What the Heck is Going on?

So yesterday my wife calls me at the office and she wants to baby shop. Heat index is around 111F, I'm a tad bit grumpy from working on my proposal and summer research project, my eyes are dry from staring at a computer screen all day, and I am cursing each and every person ever associated with the Federal Reserve Board... ever. That seemed like a good time to take a break.

I am not a good shopper. My family knows this. Especially when it comes to anything other than books, music, or food. My wife loves shopping, and I try to be as good as possible. I will honestly admit that I'm not jumping at the chance to shop, but the baby needs things, and it really makes my wife happy. So I man-up and get ready to sort through an assortment of pink sheets, looking for a label that says 100% cotton. That is background for where this story is going.

We agreed on a baby mattress and some sheets, as well as looked at prices for rugs, window curtain materials, and other baby stuff. Then came the issue of the mobile. My wife is brilliant, and she wants to make the mobile herself. I really think this is a fantastic idea, and so I'm going along with the fabric selections, string selection etc. And then she pulls out what look like two spray painted ply wood tortilla holders for the base to hang the cloth owls from.

I do not know what came over me. The wood pieces looked horrible. They were ghastly. All I could imagine was my child looking up at two black UFOs of death with happy little owls hanging down from them; perhaps abducted, drugged, probed, and then unceremoniously dropped in Butte, Montana, to face the incessant questioning of conspiracy nuts. Not my child. Ooooooh no.

Then daddy went a little crazy.

I found myself (very nicely and politely- don't think I was rude or angry with my wife) saying things that I know will make everyone around roll their eyes. Those things usually began with, "My child will not..." with a particularly self-righteous tone.

So... I made my wife put the tortilla holder of death back on the shelf, assuring her that I could find better wood at Home Depot or Wal-Mart and that I would put together the hanging base for the mobile, and that my child would not fall asleep under cheap grim reaper mulch. No she would sleep under quality material, and that little booger would know that daddy loves her. Let me stop and say, for the record, that we were at the end of our shopping/scouting trip. My wife was fully prepared to go home and rest, something I had been looking forward to all day. ... and then I dragged her across town to the Home Depot and the Hobby Lobby.

At the Home Depot I asked the very patient and nice young man in the lumber section if I could see the wood scraps. After a couple of seconds rooting through their scrap bin I announced that none of it would do, and we moved on (are you seeing a pattern of general daddy-douchery going on here?). I then dragged my wife to Hobby Lobby, where I accosted her with half the wood-carving section as examples of superior mobile material. We settled on an elliptical piece with the bark still around the trim. I can drill holes in them, and hang them from hooks secured into the ceiling.

So, that's the end of it right?

No. Then I see a book (which is never good). A book on pyrography... wood-burning. "Wait!" I announce to my exhausted wife, "I have a soldering iron! We can write her name on the base so she can see it with the owls hanging down!!!

I

CAN

DO

THIS!!!"

Well... about an hour and a half into me hunched over the kitchen counter with my old soldering iron (previously only used to fix gliltchy wires in my electric bass), practicing a couple of different ways to trace "Eva" as written on practice wood pieces by my calligraphist wife, I suddenly look up as if waking up from a black-out.

"Wait... what just happened?"

In my defense, its going to be an AWESOME mobile.

Update:
The wife and I working on some rough drafts.