One-Armed Man

I am the one-armed man. When I come home from my job, between midnight and 1 a.m., I take the infant from my wife, who is by then exhausted and ready to sleep. I hold the baby girl till it's time for me to get some rest, around 6 or 7 a.m. She still doesn't feel good on her own. If she's deep in slumber, you can put her down in a cradle for an hour or two. Usually, she's not. But she fits in the crook of one arm nicely if I have a place to rest my elbow.

I learn I can do a lot of things that way. I can play certain computer games using just my mouse. I can read online, but not books. I can't type, but I can handwrite notes.

Usually I eat dinner around 6 a.m. Yeah, I know. Someday I'll post my average day's eating schedule just to appll you all. It begins at 4 p.m. with a double espresso.

The other morning I got hungry and all we had left in the fridge was pork and sauerkraut from New Year's Day (a Pa. Dutch custom, I believe). So I got a plate of it out and stuck it in the microwave then sat down, baby in arm, to eat it.

I could shovel up sauerkraut nicely enough, and I ate a few bites and she ended up wearing only a few stray strands. But when I looked at that hunk of pork, I realized I couldn't cut it with one hand. No problem; man the problem-solver: I speared it with the fork, raised it up, and tore out a hunk with my teeth.

And then realized, "How am I going to get this thing off my fork?"