My Superpower

Well, it appears that I'm not the only blogger out there in a slump; most of the guys I've linked to aren't feeling any more pumped than I am. Although I am happy to see that the Big Doofus and Daniel Macintyre recently produced something. And my beloved Sister-In-Law has been faithfully doing the NaBloPoMo thing lately--one post a day. Short posts, but faithfully produced.

But! Just because I haven't been blogging much, doesn't mean that nothing has been happening in the Power household. Indeed, with three kids six and under, and a pregnant wife, there's always stuff happening in the Power household. Which also explains the lack of blogging. ;-)


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Well, one of the things that's been happening is that I've been practicing the piano quite a lot in the last month. Remember my post from a month ago, in which I outlined my strategy for learning more sophisticated pieces of music--like Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata (First movement only, please) and Debussy's Clair de Lune? Well, unless my commenter Uvulapie (he of the oddly scanned face) has been doing an awful lot of practicing lately, it's a good thing for him that I chose not to take him up on his offer to race. I now have the entire Moonlight Sonata (First Movement Only!) memorized, and I can do it increasingly error-free (although there are two measures right at the bottom of the first page that throw me every time).

And I have thus discovered my super-power.

You know, every one of us has a super-power--some skill that we have, and only we have, that makes everyone else around us sit up and say, "huh..." when they see us in action. I know one young lady who used to go to our church, for example, whose superpower is that she can smell out a liar every time. She's a very nice, sweet young lady, with a bit of spunk in her personality, so she can be quite disarming--but do not try to pull a fast one over on her; she knows. You cannot bluff this woman.

(Incidentally, she has an older brother whose super-power is--I kid you not--that he can talk to chickens. Seriously--he tells them what to do, and they just do it. And it's not like they're trained chickens, either. He just has an inborn talent as the Chicken Whisperer. And he's not particularly content with his super-power lot in life, either: "Of all the powers I could have wound up with, why did it have to be this one?")

So what's my newly-discovered superpower?

I can put my wife to sleep.

Seriously. Here's how I do it:

• I go to work in the morning, leaving her with three very rambunctious kids.
• I stay at work all day.
• I come home at my normal time, about 6:30. She's usually pretty frazzled by this time.
• We eat dinner. She's eating for two, remember, so that by 7:15 or so all her blood has gone from her brain down to her digestive system.
• I then start to practice Moonlight Sonata (First Movement Only!), over and over and over and over...
• That pretty much does it every time. She's out cold on the sofa by 8:00, no matter what the kids are still doing.

Of course, while I'm somewhat gratified to discover my superpower, I find that With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility. Namely, whenever I (unwisely) use my Superpower in this manner, it then falls to me to put all of the kids to bed--which is quite a chore, considering their Rambunctiousness (see first bullet point above).

(Incidentally, to read about the same phenomenon from my wife's perspective, she blogged about it here....)

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So, if I have any readers left after the last week or so, do any of you have any superpowers you'd like to cop to? I'd love to hear about them, if you don't mind blowing your secret identities.


P.S. Claire de Lune is much harder than the Moonlight Sonata (First Movement Only!). I'm making progress--I'm about a sixth of the way through it--but it will take me much longer than a month to get it down....