve tried. Huggies have these gigantic gaps that allow urine to leak all over the place. The “Mom to Mom” brand being heavily promoted at Safeway – whose package features the quote “I wish everything that touched my baby’s skin felt this soft” – feels like maxi-pads wrapped around thin cardboard, which just hast to chafe the poor guy. Haven’t yet found newborn Luvs, Kirkland, or any of the other brands, so my loyalties may change.
• Same with bottles – we used Gerber Nuk nipples at first from the hospital, but they flowed too quickly. We switched to pricey Adiri bottles that were slower flow and better resembled a boob, but they don’t flex like natural breast material so it’s difficult for the kid to get a good latch. We’re now using Dr. Brown’s, which have an interesting pressure maintenance design that allows the milk to flow more evenly and a nipple that more looks like a naturally latched nipple.
• I underestimated how interesting little things like bottle design really are.
• When designing products for new parents, remember that you’re dealing with over-exhausted, easily frustrated people who are just trying to keep their sanity intact. There’s absolutely no room for bad user interface design. Take the Diaper Genie refills – you’re supposed to be able to rip off the tab, stick your finger into the refill and find the edge of the new baggies to pull out, tie and insert into the diaper pail. The last one I opened, however, did not have the edge anywhere near the top, so I kept pulling out bag that was folded over itself – an unnecessary double bagging that, at $5.00 a pop for a refill, is needlessly expensive. Perhaps if they attached the edge to the tab you pull off or something, this would be far easier. Instead, I threw a mini-tantrum.
• The best part of the day comes around 2-3pm when Dustin is wide awake and VERY aware of everything around him. He looks in your eyes and hangs on every word. The worst part of the day is sometime around 3-4am when Dustin is wide awake and looks into your eyes expecting intelligent interaction and stimulation. This is when “Who’s my good little boy?” turns to, “Fer chrissake kid, go to sleep already, Daddy’s exhausted.”
• I’m enraged by the rampant sexism to be found in books on infant development. I bought “Baby’s First Year Week By Week” by Glade B. Curtis, M.D., M.P.H. and Judith Schuler, M.S. – a rather popular title that nicely lays out in quickly readable chunks what to expect each week in my boy’s development. They pepper their often useful information with useless and offensive comments like these:
  

  “Changing you baby’s diapers is a necessary task; once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to do it quickly and efficiently. Many men are even capable of learning this skill!“

  Fuck you! From the moment this kid popped out, the responsibility of a majority of his care fell on me while my poor wife recovered from her C-Section. She’s now totally capable of taking care of him mostly on her own, but this is my kid, too, and I consider all aspects of taking care of him a completely team effort. Comments like these are derived from the old-fashioned idea that the men work while the women take care of the baby, an imbalance women have decried forever. Comments like these only exacerbate the problem and reinforce the idea that men are, somehow, incapable of caring properly for their infants.

• Another oversight in many of these books is an honest discussion of breastfeeding, especially for women who require intervention. Breastfeeding is often linked with an all-natural childbirth and, in both philosophies, anything unnatural – formula from a bottle, an epidural during delivery, etc. – is strictly taboo. But the world rarely works out the way you plan and, in our case, our desire to go all natural gave way to our desire to not have a stillborn child. Danielle was more or less OK in understanding that the C-Section was necessary and wasn’t too hard on herself when the time came to do it. However, that surgery apparently greatly affects her ability to breastfeed, and every book we’ve read and every poster at Kaiser consistently tells us that “breast is best” and anything else is practically child abuse.But, here’s the reality – not every woman is able to immediately breastfeed her child, especially those who require any kind of medical intervention during the delivery. The medical community has worked so hard to convince people to breastfeed that they’ve completely ignored the complications many – I’d argue most – women have when they first try it. Poor Danielle has been stressed just by having the baby, just as I am and just as every new parent is. This stress, combined with the recovery her body has required from the surgery, affected her milk production to the point where we weren’t really able to sufficiently feed our kid by breastmilk alone. Because of the pro-breast propaganda, this has stressed her out even more, making her feel inadequate, which turns the whole thing into a vicious cycle. The lactation consultant, up until yesterday, basically said she couldn’t do anything to help Danielle if she couldn’t learn to relax, which made the situation worse.I could write this off as an anomaly if I had not heard the exact same thing from other mothers, especially those who delivered by C-Section. All of them struggled – in some cases for several weeks or even months – to get their milk supply up to snuff. The guilt we’ve felt in feeding out child formula is not really founded – it’s true formula is not as good as breastmilk by a long shot, but it really is the next best thing,  though we’ve been taught from all of our birthing classes and books to think of it as almost a poison. Without it, the kid would starve to death right now. Instead, he’s maintaining a very healthy weight and developing normally.

  As for breastfeeding, we’ve refused to give up and Danielle has since met with the lactation consultant again, explaining her situation and asking her to be helpful and not judgmental. The good news is that her production is now up and we have a couple of new tricks to help the kid better latch on and wean him off the bottle and onto the breast. If the medical establishment and baby books would recognize these problems and attempt to troubleshoot them rather than waste reams of paper and gallons of ink convincing us that the breast is the only way to go, we’d see a lot more healthy babies and mothers.

  I keep trying to keep all these things in perspective. My mother never fed me breastmilk for various reasons, and actually started me on cereal mixed in with the milk within only a few weeks of my life. We didn’t have all of the fancy hypoallergenic, baby-safe stuff we have now when I was a kid, and I doubt I really got all that much DHA during those  early years when my brain was forming. I turned out fine – really, I did – and so will my kid. It’s not an excuse to be completely laissez about the whole deal, but this perspective is what keeps me from getting too freaked out when things don’t go as planned.

• The generational differences between our fathers and fathers now is astounding. I, too, was born via C-Section in 1975. I told my Dad about being in the operating room with Danielle, cracking up the nurses and doctors on the other side of the screen, then cutting the ceremonial length of umbilical cord they had left for me. We was astounded, “You were in there with her?” It didn’t dawn on me that my dad was actually one of those guys pacing in the waiting room while I was being delivered. Same goes for caring for the baby. Danielle’s parents were here helping us for the first couple of weeks. At one point, her father said something to the degree of, “We didn’t have this kind of help when you were born.” Danielle later said to me, “Yeah, that’s because mom did all of the work.”In our house, it’s a pretty even split – I’ve changed more poopy diapers than her (not keeping score as some kind of bitter ammunition, I’m keeping score as a sense of pride) and done more bottle feedings, but that’s only because she was mostly out of commission the first week. Now that she’s healing, we’re on a more even keel, and I really wouldn’t want it any other way.  I take great pride in caring for my son – in really knowing how to care for him. I don’t pass him off to mom when he starts screaming, I don’t freak out when he cries in my arms, I don’t panic over his poopy diapers (I swear he holds it in all day just for me sometimes, though – I call these the “apocalypse diapers”). If I see him crying, I go through the four most likely reasons – hungry, wet/poopy, cold, gassy – and respond accordingly. If he were on a regular sleeping schedule, it would actually be easy. And, those moments when he’s done crying and just sitting contentedly in my arms, often looking back into my eyes, really makes all of the exhaustion and stress totally, totally worth it. I actually daydream about this kid.

Last night’s election of Barack Obama to the presidency is historic proof that this nation has made tremendous steps toward a more egalitarian society. Last night’s defeat of Proposition 8, which modifies the California State constitution to explicitly eliminate a right granted by its non-discrimination clause, is proof we have many miles left to go.

It’s ironic these two events should happen the same night. For so long, human rights and equality have been focused almost solely on race and gender. Sexual orientation has always taken a major backseat when it comes to civil rights. Many still think of it as a choice, laughable that they should get any special rights at all. But no one is asking for special rights – they’re asking for equal rights, especially the right to live their lives in peace and prosperity and not be denied the simple pleasures most of us take for granted.

It’s true I’m in favor of gay marriage – I believe that whenever any two, non-related consenting adults come before their community and, if appropriate, their God to swear their lifetime of commitment to one another, we should celebrate it as an incremental strengthening of the ancient tradition of marriage. But, to be perfectly honest, I don’t care whether gay people marry or not – I simply do not like the government telling me whom I can and cannot marry. Not too long ago, a man and woman of different races could not legally marry throughout much of this nation. Many interracial married couples living today can remember a time when their union was considered illegal and, in some circles, it’s still widely frowned upon. I’m certain that many of the same people who voted to legally discriminate against gay marriage would consider a ban on interracial marriage to be absolutely appalling.

And, yet, they gladly marked a ballot that clearly explains that they are eliminating a right from a group of their fellow citizens. The pro prop 8 people led a rather misleading and despicable campaign that clearly outlines the rampant homophobia and blatant discriminatory spirit that still drives this state, a state considered by many to be both among the most liberal as well as a bellwether for the rest of the country. It must be reiterated that the court that determined gay marriage to be constitutionally legal did not create any new law or make any changes to the constitution – they simply properly interpreted a clause in the document that says this state will not discriminate, effectively calling illegal all previous attempts to ban gay marriage through legislative action. Californians today said, in essence, “The State of California shall not discriminate… unless you’re gay.” What a tremendously shameful step backward. That my neighbors – there have been “Yes on 8″ signs posted all around my neighborhood – and no doubt some people I call friends voted to make this happen sickens and shames me.

I spent much of my evening watching the election coverage on MSNBC. The issue of Barack Obama’s race and the historical significance of his election has, in recent months, hovered in the background of his candidacy, but never really defined it. He never brought it to the fore and waved it as a rallying flag, choosing instead to focus on the issues Americans currently face. As soon as McCain conceded, it seems that all of the news channels suddenly celebrated the great civil rights achievement made tonight. In other words, it suddenly became all about race, but in a somewhat positive way. And, while those who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and suffered through decades of segregation and Jim Crow laws are rightly celebrating the fruits of their efforts, I find their silence on the issue of this new civil rights movement eerie and appalling.

I’ll cut to the chase – in addition to the one above, you can see all of the pictures I’ve taken of Dustin so far here on Flickr.

There aren’t many, but we’ve been busy, as you’ll see…

Been a long, arduous few days at the Zazueta household. Danielle began laboring on Friday the 17th at about 2:30pm following our appointment with the doctor for a checkup. She was due on the 16th, so everything was pretty much on schedule.

The contractions were erratic, but roughly 3-4 minutes apart for about an hour come 11:00pm. We called Kaiser and they had us come in. They did a quickie triage checkup, and immediately noticed something was wrong – while measuring the contractions against the baby’s heartbeat, they noticed his heartbeat took a precipitous dive with each contraction. It immediately recovered, though, but they were still concerned and admitted us immediately.

Now, here was the plan: Danielle, God love her, wanted to do this completely naturally – no drugs, no interventions of any kind, just us breathing and pushing with the midwife. Until about a week or two ago, she was very gung ho about this (and those of you who know Danielle know that when I say “gung ho” I’m understating the situation). Then we read a book that, in essence, said that any delivery where the result is a happy healthy baby and a happy healthy mother is considered a success. This shifted her mind set in an amazing way, as you’ll see.

Danielle’s friend Claudia came to act as pseudo-doula and was a TREMENDOUS help to both of us. I watched with terror as every contraction resulted in another “decel” of the kid’s heartbeat, followed by a somewhat rapid return to normal. At some points, though, the decel went WAY too low and lasted FAR too long. We knew this was the case not only because of the lines on the monitor, but because every member of the nursing staff suddenly appeared in our room each time this happened, all them trying to portray an air of calm while furrowing their brows and trying to figure out what to do.

Danielle powered through each contraction with an amazing grace and focus. Claudia and I lead her in deep breathing and encouraged her on. She can take a hit like no one else I know – it was impressive AND scary to watch.

The first chip in our birth plan came when a nurse suggested that these decels could take a sudden turn for the worse and an emergency C-Section may be in order. Rather than get into a situation where they had to take time to put in an epidural before rushing to surgery, losing precious minutes, they suggested she get one pre-emptively. They said it may also release the pressure on the baby. They were pretty sure the decels were a result of cord compression and hoped that an epidural plus injecting more water into the amniotic sac may help things a bit. Reluctantly, a fiercely grunting, barely communicative Danielle nodded her head in agreement and the epidural was administered. Soon therafter, Danielle’s grunting gave way to laughter and conversation. As each contraction got stronger, as evidenced by the monitor, Claudia and I looked at Danielle asking her how she was feeling, recalling when the contractions were only have that strength and she was deep-breathing through them. “It feels like the tickle of a feather,” she said completely lucidly. Moral: epidurals rock. Ask for one where better drugs are sold.

Things continued on like this for a few hours. When we came in, she was about 4cm dilated. Ten hours later, she was still only 6cm dilated. The term “C-Section” began floating around a bit more often as the night progressed into mid-morning. Finally, sometime around 11am, the doctor on staff broke it to Danielle. “We’re not making ant progress, and I’m concerned that as your contractions increase, so will those decels we’re seeing in his heartbeat. We should do the C-Section.”

So the all-natural birth plan became a completely intervened birthplan, but Danielle – to her great credit – rolled right with the punches, repeating the mantra, “Healthy mom, healthy baby.” They wheeled her in to the OR to prep and gave me a set of surgical scrubs. When she was all prepped, they led me in. They placed a sheet between her top and bottom halves so we didn’t have to see what was happening below. Because of the epidural – amongst other drugs the “Candy Lady”, which was the name I gave to the anesthesiologist, crammed into her veins – Danielle felt nothing as they opened her up and began pulling out the baby. She was completely lucid and awake for the whole thing and the two of us bantered back and forthm cracking jokes and eliciting peals of laughter from the surgeons on the other side of the screen.

How glad was I that the screen was there? At one point, I stood up to look at something else in the room and my gaze grazed across my wife’s open body on the table. I was cool as a cucumber and actually kind of fascinated with the glimpse, but thought it best to not linger as my emotions were way overtaking my scientific curiosity, and I was doing so well vertical.

After a few tugs, we heard the surgeons cry “There’s the baby!” They rushed him over to the warming table and began cleaning him off and siphoning out the fluids in his lungs. Not long after, we heard his first cries, and he, in turn heard ours. They beckoned me over to take a look and cut the small bit of ceremonial cord left just for me. It was AWESOME. He looked like a cross between Dustin Hoffman and Mr. Magoo.

The surgeons told us that the decelerations in his heartbeat were due to the fact that cord was around his head. Had he been born the normal way, there’s a chance we would have had major complications. The C-section was the right call and he turned out just fine.

They took Danielle to the recovery ward and stitched her up and I went with Dustin to the Nursery for his first round of tests. I was able almost immediately to soothe him under the warming lamps as I counted – 10 fingers, 10 toes and one of those. All there!

The last couple of days have been hectic. Danielle got very little sleep the night before she went into labor and has probably had a grand total of five hours of sleep over the past four days. Her parents came in yesterday and relieved me long enough to go home and catch about five hours of sleep so I could come back for the night shift, but other than that I’ve only had sleep in very short fits and spurts.

This kid is beautiful and so, so sweet. I’m already beginning to recognize his cries and what they mean. He’s on a three-hour sleep, eat burp schedule with a necessary diaper change every two feedings or so. He cries juuust when these things start, but is otherwise quickly soothed. He’s spent much of the last three days sleeping on my chest, which has to be one of the top feelings in the world for me.

Mom, dad and baby are all home now – we were released at about 3pm today – and Tom and JoAnne are here making us dinner and helping us handle the kid so we can take a wee bit of R&R. Both Danielle and I are completely wasted, but we’re also giddily, stupidly happy. Nothing went as planned, but I don’t think either of us could be happier with how things went.

Rob Z.