It’s a Wonderful Dad’s Life

Getting Out Was a Bit Much

I did indeed get to the grocery store. And by the time I returned, I was ready for some pain medication. So I got the ice pack out and wrapped my arm. And that instantly helped. I also took Propoxyphen. Between the drugs and the ice pack (and putting my arm in a sling) the pain seems to have subsided for the moment.

I plan to spend the rest of the afternoon cleaning up and getting dinner together.

Lets see how that goes.

Post Op Plans

So interestingly, my arm doesn’t feel much worse than it did going into surgery. There are different movements that cause pain, but for the pain intensity is not too bad. Which means I will simply ignore the pills as much as possible.

I am guessing that by tomorrow, I will just start living normally again. The Dr. said I can’t hurt anything, it is just a pain thing I have to worry about. As long as I am comfortable, he said I could go for it.

Kat, William and Melinda headed out to Gilroy Gardens today. I was left here to recuperate. However I feel pretty recuperated now and want to do something. I am thinking about going to grocery store and finalizing my basket of goods. For July.

I tred to start a basket of goods in the past, a way to measure inflation. But the pain of carrying a list and all the time it took to translate notes into a usable spreadsheet waw too much in the past. However, with the iPhone and the Shopper App, it is quite simple. I can record the goods into the phone, email the list as a record complete with the cost of goods total. When prices change, I can update the prices on the phone in real time and repeat the record keeping email.

I have noticed that there have been some large changes to food pricings in the last few years.

For example, Organinic Bananas went from .99/lb to 1.29/lb over the course of 18 months. Abario rice has gone from 2.50/lb. to 3.49/lb in the course of a year.

It will be interesting to plug all the food I am tracking and determine what the inflation is on me personally.

Morning Report

I woke this morning thinking about all that I need to do before surgery this afternoon. And amazingly, there is a pretty long list of things.

First, I need to make sure that Melinda can find me. Because Melinda is having to work until 2 p.m., and my surgery is scheduled for 3 p.m., it is unlikely that Melinda can come, pick me up and get me to the surgery center in time. Thus, I will be making my way over to the center on my own and she will meet me there.

Now making it so that Melinda can find me is not all that easy, and it ended up exposing a lot of issues that I didn’t up to this point know about.

First, because Melinda has an iPhone, my first thought was that I would simply install one of the new GPS products on her phone that would give her turn by turn instructions to the center. But, Melinda hasn’t upgraded her phone to the latest OS, so that is not an option until I upgrade her phone. No problem, but now I need to know where her computer is so that I can start the process. And I am afraid that we don’t really have time to do it as it took me nearly 2 hours when I did it.

I did book mark the address and location and she can use the map service on her phone to get there. Hopefully that will be good enough for now.

Now figuring out how to get to the center is easy. I will simply take a taxi (or more likely a town car) to the center. The cost is pretty minimal and makes for a stress free afternoon.

The doctor prescribed vicodin for pain medication. Ugh. First, vicodin makes me quezy. Second, I find motrin is better at pain relief than vocodin is. Thus, I need to call the doctor and ask for a different pain reliever. One that doesn’t make me feel sick.

I depending on who you talk to, I can eat lightly sans milk and grease, (think carbs) or not at all since midnight. I will go with the former idea as I don’t want to spend the entire morning hungry.

Of course, I have work for work I need to do today. I have work I need to do for Kat’s school today. And I am watching the kids until noon today.

In short, this is going to be a busy day.

A Happy Development

I don’t know why I did it. But tonight I clicked on a link to a blog that has long been gone.

You see Val had a stalking incident and turned off her blog.

Probably a year ago.

I never dumped the link because I had hoped that she might love blogging so much that she would return to it. And then she did. But she restricted access.

For some reason, I clicked on her blog link tonight.

And she was back. Val is back.

Of all the blogs I have read over the years, Life of a Valley Girl, is easily the most addicting.

She is almost as neurotic as I am. But unlike me, she is completely fabulous. And interesting. And funny.

But most of all, she is honest. And it is the complete honesty about her thoughts, her feelings, her actions that draws me to her writing. It is that she is willing to let you know who she is, to really get to know her. You feel connected. Even though you haven’t a clue who she is.

I hungrily read through parts of her writing. It seems a lot has changed in the last year for her. I look forward to following her again. Hopefully, she won’t go away again.

Torn

A few weeks ago, Kat went to Bible Camp at one of Kat’s friends church with her friend. At the time I didn’t think much of it. I have known for a while that it would be in Kat’s best interest to be exposed to religion. What is the harm, I thought.

Since that week, Kat has been back to the church at least once a week through invitations through the same neighbors. And I have to be honest, I am not caring for this new development.

Now I feel obliged to go to this place and see what is up. I have this fear that this is one of those uber outreach churches that make you feel like shit if you don’t participate. One of those churches that really push building the congregation. One of those wacked out churches that convince you that God is talking through you. One of those churches that shun you if you stop going.

Seriously, I just don’t know why all of a sudden, Kat is going once or twice a week.

And I don’t know why Melinda thinks this is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

OK, in fairness to Melinda, she doesn’t know anything about religion. She never passed tracks out for the Jehovah’s Witnesses. She never prayed in tongues. She has never seen the hypocracy that allows saved people to treat everyday people like shit all the while knowing in their hearts that they are part of the chosen ones.

She has never sat down and read the bible, studied the bible to learn it’s teachings. Spent countless hours in Sunday school. And Friday night fellowship. And Saturday fellowship. And midweek service.

She never watched her mother zone out for hours at a time to do her “devotionals.” To pray. To listen to the lord.

She has never experienced the miracle of a spiritual revival. She has never seen people learn to walk again. People to grow their arms. People feel the power and electricity of Christ.

No, she hasn’t. She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t understand how underhanded people can be. How a group can teach a child to hate his or her parents for not “believing” as they do. How a congregation can tell a person to leave a family who refuses to accept Christ. How churches can have an us vs. them mentality.

Color me stupid, but right now, I have alarm bells ringing in my head. My intuition says that I need to step in and end this.

I guess that is what I am going to do.

Looking Back at 2008

If time is money, I am spending a small fortune compiling my writings for 2008 into a book for publication.

I must finished editing March. I spent a week so far getting to this point. And before I am finished with March, I still need to go through the pictures and add the good ones.

I must say, from a personal perspective though, it really is interesting going through my writings a year later. You really feel the difference a year makes.

In this case, what I see is that I had much more time to think than I do these days. I see that I had more time for my kids. I see I was much more involved in their lives.

I wonder, looking back at my life and what I have today and comparing it to what I had last year, I am struck with the thought, “Is it worth it?”

Of course, I am only seeing the good from last year. So perhaps I should recognize the rose colored hue.

Conversations

Me: What book do you want to read?
William: Blech
Me: i don’t know that book. What is it about?
William: blech. (he points to the bookshelf)
I walk to the bookshelf hoping for some inspiration. I keep looking, but nothing comes to mind.
William: Oh God. (he gets out of bed and walks toward the bookshelf.) You are driving me crazy!

It’s Hot This Weekend

Over the weekend, we had a heatwave took temperatures up to the mid 90s. And with such heat comes lethergy for the adults and stir-crazy energy for the kids. Melinda had a novel solution for this. She ran out and bought a slip and slide. Kat and Sophia took to it immediately. William didn’t care for it at all as a toy for himself. However, as water created a bit of mud for his cars to play in, he saw a lot of utilitarian uses for the slip in slide. A bath structure for his newly dirty cars for example.

Now the girls of course didn’t care much for this plan and so as William executed his plan, the girls tried in vane to keep mud off their slide. In the end, we had to clean it up and work hard to keep William from continuing to was his cars.

For dinner, since it is so hot, I am cooking beer-butt chicken on the grill along with some greens and fresh bread. Hopefully tonight I will have enough time to boil down bones into broth. We are running low.

This coming week is a short week for me. I work Monday and Tuesday and then I am off for the rest of the week. On Wednesday I plan to take the kids to museums. On Thursday is my surgery. On Friday, I think I might be recovering.

Earlier today, Melinda and I took the kids to the Heller Aviation Museum in San Carlos. Kat loved it. William liked it, but soon was ready to leave. It was definitely not as interesting to him as I thought it would be. He did like crawling through the 747 nose. He liked the flight simulator games. He liked watching planes take off and land. But after an hour there, he was definitely ready to come home.

We ate out today for lunch. The first time in a long time. We ate at Chevy’s. For the first time in recent memory, Will was happy to sit in his seat the entire time and eat his meal. Life is good.

Pushing Limits

William loves nothing more than to see just how far he can push things. Whether it is to avoid going potty, or whether it is in his continual insistence to harass his sister, he pushes to see how far he can take things. There are times when I am completely drained as I try to keep Will from throwing things at, or kicking, or hitting or stealing from his big sister. Chasing after him after he throws the front door open and runs into the front yard and down the street. As I watch him turn a completely clean room into a disaster area in 5 minutes.

On an intellectual level, I love it. It shows his curiosity. It shows his imagination. It shows his sense of self.

But on a practical level, I am just wiped out.

I keep hoping this is a phase, but with my luck the phase will last well into his 20s.

(Remind myself that I love it…It shows his curiosity, imagination and sense of self. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat)

I am OK

So, after writing my last blog post, I consulted the Internet. I am not physically dependent on hydrocodone (vicodin), I am just experiencing its side effects. Good to know that I am not addicted. Bad that taking the pain medication makes me feel like crap. I am still not going to take it though, the pain is less bothersome than feeling nauseous for the day because you took a pill to feel better.

I am so looking forward to surgery.