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Hello there, everyone. Just like Dr. Who, but with slightly less melodrama, this website has to regenerate every few years. A decade ago, it was nothing but half-naked pictures of me. Now, those barely make up two percent of its content.

In its previous incarnation, we went with a black-orange-and-yellow palette, mostly to reflect the colors of the rubber duckie on the cover of the Alternadad hardback. Well, though I'm still definitely a dad, and will still write about that sometimes in this space, it should come as a great relief to many, particularly me, that the Alternadad era is officially over.

In its place, we've gone with something lighter, friendlier, and, in anticipation of STRETCH's arrival this August, more yoga-ish. What, you may ask, is that image in the top left-hand corner? Why, it's my face popping out of a lotus flower! According to Buddhist philosophy, the opened lotus represents the resurrection of an enlightened being who emerges, undefiled, from the chaos and illusion of the world. I doubt it's meant to be used, as I'm using it here, semi-ironically.

The lotus also has sacred meaning in yoga lore. The head chakra is often depicted or described as a thousand-petal lotus that opens toward the infinite. That lotus drips a sweet nectar, which you're supposed to be able to taste once you reach the highest level of yogic awareness. I'm not there yet, but I hope that when I get there (sometime in June) it tastes better than agave syrup. That stuff's just no substitute for cane sugar, in my opinion.

So hopefully I'll be posting here more frequently, and you all will return to this space as well to be my companions on the next exciting incarnation of my literary voyage throughout time and space.

Meanwhile, read this piece I wrote for Salon about my cousin in the Olympics. I think it's pretty good.

Thank you very much to Jennifer Robbins and Jason Swihart for their hard work.

Namaste,
NP

Sort of sleeping at 7 AM. From the kitchen, I heard:

"ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!"

Lunacy can erupt in our house at any moment.

Elijah came into the bedroom, stuck his steaming face in mine, and yelled,

"WHY DID YOU EAT MY SPECIAL APPLE?"

"Your what?"

"MY SPECIAL APPLE THAT I PICKED OUT AT THE STORE AND MOMMY BOUGHT FOR ME! AND YOU ATE IT! WHY? WHY? WHY?"

"I didn't know it was a special apple. I just ate an apple."

"YOU DID TOO KNOW!"

"No, Elijah, I was out of town. Mommy didn't tell me you had a special apple."

He stormed out of the room. I got out of bed, moaning. Elijah stood at the kitchen table, continuing to scream about his apple.

"Of all the apples you could eat," Regina said.

"How the hell was I supposed to know?"

"HOW THE HELL WERE YOU SUPPOSED TO EAT MY SPECIAL APPLE?" Elijah said.

"Don't say hell," I replied.

"THAT'S IT! I'M NOT EATING BREAKFAST, LUNCH, OR DINNER TODAY!"

"That's your problem."

"NO! IT'S YOUR PROBLEM, MISTER!"

"You know, Elijah, that apple was kind of mushy."

Elijah snuffled.

"It was?"

"Yeah. It had a big brown spot."

"Oh," he said. "Then can I have a different apple?"

"As soon as you apologize."

"I'm sorry I yelled at you."

"Don't let it happen again."

"OK."

And he didn't yell at me again until 2:30, when I picked him up at school.

"Daddy," he said. "When I get home, can I go online to www.killthebackyardigans.com?"

"I don't think there is such a site."

"WHY NOT? HOW DO YOU KNOW? YOU'RE LYING!"

I've got to teach this kid how to meditate.

4 AM and the world was snoring, or at least our two Boston Terriers were. A voice pierced the calm of night.

"MAMA! I HAD A BAD DREAM!"

Though she normally gets out of bed at the speed of sludge, Regina was up and running before the boy finished his sentence, as though she'd been launched by tightly-coiled springs. My own response in these situations tends to be slower and fuzzier. I gradually gained some waking consciousness, and staggered toward Elijah's room.

Regina was busy talking him down.

"What happened?" I said.

"I dreamed that Shaq ate us!" Elijah said.

He wasn't referring to the itinerant sheriff-pimp NBA All-Timer. Our dog Shaq is old, blind, deaf, hobbled, and flatulent. We have to add hot water to his food so he can gum it down. Eating us isn't on his agenda.

"Hardly likely," I said.

"And then he ate himself!"

"Even less likely."

"I'm scared!"

"It'll be OK."

"Can I sleep with you?"

"You know the answer to that."

Many people let their children into bed with them after a bad dream. We aren't those people. Once you open the sheets to visitors, the odds of having a 12-year-old co-sleeper are reasonably high. Horror stories of the family bed abound, and we want our damn privacy at bedtime. We help our kid through the rough dreams, but then he stays in his own room. The night belongs to us.

Regina plugged in a string of accent lights that hang around the boy's dresser, and we went back to bed, unaware that the night's terrors had just begun.

Last night, Elijah and I were enjoying the Suns' rare beatdown of the Lakers. After all, what seven-year-old doesn't want to see the bad guys lose? At some point in the fourth quarter, during a fruitless Lakers timeout, the inevitable commercial for Carl's Jr. appeared. In it, a hot young thing who appeared to have studied at the Megan Fox school of crazy-charm writhed around on a bed while eating a hideous-looking salad that appeared to contain some combination of fruit, chicken, and nuts. Sometimes, she said, she just gets so hungry. The commercial ended with our heroine dipping her smooth, tanned form into a soaking tub, gazing coyly over her shoulder, leaving the core customer base of Carl's Jr. with a vaguely dissatisfied feeling in its collective loin.

This seemed like a teachable moment, as President Obama would say. I'd use the opportunity to give my son a simple lesson in media criticism.

"Now, Elijah, what do you think that commercial is trying to tell us?"

"I don't know."

"Do you think it's trying to say that if you eat at Carl's Jr., a sexy lady is going to come over to your house and lay on your bed?"

"I don't know."

"Well, do you think that would happen?"

"No. The commercial is trying to tell you that if you eat at Carl's Jr., you're going to be clean."

This was an interesting angle.

"Why?" I said.

"Because the lady takes a bath at the end."

"Oh."

"That's lying, daddy, because if you eat at Carl's Jr., you're probably going to be dirty."

Sex doesn't sell to seven-year-olds, thank Jeebus. But they end up getting the point anyway.

This space has been such an egregious Internet dead zone, for so long, that I almost feel ridiculous posting here. When I started with this particular iteration of this web site, now nearing its 10-year anniversary of continual operations, it was with such great hopes for fun and community and good times for all. Then I went and started Offsprung, and then I sold my soul to Parents.com for nickels on the dollar, and when I woke up after that 30-month fever dream, this place looked old and tired and everyone had left. Plus, Facebook and Twitter, barely a gleam in the net's eye when I started, had taken over, and my energies went there.

But now a rebirth is coming. I'll debut a new design sometime early in 2010, and hopefully will start writing every day, or at least several times a week, and the amusements will start again. I hope, like the swallows to San Juan Capistrano, or some post-burrito reflux, my readers will return.

Meanwhile, I'm guest-blogging over on Details.com for a few weeks. Here's a link to my first post.

And here's my latest yoga column for The Faster Times. Please to enjoy, and see you back here soon.

Namaste,
NP