Month: April 2004

A New Day!

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This Day

Action packed!

Started the day off with cleaning the bathroom. Scrubbed the diaper pail (nasty) and the toilet (nastier).

Preped to go to Noah’s soccer game and backed our station wagon into the grandparents car that they’ve temporarily loaned us. I was so completely pissed off with myself that I yelled at everyone, cursed, drove angrily (albeit, it was fast my family was never in danger), yelled unjustly at Tommy, then stormed away from everyone for a 15 minute walk–what I really needed was a 2 hour hike in the mountains. I used to be so together. This was inexcusable! Accidents of this type should never occur and my loss of temper was intolerable also. The grandparents car was absolutely undamaged; not even a scratch. The station wagon has a small dent that I think I can pop out and a hairline crack in the tail light. I’m sure that if I had it professionally repaired it would be between $400-800 but we won’t do that. I still can’t figure out what caused the dent. It lines up with the plastic taillight of the other car.

Noah’s soccer game was one of the best he’s ever played. And he got to be goalie! His goal tending was good, his defense on the ball and his offensive aggressive for a change! I started the long uphill battle of trying to mend things with Cathy.

After soccer we buzzed off to the mall to get the cookie for the birthday girl that would be at the Girl Scout bowling. A quick run to the house for non-mud stained jeans for Cathy.

We spent the next 3 hours at the bowling alley with deafening music blaring. There were a total of 14 of us: Tommy, Noah, Amy, Cathy and myself, 4 sorority girls, and 6 girl scouts (one being Sarah). It was chaos and Amy disappeared on us once (that was scary). The noise and lights were enough to make a stable person go mad so I fully expected a melt down from Tommy. Instead he was together and well behaved. Everyone had a blast. Amy did a bunch of solitary dancing then some dancing with me as she tried to sleep on my shoulder. At one point they played a Who cover of “Behind Blue Eyes” but its obviously not The Who so I ask the 16 year old dj “I know this isn’t The Who. Who sings this?” He replies “Limp Bizkit” Then careful adds “It’s called ‘Behind Blue Eyes'” For a moment there I wanted to smack him on the head and say “Sonny, let me tell you sumtin about dis here song!” I’m certain that he heard the only word he heard out of the first part of my question “I know this isn’t The Who” was “who”.

After bowling the kids and I scrubbed the bathroom floor. Didn’t get around to caulking the sink but that’s not far off.

Next the kids and I split wood, lots of it! We filled the trailer with it and still have much piled, much more unsplit and all the wood in our yard. It will be a long day tomorrow. Each of the kids worked very hard. As I was trying to free the trailer from the hitch on the car (the weight of the wood fighting me), Sarah brough Amy outside and I didn’t need the distraction and thought it too dangerous and after I asked nicely that she take Amy back inside and she refused I got indignant and yelled but I really wasn’t in a position to have a nice little discussion about the situation. I still should not have handled it so poorly. So, after the healing from the morning I was back to having an irritated Cathy.

We took the kids to the grandparents for dinner and watched old Jimmy Stewart movies then returned home to get a fire going, blog and passout.

Despite the loss of temper and the new dent in the car it was a pretty good day.

The place I rented the wood splitter from was giving away free cokes and free dry roasted peanuts. So, I had a craving for more peanuts and invited the family on a date to the Texas Roadhouse where we could have steaks and, yes, more dry roasted peanuts. Except for the terribly long wait and the stoned waiters and waitresses, the evening was much fun.

Amy went into the bathroom, climbed into the tub, pointed at the knobs and said “fix it!” I couldn’t say no to the sweetness and so she got a bath.

Later I was on the phone to Air Quality control (burn permit), Environmental Safety (mosquitoe control for the neighborhood), the party company regarding our may event and the middle school principal and gym coach regarding Tommy’s hostile environment.

I got a haircut, dropped by Office Depot to pickup Cathy’s copies, dropped by the bowling alley to confirm the girlscout event tomorrow, went to the Gateway store to see if the closing had any good specials on–no such luck, went to Home Depot, then the bank, then the rental company.

Finally I returned home to start splitting an impossible amount of wood for a single person to handle.

And the vultures begin to suck the account.

Amy just poured Gatorade all over my pants and cried when I quickly moved her to the floor to clean the mess. I suppose I over reacted and could have handled her more gently.

Now she cries because her baby doll doesn’t fit in a box she’s aquired. Oh. All better. She made it work.

She is playing happily with her doll. Some of her cutest words for me are when she says “Uh oOH!”

Amy just heard a helicopter fly over our house and tracked the sound with her head and said “ar plane?” And now stood in my lap and turned the lightswitch off then on observing the light turn dark then bright, laughed in satisfaction and said “I did it!”

Amy is having a hard time deciding if she woke up on the good size or the bad size of the bed. Very impatient this morning. Still adorable!

A New Day!

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This Morning

I slept very well. Had vivid dreams. The memorable ones were of Cathy and I working together on something and letting Noah use a sailboat to get all over either Tennessee or perhaps the whole United States. We used a GPS to track where he was and I was happy he was “getting to do things I couldn’t.”

For some inexplicable reason, I woke at 2:55 as I do many mornings. I almost got up to do creative writing on the blogs. I felt like I had a couple of hours to spare and that I have a couple of hours of writing I want to do. Instead I returned to sleep and woke again at 5 then hung out inbetween waking and sleeping in a semiconscious state and spent an hour telling myself to get out of bed.

Noah, the morning person, got himself up at 6am and as I was getting dressed came to check on me and make sure I was awake. He is such a great child!

Worked on Cathy’s printer. Gave Tommy his medicine at 6:20 and am now enjoying the writing.

Today’s goals: Get a haircut at 11:30 then rent a log splitter. Time permitting replace the starter in the Jeep. The afternoon is to be spent cutting wood. Saturday day is girlscout bowling and something else then Saturday afternoon and evening splitting wood. And all day Sunday is to be spent splitting wood. Then the rest of the week Tommy can help me stack it. A 2nd strong adult would really be helpful this weekend.

Catchup time. I could spend the next several hours just typing my thoughts.

Cathy and I did some banking (that felt good!) It’s not nearly enough and there is no more in sight at the moment but it felt good to make a deposit and know that some bills will be paid.

Next I pick Tommy up from school and he stank. He obviously didn’t wear deoderant today and had the smell teenager in full effect. So on the way to Star I stopped to get Tommy a drink and deoderant which was a good choice. He rode at Star but was rude, argumentative, and at one point dangerous. They could have kicked him out on the spot but was given a firm warning. I want him to get his act together. He could go very far with Star and I think he enjoys it. On the ride to Star Tommy informed me of more abuse in gym class; granted, he may have asked for it but I put a call into the school to see what will happen.

We went from Star to IHOP and had breakfast for dinner. I enjoy taking my family out to eat. And they were relatively well behaved.

Returned home and played on the computer but now must pass out.

Looks like Google is hiring: Google Copernicus Center is hiring I’d be a little nervous about relocating the kids there though.

Currently weighing heavy on mind: desire to continue working on the house wiring (network and electrical) and desire to buy/built/network several more computers (kids, house ai, ms biz server 2003, new workstation for wife, new workstation for me, cfmx server, t-1 connected web server connected to another ms sql server securely behind a 2nd ethernet card and its own lan, a lan for the kids controlled by a custom linux firewall, a box for a firewall between house and t-1 [see webserver above])

Sarah immediately calls it out. “Uh, is this someone’s April Fools joke? I thought my cereal looked wierd.”

Sarah says “I know another” and that she woke up in the middle of the night wondering where she was and went back to her room.

A New Day!

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This Morning

Woke at 5am and almost got out of bed! Woke again at 6:05. Spent the next 10 minutes making 2 gallons of chocolate milk. Woke the children. Now I’m going to check my shares at Blogshares

Noah watched the chocolate milk pour into his cereal and waited a few moments then put it away and said “Cool, the milk’s turning brown.” I decided to hold my tongue.

Last Night

Tried unsuccessfully to move the children around in their beds. Noah would be in Tommy’s bed, Tommy would be in Sarah’s bed and Sarah would be in Noah’s bed. We’d hoped it would cause much confusion in the morning for April Fools. Noah was the only one that didn’t wake while we were trying to move them so we ended up with Sarah in Noah’s bed saying “Why am I here?” (she later moved herself back to her own bed), Noah made it to Tommy’s bed and Tommy just groggily said “hi dad.”

Stayed up with the wife watching Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital and tried to stay up for Futurama