How to Replicate Nursing a Thirteen Month-Old Baby

Note: Part II of Project Nutra-Log has been briefly delayed due to lack of free time and our Head Researcher's dismally poor math skills (midway through calculating various nutritional information, we were briefly convinced that yams were a freakish super-tuber endowed with deity-like powers [not to mention an affinity for mini-marshmallows]; turns out we'd multiplied rather than divided its stats. Nice try, yam!).

1. Why replicate? J.Q. would be abundantly happy to crawl over to your house and deliver the real deal! What's that, you say? "Alas, my breasts are not lactating, merely firm, perky and able to be contained by a bra which doesn't resemble a restraining device for a 400-lb. mental patient?" Or perhaps, "No thanks, I'm really trying to cut back on the number of strange men coming over my house and mouthing my boobs."

2. Okay then, be that way.

3. Purchase a mango, a papaya and one of those cute lil' rainforest monkeys which are always appearing on the cover of National Geographic under a headline like "CHIMPS IN CRISIS" (see also: "LORIKEETS IN LIMBO", "SPRINGBOKS IN STAGNATION").

4. Attempt to strap your newly-acquired monkey into a car seat before heading home. The biting, clawing, feces-flinging, etc. will add to the authenticity of the experience.

5. After such a big adventure, your monkey could probably use a snack. He also needs to bond with his new upright-walking overlord. Why not combine the two activities? Remove your shirt and lie down on the floor. Place a papaya on one breast, a mango on the other and let the fun begin!

6. Grow slightly annoyed as your torso is repeatedly pummeled by twenty-some pounds of frantic simian. First mango, then papaya. Mango, papaya. Mango, papaya. PICK A FREAKING FRUIT AND STICK WITH IT, WHY DON'T YOU?



7. Feel your annoyance wane as the monkey curls up on your chest and gazes into your eyes adoringly. This would be such a sweet moment... if only he weren't simultaneously kicking you in the groin and methodically poking papaya seeds up your nose with his razor-sharp little claws.



8. Attempt to trim claws and/or apply socks to monkey without disrupting monkey's blissful snuffling and flailing.



9. Ooops... that wasn't a good idea, now was it?



10. Cover uninjured eye with hand. Daydream about windsurfing in Hawaii with Josh Holloway while monkey spends next forty-five minutes happily grunting and licking subatomic particles of fruit off of your chest.

Thumbscrews Research Labs Presents... Project Nutra-Log, Part I

Special Pre-Feature Bonus - Thumbscrews Research Labs' Dubious Child-Rearing Tip of the Week: Beef jerky is a nice diversion for a teething baby. The infant in question needs to be obedient enough to spit out any accidentally-dislodged fragments, however. I've managed to convince J.Q. that jerky is essentially a savory variant on chewing gum; he'll tear enthusiastically at a slab like a small, pink, clawless jaguar, then dutifully eject his tongue whenever a shred wiggles its way loose from the main beef-wad (as Alpha-Female, I have the honor of removing and eating it). It's only a matter of time before he begins using his Favorite Object in the World, the remote control, to view NASCAR rallies and "Bass-Tastic: Donnie 'n Boomer's Ten-Hour Fly-Fishing Extravaganza".

Note: Slim Jims and other semi-pliable jerky variants are inappropriate for infants; they're too likely to be ingested (and wouldn't THAT be awkward to explain to the paramedics?). You want the toughest, hardest jerky you can find; that packet of "D.B. McBeefypants' Teriyaki-Style Cow Fragments" which has been sitting in your local 7-11 for about as long as the issue of "Swank" featuring Gennifer Flowers would be a good choice.

On to the main event!

Lunch: it's the distant relative's funeral of meals. It's inconvenient, costly, annoying, yet ultimately unavoidable. The midday meal may even be more tragic: while most of us are only called upon to whip up feigned tears and marshmallow-intensive sympathy desserts every few years, lunch must be eaten on a daily basis. Those of us at the Lab have evaluated many lunch products throughout the years; as you will see, all were found to be lacking:

TV Dinner

Pros: Cheap (especially reduced-for-quick sale flavors such as Sweet 'n Sour Smelts or Organic Hearty Ruta-Bulgur Bake).

Cons: Not exactly a flavor adventure (or even a flavor trip-to-the-patio-furniture-outlet); potential for catastrophe inherent in preparation.

Homemade Sandwich

Pros: cheap; healthier than many alternatives; made with love, which is not presently available in any individual squeezy-packet form.

Cons: that turkey on cracked-flax which looked so appealing at 8:00 AM will, come noon, fill you with more than just wholesome goodness; namely, an overwhelming desire to run down the street to Hoagie Hovel and consume an entire mortadella sword-swallower style.

Gourmet-Type Sandwich

Pros: flavored mayonnaise a non-threatening way for suburbanites to engage in a little gastronomic adventure; when informed by coworker that you have some spinach stuck to your teeth, you can huff, "It is ACTUALLY a fragment of fresh baby arugula, commoner!"

Cons: While unquestionably tasty, havarti not worth $3.75 per square inch; flavored mayonnaise suspected of being a "gateway" condiment (first you're licking chipotle-thyme spread off of rustic ciabatta... next thing you know, you're slurping the brain directly out of some poor chimpanzee's skull and washing it down with a hallucinogenic beverage fermented from bat droppings [try new GuanoBrau Lite: great taste, less gnat exoskeleton!]).

There are, of course, other options... stromboli the size and density of life preservers, lunch-cart General Tso's, which has the added benefit of being both a foodstuff and an exciting game ("Was That a Pepper or a Roach Carcass?"). However, no matter how sumptuously greasy the egg roll or provolone-packed the sub, lunch is still a Meal of Obligation. Moms pack lunch, businesspeople "do" lunch, teenaged fast-food employees count the minutes until lunch (also known as "Blunt O'Clock") but very few people look forward to actually EATING lunch.

This, my friends, is a PROBLEM, and one which we at the Lab don't take kindly to. To paraphrase the poet, we've got ninety-nine problems but a PB&J ain't one.

Is there a solution? Does it involve tossing inappropriate objects in the Cuisinart? Will we use the phrase "full of bio... nutra... flavones and shit"? You'll just have to wait for Part II to find out!

Advice You Didn't Ask For - #1

Coffee...

1. Starbucks coffee is burnt coffee. You might as well suck on a charcoal briquette (which is probably the only thing in the world capable of getting the taste of Starbucks coffee out of your mouth).

2. Let the water cool off for about thirty seconds after it comes to a boil before pouring it over the grounds.

3. Pour in just enough water to just cover the grounds, let it drip through, THEN pour the rest.

4. Special marginally-related pet peeve: people who ask diner waitresses whether the coffee's "fresh" or not (att'n mom: I kid because I love. Also, I will buy you an ass-kicking Mother's Day present to make up for the kidding). It's DINER COFFEE, not a freaking Perigord truffle (which, come to think of it, is probably improved by sitting around, not to mention a soupcon of dirt and pig saliva). It's $0.79! You're in a diner! Odds are it's fresh; even if it's been sitting in the pot long enough to mutate into a sentient life form, crawl into your cup and request an offering of burnt Sweet 'n Low packets in a Charlton Heston-esque voice, your server is going to lie and tell you, "Oh, yeah, just put on a new pot!"

Babies Who Drive You Crazy By Refusing To Nurse...

1. Re: Gypsies. They prefer to be called Romani. Their supposed willingness to purchase infants is a myth. I know, I was disappointed too.

2. You will KNOW when the baby is latched on. It's a firm, tight seal, like getting your nipple stuck in a little bitty FoodSaver. No one - doctors, nurses, lactation consultants - EVER told me this. As a result, I was spending literally hours each day with a hungry, increasingly-irritated infant ineffectively mouthing my boob.

3. If your baby still refuses to latch, EVER, despite a solid week of trying... give it a rest. Keep pumping, get someone else to feed the kiddo pumped milk while you eat Pop-Tarts and weep with frustration, but don't drive yourself and your baby crazy with a nursing battle royale at every single feeding. Try once a day, once a week... hell, once every two weeks. Some babies just need a little time before they're willing/able to latch; forcing the issue frustrates everyone involved. I realize that no two situations are identical and this goes contrary to a lot of lactation consultants' advice, but giving up the drill-instructor-in-"Full Metal Jacket"-style breastfeeding encouragement worked for my son, who finally latched at five weeks and is now capable of crawling across the room, yanking up my shirt and jamming a boob in his mouth like an overstuffed sandwich (Rack on Rye? Jahooby 'n Jarlsberg?).

4. Formula feeding isn't the end of the world, nor does it make you any less of a mother. Initiating breastfeeding is an enormous pain in the ass (and tits), and it takes place during a time in your life when you're uniquely unsuited to deal with even another molecule of stress or anxiety. Sometimes, whether a baby nurses or not just comes down to serendipity. Think of it this way: formula-feeding is one of those things about which you'll eventually stop feeling guilty (unlike, say, shooting a man in Vegas just to watch him die). How about starting NOW? Give nursing a month or two... as long as your psyche and body can withstand. After that, kiss and cuddle your baby, hug him and blow kisses on his fat little tummy, huff big lungfuls of baby-scent from his tiny, fuzzy head. Do NOT feel guilty.

White Button Mushrooms...

1. Scrub 'n slice. Slices can be somewhat haphazard; anything from "mushroom which cut itself shaving" to "particle of mushroom small enough to be used in homoeopathy" is just fine.

2. Stick a non-Teflon skillet on the stove and heat it up until it's medium-hot...ish. Flick some water/diet soda in there; if it sizzles, your pan is hot enough. At this point, you may wish to sing Buster Poindexter's classic tune "Hot Hot Hot".

3. Toss in a wad of butter and a couple of squirts of olive oil. Mix 'em up with a spatula. The oil prevents the butter from burning, the butter prevents the mushrooms from tasting like crap. It's a beautiful symbiosis, like those little fish who eat aquatic mites off of other, larger fish. Wait a minute: that's disgusting. These mushrooms will taste nothing like oceanic mites, I assure you.

4. Toss in all of your sliced mushrooms All of them! Unless they're spilling out onto the burner and igniting and scaring the female children (and impressing the male ones). Stir to coat with melted fat medley.

5. Cook and stir and cook and stir and cook and stir. Stir every two minutes or so. Cook for a loooooong time. If you're drumming your nails on the countertop and muttering, "Fuckin' mushrooms, I'm just gonna go to Wendy's and get a Mushroom-Wenselydale Melt, damn it to hell"... you're still not done cooking.

6. When - and ONLY when - 80% of the mushrooms have nice, golden-brown markings (sounds like a nature film, no? "The Eastern White Button-hawk is characterized by its distinctive golden-brown markings. It is also delicious with onions."), pour in 1/4 cup of white wine (vermouth is nice. Cooking wine is the urine of Satan). Stir like a crack-addled Keebler Elf until all of the crusty goodness adhering to the pan has been dislodged. Salt 'n pepper to taste.

Att'n Readers: feel free to comment with your OWN helpful unsolicited advice. Well, I guess I'm kind of soliciting it NOW, so... um... yeah. Got a top-secret trick for dealing with tea, babies who scream like Steven Tyler being sucked into a turbine engine or cooking shitakes (or any non-beverage, baby or fungus subject)? Cough it up!

Mother of Invention : #2

Just call me the anti-Edison, because I've once again been inventing:

The Rotatovirus: A genetically-modified variant of the rotavirus (Amateur Geneticist Jul sez: yeah, just slap an extra adenine and thymine on that sucker with a glue stick or somethin'!) which causes the sufferer's bodily waste to be excreted in cheery little curliques. This would add some much-needed levity to the usual crying/puking/shitting/receiving call from daycare ordering you to pick up your diseased vermin IMMEDIATELY/major 'tude from daycare director when informed that vermin will not be retrieved for an hour, despite the fact that vermin's mommy has a fifty-minute train ride home and will not exactly be making a pre-Suburbiaville pit stop for hookers and blow, despite the fact that they might help ease the pain of being chastised by an organization to whom we're funneling enough cash on a monthly basis to pay a team of rogue scientists to covertly stab each cast member of the perversely appealing "Nanny 911" in their broad, squishy asses and create a specially-engineered uber-nurturer FROM THE ADIPOSE TISSUE SAMPLES OBTAINED THEREFROM... wheeze!

The BRAG Diet: A recent Thumbscrews Research Labs innovation, this update on the classic diarrhea-management BRAT diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, toast) replaces the latter item (poked, slobbered on, screamed at, ground into crevices of high chair but ultimately not consumed by junior lab assistant J.Q. Thumbscrew) with graham crackers. While not as wholesomely neutral as toast, they're much more eagerly accepted, plus produce a pleasant yet disturbing side effect (WARNING: if any of you are considering becoming parents in the future, STOP READING NOW. Or keep reading, then decide, "You know, maybe in lieu of having kids, I'll join that commune in South Dakota devoted to celebrating the ethnobotanical spirit of the acorn squash"). After twenty-four hours on the BRAG regimen, J.Q. began producing diapers which smelled oddly... um, sweet... and... uh... meaty. Kind of - nay, EXACTLY- like a glazed ham. Each time J.Q.'s face flushed and his little brow furrowed, I could almost imagine him determinedly poking another clove into the damned thing.

Sub-Par House Painting: Mr. Thumbscrews and I have spent the past few weekends repainting our house. Unlike our ill-fated bathroom remodel (STILL not entirely complete, although we are once again whizzing indoors - and if that weren't fancy enough, behind a DOOR instead of a plastic tarp!), house-painting has been relatively pleasant. When the weather is nice, we haul J.Q.'s playpen outside and let him join in the fun (tossing toys on the lawn, eating stray leaves, shrieking like the demonic love child of Whitney Houston and an bandsaw while mommy is perched atop a 24-foot extension ladder). While slopping paint on the garage last weekend, we came up with a brilliant business idea: Good Enough Painters.

We reasoned that most people don't WANT a meticulously applied paint job which will look fabulous for years to come. They just want their house to look slightly less crappy for a few weeks so they can unload it on some poor idealistic newlyweds and move to their own 4,000 sq.-foot slice of Upwardly Mobile Meadows. Need a cheap, shoddy paint job? Good Enough Painters will not only serve your needs, we'll spill lacquer thinner on them, too! For a VERY reasonable fee (say, $250 cheaper than your local band of whiny college kids, plus unlimited free diet soda), we'll half-assedly apply a single coat of paint on your home... and your shrubs... and anything else within slopping range. If you're willing to sign a waiver promising not to sue us (or inquire too closely about mysterious lumpy areas and/or missing pet turtles), we're sure you'll agree: there's good, and then there's Good Enough!

Special Bonus Section: Why I Love Mr. Thumbscrews

1. We managed to paint our house together without killing each other (or getting in a heated trim-color dispute and painting "[SPOUSE'S NAME] SUX DIKK!!!" on the side of their car).

2. While painting, we had many interesting and humorous conversations.

3. One of those conversations consisted entirely of speculating what an "Ask Highlander" advice column would be like.

4. Neither one of us had ever seen a "Highlander" movie, and were aware only that they featured beheadings and time travel.

5. Some of our sample "Ask Highlander" questions:

Dear Highlander-

My neighbor and I each have young sons. While her son is a nice enough boy, he has a bad habit of "borrowing" my son's toys without permission! How can I resolve this in a neighborly way?

- Confused in Columbus

Dear Confused-

Cut off their head.

- Highlander

Dear Highlander-

My parents would like me to major in pre-law, but I really feel like my passion is pottery. How can I convince them to let me choose my own path in life?

- To Pot or Not?

Dear Pot-

I agree that it's important to have a passion. For instance, my passion is cutting off heads. However, it's also important to remember that everyone needs to start somewhere. For instance, I began by cutting off the heads of pottery majors.

- Highlander

Dear Highlander-

I am sore afeared of that phantasmagorical Headless Horseman!

- Ichabod Crane

Dear Ich-

Cut off the horse's head.

- Highlander

Dear Highlander-

Is there a Mrs. Highlander?

- Wondering

Dear Wondering -

Well, there USED to be...

- Highlander