Month: May 2004

I just watched a prairie dogground hog mosey through our back yard! It was a big as a fat house cat with a tail like a dogs.

I forgot to mention that I unfairly bit into Cathy last night. I try to teach Tommy despite his handicap and I feel I know where his limits are and I frequently push the limits on purpose. I snapped at Cathy telling her “No matter how I treat Tommy I always get lectured. If I am mean to him or if I am nice to him I get lectured.” She disagrees with many of my methods and feels that I am always angry with Tommy and that I hate him. I need to try harder to not hear her words as a “lecture” but rather as a request on how to handle Tommy differently for everyone’s happiness.

Last night Cathy mentioned that she feels she has to “choose between Tommy and [I]” and that’s not fair of me to have put her in that situation.

A New Day!

Let’s start the day off with a PayPal donation link:

This Morning

My eyes itch. My throat is sore. I can’t breathe through my nose and I feel like I’ve swallowed cotton.

You know. A little earlier this morning I was relating to how a seriously injured person must feel in the hospital bed. I mean, they have to have fight to keep going. If it is serious, part of the ability to recover is going to be that person’s desire, conscious or unconscious, to keep going. This morning I was not so sure that if I were to be seriously injured that I would have the will to keep going. That sounds ridiculous coming out of me because I’ve always taken blows well. I have had many people in my life describe me as a pillar of strength for them. I need a good turn. Murph seems to be setting me up badly.

At 1am this morning I was still awake. I was wide awake but had a heavy feeling of exhaustion. I could not tell if I was truly tired and unable to sleep because of anxiety or if I was truly awake and unable to motivate myself because of depression. I finally convinced myself that it would be better to rest and get up early than to work now and be too tired to get up and help the kids prepare for school.

At 4:10 I hear movement upstairs. I go upstairs to have Tommy say “I think I threw up?” I find humor in that statement. How could you not be sure if you threw up. And man! Did he ever throw up! We spent the next hour with Tommy reluctantly cleaning up his mess. Then of course I finished cleaning it. During this time Tommy wakes the baby. She gets comforted by myself and my wife on 3 occasions before she finally returns to sleep.

At 5am, I debate staying up and my wife wisely encourages me to get some more sleep.

At 5:25 Tommy is throwing up again. This time it is mostly water as he gulped down half a liter. I put him to sleep in the bathroom with a promise to wake him and move him in half an hour when his siblings are preparing for school.

At 7:45 Tommy is complaining of being thirsty but before I can offer him “regulated sips” of water he is forcing himself to gag trying to throw up. This was an attempt to force himself to heave. I don’t yet dare to give him his medicine.

We have another IEP at 2pm the result of which will be us needing to start a class action lawsuit–a little hard to do when you need to pull $5-10k/mth and are making $0. This promises to be a fun day! Between 8am (now) and 2pm [6 hours] I have to prepare for the IEP [.5 hour], deal with Amy (that is diaper changes, breakfast and some play time) [1 hour], bathe [.5 hour], wash a pukey sleeping bag[.25 hour], clean the kitchen and floors [2 hours], sending marketing materials to people that I promised they’d have on Monday [.75 hour], contact more potential clients [1.5 hour], send resumes and cover letters to jobs that were advertized in Sunday’s paper [3 hours], contact job leads that I’ve already interviewed with or been in contact [1 hour], contact the cell phone customer service to get an extension on the bill [.25 hour], program [8 hours], and do enough of the finances to figure out if I am in danger of having my checking account closed [12 hours].

[Total Hours: 30.75 hours]

Last Night

I was starving but we didn’t get out of the house in time to get food. We rushed to Sarah’s 5th grade musical program. The program was their wrapup of their 6 years (3 for Sarah–can you believe that!) at the school. The gym hot, noisy and uncomfortable. Fortunately we left Tommy at home but that would come back to haunt us later. I walked the length of the school 5 times getting cokes for Cathy, Noah, Amy and myself. I welcomed the opportunity to be outside when Amy couldn’t take any more.

Some bozo made a dvd of pictures with powerpoint style transitions and a music track. I would have chosen the music different, probably picking hits from the years that the pictures were being shown. I feel like we are constantly being shafted by the school. We volunteer our time at the school. We participate. We interact with the teachers. Yet we continuously get grief or left out. All of our pictures are digital so when I was told about the dvd I inquired and said “do you really need hard copies?” and was told “the guy doing the video needs to scan them in and I replied that “they are already digital and will save him effort.” I was told “he doesn’t know how to deal with that” and later was told he could. We sent our pictures as fuzzy printouts labeled with the filename of the respective file on a cd we burned. Not a single one of our pictures ended up on the dvd. Sarah was in it twice and that was simply because she was in group shots that other parents provided. Shafted! Morons! I could have printed the pictures on photopaper and let them get scanned in. In hindsight I suppose this is what I should have done. I cannot help but think because of the pathethic economic situation I have placed my family into continues to unfairly hold us back.

we returned from the program to find that Tommy had blatantly raided the kitchen. Food crumbs were all over the couch. The television remote was uncomfortably sticky as was the phone, door knob, and most other things I touched. Tommy had so much sugar and junk food that he would later lose his stomach.

This is too funny not to post..

Before the Cicadas are done, I have to figure out a way to get a decent recording of the noise. It really and truly sounds like a flying saucer from HG Wells War of the Worlds is going to come over the tree line from the horizon. In the immediate vacinity it sounds like thousands of crickets screaming in pain.

Took a 1 hour break to clear some of the yard. That felt good but afterwards my stomach started to ache. I laid down in bed half in agony, half in anxiety. Finally rose and bathed in preparation for tonight’s 5th grade musical event.

Throat is sore as all get out.

I have to shift. Going to work in the yard for an hour then return to drop some resumes.

Crappy piece of marketing created. I need to get something out to folks I promised to send information to so this will have to do for the moment. I am capable of so much better.

Today I feel worthless..

Thanks to Tim for this link! Time to get your backup of the Internet!