Ok, here comes my big confessional. I worry about a lot of shit. I don't often come out and say it; I just keep it inside until my body finds some physical way of manifesting the stress instead. I've kind of always expected to end up with an ulcer. My body's preferred way of showing stress is to attack my weak neck vertebrae. The doctors have officially diagnosed me with a herniated disk in my neck. However, the 2 times it got so bad that I had to wear a neck brace both were very stressful times in my life. The Wife and I were responsible for quite a few expenses of our wedding. One month before our ceremony, we got a bunch of bills in the mail, and I got my first attack of neck problems. Strangely enough, the second go around was 1 month before our first child arrived.
Now, I can only wish for something as simple as a pain in the neck. Instead, on December 26th, I got to have a trip to the ER for what has so far been diagnosed as heart palpitations. We were out running errands and I felt a little fluttering of my heart. The Wife noticed that something was not right and I told her what I was feeling. Over the next hour, the intensity rose and fell, but never quite went away. Finally, I was feeling a little tightness in my chest, so with a little prompting from The Wife, I called my Dr's office. After describing the feelings to a nurse, she advised me to get to the ER.
The triage nurse could feel some irregularities in my heartbeat at check-in. They took me into a room, gave me some baby aspirin, slapped a heart monitor on me, drew blood, and did an EKG. The Dr said that if I was having a heart attack, it wouldn't show up in my blood right away, so I'd need to stay and have blood drawn after 3 hours, and again after 6 hours. What fun! The Wife had taken the kids home to give them dinner, so I called her and told her to make arrangements, since I wouldn't be getting out until after 1am. I just about developed bed sores from lying on the stupid bed watching crappy TV. Of course, nothing showed up on any of their tests. I'm sure it was just my body's new way of getting the stress out.
On the 27th, I went to my regular Dr for a follow up. He gave me the paperwork to schedule a stress test. Finally, yesterday morning, I got to return to the hospital to get fitted with a 24 hour heart monitor. There were 10 little pads that had to be attached all around my chest to listen to every little blip of my heart. I had to keep a diary of anytime I felt any strangeness so that they could try to cross reference my activities with any abnormal readings. We'll see. I felt a few flutters that I noted, but the worst one was when I was on the telephone scheduling the stress test. Just thinking about the issue set me off.
This all started about a month ago when I was at my Dr for a routine visit and I was told that for the first time ever, my blood pressure measured high. I immediately started worrying about it, as I have a family history of high blood pressure. The Dr asked me to go the pharmacy a couple of times to use their blood pressure machine, to keep an eye on the levels. So, for the last month, I've been thinking about it every single day. Of course, each time I'd actually stop and check it, it'd still be high, and I'd be worrying more. The entire time I was in the ER hooked up to all the machines, I was registering a high blood pressure as well. However, to top everything all off, when I went to my Dr's office the next day for the follow up, my blood pressure reading was normal. So, I have no idea what's going on. Here's hoping I can get some answers next week as test results begin to come in.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Saturday, December 23, 2006
The Pursuit of Happyness
I started a post early this morning bitching about starting my vacation with Bronze waking up at 4 am and not going back to sleep. I’m glad I didn’t get a chance to finish it, because it ended up not being a very big deal. The Wife got up with her until a little after 5, then I got up and came downstairs with her and let The Wife go back to bed. We had a nice morning coloring and then watching a little TV. Finally, Azure woke up and joined us. He was wiggling his loose tooth and went into the kitchen to get a little bowl to carry around, just in case his tooth came out. It was a silly sight.
Breakfast time came and Azure’s tooth was so loose and wobbly that it was making it hard for him to eat. He agreed to let me try to get it out for him. I started moving it around until the whole tooth came out of the socket, turned completely upside down, and was just hanging on by one little thread. Of course, Azure wanted me to stop right then. I had to convince him that trying to eat with an upside down tooth was not a good idea. He sat back down, I got a wet washcloth, yanked it out, and dabbed at the little bit of blood. He was quite excited and ran into the bathroom to look at his mouth in the mirror.
Once The Wife got up, we started cleaning the house, and cleaning, and cleaning, and cleaning. It went on nearly all day. We finally finished around 4pm and started getting ready to go out. Yes, that’s right, we got to have another date! The sitter arrived at 5 and we went for dinner and to see The Pursuit of Happyness. It was an inspiring story. Makes me think I need to stop whining about every little thing and get out there and Just Do It. Carpe Diem. Pursue Happyness.
We got home from the movie, had a visit from the tooth fairy, and went to sleep. All in all, it was a very good day.
Breakfast time came and Azure’s tooth was so loose and wobbly that it was making it hard for him to eat. He agreed to let me try to get it out for him. I started moving it around until the whole tooth came out of the socket, turned completely upside down, and was just hanging on by one little thread. Of course, Azure wanted me to stop right then. I had to convince him that trying to eat with an upside down tooth was not a good idea. He sat back down, I got a wet washcloth, yanked it out, and dabbed at the little bit of blood. He was quite excited and ran into the bathroom to look at his mouth in the mirror.
Once The Wife got up, we started cleaning the house, and cleaning, and cleaning, and cleaning. It went on nearly all day. We finally finished around 4pm and started getting ready to go out. Yes, that’s right, we got to have another date! The sitter arrived at 5 and we went for dinner and to see The Pursuit of Happyness. It was an inspiring story. Makes me think I need to stop whining about every little thing and get out there and Just Do It. Carpe Diem. Pursue Happyness.
We got home from the movie, had a visit from the tooth fairy, and went to sleep. All in all, it was a very good day.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Conkerdoodle
Yesterday, I was having a conversation with The Wife and we were recalling funny things that the kids say. There was one odd word that Azure had made up a couple of months ago that I was trying to remember. Then today, after I read this post about yumpindumpin, I forced myself to dig into the depths of my brain and find the word. It’s conkerdoodle. What’s a conkerdoodle you might ask? Well, that’s the fun of made up words, they can mean anything you want.
For us, conkerdoodle was a funny little name Azure had for some of his stuffed animals, or his sister, or us. Of course, who was a conkerdoodle changed from moment to moment, according to his whims. The funniest thing happened one morning when I went into Azure’s room to wake him up for school. I went into the room and he was still asleep, so I leaned down by the bed, pretty close to his face, to admire him while he was sleeping. There wasn’t any movements, smiles, snickers, or anything except regular breathing, so I figured he was in a deep sleep. After about 10 seconds of watching him, he suddenly says “conkerdoodle!” and then opens his eyes and starts laughing. Needless to say, I was a bit startled. We had a good time laughing about that one.
Another odd word that’s managed to stick in our family’s vocabulary is shou-shou. For the kids, it’s always been a traumatic experience when The Wife “disappears” into the bathroom for a shower. There have been many battles between them and myself about whether they can “tell Mama one more thing”, or just leave her alone for 10 stinking minutes. So, it’s little surprise that one of the first few words that Bronze started using was shou-shou, for when her Mama was in the shower.
The other day, I was dropping Azure off at school and his best friend wasn’t there that day. He was feeling sad since she was gone on vacation and didn’t want me to leave to go to work. He started to cry just a little as I went out the door. Through the window, I quickly flashed him the sign for “I love you”, which is a staple in our household. This immediately diffused his sadness as he smiled and gave me the “I love you” sign back. I was able to turn and walk away, knowing that he would be ok without his best buddy by his side that day.
I love having little inside jokes, words, signs, etc. with my family. It’s such a powerful feeling to share that connection with them. Find that special someone in your life and give them a big conkerdoodle! You’ll be glad you did.
For us, conkerdoodle was a funny little name Azure had for some of his stuffed animals, or his sister, or us. Of course, who was a conkerdoodle changed from moment to moment, according to his whims. The funniest thing happened one morning when I went into Azure’s room to wake him up for school. I went into the room and he was still asleep, so I leaned down by the bed, pretty close to his face, to admire him while he was sleeping. There wasn’t any movements, smiles, snickers, or anything except regular breathing, so I figured he was in a deep sleep. After about 10 seconds of watching him, he suddenly says “conkerdoodle!” and then opens his eyes and starts laughing. Needless to say, I was a bit startled. We had a good time laughing about that one.
Another odd word that’s managed to stick in our family’s vocabulary is shou-shou. For the kids, it’s always been a traumatic experience when The Wife “disappears” into the bathroom for a shower. There have been many battles between them and myself about whether they can “tell Mama one more thing”, or just leave her alone for 10 stinking minutes. So, it’s little surprise that one of the first few words that Bronze started using was shou-shou, for when her Mama was in the shower.
The other day, I was dropping Azure off at school and his best friend wasn’t there that day. He was feeling sad since she was gone on vacation and didn’t want me to leave to go to work. He started to cry just a little as I went out the door. Through the window, I quickly flashed him the sign for “I love you”, which is a staple in our household. This immediately diffused his sadness as he smiled and gave me the “I love you” sign back. I was able to turn and walk away, knowing that he would be ok without his best buddy by his side that day.
I love having little inside jokes, words, signs, etc. with my family. It’s such a powerful feeling to share that connection with them. Find that special someone in your life and give them a big conkerdoodle! You’ll be glad you did.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Celebrating the Birth of the Baby Cheese
The Wife and I are heathens. Let me just clear the air on that concept right now. My mom is, and my dad (before he died) was, convinced that we’re going to burn in hell. That’s ok. I’ve accepted that. I spent most of my childhood attending a religious school and going to church each week. I was even active in my church’s statewide youth fellowship program. I thought I knew what I believed about God, etc, but also it was just a fun outlet with cool kids that I got to know from attending church camp each summer.
When I got to college, I got exposed to what other religions believed and began to question myself. I finally opened my eyes to the inconsistencies in the story. I refuse to believe that Jesus would have condemned a good, loving, caring for others type of person to eternal damnation just because that person happened to follow a different idea of a god. What I think Jesus wanted was not for people to blindly follow him, but instead try to live their lives like him, caring for the needy, loving their family, etc. A Buddhist, a Muslim, a Jew, or an Atheist are all equally capable of living their life as Jesus tried to exemplify.
The Wife has been going to a local Mothers Of Preschoolers (MOPS) group this year that she got introduced to by a friend. This group is affiliated with a local church. No big deal. The Wife enjoys the company, the kids are in a safe environment, and it gets them all out of the house a couple times each month. However, since we don’t attend a church, our kids have no concept of who Jesus was.
The activity for the kids last time at MOPS was to make an ornament for the tree. Sounds fun, right? Well, the ornament had 5 pieces: one egg holder from an egg carton, some cotton, a small piece of fabric, a tiny baby doll, and a pipe cleaner. The idea was to glue the cotton to the egg carton piece to make a bed for the baby, cover it with the fabric to make a blanket, and poke the pipe cleaner through to hang it on the tree. The kids seemed like they enjoyed making the ornaments, as they were very excited to show them to me. Bronze got to show me her ornament first. She hid it behind her back and told me she wanted to show me her “Baby Cheese”. She brought her arm out from behind her back and showed me the ornament. I told her how great her Baby Cheese looked. We headed right over to the tree and I held her up nice and high to hang Baby Cheese out of the cats reach. I just about lost it laughing to myself. That ornament quickly shot into my top 10 favorite ornaments, which include various snowmen, glass balls, and the ship from Star Trek Voyager. So yeah, maybe we are going to burn in hell.
When I got to college, I got exposed to what other religions believed and began to question myself. I finally opened my eyes to the inconsistencies in the story. I refuse to believe that Jesus would have condemned a good, loving, caring for others type of person to eternal damnation just because that person happened to follow a different idea of a god. What I think Jesus wanted was not for people to blindly follow him, but instead try to live their lives like him, caring for the needy, loving their family, etc. A Buddhist, a Muslim, a Jew, or an Atheist are all equally capable of living their life as Jesus tried to exemplify.
The Wife has been going to a local Mothers Of Preschoolers (MOPS) group this year that she got introduced to by a friend. This group is affiliated with a local church. No big deal. The Wife enjoys the company, the kids are in a safe environment, and it gets them all out of the house a couple times each month. However, since we don’t attend a church, our kids have no concept of who Jesus was.
The activity for the kids last time at MOPS was to make an ornament for the tree. Sounds fun, right? Well, the ornament had 5 pieces: one egg holder from an egg carton, some cotton, a small piece of fabric, a tiny baby doll, and a pipe cleaner. The idea was to glue the cotton to the egg carton piece to make a bed for the baby, cover it with the fabric to make a blanket, and poke the pipe cleaner through to hang it on the tree. The kids seemed like they enjoyed making the ornaments, as they were very excited to show them to me. Bronze got to show me her ornament first. She hid it behind her back and told me she wanted to show me her “Baby Cheese”. She brought her arm out from behind her back and showed me the ornament. I told her how great her Baby Cheese looked. We headed right over to the tree and I held her up nice and high to hang Baby Cheese out of the cats reach. I just about lost it laughing to myself. That ornament quickly shot into my top 10 favorite ornaments, which include various snowmen, glass balls, and the ship from Star Trek Voyager. So yeah, maybe we are going to burn in hell.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Lazy Sunday
Yesterday was a nearly perfect day. One of my favorite memories from my childhood is when there wasn’t anything that we had to do on the weekend and we could just relax. Yesterday was one of those days again. Lots of sitting around relaxing, playing games with the kids, watching tv, and best of all, napping.
The thing I miss most since the kids have gotten older and don’t take afternoon naps anymore is the chance to take a nap myself. This was always a big part of those weekends of my youth and my pre-kid adult life too. Napping is a great way to recharge and get ready to face another week of the grind. To me, not getting a nap on the weekend is on par with getting shoved down and kicked repeatedly. To say I miss my naps is just not getting to the root of it. Yes, of course I love my kids and enjoy playing games with them. Also, the dishes and the laundry and the countless other chores I do each weekend have to be done. But the endless stream of these things just wears me out.
We have a big comfy chair in our living room that Azure dubbed the “thinking chair” from his Blue’s Clues days. When the kittens joined our family, they quickly decided that the top of the chair was their personal bed.
Yesterday afternoon, when the kids were in their rooms for rest time and Becky was in the office, I sat down in the thinking chair, rested my head up against Grumpy Sparkles and quickly fell asleep. Soon, Gilbert joined us. It was a cozy place for a nap. At some point, I woke to Grumpy giving my hair a bath. A little gross, but I was too sleepy to care and fell back asleep. I got to nap for almost an hour and a half, so I was pleased.
The Wife has wanted to get a cat for years, but for one reason or another, I always found an excuse not to. However, I love the addition that the kittens have made to our family.
Every day, I find myself laughing at some silly thing they’re doing. Even the fact that they’re tearing up the bottom row of tinsel and ornaments on our tree is humorous. Hopefully, our tree doesn’t end up looking like this. Just in case, we decided to leave the glass ornaments in storage this year.
Anyway, I love and I enjoyed cuddling up with them for my nap. Hope you can enjoy a lazy Sunday once in a while too.
The thing I miss most since the kids have gotten older and don’t take afternoon naps anymore is the chance to take a nap myself. This was always a big part of those weekends of my youth and my pre-kid adult life too. Napping is a great way to recharge and get ready to face another week of the grind. To me, not getting a nap on the weekend is on par with getting shoved down and kicked repeatedly. To say I miss my naps is just not getting to the root of it. Yes, of course I love my kids and enjoy playing games with them. Also, the dishes and the laundry and the countless other chores I do each weekend have to be done. But the endless stream of these things just wears me out.
We have a big comfy chair in our living room that Azure dubbed the “thinking chair” from his Blue’s Clues days. When the kittens joined our family, they quickly decided that the top of the chair was their personal bed.
Yesterday afternoon, when the kids were in their rooms for rest time and Becky was in the office, I sat down in the thinking chair, rested my head up against Grumpy Sparkles and quickly fell asleep. Soon, Gilbert joined us. It was a cozy place for a nap. At some point, I woke to Grumpy giving my hair a bath. A little gross, but I was too sleepy to care and fell back asleep. I got to nap for almost an hour and a half, so I was pleased.
The Wife has wanted to get a cat for years, but for one reason or another, I always found an excuse not to. However, I love the addition that the kittens have made to our family.
Every day, I find myself laughing at some silly thing they’re doing. Even the fact that they’re tearing up the bottom row of tinsel and ornaments on our tree is humorous. Hopefully, our tree doesn’t end up looking like this. Just in case, we decided to leave the glass ornaments in storage this year.
Anyway, I love and I enjoyed cuddling up with them for my nap. Hope you can enjoy a lazy Sunday once in a while too.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Catching up
With each passing day this week, I found myself falling a little further behind on my great plans for this blog. I have all these ideas that float into my head throughout the workday. I’ll quickly jot the idea down and go on with work, with the intention of writing a post based on the idea in the evening. However, by the time I help get the kids into bed and have some dinner and clean up a little bit of the disaster that is our house, I have no energy left for thinking coherent thoughts and putting them down here. With that in mind, I’ve got a grab bag of topics to cover in this post.
I’ve had to use 3 sick days over the past week or so to help care for various sick people in my family. Azure and Bronze have both been fighting colds. Add that to the fact that I invited the plague into our home by having my childhood friend come visit from 2 hours away with his kids, one of which got sick and was throwing up in the car on the way here, therefore cursing The Wife and Azure to a day and a half of throwing up from the stomach flu. I cannot begin to explain the guilt that I feel, even though the only way of avoiding this would have been to turn my friend Beege away and force him to drive 2 hours back home with his sick child covered in throw up. Just not possible.
Also this week, I had the pleasure of watching The Lost Room on SciFi. What a cool show. I mostly gave it a shot because of Peter Krause. I really liked Sports Night and he played by far my favorite character on Six Feet Under. I don’t know what, if any, plans SciFi has for repeats of this mini-series, but if you’ve got 6 hours to burn, I’d definitely recommend it.
Put it all together and you’ve got a wonderful recipe for a blog without new content for almost a week.
There’s one other thing I wanted to talk about this time. I was very involved in theatre in both high school and college, and a fair number of the dates The Wife and I went on in the early days of our relationship were to various stage productions. So, when she surprised me a month ago with tickets to see Escanaba in Love at The Purple Rose Theatre, I was very excited. We went to the show last week and had a wonderful time.
Making these kind of plans is a big deal for us. For whatever reason, we were the type of parents who forgot to be a couple once the kids were born. We’ve never had a regular sitter. Maybe twice a year, we’d get some family member to watch the kids so we could have an evening out. Needless to say, after 5 years, this has been a strain on us. Just recently, we’ve finally been able to establish getting a sitter once in a while. What a relief!
We were a little concerned about how the kids would react to having someone sit for them. The girl we found came by for a short visit (interview) and to meet the kids. Things went well, so we made plans for her to watch the kids so we could do dinner and a movie. After we told the kids, they wanted to draw pictures to give her when she arrived. We thought this was kind of cute. The big day arrived and the kids were so excited they hardly gave us enough time to go over things with her before they dragged her away upstairs to play. The Wife and I went into the garage to leave and I realized the sitter’s car was in the way. I ran back in the house to ask her to move her car to the side of the driveway. As I was approaching the room where they were playing, I overheard Bronze telling the sitter, “I love you.” Mind you, Bronze had only known this girl for about 30 minutes total!
It started to sink in that the kids are craving attention from other people. Maybe, just maybe, it’s even a good thing that we’re exposing the kids to some other influences. Gasp! Regardless, the most important point of the sitter is that I get to start going out with my wife again. I was nearly to the point of leaving the kids with some homeless guy on the street, just for the chance to be a couple again. Thankfully, they can stay with someone who we trust and we still get to have our fun.
I’ve had to use 3 sick days over the past week or so to help care for various sick people in my family. Azure and Bronze have both been fighting colds. Add that to the fact that I invited the plague into our home by having my childhood friend come visit from 2 hours away with his kids, one of which got sick and was throwing up in the car on the way here, therefore cursing The Wife and Azure to a day and a half of throwing up from the stomach flu. I cannot begin to explain the guilt that I feel, even though the only way of avoiding this would have been to turn my friend Beege away and force him to drive 2 hours back home with his sick child covered in throw up. Just not possible.
Also this week, I had the pleasure of watching The Lost Room on SciFi. What a cool show. I mostly gave it a shot because of Peter Krause. I really liked Sports Night and he played by far my favorite character on Six Feet Under. I don’t know what, if any, plans SciFi has for repeats of this mini-series, but if you’ve got 6 hours to burn, I’d definitely recommend it.
Put it all together and you’ve got a wonderful recipe for a blog without new content for almost a week.
There’s one other thing I wanted to talk about this time. I was very involved in theatre in both high school and college, and a fair number of the dates The Wife and I went on in the early days of our relationship were to various stage productions. So, when she surprised me a month ago with tickets to see Escanaba in Love at The Purple Rose Theatre, I was very excited. We went to the show last week and had a wonderful time.
Making these kind of plans is a big deal for us. For whatever reason, we were the type of parents who forgot to be a couple once the kids were born. We’ve never had a regular sitter. Maybe twice a year, we’d get some family member to watch the kids so we could have an evening out. Needless to say, after 5 years, this has been a strain on us. Just recently, we’ve finally been able to establish getting a sitter once in a while. What a relief!
We were a little concerned about how the kids would react to having someone sit for them. The girl we found came by for a short visit (interview) and to meet the kids. Things went well, so we made plans for her to watch the kids so we could do dinner and a movie. After we told the kids, they wanted to draw pictures to give her when she arrived. We thought this was kind of cute. The big day arrived and the kids were so excited they hardly gave us enough time to go over things with her before they dragged her away upstairs to play. The Wife and I went into the garage to leave and I realized the sitter’s car was in the way. I ran back in the house to ask her to move her car to the side of the driveway. As I was approaching the room where they were playing, I overheard Bronze telling the sitter, “I love you.” Mind you, Bronze had only known this girl for about 30 minutes total!
It started to sink in that the kids are craving attention from other people. Maybe, just maybe, it’s even a good thing that we’re exposing the kids to some other influences. Gasp! Regardless, the most important point of the sitter is that I get to start going out with my wife again. I was nearly to the point of leaving the kids with some homeless guy on the street, just for the chance to be a couple again. Thankfully, they can stay with someone who we trust and we still get to have our fun.
Saturday, December 9, 2006
D-day (not for weak stomachs)
Once a month, some friends and I get together for a guy's weekend. This consists of my 2 best friends from high school, who live around 2 hours away, and me. This weekend however, I couldn't leave home because The Wife's out of town and Bronze had a birthday party to go to today that we didn't want her to miss. So, rather than missing out on guy's weekend, we decided to turn it into Dad day or d-day as we joked about during our planning emails. We had no idea what we were in for!
One guy couldn't make it because of work, so it was just me and my kids ages 5 & 3 1/2 and my friend Beege and his 4 kids, ages 7, 4, 2 1/2, & 1. My kids were looking forward to having someone new come over to play and around 8:30am starting asking when they'd be here. I tried to explain how difficult it was going to be for them to get here. "Think about how long it takes us to get ready to go somewhere. We just have 2 kids. They have 4 kids! Plus, they have a long drive. It's going be a long time before they make it to our house." I might as well have been taking to the cats. The kids were just too excited. Every 5 minutes, they're looking out the window, checking to see if anyone's here yet. Finally, the phone rang around 11:30am. Beege just finally got his kids all packed up and was starting the 2 hour drive. Of course! I knew it wasn't going to be easy. I fixed my kids some lunch and they had a little rest time, then I sent Bronze off to the birthday party with her grandma.
A little while later, Beege called again, this time he said he's about 10 minutes away, his 2 1/2 girl just threw up all over herself and her car seat from motion sickness, and could I please start running a bath for her. They got here, he cleaned her in the bath while I got his other kids settled in, I hooked up the hose outside, and he took apart the entire seat so he could spray it down. Then we put a load of laundry in to wash the car seat cover, her coat, and her clothes. By the time all that was finished, he got to give his baby a bottle. We actually had a few minutes of conversation during that time, but I was still running around keeping an eye on 4 kids and 2 over stimulated cats. Bronze got dropped off from the birthday party and all the kids got to play together for a while.
Soon, it was time for a snack. I got it ready, corralled the kids to the table, and as soon as we sat down, Beege's girl turned to him and said she needed to throw up again. He managed to grab a bowl just in time. They spent the next hour or so sitting on the couch with her throwing up numerous times. She managed the hit the bowl every time except once, when she completed nailed Beege's shirt, socks, a bunch of the floor and herself. So, off to the shower they both went. I had to get him a clean shirt and socks of mine and an old shirt of Bronze's. At this point, we were completely caught up in the comedy of the situation.
Meanwhile, I fixed some dinner for everyone who wasn't sick. Beege still had to put the car seat back together after it came out of the dryer. His girl managed to pass out on the couch for a little while before waking up and getting sick a few more times. Finally he got them all packed up and loaded up in their car. As we were saying goodbye, we laughed about how much we enjoyed talking to each other this time. I promised that if we ever have another d-day, I'll drive to his house next time.
One guy couldn't make it because of work, so it was just me and my kids ages 5 & 3 1/2 and my friend Beege and his 4 kids, ages 7, 4, 2 1/2, & 1. My kids were looking forward to having someone new come over to play and around 8:30am starting asking when they'd be here. I tried to explain how difficult it was going to be for them to get here. "Think about how long it takes us to get ready to go somewhere. We just have 2 kids. They have 4 kids! Plus, they have a long drive. It's going be a long time before they make it to our house." I might as well have been taking to the cats. The kids were just too excited. Every 5 minutes, they're looking out the window, checking to see if anyone's here yet. Finally, the phone rang around 11:30am. Beege just finally got his kids all packed up and was starting the 2 hour drive. Of course! I knew it wasn't going to be easy. I fixed my kids some lunch and they had a little rest time, then I sent Bronze off to the birthday party with her grandma.
A little while later, Beege called again, this time he said he's about 10 minutes away, his 2 1/2 girl just threw up all over herself and her car seat from motion sickness, and could I please start running a bath for her. They got here, he cleaned her in the bath while I got his other kids settled in, I hooked up the hose outside, and he took apart the entire seat so he could spray it down. Then we put a load of laundry in to wash the car seat cover, her coat, and her clothes. By the time all that was finished, he got to give his baby a bottle. We actually had a few minutes of conversation during that time, but I was still running around keeping an eye on 4 kids and 2 over stimulated cats. Bronze got dropped off from the birthday party and all the kids got to play together for a while.
Soon, it was time for a snack. I got it ready, corralled the kids to the table, and as soon as we sat down, Beege's girl turned to him and said she needed to throw up again. He managed to grab a bowl just in time. They spent the next hour or so sitting on the couch with her throwing up numerous times. She managed the hit the bowl every time except once, when she completed nailed Beege's shirt, socks, a bunch of the floor and herself. So, off to the shower they both went. I had to get him a clean shirt and socks of mine and an old shirt of Bronze's. At this point, we were completely caught up in the comedy of the situation.
Meanwhile, I fixed some dinner for everyone who wasn't sick. Beege still had to put the car seat back together after it came out of the dryer. His girl managed to pass out on the couch for a little while before waking up and getting sick a few more times. Finally he got them all packed up and loaded up in their car. As we were saying goodbye, we laughed about how much we enjoyed talking to each other this time. I promised that if we ever have another d-day, I'll drive to his house next time.
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
Space, the final frontier
Today I came across this article about NASA building a moon base starting in 2020. And last week, Steven Hawking had this to say about humans colonizing space. What an exciting time to be in the field of astronomy.
The Wife has a bit of a daredevil streak in her, she’d like to go parasailing, hang-gliding, parachuting, those sorts of things. That stuff scares me and I’m always telling her she’s crazy for wanting to try those things. This summer, we were on the sky ride at an amusement park. I was sitting with Bronze while The Wife rode with Azure. I was terrified of losing her the entire ride. All I could think about was that there was just this little bar in front of us, and how easily Bronze could just slip under it and she’d be gone. She kept complaining about my death grip on her.
In complete contrast what you’d expect with my fears, I would love to be able to take part in a NASA mission. I wish I had the training to be able to add something useful enough to justify my going to the moon. I’d sign up in a heartbeat for that ride.
I’ve always had an interest in space and astronomy. Unfortunately, the one class I had on astronomy, the professor was in his final semester before retirement, about 90 years old, and extremely boring. Shortly after midterms, I couldn’t take it anymore and stopped going to his class. I kept doing the weekly labs, but missed out on any other homework he was assigning. Needless to say, my grade was suffering. Going into finals, he told us that it would be a 100 point final covering 6 chapters, with a 15 point extra credit question. I calculated that with the weighting he was giving to the final, I needed 108 points to pull out a B for the class. I stayed up all night, making an outline of each of those chapters, and cramming it into my brain. By the next morning, I had the shakes and an upset stomach from the anti-sleep potion I’d concocted. I got my final, breezed through the test questions, and nearly laughed out loud when I saw this extra credit question. “Please give an outline of one of the chapters covered on this test.” I got a 96 on the test, plus 15 points of extra credit, giving me 111 total for my B. Not that I’d recommend this approach to anyone, but it worked well for me.
Thus ended my study of astronomy, forever grounding me here on earth and relegating my trips to the moon to a pipedream. Unless I hit the lotto, then I’ll be calling Richard Branson.
The Wife has a bit of a daredevil streak in her, she’d like to go parasailing, hang-gliding, parachuting, those sorts of things. That stuff scares me and I’m always telling her she’s crazy for wanting to try those things. This summer, we were on the sky ride at an amusement park. I was sitting with Bronze while The Wife rode with Azure. I was terrified of losing her the entire ride. All I could think about was that there was just this little bar in front of us, and how easily Bronze could just slip under it and she’d be gone. She kept complaining about my death grip on her.
In complete contrast what you’d expect with my fears, I would love to be able to take part in a NASA mission. I wish I had the training to be able to add something useful enough to justify my going to the moon. I’d sign up in a heartbeat for that ride.
I’ve always had an interest in space and astronomy. Unfortunately, the one class I had on astronomy, the professor was in his final semester before retirement, about 90 years old, and extremely boring. Shortly after midterms, I couldn’t take it anymore and stopped going to his class. I kept doing the weekly labs, but missed out on any other homework he was assigning. Needless to say, my grade was suffering. Going into finals, he told us that it would be a 100 point final covering 6 chapters, with a 15 point extra credit question. I calculated that with the weighting he was giving to the final, I needed 108 points to pull out a B for the class. I stayed up all night, making an outline of each of those chapters, and cramming it into my brain. By the next morning, I had the shakes and an upset stomach from the anti-sleep potion I’d concocted. I got my final, breezed through the test questions, and nearly laughed out loud when I saw this extra credit question. “Please give an outline of one of the chapters covered on this test.” I got a 96 on the test, plus 15 points of extra credit, giving me 111 total for my B. Not that I’d recommend this approach to anyone, but it worked well for me.
Thus ended my study of astronomy, forever grounding me here on earth and relegating my trips to the moon to a pipedream. Unless I hit the lotto, then I’ll be calling Richard Branson.
Monday, December 4, 2006
Hidden surveillance may be in order
Ok, I mentioned that things had been crazy around our house recently. Let me explain why. Both kids were sick last week with colds that required them taking medicine. We left the cold medicine out on the bathroom counter, as we were using it a couple of times each day. The kids were upstairs in the afternoon for their “rest time”, which consists of them trashing their rooms quietly getting a couple of toys out, fighting playing with each other, and coming downstairs every 5 minutes staying in their rooms to give The Wife a break. Anyway, last Thursday, about 2 hours after rest time was done, The Wife needed to go upstairs for something and noticed one of the bottles of medicine sitting on the bathroom counter completely empty with the childproof cap lying next to it. She called me and together we determined that there must have been around a third of the bottle left. I looked online at the information about the active ingredients in the medicine. There were 2 listed and both recommended calling poison control for an overdose. Great fun!
The Wife called them and talked to someone. Luckily they told her that for the amount that Bronze drank, she should be fine, with maybe some periods of either sleepiness or wakefulness. Bronze started getting real drowsy about 2 hours before bedtime, but we kept her awake til her normal bedtime, thinking that this would be better. Also, poison control said that we should wake her a couple of times during the night to make sure she was coherent. I warned Bronze, as we were getting the kids ready for bed, that I’d be waking her, so that she wouldn’t be too surprised. I woke her about an hour after bedtime, slowly rubbing her shoulder saying, “Daddy’s just checking you to make sure you’re ok. Go back to sleep now.” She rolled over, looked up at me, smiled, said “Ok”, and snuggled back under her covers. I went in 1 other time, as I was getting ready for bed. She was sleeping so peacefully I decided not to wake her. I climbed into my bed knowing all was well. Crisis averted.
Around 4am, I barely remember hearing Bronze standing next to the bed, talking to The Wife. The Wife told her to go back to sleep, and that was all I heard. Around 6am, I again hear Bronze talking to The Wife. The Wife, a little more sternly this time, says that it’s too early to get up and that Bronze should go back to sleep. As I was slipping back into sleep, I heard a sound and I said to The Wife, “It sounded like she was going down the stairs.” That was about all that registered in my brain until a little after 7 (which is the normal wake up time at our house) when Azure came into our room. The Wife and Azure headed downstairs, while I was still getting myself awake. Suddenly I hear Bronze talking to The Wife from down the stairs and Bronze starts wailing. I rush downstairs as the realization sinks in that my 3 and a half-year-old daughter has been awake for hours completely unsupervised. The girl who just the day before drank a third of a bottle of cold medicine. The girl who can’t use kid scissors unless there’s a grown up observing because she’s cut her own hair 3 different times, cut numerous different doll’s hair, and cut her parent’s very expensive duvet cover that they got for their wedding. My mind was racing, immediately thinking horrible things, recalling the conversation that The Wife and I’d had the day before about me needing to make sure to lock the cabinet under the kitchen sink, as I’d been lax about that recently. I was scared.
I get downstairs and everyone’s in the office. I see Bronze standing there, wearing her painting smock, paint all over the smock and her arms, a bunch of colored paper on the floor, the box of paints open on the table (which had been put away in the closet), a few finished paintings sitting on the desk drying (just like when we do this activity), paint on the table, paint on her mother’s shelf, and the piece de resistance, our tan fabric covered desk chair, completely painted with purple and green paint. Bronze was fine, the crying was cause she didn’t want to get in trouble for what she described as “I accidentally painted the chair.” I was so glad she wasn’t hurt. I looked around the room and saw that there wasn’t any paint on any of Becky’s scrapbooks, which are stored in the room, and breathed a sigh of relief at that. All I could do was chuckle to myself. The Wife took her into the bathroom and cleaned her up while I got some wipes and set about cleaning the office. The Wife scrubbed the chair with fabric cleaner but we now have a lovely purple and green chair. No big deal.
As it turns out, previous to her painting, Bronze had also went into the living room, turned on some lights, put in Riverdance, and sat and watched the entire 71 minute show. There was also a big pile of books in the middle of the living room floor that she’d gotten out. We figure she must have been up since the first time she came into our room around 4. We are so lucky. As The Wife pointed out, she could have just as easily opened the door and wandered outside to play or something. I guess next time when that little voice in my head is telling me that I’m hearing one of the kids going downstairs in the middle of the night, I’ll have to actually believe it instead of dismissing it as “probably one of the cats” as I remember telling myself as I fell back asleep. Wakefulness indeed.
The Wife called them and talked to someone. Luckily they told her that for the amount that Bronze drank, she should be fine, with maybe some periods of either sleepiness or wakefulness. Bronze started getting real drowsy about 2 hours before bedtime, but we kept her awake til her normal bedtime, thinking that this would be better. Also, poison control said that we should wake her a couple of times during the night to make sure she was coherent. I warned Bronze, as we were getting the kids ready for bed, that I’d be waking her, so that she wouldn’t be too surprised. I woke her about an hour after bedtime, slowly rubbing her shoulder saying, “Daddy’s just checking you to make sure you’re ok. Go back to sleep now.” She rolled over, looked up at me, smiled, said “Ok”, and snuggled back under her covers. I went in 1 other time, as I was getting ready for bed. She was sleeping so peacefully I decided not to wake her. I climbed into my bed knowing all was well. Crisis averted.
Around 4am, I barely remember hearing Bronze standing next to the bed, talking to The Wife. The Wife told her to go back to sleep, and that was all I heard. Around 6am, I again hear Bronze talking to The Wife. The Wife, a little more sternly this time, says that it’s too early to get up and that Bronze should go back to sleep. As I was slipping back into sleep, I heard a sound and I said to The Wife, “It sounded like she was going down the stairs.” That was about all that registered in my brain until a little after 7 (which is the normal wake up time at our house) when Azure came into our room. The Wife and Azure headed downstairs, while I was still getting myself awake. Suddenly I hear Bronze talking to The Wife from down the stairs and Bronze starts wailing. I rush downstairs as the realization sinks in that my 3 and a half-year-old daughter has been awake for hours completely unsupervised. The girl who just the day before drank a third of a bottle of cold medicine. The girl who can’t use kid scissors unless there’s a grown up observing because she’s cut her own hair 3 different times, cut numerous different doll’s hair, and cut her parent’s very expensive duvet cover that they got for their wedding. My mind was racing, immediately thinking horrible things, recalling the conversation that The Wife and I’d had the day before about me needing to make sure to lock the cabinet under the kitchen sink, as I’d been lax about that recently. I was scared.
I get downstairs and everyone’s in the office. I see Bronze standing there, wearing her painting smock, paint all over the smock and her arms, a bunch of colored paper on the floor, the box of paints open on the table (which had been put away in the closet), a few finished paintings sitting on the desk drying (just like when we do this activity), paint on the table, paint on her mother’s shelf, and the piece de resistance, our tan fabric covered desk chair, completely painted with purple and green paint. Bronze was fine, the crying was cause she didn’t want to get in trouble for what she described as “I accidentally painted the chair.” I was so glad she wasn’t hurt. I looked around the room and saw that there wasn’t any paint on any of Becky’s scrapbooks, which are stored in the room, and breathed a sigh of relief at that. All I could do was chuckle to myself. The Wife took her into the bathroom and cleaned her up while I got some wipes and set about cleaning the office. The Wife scrubbed the chair with fabric cleaner but we now have a lovely purple and green chair. No big deal.
As it turns out, previous to her painting, Bronze had also went into the living room, turned on some lights, put in Riverdance, and sat and watched the entire 71 minute show. There was also a big pile of books in the middle of the living room floor that she’d gotten out. We figure she must have been up since the first time she came into our room around 4. We are so lucky. As The Wife pointed out, she could have just as easily opened the door and wandered outside to play or something. I guess next time when that little voice in my head is telling me that I’m hearing one of the kids going downstairs in the middle of the night, I’ll have to actually believe it instead of dismissing it as “probably one of the cats” as I remember telling myself as I fell back asleep. Wakefulness indeed.
Friday, December 1, 2006
Welcome inside my world
Welcome inside my world. I’ve never considered myself much of a writer, so I’m not sure how well this undertaking is going to turn out, but I’m going to give it a shot. Recently, I’ve totally been drawn into the blogging world. I find it very comforting to know that so many others share some of the same joys, concerns, and wonders of parenting and life in general that I feel. I suppose that I would classify what I’m envisioning this becoming is a “dad blog”, as so much of life ends up revolving around my kids and their needs. However, that certainly won’t stop me from commenting on various non-kid related issues that rattle around my brain as well.
My hope is that by putting my reflections and observations out there, maybe someone else will stumble across something I’ve written and take something useful away, as I’ve been able to do from so many of the blogs I’ve been reading over the past few months. I’ve been kicking this idea around for a while, wondering if I’d be able to come up with enough content to make this worthwhile. I figure why not start this blog at the beginning of a new month? It’s been a crazy couple of days around our household and I’ve got plenty to write about. That said, let’s get on with the show!
My hope is that by putting my reflections and observations out there, maybe someone else will stumble across something I’ve written and take something useful away, as I’ve been able to do from so many of the blogs I’ve been reading over the past few months. I’ve been kicking this idea around for a while, wondering if I’d be able to come up with enough content to make this worthwhile. I figure why not start this blog at the beginning of a new month? It’s been a crazy couple of days around our household and I’ve got plenty to write about. That said, let’s get on with the show!
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