Getting to Carnegie Hall

You know what they say. But how do you practice for something when you don't yet have what it is you need to practice for? You can't, for instance, practice juggling if you haven't the balls for it.

Eww! Don't be gross or weird. I am talking about something beautiful and magical and I am talking about something innocent and pure, and; okay, I'll admit that I think certain innocent words are funny. Balls is one of them. Also noodles, gravy, wormwood, assassin, organ, lupus, shower, Fonzie, swivel, perky, gossamer, guzzler, shoveler, corndog, and will power. To name a few. Is lupus innocent? If it is, then I also think the 'canker' part of canker sore is pretty hilarious... and it aint a thang funny about soreness, yo!

Shoot, I would be restlessly nail-biting and nervously ticking like a doomsday clock (which has been at five-till-the-witching-hour since the pickle was a proverbial twinkle) if I didn't allow myself some outlet for practice.

My good Detroit buddy, and a very recent father his damn self, Jason Thomas Dale (I know... 3 firsts!) and his wife, M-A Vizmeg-Dale, were awesome enough to send us a pre-childrens' book. It is actually designed to be read to a fetus through the belly! This is a plot understandably effed up. And this is a man used to reading to the blind.


Jeez, what else? I am practicing modeling unadulterated freshness. Dare a dude to say this isn't positively dripping with parroted freshness. Go ahead, Weihao!


The question is, "who's parroting?"

Plus I am practicing reading "International Instructions" for the assemblage of items with sufficient complexity to make Ben Clarke blush. I really thought I was a smart guy all these years. And I thought I was just Wally-Cleaver of genteel. That is until I tried to put a singing/rocking/shaking/talking infant nap station with owl mobile together. Holy crap! I might as well have passed a Qtip from ear to ear like a man-child smile.

Try it and you'll see. I was cussin' and yellin' and fussin' and so genuinely tee-o'ed I wanted to spit on carpet.

And that's just wrong.

And then what? And then you've got yourself a buncha toys that are as close to utility as a bikini in February. But wait... right when you think there's no I in 'ingenuity' you come up with the bestest, freshest idea since recycling!


Practice, practice, practice!

Week 29

In the 29th week the pickle is still mighty small. We're talkin' less than three pounds and ten or so inches all scrunched up as the pickle is. Would be up in the sixteen inch ballpark if the pickle could stretch out, but that's still down the way a stretch.

I'm not saying anything untoward about small things. That'd be bogus. Kasha is about five-one, and I think she's tops. Starting twenty years ago and continuing to this very day the Mazda Miata has been what I consider to be the finest machine ever made by human hands. The God of Small Things is a super read-worthy book by Arundhati Roy, and it always makes me wonder what would happen if she married goal-tender extarordinaire "saint" Patrick Roy. I mean, of course she'd needn't change the spelling of her name, because they are exactly the same in that regard. But "read" is the same whether you pronounce it RED or REED while, a Quebec-French-Canadian, Patrick says his Roy like "WAH" and Arundhati makes the same word rhyme with "soy." The point is that Miatas are sweet.


In the 29th week, you'd be shocked if the pickle was, say, the size of a Golden Retriever. Small is fine. You have to consider where you're at. That same awesome Miata would be an horrible mismatch for the leggy and enormous John Amaechi, formerly of the Cavs/Magic/Jazz. Just think if Tim Hardaway and Amaechi had the chance to cruise around and sort some stuff out in there. Tim probably has all his mean words as a result of growing up with a name as easy to ridicule as Hardaway must have been.



What I am trying to say is that Kasha's belly is a small place. Try picking it out of this line up (which includes Kasha, myself, and Bekka who is among the sveltest Beijingers you could ever find) if you think you can.


So, in a place like that, of course you're gonna be a shrimp. Oh, add shrimp to the list of small things that are irreproachable. I'll say just one last thing about small things here in week 29. We took the little belly and the pickle within to go see "Amerikas Nightmare," "Tha Infamous" Mobb Deep and behold the little-est rapper this side of Bushwick Bill: Mobb Deep's Supa-Produca/Rappa, Havoc. He was SO cute! And standing tall at five foot five, he reiterated (in the grimiest possible way) that good things come in small packages!



FREE PRODIGY!

Wrong or Right or just lucky

The results are in and I have to say that my predictions were accurate! Or they were split and I was half wrong. It's all in how you look at it. Like if I said I was eating crow and by that you thought I was admitting I was wrong when the whole time I was really bragging because crow is delicious-er than grouse and harder to hunt for. Sorry, that was just idiotic.

When I said that Carrie and Andrea would both have baby boys I also said that such guesswork could be equated with the tossing of a coin; with chance. And you know what?
I was totally right! Well, I was right and wrong, and that is what flipping a coin is all about: 50/50. So, I was completely right.


But still I feel it necessary to amend the analogy. I think I am vindicated in stating the similarities between guessing the sex of a baby and a coin toss, but there is one notable difference that Carrie and Andrea's deliveries bring to my mind. With the traditional calling of 'heads or tails' it is usually a good luck/bad luck dichotomy. By that feature the analogy breaks down completely, because if you're calling 'girl or boy' then (right or wrong) the outcome is good luck or equally good luck! Oh, that's "Nature Boy" Rick Flair sporting a modified "White Lightning" Dwight Falcons Jersey while tossing a silver dollar. Please add that jersey to my xmas wish list!

So here's how it all shook out: I thought Carrie would have a boy and I was Wrong.
They had me eating crow for awhile there when she, Zack, and Emmy welcomed Waverly Mae, leaving the gender ratio even more unbalanced for Zack.


Then there's Andrea. She and my big brother Andy (along with Henry and Victor) totally redeemed my prediction record by delivering the baby boy that chance foresaw. Santiago Martin was born in Providence Hospital... the very same place where Kasha was born!


What do these outcome say about the coin toss that predicted the pickle will be a baby girl? I think the pattern proves that I will be right! No matter what happens, it's up to chance and I'll be super lucky!

Pickle Ketchup Weeks

Last time I was able to get online for a weekly update Kasha was in the 23rd week pregnancy wise, and in the state of Michigan geographically. Well, she was back home in Beijing by the time I was able to write about her pregnancy's 23rd week in the states. But. Anyways.

You know what? It's kind of fitting this way. The third Trimester is here and in this time the pickle will double in size lengthwise while tripling in terms of weight. That must be exhausting work! And I'm not guessing about that, either. From this point onward, the pickle will be spending 90% of her or his time sleeping like a baby.

And so why should I be breaking my back, busting my hump, struggling to try to write about somebody who's acting like such a lazy sack? Let's be honest for one second, OK? All that anybody really cares about is Kasha and her belly and my thoughts are just so much filler. If this blog were TV, you'd be getting up and going to the fridge whenever I've typed, and captivated whenever there's a pregnancy picture.

It's fine. Really, I'm OK with that!

So let's just do a gallery of the weeks gone past and I'll keep the editorializing to a minimum!


Here's Kasha in her 24th week of pregnancy. At this point the pickle is starting to fill up that womb... but like I said, it has a ton of rapid growth to come and in the next two months the space will just get tighter and tighter.


That tightness means that the skin on Kasha's belly is getting stretched tight as well. The result of that, interestingly, is a very itchy stomach!



Next we have Kasha's 25th week pictures. This was the last week we lived in our old apartment. Meaning we lived in boxes and suitcases for the 25th week. Not fun.


So, by the 25th week... potentially... the pickle is viable. This just speaks to the amazingness of science and medicine and all that jazz. Basically, even though the pickle is only about 2 pounds and nine inches, doctors would have a chance of supporting him or her through super fancy incubators. But I am writing this in the 29th week, so that kinda blows the suspense, eh?


Week 26 was when the pickle got a bedroom! We moved in to the new apartment and started picking paint colors. I'll be applying those coats while Kasha and the pickle are away in the USA, because by the 26th week all the 5 senses have developed and paint fumes be harsh, yo.

By the 26th week doctor appointment, we've been told to keep a diary of kicking.
This is mainly to record the number of kicks per day (20 is in the safe zone, less than that is cause for concern) but ask Kasha where the pickle is kicking... she's got some wild data on that as well!


Week 27 we went away for the pickle's first camping trip. We hopped in the back seat of Yang and Valentina's car and drove to Nandehai to camp on the beach. Had s'mores for the first time in ages and realized, Wow, the pickle got to have some S'mores and showed appreciation by kicking up a storm! Lucky pickle!

Now, this was ideal beach conditions! We got kinda arty with taking these photos and it is kind of appropriate for the amazing, natural light to have caught our eyes...

By the 27th week, the pickle has finished forming all that good eye stuff (namely, the retina) and will be able to process what we call 'light' into what we call 'sight.'

LIFE'S A BEACH

It's been a long time, been a long lonely lonely lonely lonely lonely time. What have you been up to, anyway? Look, It'd be real easy to say that the beautifully temperate seasonal change from arid Spring to bright sun and mid-eighties (F) had us feeling too damn irie at the seaside to bother with the 'net, yo.

Man, I just realized how cool I'd seem if that was what I went with... but that's not the reality, and I still intend to seem super cool by the time this is done being read. The truth is that my internal reporter (read: whiner) always gets the better of my internal desire to seem like the coolest person in any room.

So, I'll give you the straight butter: We were shut down!

I mean that it is well known that there is a high level of information control throughout China and it just so happens that I admire the effort. It is hard enough to control the spread of rumors and gossip in a small circle of friends or coworkers. Imagine controlling the news that reaches one and a half billion ears.

Truth bomb! Now imagine trying to maintain that control in an age when people are able to use the internet to gossip. Ham radios become small potatoes by comparison, and I become hungry by writing that.

If you're asking what all this yakkity-yak is building toward or how a person could be so utterly filled with self important delusions of grandeur as to believe that their insignificant opinions (opinions in a foreign language that are insignificant, no less!) could possibly warrant the attention of government censors, well, get a load of this, pal:

You may have heard about the 20th anniversary of that Chinese guy who stood up to a tank in Tiananmen Square. Yeah, that just happened, and you may have heard about it. Well, there are a good many people in China (even people who have lived in Beijing for the past 20 years) who never got that story. The heavy hand of state control: you just can't knock their hustle!


So yeah, "mysteriously" I guess, two or three weeks before that 20 year anniversary, several websites were shut down all over China. Well, at least in Beijing. Kasha and I did an informal survey of people we knew and all of them concurred. I mean, there was swine flu and global economic trouble continuing, but my money's on the 20th anniversary! OK, so which awful, anti-social, treasonous, dangerous, and incendiary websites were shut down?

Maybe you've heard of Youtube, Wikipedia, and Blogger. The point is that there is nothing wrong with these sites, just like there is nothing wrong with an active press. But the internet, even time-wasting sites like Youtube, allow people a platform for self-publication. A soapbox with untold millions of users. Users that are enabled by search-engines and in-box-spamming coworkers, and endless chain-lettering parishioners. And that's threatening to people who seek to maintain that tight control.

So, even if you're using a self-publishing website to upload video of a goofy, British, middle-aged, rural hick lady singing a ditty from Les Miz, or if you're using wikipedia to be the first person to write an article about DeLaSoul's 1996 release, 'Stakes is High', or EVEN if you're using Blogger to write about pregnancy... any use of any website that enables widespread publication of material outside of the strictures of state control and censorship... IS a huge threat.

Anyways, now we've got a better internet connection and a proxy server and (if you don't mind the annoyance of pop-ups which come along with the proxy service) the 'net surfing has never been better! Life is a Beach-Ball!

Week 23

The pickle is a baby doll at week 23! By this time we're measuring a full 8 inches from the top of the head to the bum and at long last weighing in at one pound. These dimensions (coupled with the now well formed features of eyelids and eyebrows) have the pickle closely resembling the kind of baby dolls that toddlers carry around.


AWWWWWW!

In the 23rd week Kasha and her belly flew to the US. She was in mourning over the loss of her Grandma K, but what an opportunity to introduce the belly bump to her entire extended family. Um, by my last count there are seven hundred and thirty-five Krupanskys strewn all over the US and abroad!


The pickle also got a chance to "meet" some new friends! It was a real pregnant belly showdown in Detroit during week 23.


Here's Kasha and her high school/ MSU pal Carrie (who's due date is fast approaching!) Carrie is responsible for introducing Kasha and I all those years ago.


And here we have Kasha and sister-in-law Andrea (who is due in June) going back to back.

Have another look at these pictures, will you? They say you can glean some info about the sex of a baby by the way the mother is carrying. Now, that sounds like a big pile of codswallop to me, but perhaps there's a nugget of non-BS in there.

Another thing to consider is that individual mother may carry very differently so what can you infer from that? Carrie and Andrea are both seasoned mommies. Carrie has a daughter, Emmy, and Andrea has two boys, Henry and Victor.

Still, we're playing a game of 50/50 here, so why not roll the dice?

Looking at these pictures I think it's gonna be like this:
Carrie- boy
Andrea- boy
Kasha- girl

But I don't have any insider info, and I don't know how to interpret the pictures of how these ladies are carrying. It's not even a hunch. I actually just flipped a Wu Jiao coin. Heads (5) it was a boy, and Tails (flower) a girl.

There's no shame in my game. Say what you will, but my contention is the old coin toss is just as accurate as any old-wives-tale! Then again, old wives have had babies, and guys like me are idiots. We'll see in the coming months, and until the final word is in, I welcome dissenting opinions.

Shall we move on?

What is notable about the pickle's development in this 23rd week is that the fetal pancreas is formed and functioning. In the earlier weeks, the pancreas was learning to fabricate insulin. Now, however, insulin is actually being deployed to break sugar down into useable bits and, indeed, to fine tune the amounts of insulin that are released. Learnin', yo! now, take a look at this pancreas. Just take a look and tell me I'm not crazy.


Whoa! Who knew the pancreas was so wienery? Sheesh. We all know how the camera catches us best (not me... I'm ambidextrous in terms of my photogenic "good side") and, seriously, if I was the pancreas I'd've been like, "hey, don't draw me from that angle... it makes me look like a dick!"

What!? Did you want me to just let that one slide? You don't know Wesley R Smith that well, I guess. I could've said that in week 23 the lanugo hair is turning black... but I didn't really get too much positive feedback the first time I brought up Lanugo.

How about this... I will leave you on a high note. In week 23 the pickle's face and body have finally acquired the cute baby appearance of an infant. Better?

Stickle Pith

Ancient Chinese Proverb Say-
"the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names"
(in bed)


Really though, you can't argue with that contention. And like so many truths, its converse is equally weighty. You can strip all meaning from observable fact by playing around with the words. Remember when President Clinton infamously deadpanned, "it depends on what your definition of 'is' is"?

I won't even get started on what Clinton's successor did with our language during his tenure!

The fact is that every word we use has capacity. Words can hold gobs of information. They have denotative capacity that changes over time and depending on what part of speech a certain word is being defined as. Then there is connotation which also changes over time, changes between cultures, and is subject to myriad devices such as sarcasm, ironic application, vocal intonation, double entendre, and even the occasional, well-employed gay lisp, Mexican affectation, or Southern Preacher Dra-a-awl.


The beginning of wisdom might be apt usage of the correct words, but that's just the beginning of it. Right? I mean, how were those ancient Chinese using 'wisdom'?

Most of the time people mistake the 'wisdom' in question. Wisdom and understanding are interchangeable here. Instead of thinking in these simple terms, using clear language to foster precise and complete understanding, people want to have uncommon wisdom. I'm not saying it's easy to speak clearly and use the exact words that are fully understood by whoever is listening whenever you talk. Man, that's a tall order!

Try telling people what happened to you on the bus today, or the narrative of the last dream you remembered. The number of clarifying statements required will soon outnumber your original message. You'll see.

By comparison, it's a lot easier to use really flowery or jargony or high-fallutin' vocabulary and feign 'wisdom' by the mere fact that nobody knows what the hell you are talking about. We all know who these people are because we're all us one of them. Maybe we don't always do it for accolades, maybe we just have a wacky hobby, a penchant for using rare acronyms, or have recently finished reading a challenging book and have something to prove to ourselves.

Whatever. If somebody is talking to you and they seem Abstract or Aloof on purpose, then maybe they are just an A-hole.

I mean to be clear.

I love the pickle. Always have liked the food. By saying that I always liked pickles, I mean that I liked salty cucumbers with dill. I especially like the Toledo, OH -by-way-of- Hungary update to this simple recipe: the Tony Paco's Pickles n Peppers (now available all over the US!).

But I like all the dill pickles! The only sweet pickles I ever cared for was the series of children's books based around personified animals and thematically linked to the Alphabet, Character Traits, and the City.

So, cucumbers and vinegar with plenty of salt and dill. That's what I like. But that's just the itty-bitty pinky toenail on the body of an immense set of food pickles! Yeah there's sweet cucumber pickles, but there are vinegar/brine pickles for every food you can imagine.

A lot of people love pickled eggs! I think pickled cauliflower is top slot. Who would disagree with saying that capers and olives belong to the pickle phylum? I don't even know what exactly a phylum denotes... so I'd be too afraid to disagree with the notion.

When I lived in India I had the pleasure of being introduced to subcontinental pickles. These are usually fruits (lime and mango are personal favorites) that are pickled in oil and turmeric instead of vinegar. Super tasty pickles, certainly, but not what usually comes to mind when we think about pickles is it?

There are also very many pickled meats (if you want to consider the feet of pigs as actual meat!) and fishes. Now, I'm not 100% about this but I think you can pickle fish (herring, notably) in milk. Like I said, I can't be sure. Alls I can usually get is a quick glance before my throat fills with barf. Pickled herring! Ughhhch!

But one man's trash is another man's treasure! I think a pickled onion makes a gin martini, but I understand that a good many people think Gibsons are garbage. And these are people who love other pickled vegetables, or love vodka with olives in it. Really has little to do with pickles as we know them, though. Turns out that the word pickle has a greater capacity than one might imagine.


Benjamin Franklin said that 'Hunger is the best pickle' or something like that. Two hundred and fifty years later Jesuit novice Bernard McAniff tried to explain to his tenth grade English class that you can say one thing and just leave it in the air with several different meanings. On the one hand, pickles are what we think they are: salty foods that make you more hungry and more thirsty. They are food we eat to, perhaps, increase our appetites. So perhaps Franklin was saying that genuine hunger is the best reason to have an appetite. But pickle also means problem and hunger also means desire/ drive/ motivation. Could Ben Franklin have been channeling Buddhist philosophy? Is it not possible that his words were another way of saying that desire is the cause of suffering?

Search me! Ben Franklin never said so one way or the other. And the soon-to-be Father McAniff never cleared the air either. All that's certain is that one word can have many meanings and some words have even greater capacity for conveying various information. Understanding that fact and using words to their fullest capacity means taking control of the destiny your speech creates.

I totally heard that in a rap song!

In summation, I dig on the pickle. Big time. Dig it. Pickles as food, that's great.

I love the idea that pickles are problems that take ingenuity to solve (whether or not said problems involve baseball rundowns).

I connect with the idea of keeping or preserving that the word pickle implies.

The pickle hidden on a decorated tree somehow came to mean good luck in my mom's house. Who on earth doesn't like luck or a well decorated tree, I ask you?

In computer terminology pickling is serializing or deflating data for ease of sharing and storage. Sure, I can get behind all that, too!

So yeah, I am full of love for the pickle, any way you slice it. But in the final analysis, from here on out, I mean the Pickle when I say I love the pickle.

The End!

stickle (v intransitive)- to raise questions about, or make difficulties, especially about trifles

pith (n)- the essential part; the substance; gist