Reality Me

I’m weary mentally and physically. My wife has the doldrums and I can’t help her. I made decent progress on the wood but there is so much left to do. The time spent splitting could be so useful elsewhere. For all the pine, I’m considering just getting a chipper and making mulch. What’s sad is I still have another huge tree to fall. I should buy a splitter. I miss the days when you could gather 3-4 or more friends on a weekend and kill a major task.

I so wanted the yard or a portion of the yard preped for an Easter Egg hunt on Sunday. This week may have to be split 50/50 between yard and contract seeking. Well like 20 yard, 20 work, 30 childcare, 20 crisis management and 10 household and other misc.

There’s a steak and a beer calling my name in the fridge.

I must read through The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate (Tim‘s suggestion) faster. I’m really just irritating my wife left and right.

Continuing to split wood. Almost ready to focus on my own yard. Arms are getting rubbery.

A New Day!

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This Morning

Thanks to the wife for getting up before me and helping Amy and Tommy.

Arms are starting to feel the lifting but not really in a bad way.

I forgot about Day Light Savings this morning so I thought I was doing well on time to only realize I’ve lost an hour. I wish they’d do away with this Day Light Savings silliness. What Am I now? GMT -6. I was GMT -5 and set the clock ahead an hour so I guess that makes it GMT -4.

Does this really apply anymore?

I think I will start the day with breakfast, caulking the bathroom then wood splitting.

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.