The first, a story that ran in the San Francisco Chronicle (my de facto hometown paper), is a friend’s positive spin on the bad news from a story in New York magazine about how people with kids tend to be more miserable than those without. Instead of piling on and complaining about how miserable she is, the author provides ten tips for becoming a happier parent. A few of the tips are inane, but most of them are chock full of good advice. Check ‘em out here.

The second piece is far more enteraining; it’s a Parenting.com blog post about a YouTube video supposedly created by the Old Spice guy (you know, the one who’s riding backwards….on a horse) for his 9-year-old daughter. No, the blogger doesn’t have proof Mr. Old Spice did the shoot for his daughter, but read her reasoning and you’ll think so too.

I bore the brunt of a particularly long weekend this afternoon. I was out reporting a story for one of my clients, the San Francisco Chronicle. I was driving on a windy road through the Anderson and Knights valleys from my home in Sonoma County to the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in Napa County. And, basically, I fell asleep at the wheel of my truck.

Thankfully, I was alone in the vehicle. Even more thankfully, I dozed off on a straightaway, and managed to wake up before my truck ended up giving me a closer look at some old oak tree.

The experience freaked me out. I pulled off the road. I dumped cold water on my head. I even did jumping jacks. I tried everything in the book to snap myself out of the sleep-deprived daze I was in. In the end, the only thing that worked was a ten-minute power nap.

Biologically speaking, this sort of shutdown isn’t exactly a surprise. My average day involves watching L from when she gets up (6:30 a.m.) until about 2 p.m., working from 2-6 p.m., running, dinner, then working again from 10 p.m. to 1 or 2 a.m. There’s not a lot of time in there for rest.

Luckily, by body doesn’t give in to exhaustion when the baby is around. I’m sure this is because she’s moving too consistently for my body to realize just how tired it is.

(I bet it also has to do with the fact that my neuroses are working overdrive when I’m charged with caring for her; those God-given suckers are more potent than any adrenaline or energy drink.)

Still, today’s bout of narcolepsy begs the question: Is it possible to be a stay-at-home parent and a full-time (or mostly full-time) freelance writer without being a zombie at least some of the time? My hunch is that the answer is a resounding no. Now I just need to be more careful—and come up with better ways to deal.

In our family, the equation is simple: Powergirl and I like to dine out, and we generally don’t let the baby stop us from heading out for a night (or a lunch) at our favorite eateries in and around California’s Wine Country.

This weekend, for instance, we dragged the kid to a lunch at the Norman Rose Tavern in downtown Napa. Thursday, we’ll bring her with us to dinner at Sonoma County’s famous Farmhouse Restaurant (this is for a story; there is no way on Earth we could afford to go to the Farmhouse on a random Thursday night).

Whenever we bring L, we are hyper-sensitive to the baby disrupting those around us, we order her something (even if it’s just a side) and we tip excessively. Still, according to San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic Michael Bauer, local restaurateurs hate us.

In a recent article, Bauer laid out the financial considerations behind how children affect restaurants’ bottom lines.

The column was brought about by an email from T.J. Jacobberger, managing partner of the Tavern at Lark Creek in nearby Marin County. In the email, Jacobberger runs the numbers on why it doesn’t pay for restaurants to welcome kids. Bauer shares the note verbatim, even including some rudimentary math that the restaurant partner conveyed.

Naturally, the email pissed off a lot of people—at last check, the online version of the column had registered 690 comments (trust me, this is a ton for the Chronicle). Still, as a business owner myself, it has gotten me thinking: Is it disrepectful to bring the kid when we head out to eat?

As quoted in a recent TIME magazine article, the Real Diaper Association, an advocacy group founded in 2004, estimates that 27.4 billion disposable diapers are used each year in the U.S. According to the EPA, that translates into more than 3.4 million tons of waste dumped into landfills.

Previously in these (virtual) pages, I’ve lamented the viability of dealing with diapers and being “green.” The way I see it, short of potty training your kid on day one, the situation is the ultimate conundrum. Use disposables and you’re stocking landfills with stuff that just doesn’t go away. Use reusables/washables and you’re wasting a ton of water to clean them all the time.

Perhaps this is why Earth Baby has me so intrigued. The service—which was profiled in a recent San Francisco Chronicle story—apparently picks up and composts your diapers. The price includes a $28 service fee, plus fees for diapers and wipes (which can vary every month).

The reporter alleges all of this can be had for $85 per child per month.

According to the story, Earth Baby “messengers” take the used diapers to a commercial composting facility, where they are mixed with other green waste. Microbes and fungus within the compost naturally bring the temperature to more than 140 degrees over 10 to 14 weeks.

The end product is used on crops, golf courses or in landscaping—basically wherever topsoil is needed.

In theory, at least provided Earth Baby diapers can handle poops and pees like the rest of them, the Earth Baby concept sounds great. In practice, though, (unless you’re Barry Zito), $1,000 per year is an *outrageous* amount of money to spend on a diaper service.

Why aren’t there affordable options for us parents to raise our kids in a sustainable fashion?

Apparently, there is a growing number of parents who potty train their babies from birth and see it as a way to save thousands of dollars, reduce landfill waste (single use disposable diapers are responsible for one-third of the non-biodegradable waste on Earth), avoid diaper rash and to strengthen the bond with their children.

The story quotes this kook named Willow Lune saying that babies are born with awareness and control of their bodily functions and the ability to communicate when they want to eliminate. In the piece, Lune waxes poetic about babies offering up cues (grunts, wiggles, cries) to signal their parents to hold their bare bottoms over a toilet, a sink, a grassy field.

The essay also cites Procter & Gamble, a diaper manufacturer who recently reported that between 95 and 99 percent of American parents use diapers, and juxtaposes these numbers with statistics from elsewhere on the planet—not surprisingly, many cultures worldwide never use diapers.

I read the post with twisted fascination. On the one hand, I’ve estimated that L tears through an average of 50 diapers each week, and feel terrible that once we get rid of them, the things just sit in our local landfill. On the other hand, though, I can’t imagine it’s very sanitary to hold a baby over a tiny Tupperware every time it has to pee or poop, nor do I think it’s feasible to catch everything every time the kid has to go.

For environmentally minded people, the diaper argument is a real stumper. As parents, you want what’s best and cleanest for your kid. But as lovers of Earth, you want what’s good for the environment, too.

Powergirl and I frequently discuss alternatives to the Huggies we buy at Target every other week. Our most viable candidate: cloth diapers, just like our parents used to use. If we went cloth, we estimate we’d end up doing two or three times the number of washes we do right now. With water supplies dwindling here in Sonoma County, this option isn’t much friendlier for the environment.

It also wouldn’t reduce our carbon footprint to hire a cloth diaper service, since the most affordable service would drive up from Marin County, roughly 45 miles away.

In short, we’re pretty much damned with any diaper decision except going diaper-free.

Herein lays the last conundrum. Sure, Lune advocates life without Huggies, but she also hasn’t met my kid, who can fill a diaper as prodigiously as Mark Teixeira can hit a baseball. No matter what these whack-jobs try to tell me, no matter how aggressively they guilt me into feeling like a bad environmentalist, there’s no way in hell I’m going to get a Tupperware and play Tetris with my newborn’s turds.

Sorry, Earth, but you’re just going to have to deal.

That said, I admit it: I miss playing poker.

For years before L was born, the game was a constant in my life. I was a fixture at a number of different home games. I’d make regular trips to casinos and card rooms all over the Bay Area. Heck, I turned the pastime into steady income, writing about it as the weekly Gaming columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Since L’s arrival, however, I haven’t touched felt once. No card rooms. No casinos. No home games. Not even a session online.

It’s not that I’ve become a financial tightwad, or that I’m going cold-turkey; I simply don’t have the bandwidth. When I’m not actively caring for L, I’m tackling stuff around the house. When I’m not doing that, I’m squeezing in work. And when I’m not working, I’m sleeping.

These are all important things. But sometimes I just want to take two or three hours and do nothing but play cards (OK maybe I’d like to drink some scotch as well).

I know other new dads who have experienced similar versions of this “Pokerlust.” One friend who lives down the coast loves to surf but hasn’t gotten on his board since his son was born. Another friend, whose son is almost a year old, lives for baseball (like I do) but hasn’t seen a live game since his wife’s third trimester.

Over time, I’m sure we new fathers will achieve balance and figure out ways to work our favorite forms of “me time” back into the equation. These kind of temporary escapes are important. They’re fun. And they go a long way toward clearing the head.

I, for one, with Powergirl’s blessing, mind you, have tentative plans for a session at a local card room this coming Tuesday night.

I’m already excited—almost giddy—about the notion of tossing some chips into the muck. I expect to be a bit rusty, but will wait patiently for the skills to return. Who’s rushing? To paraphrase an old adage, the experience won’t be about winning or losing, but simply playing the game.