Thank you NBC

Last night we watched Heroes online because our DVR is not cooperating.  They have a few short commercials throughout it.  Here is what they consisted of:

1. Little girl neatly packing up the contents of her dollhouse.  Mother comes in and says "come on Anna it is time to go".  Camera pans back to see the room full of packed up boxes.  Deep voiced man explains how "When you go through a foreclosure it doesn't just affect you".

2. Different little girl laying on her bed with images of pollution, deforestation and toxic waste being projected across her and the room.  The girl sternly says "You promised me the world... Is this what you had in mind?"

3.  Three young adolescent boys sitting around an old station wagon, with several other old cars parked next to it.  The film quality is reminiscent of the early 80's.  They are obviously bored, sitting in different positions, one on the ground one reclined on the hood and the other leaning on the wagon.  They are completely disengaged with each other and fidgety.  After 10 seconds of only hearing the basketball that one of them is apathetically bouncing, another man with a deep voice says "The community almost built them a community center... but almost is as close as they got".  Then more quiet idleness and slow basketball dribbling.

So I just wanted to thank NBC for wiping that silly naive smile-of-life off my face and putting me in my place by reminding me that we live in a world where little girls are evicted from their dollhouses, we are destroying the planet for our children, and our teenagers are teetering on the brink of violent crime due to boredom and not building them a community center is sure to push them over the edge.

I thought I was just going to get an hour of fun entertainment, but instead I got a fresh outlook on life.

That's Going To Hurt In The Morning

Poor guy "fell"* off a neighbors trampoline and landed face first on the patio. He spent a few hours laying pathetically on the couch, took a short nap, then got up, ate chips and salsa and ran downstairs to play video games with Jacob. The bump is actually a lot worse than you can see in that picture. He is attempting, unsuccessfully, to pull his hair back for the picture.

*I say "fell", but actually he was pushed by someone whose name will go unmentioned.

Bad Day Addendum

Before reading furthure please be sure to read the post "A Really Really Really Bad Day or One Good Thing is...." first, as this is an addendum to that.  

This afternoon things were going better.  I started to get hungry and we didn't have anything to eat so I went to Quiznos and got a sandwich with soup to go.  As I pulled out of the parking lot it sounded like my back passenger tire was flat.  So I pulled over as soon as I could and parked in front of this nail salon.  Sure enough it was completely blown out.  No problem though I have a spare and everything I need to change it.  I tried calling Jenny and noticed that my cell phone was was almost out of batteries, strange I just charged it.  She didn't answer.  Oh well I figured I would have it changed in 10 minutes and be home in 15 anyway.  

I took everything I needed out of the trunk, yes it was all there.  I opened the side door so I could listen to NPR news while I took care of business.  After placing the jack I removed all of the lug nuts, then I jacked up the car.   A news story was on about ball jointed dolls.  Aparrently they are all the craze now in Japan and gaining interest in the US.  So I gave the wheel a good yank to pull it off and it didn't budge, no matter what I tried I could not get the wheel to move at all.  I wiggled it, I kicked it, I spun it, I cursed at it.  Nothing worked.  I tried calling Jenny again, still no answer.  I double checked the wheel to make sure I wasn't missing anything, no everything looked right, it should slip right off.  These women spend thousands of dollars on these silly dolls that I guess look like real people, sounds like the setup for a B horror movie to me.

Oh I forgot to mention that this entire time I am working on this, two women where sitting 10 feet away from me in front of the nail salon talking about me in Vietnamese and laughing.  I am sure it was a great time for them.

I still hadn't eaten my food, so I sat on the parking lot curb and ate my sandwich with my fingers black with grease and dirt.  With what I am sure is the last bit of juice in my phone battery I eek one more call to Jenny, still nothing.  So I called my Dad and it went something like this:

Dad: Hello.

Me: Dad, real fast I am almost out of phone batteries.  I have a flat tire and I am parked next to Hollywood Video, try to get a hold of Jenny and let her know.  I haven't been able to get a hold of her.  I am trying to change the tire but I can't get it off.  I have taken off all the lug nuts and it won't move, I think it is rusted on.  Any ideas?

Dad: Well you haven't jacked the car up yet have you?  You have to do that before it will come off.

Me: Yes Dad (In my mind that was a given, but apparently he has little faith in my automotive knowledge), I of course I jacked the car up...

We then discussed how I should walk to a nearby automotive place and see if they can help.  Which is what I did.  A nice man at the Jiffy-Lube gave me a can of "ZAP", basically WD-40, with the nozzle broken off so I had to push the spray stem up against what I wanted to spray.  At this point it has been at least an hour since I left the house to get a quick sandwich and come straight home.  On my way back to the car Jenny called, I told her what was going on.  She felt adequatly sorry for not having heard my prior calls.  I asked her to bring my hammer and a good can of WD-40.  She said she was on her way.

Back at the car, one of the nail salonists (posibbly a made up word) started asking why I wasn't able to get it changed yet and I explained about it being rusted on, but not to worry because my wife was bringing me a hammer.  She went in and brought out a big heavy hammer, perfect for what I needed.  Did you know that a really nice pair of eyes for one of those dolls could set you back several hundred dollars.

I sprayed down the lug nuts as best I could with the broken spray can and started hamering away.  It still took a surprising amount of whacking, but it eventually came out and I was putting the spare on when Jenny arrived.  I finished everything up, we returned the can of "Zap" to the friendly people at Jiffy-Lube and went home.  I stopped at QT to get a Coke on the way back.  Jenny had asked me to get a pack of stamps while I was there.  They were out, but gave me my drink for free.... maybe the day was turning around.

Some people go as far to treat the dolls like their children.  One woman interviewed explained how she had a 17 year old girl with dark hair and an 8 year old boy with blonde hair...  What a stupid news story, I don't think I really like ball jointed dolls.

A Really Really Really Bad Day or One Good Thing is....

Well the one good thing is that he had only had water and saltines since last night, but let me start from the beginning. Three weeks ago Jenny came down with this strange mystery virus. It doesn't cause a fever, or runny nose, or coughing, any of the usual things that indicate that you are sick. It just made her feel bad; body aches, tiredness, general malaise. Stay at home mom's don't really get sick days so for the most part she still had all of her regular duties in child care. I think I went in late a couple of days so she could sleep in and I took at least half a day off. After about a week of this you start to wonder if the person is faking it, that is, you wonder until you come down with the same sickness. Fortunately she started getting over it as I came down with it.

So for the next week I felt horrible with no visible signs of sickness, then on the Friday of Labor Day weekend we had a trip planned to Buena Vista Co. I was pretty hesitant about it since I was still getting over being sick and I was still very tired. But we packed and hit the road. I had a sore throat and was exhausted the whole time, but it was okay otherwise. Even after getting back on Tuesday I still was not feeling my best. Finally after a few days I came down with a full blown cold, missed another day of work some where in there, I think... it is all pretty foggy, and slowly everyone else in the family has come down sick now too. Except Ethan.

I wish Ethan was sick because right now he is screaming "DADDY, I AM TALKING TO YOU" while I ignore him. He has been crying for me to put on a show for him for the last 10 minutes and I told him not right now, but that I would do it for him later. That isn't good enough though, he wants it "NOW!". Before that he was throwing a fit because he wanted his yo-yo back, before that he was throwing a fit because he was frustrated with the yo-yo because he couldn't get it to do what he wanted it to.

Jacob came home sick from school yesterday with a fever and since he absolutely refuses to take any medicine he suffers through his high temperatures with no relief. At about 4:00 this morning Jenny got up and went to Dillon's and Walgreen's because her ears were hurting so bad that she wanted to get some ear drops. After she got back and laid back down, around 5:00 Samuel starting crying. I put a shirt on him, covered him up better and gave him some of the ear drops (Finally Ethan went away... wait he is back... Jacob threw up in the toilet, he is okay though), so after laying Samuel back down in the middle of the night I checked on Jacob and he was burning up. I took his temperature and it said 106!! I freaked out a little bit, brain damage begins at 105 (or so I have heard). I woke Jenny back up and ran to get some ice water. She took his temp again several times and it only came to 103, whew, that was a close call. So Jenny laid back down and I finally convinced Jacob to take some Ibuprofen. That is the best he has ever done with taking medicine and he slept until after 9 this morning because of it.

Samuel has this 6th sense of knowing when I lay down. After finishing with Jacob at around 6:00 I laid down and as soon as I shut off my lamp, WHAAAAAA. Samuel was crying for something again. This time I held him for a little bit and gave him some Ibuprofen too. He slept fine after that.

After we got up this morning things are mostly a blur. I remember laying on the couch and Ethan and Samuel fighting over who could lay where on top of me. I remember Ethan bulling Samuel several times and whining because he was hungry (yes I did get up and feed him). Then he started with the aforementioned yo-yo at about 8:30 and hasn't stopped whining or crying or throwing a full blown fit ever since.

Jenny's ear problem was only getting worse. She already had a scheduled appointment this morning that she went to and when she came back she was obviously in extreme pain. She took some Ibuprofen, some more sudafed to help clear up her sinuses and then she even took some percocet left over from when I had my wisdom teeth removed (I am sitting on the deck right now and Mason, our dog, just chased a squirrel from out of a tree onto our house. He is looking down at me and for a moment I actually feared that he was going to pounce on me. I could see it in his beady little eyes. Whew, he is gone now. Off to hatch another evil plan). Still the pain was not letting up for Jenny. So she called her Dr. and scheduled an appointment for about an hour later at 10:50. She wanted to leave right then, and since she was in no shape to drive herself I loaded everyone up in the car to take her. The kids were mostly still in just their underwear, I had to carry Jacob from the couch out to the car. We pulled out of the driveway and drove up to the stop sign at the end of our street and Jacob said, "I feel like I am going to puke". I put the car in reverse and started to back up to our driveway again and BLAAAAAH.... BLAAAAAH... too late. The one good thing is that he had only had water and saltines since last night.

So Jenny took my car while I cleaned out the van. Ethan then threw a fit because we weren't going with Mommy. Jenny called about 45 minutes later and sounded horrible, I could barely understand anything she said, just that the doctor had given her some prescriptions that she was waiting to get filled at Walgreen's. When Jenny got home later, Ethan had thankfully calmed down and she was feeling a little better. She said that she got in to see the doctor early after they saw her putting finger dents in the armrest of her chair in the waiting room and that when the doctor looked in her ear, she gasped in surprise to see how swollen the inside was and that her ear drum was bleeding a little bit. There was a pinhole in it that was draining fluid and it might get bigger which would actually be a good thing because then it would drain faster. She gave Jenny a steroid, antibiotics and some oxycodone.

Things seem to have calmed down for the time being. The kids are quietly watching TV, Samuel is playing nicely, Jenny is resting in bed and now I have to figure out how to feed all of us . I really don't feel up to cooking anything and fast food sounds terrible... maybe I will just lay down while I have the chance.

I am sick of being sick!

Team Rip Your Heart Out and Shove It Down Your Throat

When we first started the season and they were assigning us to our different teams and coaches, I gave the lady Jacobs name and she said ""Ok, he is on Team Caring". "What?", I said. "Are you serious? Team Caring is the name of our team? That has to be a joke! Why not just call us Team Lame, or Team Rainbow Lambs and Flowers? You name your ball team after some kind of ferocious or noble animal like, The Lions or The Stallions, not Team Caring!!" Ok, I didn't really say that to her, but I did think it.

We never spoke of that name again. I don't even think the boys ever knew that was the name of their team. How could I reveal such shame to them. They enjoyed the season though, and as you can see they "won" medals. I don't know what they did to win the medals, seeing as everyone else received one also, but I think it has something to do with paying the $55 to play T-Ball. Now I only wonder if later when they actually accomplish something and win a medal it will mean just a little bit less because of this.

The Good News: I didn't cut my arm off

Welp, I survived another tree trimming season. Every spring I have to get out my chainsaw and take care of the jungle in our backyard and every year I am afraid of cutting off one of my own limbs. Last year while I was working in the backyard a neighbor two houses down was in his backyard using his chainsaw. I just happened to look over and see him cut off a branch and his later fall out from underneath him. I jumped up on one of the kids toys and yelled over to see if he was ok. I didn't hear an answer right away so I ran over to climb the fence when I saw his wife come out of the house and another guy who must have been with him frantically yell up to her to go get some towels. Now, any time someone is using a chain saw and there is an accident where someone yells "Go get a bunch of towels", that is not a good sign. Soon the paramedics arrived and he was taken to the emergency room. I never did find out what happened but the incident did nothing but confirm my fear for my chainsaw.

This year I just took care of some minor trimming myself and we hired a professional service to "lift the skirt", or whatever dirty metaphor it is called, on our 2 big maple trees. My goal is to be able to grow grass in our backyard. Right now all we have is dirt. you know the growing conditions are bad when even the weeds can't take root. If you remember, last year I planted grass and it came up nice until we got about 8 inches of rain in a month. It flooded the yard for too long and the grass died. Apparently swamp like conditions are not ideal for grass. This year I decided I would give it another try. I have a 2 fold approach. First, I realized that a raised garden bed along the back fence was working as a dam, so I removed the railroad ties and leveled the ground. Second, we trimmed the trees quit a bit yesterday morning and hopefully that will give the ground the sunlight that it needs.

It is amazing how hard it can be to recover just a small piece of land from years of neglect. It has taken us 3 Spring/Summers to finally have the backyard in what I would call respectable shape. Mostly it just needed A LOT of pruning and trimming. Even though I had already done a lot over the last 2 years, the entire ground was covered with branches when the trimmers were done. It took 2 of them at least 30 minutes just to load what they cut and the brush pile I already had onto their flatbed.

I hope to plant the grass in the next few days. I will keep you updated on the progress or lack thereof, but the weather doesn't look like it is going to make it easy for me.

Chucky Jesus?

This morning Jacob has been asking me to give him words to spell on paper. So we went through things like "run", "jump", "sun", etc... Then he rolled out some play dough and wanted to spell words with it. So I asked him if he could spell "Jesus". He asked if it had a "Z" in it and I explained to him how the letter "s" makes the "z" sound sometimes. As we were sounding out the word "Jesus" several times, Ethan said "Chucky Jesus". I looked at him and he said "I want to go to Chucky Jesus". At this point I realized that in 4 year old language "cheeses" and "Jesus" are pronounced virtually the same. So I asked him if he realized that it is "cheeses" not "Jesus", like what we eat on Pizza. He looked up at me and smiled with a sheepish smile that told me that all this time he thought his favorite place in the world to eat was "Chucky Jesus".

Lost and Found

Mason (our dog) slipped out of the house on Friday afternoon while my mom, sister and brother were here. He used to run away at every chance but about 2 years ago he spent a night in the dog pound and then stopped running away... until the last few weeks. He ran away twice 3 weeks ago but he had on his tag which had our address and phone number on it so people found him and brought him back. When he ran away on Friday Rachel was pretty upset but Jenny and I said someone will just bring him back like they always do. We didn't bother to go looking for him because that has never worked in the past. Later that night my stomach sank when I put the boys to bed and found his collar sitting on their dresser! No one would be bringing him back that night.

Rachel and I went looking for him for about a half hour with no luck. Then I came back and made the above missing poster and Jenny and I put about a dozen of them up along the nearest major road. All that was left was to sit around and wait.

The next day I saw him come trotting out of one of the bedrooms, where he had presumably just fallen asleep and not heard us call for him... but alas I awoke to find it only a dream.

The dog pound would open at 1:00 and we could call them then but thankfully right about 1:00 I got a phone call from someone that had found him and saw one of our posters at the same time. He was still out roaming the streets almost 24 hours later. They picked him up and brought him to our house within a minute of calling us. It was a big relief for the whole family.

IM Gaffe

Jenny said I had to post this within two days or she was going to. (Are there any other couples out there that argue over who is going to get to post something on their blog?)

So my co-worker/cubicle neighbor/friend at work told me this morning that someone had offered him a job interview down in Houston. He loves his job but kind of feels like he needs to get out of this town. So, later that morning, I heard him talking on the phone and actually setting up the hotel and car rental for this job interview - yes, while at his current job. I teased him over IM (Instant Messenger for the less computer savvy) about how tacky and inappropriate it was. That afternoon, he came over to my cubicle with his eyes wide open whispering about how he was trying to ask me over IM if he should tell our boss, or if I thought she would just fire him... I think you see where this story is going now... Haha. Of course he had accidentally typed it into her IM window!! Now he didn't know what to do. Quickly, we figured out that he should say, like he was finishing the sentence, "...about how I bawled out a customer and about that big wart on her face." Thus making it look like it was a joke done on purpose. Unfortunately, it took too long for him to come over and talk to me, so in the meantime she said, "I am assuming that wasn't meant for me." Oh man, even now that makes me laugh. I think he did what he could to cover it up, but I am pretty sure she saw right through it.

Another quick story about this same character. In a noble effort to save money on eating out, he decided to turn his cubicle into a kitchen. He now has a fairly large-sized mini-fridge in his cube, along with a toaster with one of those little egg cookers on it, some kind of newfangled meat pocket toasting device that looks like a cross between a toaster and a crock-pot, an actual crock-pot and some kind of thing that looks like an oven-toaster but is actually a microwave I guess. Today for lunch, he had Hamburger Helper cooked in his crock-pot. And yes, each of these devices is against company policy.

Stan Revealed

By the way here is a picture of Stan for those of you who were wondering.

The Ascent of Stan

Independence Day

We spent Independence Day and the rest of the week in GC. I would like to say 'thank you' to whoever at the city or county that decided to outlaw firecrackers in the 3i parking lot. I was just telling Jenny before hand how that place used to be like a war zone. Then when we were pulling into the lot past some policemen, I overheard one of them use the exact same wording about how before firecrackers were banned from the 3i parking lot it was like a war zone.

One year in Hike School a family friend had bought 10,000 of those long glow stick necklaces to sell on the 4th. He told Travis and I that we could split the profits with him of whatever we sold. So we spent the evening dodging firecrackers from what would ordinary be sane people driven mad with the lust of loud bangs and bright lights. We went home that night shell shocked with an extra $100 bucks in the pockets of our ruined shorts and ruined shirts full of burn holes.

Here are some pictures I took of the fireworks...

My love-hate relationship with Subway

Subway is always a great fast food alternative.  It is fresh and healthy and in general makes me feel good after eating it rather than the sloppy (but amazing) beef brisket sandwich at Hog Wild, Mmmmm...

However Subway has one fatal flaw!  They can't seem to get a handle on the amount of sauce to put on their sandwiches.  Usually I get the chicken teriyaki sandwich on either the honey oat bread or the parmesan bread with provolone cheese, toasted, with cucumbers, green peppers, lettuce, banana peppers, salt & pepper and of course the teriyaki sauce.  But they always drench the sandwich in the sauce and it doesn't matter which Subway I go to (there are now 3 very close to my house) or who makes it, they ALL do it.  It must be a mandate handed down from the big guys at corporate to program the saucy bath into their brains as part of their training or something.  I pretty much always go through the drive through so by the time I get home to eat the bread is soggy.  I hate soggy bread!  Not to mention all you can taste then is the sauce.  Why bother with the rest of the food if you a aren't going to be able to taste it?

So, I always ask them to go easy on the sauce.  They still seem to go wild with it and drench my sandwich.  So then I started really emphasizing that I barely wanted any sauce on it.  Still they usually put way too much.  I was left thinking "if this is 'easy on the sauce' what do they normally do, dunk the sandwich in a tub of it?"

Finally I figured out the perfect solution.  I decided to ask for the sauce on the side.  That way I could put on the exact amount that I wanted and it wouldn't be soaking into the bread on the way home.  Brilliant!

Now Monday I came home from work and Jenny was exhausted, apparently growing a baby wares you out, and the kids and I are starving.  So I throw the kids in the car and run by McD's for them and go across the street to the brand new Subway, with my scheme in mind that will fix all of my problems.

First I had to wait a few minutes before they would even take my order.  Obviously this guy was new because he kept telling me "one moment" as I ordered so I would pause for him to catch up.  I asked for the sauce on the side and he said "No problem".  Then I pulled up and waited, paid, waited more.  The manager came to the window and said it would probably be about four minutes and asked if I would like a cookie while I wait.  No problem I would love a chocolate chip cookie to share with the boys.  Then Jacob told me that Ethan was a asleep.  This is an inconvenience because it is too close to bed time and now he will have trouble falling asleep after he eats.  That's not good. 

After waiting about four minutes like she said, the new kid brought me out my sandwich in a bag, but there was no side of teriyaki sauce.  I pointed that out to him and he hesitated for a second and said "oh right... ummm yeah let me get that."  That's not good.  While he got the sauce I opened my sandwich and sure enough... it had been baptized!  He brought me the sauce and I said, very nice but firm "you already put the sauce on the sandwich didn't you?"  He looked at me sheepishly, "yeah".  I handed back the sandwich to him and told him that I was going to need a new sandwich, again very nicely.  (I don't usually do that sort of thing but as you have read above this has been an ongoing battle with them for months and I am determined to break them of this over-saucing habit.)

At this time there is a girl in a car behind me who has started honking her horn in order to get someone to take her order because she has been waiting so long.  They aren't short handed, I could see at least 3 employees and the manager through the window and there didn't appear to be any customers inside either.  After waiting another 5 minutes I am began to wonder what was going on so I peeked through the window.  It looked like the manager was making my sandwich I could see her putting on the veggies, then she reached for the teriyaki sauce... NO... WAIT... STOP!!!  

A different girl brought me the sandwich and the manager was standing behind her.  She handed the bag to me and I said "You put the sauce on the sandwich didn't you?"  Her eyes got wide and her mouth opened but with nothing to say.  The manager behind her heard what I said and she closed her eyes and hung her shoulders in disbelief of her own carelessness.

"Would you like any chips or cookies?", she asked as I put the car into drive.  "No I don't want to wait any longer, that's fine" I said in frustration as I pulled away.

How was the sandwich?  Really not that bad.  Will I go back?  Yes, and someday Subway I will break you of this terrible sandwich drenching habit of yours!  Every sandwich should have the right to live free from the threat of being soaked and hopefully someday soon no bread will have to go soggy again.  You may have won this battle... but I will win this war!!