1:00 AM, my night home alone with M., and I can’t sleep. I don’t get it. I’m basically off the caffeine. It’s not like I did anything this evening that got me hyped up so that I couldn’t sleep. Perhaps, though, this is how I get her to sleep when S.’s working. Of the last five nights, M. has slept for at least seven hours during four of those nights. The other night, she slept only four hours then had a two hour fit. If you guessed the night she didn’t sleep was the night S. was working, you just won yourself a duck. The 8 1/2 hour sleep is the shit, though. There’s nothing like getting up at 4:00 to make the preemptive bottle because you hear some noise coming from the baby’s room, and then getting to sleep 3+ hours before you actually have to use the bottle.
I praised the virtues of watching the St. Louis Cardinals play earlier this week. Allow me to break it down a little and say Albert Pujols might be the most enjoyable hitter to watch in the game right now. It’s absolutely sick how good that guy is. Fox is using some funky camera angle at Busch so I have no idea where pitches are, but he crushed a pitch that appeared to be up and away tonight to left field. In modern baseball, you send that same pitch to right. No way do you pull it. But Albert did. Sure he grew up elsewhere, but it’s pretty cool that his US roots are in Kansas City and there’s a small claim to him.
If you look up prick in the dictionary, will you find Jeff Kent’s picture there? To parrot Jim Rome’s line, this is the guy that made Barry Bonds seem like a decent guy. Kent always looks like he’s ready to whine about something, and generally does anytime someone gives him an opportunity. He didn’t even look happy after he hit a home run in game one; he was too busy bitching about something Mike Matheny said to him once he got back to the dugout.
Speaking of Kansas City, I caught a portion of A&E’s More American Eats yesterday that had a lengthy section on barbecue that was truly fascinating. I had no idea that barbecue was often used as a social event by politicians in the pre and post-revolution days. Kind of an old school Get Out The Vote effort. The bigger barbecue you threw, the higher your social status was. I need to really go all out when I finally buy a smoker, I guess. The program went into a little detail on the different styles of barbecue, but rather smartly focused on Kansas City, stating it was the capital of corporate barbecue. Here’s one for you KC residents to put into your caps: the old Penny’s barbecue, which became Arthur Bryant’s, is in many ways credited with speeding integration in Kansas City. It was so good that even affluent whites went into the heart of black KC to purchase fine smoked meats. Noted food historian Calvin Trillin painted the lovely picture of troops coming over from Fort Riley in integrated groups and “walking into the greatest restaurant in the world” and seeing whites and blacks dining in the same room. The message of integration that had been drummed into their heads in basic training was validated in the real world. See, barbecue isn’t just tasty, it’s helped bring us together as a people. So take that Memphis, Texas, and Carolina! Bonus points to A&E for making sure KC specialty burnt ends got some air time.