Category: blood

Family, easy!

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play-by-play

As it happens.
The play-by-play folks, the birth entry. I’ll do my best to update this with info as things proceed, rather than doing one entry-per-update. Get your fingers on F5, and refresh often to get the latest.

Friday, 11:11am: Sharaun calls me at work to ask if I’m planning on coming home for lunch. She also mentions that she’s noticed some “spotting,” which is kinda too gross to really explain – but could mean things are starting to happen.

Saturday, 8:45pm: Sharaun and I throw in one of my favorite movies to pass the time, Castaway, and settle down to watch. She mentions that there’s been more “bathroom signs” of impending labor (nasty details left to the imagination).

Sunday, 4:20am: Sharaun wakes me up to say she thinks she’s had a couple contractions, which came about 20min apart. We decide to begin timing.

Sunday, 5:45am: Contractions confirmed! Now about 10min apart. We both wake, take showers, and begin to gather the final gear we’ll need to take with us to the hospital.

Sunday, 6:11am: Contractions now 5min apart… that was… unexpectedly fast… we’re putting things together, leaving soon if the next few are ~5min as well.

Sunday, 7:08am: Contractions have slowed now, coming about 10min apart currently. Still at home, ready to go when the time comes.

Sunday, 8:15am: Still spot-on 10min between contractions, although I can tell by watching her they’re getting stronger (more hurty). She’s actually able to sleep in the 10min between them, and I just plan to let her stay here as long as we can.

Sunday, 8:45am: What started out as a sunny-looking morning has quickly turned grey and is currently threatening rain. Sharaun’s asleep, contractions still about 10min apart – with a few variations (she either missed one or slept through it). I’m just sitting here… trying to find something to do… waiting for the rain.

Sunday, 10:05am: Waiting patiently, Sharaun’s now up and the contractions seemed to have slowed to something between 15-20min. I microwaved a bowl of last night’s leftover spaghetti, I know it’s not really a spaghetti time of day – but I’ve been up long enough my belly’s telling me it’s lunchtime. Anyway, what better than my favorite food to give me the strength I’ll need to see Sharaun through. Until more nothing happens…

Sunday, 10:25am: Word’s getting out – friends’ve been calling, offering assistance and well-wishes; nature is still taking its sweet-ass time. In fact, Sharaun hasn’t had a contraction for 40min now, and I’m hoping this whole thing isn’t just false labor. We’re about to take a walk around the neighborhood – before it rains – to see if we can’t jump-start the process.

Sunday, 11:30am: With nearly two hours gone since her last contraction, I was beginning to wonder what was going on. Then, she had what she “thinks” was a contraction. Maybe the walking worked… the timer’s counting, maybe we’ll get started again.

Sunday, 12:15pm: Third contraction on a 20min beat-rate… we back on track? Stay tuned…

Sunday, 1:22pm: Contractions falling off again, almost 40min between this time. If timings were all the info I had, I’d diagnose it as “false labor,” but the books say there’s no pain associated with those irregular contractions – and she’s definitely in pain with these. Of course, they also make the blanket statement that, “nothing is absolute in any pregnancy.”

Sunday, 1:40pm: Finally called the doctor, who said that she doubts it’s false labor – since Sharaun is already several days overdue. The post-40min contraction came a mere 15min later, so maybe things are picking up. I guess this is really it, just a frustratingly random “it.”

Sunday, 2:45pm: Still lumbering along at this odd pace… 40min, 15min, 20min, no discernible pattern. It’s raining now, and I, having been up since before 5am, decide to take a nap on the couch. Funny how urgent I thought things were ’round about 6am this morning… woulda been less rushed had I known I’d be catnapping on the couch come 2pm. Maybe this baby is trying to teach me patience…

Sunday, 3:55pm: I took all sorts of higher mathematics courses on my road to an engineering degree, so while I’m sitting here timing these contractions I’m trying to fit them to some model. Math be damned, though, I can’t find anything “regular” about these things to save my life. The last five?: 14min, 7min, 28min, 27min, 21min, 11min (all about 1min long and, according to Sharaun, equally painful). My only thought is, Sharaun’s labor is going to be just like Sharaun: hopelessly disorganized.

Sunday, 4:45pm: … 20min, 10min, 6min. In birth class they talked about contraction duration, time between contractions, and how much they hurt. The whole time my nerd brain is translating this laytalk into frequency, amplitude, and wavelength. Right now, on the graph in my head, this is one of the effed-up-lookinist “periodic” waves I’ve ever seen.

Sunday, 5:30pm: Although not every contraction is 10min apart, the amount of them that are seems to be increasing. The contractions themselves are actually pretty consistent, being, for the most part, uniformly ~1min long and pain enough that Sharaun stops talking and concentrates on breathing. We shall overcome.

Sunday, 6:00pm: 10min, 12min, 16min. That’s the patterniest few I’ve seen in a while. I think, if they stay <20min apart for another 30min or so, we’ll call the doc and see if we can head up to get a check. Worst thing that can happen is they send us back home.

Sunday, 6:30pm: Three more at 10min or less apart. We decided we will wait for that 5min-apart milestone before rolling out to l’hopital. If she stays consistent, I’d expect that to take at least 2-3 more hours.

Sunday, 7:30pm: Every time I get excited about these things coming faster, they reset – to torture me I think. Only two in the past hour, but that last one made her yelp out… so much stronger than anything thus far. I’m thinking a well-planned nap now might be in order, as she looks determined to wait till Monday (Grandma’s birthday, on Sharaun’s side, maybe she knows…)

Sunday, 8:00pm: Let’s recap: Sharaun’s been in labor now for about fifteen hours. Although, it hasn’t been super intense (easy for me to say). Despite my protestations, she just cooked us both grilled cheese and tomato soup, simply taking a break for contractions (10min, and then 11min, after the two 30min-apart ones, if you’re keeping track). She’s been eating normally, napping, and taking it easy in general. For a woman in labor, she’s sure sucking it up.

Sunday, 8:30pm: Ooowwwwww…. I’m gonna call these new kinda contractions: Contractions 2.0. Contractions 2.0 do not look fun. Contractions 2.0 look downright agonizing, squirmy and stabby. If you’re keeping track, it went: 8min, 10min, 24min, 9min. As maygsters said, “Come on Keaton!”

Sunday, 9:00pm: Contractions 2.0 continue, but 25min since the last. I can tell Sharaun’s starting to think about just how painful these things will get, knowing how much worse they’ve already gotten. Hey Keaton, here’s a picture of your brave mommy workin’ you out early this morning.

You can do it mom!

Sunday, 9:45pm: Waffling between 10min and 25min apart, which, looking back, has actually been going on for a while. Nothing new… still waiting.

Sunday, 10:30pm: I guess I’m beginning to let my guard down; took off the belt, shirt, and finally took my wallet and keys out of my pockets – subconsciously admitting that we’ll likely be bedding here again tonight. Sharaun is apologizing to me, telling me she feels like she’s disappointing me because the whole thing is taking so long – as ridiculous as that sounds. And, for the records, we had another 40min wait and then two 9min back-to-backs. As random as ever.

Sunday, 11:00pm: We’ve decided to try and go to bed, but continue to time the contractions. For timing, I’ve been using the stopwatch function on my cellphone, in lap-time mode. You can keep a running log of both contraction duration and time between – and store it off every 20 “laps.” It works well. Right now she’s on her longest 10min streak since way earlier today at three in a row. While we can get sleep though, we’re gonna go for it. I’ll continue to post as we wake for contractions.

Monday, 12:36am: No sooner have we settled into bed do the regular, strong 7min contractions come. And, I’m up now because Sharaun’s water broke – that’s it folks, we’re off to the hospital. She’s finally coming!

Monday, 2:08am: Sharaun’s admitted and hooked up to monitors. The wireless is on lockdown, but there’s a phoneline and I’m winging bits and bytes at a whopping 26.4Kbps. Contractions are <5min apart and look absolutely awful. No word from the attending yet, but as soon as there’s something to report you’ll see it here.

Go mom!

Monday, 2:30am: Oh. My. God. This looks unbearable. I actually had tears in my eyes watching that last one… and there’s nothing I can really do aside from rooting her on. Wow.

Monday, 4:00am: There’s a pull-out bed in the room, and I’ve been trying to catch some sleep while Sharaun moans her way through her contractions, which come about every 3min now. I think she was a little discouraged when the nurse told her she was only 2cm dilated – but they did say she should progress at about 1cm per hour from this point on. She toyed briefly with the idea of some narcotic to take the edge off, but decided against it. Until later.

Monday, 8:00am: While I had 240min of fairly restful sleep, Sharaun had approximately 80, what look to be torturous, contractions. Can make a guy feel kinda guilty, but I was exhausted. No significant update on progress from the doctors… they say they’re waiting for contractions to get closer together and very strong. I think that’s got Sharaun worried, as she’s curling toes through these already. More to come…

Monday, 8:20am: I read most of the recent comments to Sharaun, and saw her brighten a little for the first time. For those of you who’ve not given birth – they hook mom up to these monitors that chart contractions, drawing little peaks and valleys. The digital display has about ten little subsections on it, one of which charts Sharaun’s progress. Other mom’s laboring in other rooms have their own little square and graph, meaning all the moms can see the other mom’s graphs. Sharaun’s been watching one graph like a hawk, as the peaks showing regularly on it are at least 2x as high as the peaks showing on hers. This must be a terrible feeling. “Am I gonna have those kind?,” she asks, “I can’t do that!” I don’t mean to paint it all doom-and-gloom, she’s doing great, and has been a little soldier through it all.

Monday, 9:00am: Sharaun was able to talk to her mom a little between contractions. The attending doctor came in and said much of the same, albeit more professionally since he was wearing a tie and had pens in his breast pocket. Since her water already broke, they don’t do regular exams to track dilation/progress – as it just introduces unnecessary foreign junk to the baby. So, they’re waiting to judge dilation based on contraction frequency and strength – and the doc guesses she’s still in the 2-3cm range. I’ve been reading her the blog comments as they come in and she really enjoys it and wanted to make sure I tell everyone “thanks” from her.

Monday, 9:20am: When I mentioned yesterday that I “might bring my laptop to the hospital,” Sharaun surprised me by responding, “Yeah, I thought you would – you can blog from the room if you can get online.” For a wife that complains I spend too much time in front of this thing, she’s been really cool about it sitting on my lap while I hold her hand through the contractions. The doctor came in and recognized what I was doing, “Blogging the birth?,” he asked. “Yup!” I’m actually happy that I was able to get online, as I think we’ll be glad one day we have this turn-by-turn account of things. Or, maybe not.

I feel like I might be portraying too grim an image of this whole thing. Sharaun’s not in abject misery, not writhing in pain this entire time or anything. Things aren’t all puppies and kittens, but in between contractions she’s mostly her normal self. I can tell she’s ready for something to take the pain away, and I hope that comes within a couple hours or so, but it’s not like she’s on the racks or in an iron maiden. So, keep the well-wishes coming, just don’t imagine a scene where she’s giving birth naked covered in fire ants or anything.

Monday, 9:50am: Sharaun found a better way to sit, the hospital bed was really bugging her – and she’s now resting in a rocking chair and doing better powering through things. Outside it’s really coming down in sheets, we’ve pulled back the curtains and are watching the storm. Nurses are coming more frequently now, not sure if that means anything – but they do keep assuring her she’s “making progress.” They brought her some Jell-O and apple juice, and somewhere from deep in the bowels of this place I can smell real food – which she won’t get, but is grabbing me by the nose and making me think thoughts of McBiscuits or something.

Monday, 10:30am: Don’t tell the doctors, but I’ve snuck Sharaun a couple pretzels from my Gardettos. Pretzels I can spare, those little brown crunchy toasts – I’m holding those over her head until she can produce a baby. They moved her contraction monitor, and it turns out she was having those 2x peaks all along – they just weren’t being captured properly – that gave her some confidence. The rain has stopped.

Monday, 11:20am: Not jack going on. Unless, of course, you call uterine contractions pushing a living being out of my wife’s cooter “jack.” They ask her, on a pain-scale of 1-10, what her contractions are like. When we got here, they were a 5; now she says they’re 8s. Pretty bad when the nurse described a 10 as “getting run over by a truck,” I mean, since everyone knows what it feels like to be run over by a truck and can easily use that experience as a comparison point. Anyway, still ~5min apart, still hurty-lookin’, and still waiting. Rain came back.

Monday, 12:10pm:Coming up on twelve hours of labor in the hospital, on top of all day at home yesterday. Sharaun still doing well, but she’s wisely trying to catch some Zs in between contractions (which is nearly impossible). Within the last half-hour, the contractions have actually slowed… perhaps we’re in for still longer.

All the pregnancy/baby books talk about making a “birthing plan” and bringing several copies of it with you when you go to the hospital. The plan is supposed to be a formal document of how you’d like your birth to go down: drugs/no drugs, people in the delivery room, dad cuts the cord, etc. We didn’t do a birthing plan. In fact, we thought the idea was kinda stupid, a little too Our Bodies, Ourselves or something. We just came up here trusting that the hospital, which is where everyone goes to have babies, knows how best to make our baby work.

Monday, 1:00pm: Nurse measured again, little-to-no progress from this morning’s 2cm (she’s right about 3cm now, but moving very slowly). The nurse suspects the doc will resort to pitocin soon to get the lead out of this whole thing. Stay tuned.

Monday, 1:10pm: Doc’s call: epidural followed by pitocin – to be administered in the next 5min or so. Not sure when I’ll update next, as the drugs will likely make things move pretty fast. Until I can…

Monday, 2:30pm: I guess I overestimated the fast-actingness of the pitocin, they actually start it off slow and ratchet it up every half hour until mom responds. Not that it won’t speed things up, but I think I’ll have time to at least post a few more updates. Prior to the drugs, Sharaun’s contractions slowed considerably, there was more than 40min between her last and the pitocin – almost like they’d dried up again. This is one stubborn baby… just like her folks. But, the down-time did give her a chance to sleep. She immediately passed out, and I’m hoping what little slumber she got was somewhat recharging. After the drugs, they encouraged her to sleep while the pitocin went to work on her now-numbed body.

Meanwhile, I called in a favor and have our good friend Kristi bringing a Chipotle burrito up to sustain me – because… y’know… I’m doing so much work and all. Lord let this child come soon! Sheesh.

Monday, 2:50pm: Drew the curtains and turned off the lights and TV (which was filled with daytime crap anyway – three judge/court things and soap operas – unemployed people sure get the shaft when it comes to entertainment). My burrito should be en-route, and I don’t plan on eating it in the room – I’ll sneak off somewhere and chomp it down then chase it with some gum so nary a whiff of pico remains on my breath. Looking at her now, asleep, she actually looks pretty peaceful. I’d imagine that will change here within a few hours (please… not another 12) as she moves into the “pushing” phase.

We wanted to thank everyone for the comments on this entry. I read them to her as they come in and it’s a really cool way to get well-wishes from the digital peanut gallery. E-labor, the newest thing… we’re so on the cutting edge.

Monday, 4:05pm: Pitocin in action – from 2cm to 6cm in under 2hrs. They just put all sorts of internal monitors up in her bidness – looks like there’s a server room up in her belly with all the cords coming out (nerd humor, if you don’t get it just move on). Epidural also in action, she’s moving through contractions with just a sense of pressure and the littlest of pain. I did my best to weasel an approximate timeline out of the nurse team that descended here minutes ago – and was told that, although nothing is for sure, she should be moving now at more than 1cm per hour – and that pushing could last anywhere from 1-3hrs. Adding up the worst case, that tells me that I can expect our daughter to make an appearance sometime before 11pm. Man… that still seems so far off…

Monday, 5:05pm: Both of us taking the down-time to sleep. Nurses say she’s still at 6cm, but that she’d only just turned 6 the last time they checked an hour ago. They are still fiddling with the pitocin to try and get the contractions more regular – as they still seem to want to space out randomly. More waiting and, if we’re lucky, a little more sleeping.

Monday, 6:52pm: 9cm. Sharaun’s got a case of the shakes, and feels nauseous… the nurses say both are a reaction to the epidural and just fatigue. She’s asked them to back off the epidural, as she’s worried she’s too out of it to push (which, again, I think is more nerves than anything). She’s managed to go to sleep again. It’s just about killing me to see her so scared. 9cm is close y’allz… I’m thinking it could be soon.

Monday, 7:08pm: Holy sweet crap, this thing is taking forever. I swear, we’re approaching the 39 hour mark from her initial contractions, and the 18 hour mark from her water breaking. I was OK with it before, but now it’s beginning to drag on like it’s never gonna happen. If I’m this tired of being here and doing this, I can’t even imagine how she feels.

I’ve got one of those fatigue headaches that just blanket your brain in a dull pain, and I’m just so tired of seeing her upset. Again, I guess when I write about things they tend to be the more negative ones – this whole battle isn’t being fought from the trenches nearly as much as I may make it sound. It really is hard though, to try and reassure someone that everything’s going to be OK and not have those assurances ring hollow.

The doctor came and dialed back her epidural, at her request. She’s still asleep, and a thousand things are still beeping and dinging and clicking and whirring like we’re on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise (the 1960s one, not the Next Generation one).

Monday, 7:36pm: 9.5cm, they’re making preparations to push.

Monday, 8:00pm: Delivery room is a hive of activity. Doctor’s on her way, Sharaun’s either rested and rejuvenated or her adrenaline is kicking in – as she’s back to her normal “with it” self and can converse without scaring me to death that she’s totally whacked. Myself, I think I’m in that “could lift a car off a trapped child” rush – like I just dove out of a plane or something. I’m up and about, pacing mostly, waiting for the “rah rah push push” part of my job to start. Oh man I am so excited right now…

Monday, 8:20pm: I guess it’s kind of the calm before the storm. The nurses are letting Sharaun “labor down,” meaning the contractions now are more to drop the baby lower into position – rather than dilate her. I’ve been encouraging her to get as much rest as possible, and can see her soldiering up for that last charge – mentally preparing. I got excited a little early, but it hasn’t really worn off at all.

Updated as I can…

Posted on

a snowy day

Novice.
Before I say anything else (which likely won’t be much tonight), I just wanted to make sure I thank all of my commenters for doing just that, commenting. Nearly every time I read a comment, I have to restrain myself from commenting back – which, to me, is a close to a cardinal sin for a blogger (self-commenting, that is). So, don’t take my lack of response as a lack of caring… you’re a big part of what keeps me writing and I loves you all. Now to the same-old-same-old.

Today, we rolled up to Tahoe so Sharaun’s mom could get her first glimpse of falling snow. We were successful, to say the least – as we had to turn around shortly past the summit because the snow was so heavy. The roads were white and I was having flashbacks to our last stranded-in-a-blizzard experience coming home from Oregon last year. So, I pulled a dicey u-turn on a windy mountain road and headed back down – stopping shortly near a nice snowy field for the 1st-time standards of snowball fights and snowangels. And, since you’re reading this, we made it back down the mountain alive and with only one loss-of-control slip-sliding event. Her folks leave tomorrow, seems like it went by so fast. Her brother, and mine, are sticking around until the end of the week. In fact, my brother and I head to the airport at the same time Friday – him returning to duty and me taking wing to Bangalore.

And, speaking of India, thanks for the all encouragement regarding my trip. I’m still not looking forward to the work bit at all, not at all. I will indeed take lots of pictures, and try to enjoy things as much as possible. But man, packing… I have to pack for both India and Oregon, since I fly in from India on the 9th, pick up my bags, check them on another airline, and then get on a plane bound for Portland. I know, I complain to much – I should think of it in terms of getting a “freeish” vacation to an exotic country and getting to spend my birthday with my folks, wife, and unborn daughter. But, if I did that, I wouldn’t have any paragraphs to fill this page with… would I?

And, before I go – Tyler (Sharaun’s brother) and I have been playing the Pac Man machine like it’s going out of style this week. In fact, I think I’ve played it more this week than the entire time since I built it. Tyler was the first to do some internet research and memorize the four main level patterns that enable you to play forever if your reflexes are fast enough. Watching him destroy me every game made me also want to learn the patterns, and now we’re both completely addicted to running up the high score. Tyler shattered the long-standing ~39000 score with an amazing ~100000+ effort tonight – and I just thought I’d mention that.

I really have nothing to say. Nothing. Goodnight.

Posted on

thanksgiving day

Turkey is good.
Thanksgiving. One of the best sanctioned-lazy days of the year.

I woke up around 8:30am, hopped in the shower and, after drying, pulled on my most comfortable t-shirt and a pair of shorts. Making my way to the living room, everyone was awake and the kitchen was already bustling. The parents-in-law were both busy putting the finishing touches on dishes that were prepped last night, making them ready to slide into the oven come time. Pouring myself a cup of coffee, I sat down to watch the parade and see what that latest internet goings-on had to offer. The weather is gorgeous, 70s and sunny with the mornings still crisp and cool, and the atmosphere at the house is all family and chatter. I love it; absolutely love it. It feels unlike any Thanksgiving I’ve yet had. Sharaun and I six months into our new daughter and family all around, it really feels grown-up; established, familiar.

Moving on to the weekend’s writing.

I wrote a lot this weekend, but most of it on the to-be-posted “best of 2005” entry. I plan to finish it up in spurts over the next week and drop it sometime while I’m in India. Excited? I thought so. Now on with the now.

Speaking of India, I leave in four days, that’s way too soon. I have nothing prepared – nothing ready; I have almost no idea what I’ll be doing there. I really, really, don’t want to go. I’ve been feeling so slack about work lately, maybe it’s because there’s so much more family stuff to focus on… I have no idea. I am excited about going to India, if just for the travel opportunity and bragging rights – but the “working” part of it has me worried. Ah, whatever, I do this every time I go somewhere. I have one week to pull something, anything, together – I suppose if I knuckle-down I can get something workable together – but will I do it, that’s what I want to know. In reality, I’ll likely do like I’ve done so many times before – I’ll wing it. Just fly across the world with nothing but my limp cock in-hand, relying on my smile and handshake to make the trip worthwhile. Man, this writing-cycle does tend to get old, I can only imagine the reading-cycle… sorry y’allz, let’s move on.

Crazy dreams last night, one in particular that I can remember was super-crazy. I was standing in line for confessional, two people waiting in front of me. I can remember feeling nervous because I wasn’t sure of the proper protocol once I actually got in the confessional. As a kid, I was hardly Catholic long enough to get baptizes, let alone be confirmed – so everything I know comes from movies. Soon I was the lone petitioner in line, and I knew something was wrong when person before me finally came out. I entered and sat down, “Father forgive me, it’s been blah blah since my last confession.” To my horror, I could see that the priest was laying on the ground, blood around his mouth. Despite this, he heard my confession and, instead of assigning penance, told me in a raspy dying breath to find that man who just left, at any cost. I left the church, walking across a green field, scared. Somehow, as things do in dreams, I looked back to find that the priest turned into a small dog, also with blood around its mouth, which was now chasing me as I ran towards my car. That’s it, crazy eh?

Before I go, I wanted to share this with y’all. A long time ago, someone left a message on our answering machine, a wrong number. It was funny. You can listen to it below:

[audio:holdinitdeeown2.mp3]

See ya.

Posted on

hope your ship turns around

Gotta come back to port sometime, it's where there's shelter.
Ever experience something that smacks you in the face and makes you realize how brilliantly lucky you are to have what you have, live how you live, and be as happy as you are? I had that this week. My permanent grin, fat belly and quiet complacence long-since taken for granted and damn-near expected, I was reminded in the most humbling of ways that my life, as I’ve made it thus far, is exceedingly better than many, many others’. When you get down to it, this is no revelation; but you know us meek, we never go about trumpeting our treasures. We don’t talk about it; don’t meet strangers and ramble on about our various successes. No, revelation it’s not; no not by a long shot. But I’ll be damned if those of among the blessed like to be reminded that there are others our there who aren’t happy at all. Those in dire straits, one step out of sync with our blissful fairy tales; suffering. No, it’s easier to ignore all that that nasty business – you end up with less guilt for feeling so awesome in comparison. So, troubled of the world: please hide yourself from my sight – for it makes my perfect life just a little easier. Thanks for understanding; hope your ship turns around.

Flew back in from Oregon with little fanfare, decided not to go into work despite having the afternoon available to do so and no real reason not to. Travel compensation, I’ll call it, when no one asks because no one cares. It’s an awesome sunny day out, but all I’ve managed to do with it thus far is lament over my lack of internet and waste time doing nothing. I did manage to muster a half-assed trip up the road to the local warehouse store, where I made a circuit of the impossibly wide aisles, shielding my eyes from the fluorescents, scouting the vast landscape for one of those pre-fab sheds they sometimes sell. My search impeded by stroller-laden stay-at-homes and big-TV-droolers, I gave up when there was no shed to be found. Somehow, the whole five minute waste of a trip was indicative of my mood this afternoon. Unmotivated; torn between doing and not doing; stuck in some limbo state between being constructive or being lazy; depressed for reasons that aren’t my own.

That’s all, but I like it. Goodnight.

Posted on

brotherly love

Bridges yet to span.
Dangit. In a shortcut attempt to go back and add a bunch of entries into the “Halloween” category – I wrote a small SQL statement to update the category value for all entries containing Halloween-related keywords. Too bad I didn’t bother to understand how the post-to-category mapping works, and I ended up making all Halloween-keyword-havin’ entries belong to only the Halloween category, erasing any other categorizations they used to have. Owell, add it too my to-fix list.

Anyway, in that vein. Sunday Erik came over and we worked a little on the Halloween props. Since last years witch project ended up being a static prop, I wanted to choose a better location for her this year. The peak of the roof in front was my 1st choice, but I needed a way to hang her a few feet out from the roof so she’d have room to hang freely. Erik came up with a pretty simple solution that incorporated a decorative thingy on the front of my house, and we were both really pleased with the results. You’ll have to imagine her broom and some colored spotlights on her, but here you go:

 

When I was in Taiwan a couple weeks ago, I was preparing to leave on my last morning in town. It was 6am, and I was hastily bundling items into my suitcase, scouring the floor for stragglers. Before I got on the interminably long flight, I wanted to sync-up my work mail so I could do some offline replying/housecleaning. Staring at the mails piling into my inbox, one from my Mom caught my eye. “Frank,” read the title. I double-clicked it up.

I haven’t written about this before now because I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to say about it, not because it didn’t matter to me. I wanted to make that clear up-front.

The missive went about explaining that my lil’ bro was in the ICU at the local hospital. He’d been “jumped” by some gentlemen the evening prior outside a bar, and was beaten unconscious. He had swelling between his skull and brain, thus the residency in ICU – but all expectations were for the swelling to go down and his condition to stabilize. I read the rest, and decided to call my pops just before I walked out the hotel door to find out the latest. Frank was out of ICU, but fairly well doped up to relieve pain. He’d certainly got a thrashing: a bad concussion, likely broken nose, two black eyes, and a Frank-head shaped dent in the steel frame of the car into which is head was repeatedly banged. He would be laid up for a few days at least, and likely would not have any permanent aftereffects. Well, good, I thought… at least he was alive. But man, what the heck?

So you want the rest of the gory details here, but there aren’t any. He got out, he got better, he’s OK now. But guys, the reason I’m writing this is not to tell you the story of my brother getting his ass kicked (as compelling a story as that may be). The reason I’m writing this is to examine my reaction to my brother getting his ass kicked. And, if I write this the way I want to, I may risk sounding callous, aloof, over-cool, whatever… but I’m just gonna run with it, OK? OK.

My immediate reaction was a bit of a surprise to me; it was almost just like reading about the story as if it hadn’t happened to lil’ bro. I wasn’t scared, sad, shocked, upset; I wasn’t much of anything. My first reaction was to call my parents to check on his current condition. Upon hearing he was doing better, my mom suggested I call him at his bedside – a thought that didn’t appeal to me much at all. I dunno, maybe I won’t sound callous because I can’t really explain it. It’s odd, like, I somehow knew it wasn’t that big of a deal. And, I don’t mean to trivialize it, I just mean… I wasn’t as surprised, looking back, as I’d think I’d have been. If I get brutally honest with myself, I think I know the reason that I wasn’t so surprised. Lean in, I’ll tell you if you don’t think I’m an animal for saying it: I wasn’t surprised because, somewhere deep in me, I half-expect stuff like this to happen to my brother. Bad shit happening to Frank just doesn’t shock me anymore.

No! Wait! I don’t mean it like that. I mean, I feel like my brother has been dealt an undeservedly large hand of bad luck in his life – not that I “expect” this kinda thing because of him or something about him. Also, you have to realize that I tend to have a very hard-to-elicit “shocked senseless” reaction. I wrote about it once, how bombshell news tends to phase me… my almost too-laissez-faire attitude toward ground-shaking happenings. I think my somewhat ho-hum reaction to Frank’s incident is a product of these two aspects of me working together.

I still feel like I need to expand here, because I’ve done my brother a disservice – which is mostly because I do pretty poor at putting down complex feelings in paragraph form. Hey, it’s hard, try it. Bitch. Anyway, like I was saying (poorly), I just feel that, compared to me, my brother has had his fair share of crap. For some reason, I got handed this extremely dumb-luck driven bloom into adulthood, while his has seemingly been one stormy sea after another. Maybe this is unfair; perhaps, perceived from his point-of-view, he’s simply had an enjoyable and hard-won road to grown-upness, much as I perceive my own trip. Maybe it only seems rocky to me, looking in from the outside where I truly have no idea what’s going on. I guess I can’t be sure. But I do know that, wrong or not, it sure seems to me like, compared to my brother, golden apple after golden apple has been presented to me on silver platters, or simply dropped into my lap.

I hate that I feel this way; hate that I feel like I’ve had such an easier go at it than Frank has. But, that’s how I feel. It brings guilt. It’s hard-to-explain guilt though, because I feel bad for feeling guilty – if that makes sense. Who am I, so richly blessed, that I have can afford the luxury of feeling bad for my poor little brother? It’s like the first class passenger who looks down his nose at the poor steerage shuffling past into the Super Saver seats… taking mock pity on the lot that life has given them. What right do I have to even feel guilty, have things been that super-duper for me? It’s bullshit. Frank and I are just the same, he’s dealt with what I’ve dealt with, I’ve dealt with what he’s dealt with. Right? Anyway, all of this becomes immediately unimportant the second I sit down with him and have a couple beers.

OK, enough of that.

Sharaun bought some stretch-top pants at the maternity store on Friday (yeah, her belly pretty much dictates a wardrobe change at this point), and when she got home and took them out of the bag, the store had stuffed all sorts of associated-marketing goodies in. There was some boob-lotion, some Strong Mom vitamin drink, and this little green and white piece of paper. On this little green and white piece of paper were some words, so I decided to read them. The words on the little green and white piece of paper were telling me about this Mastercard I could get. Nothing new there, with the amount of credit card offers we get in the mail – I could apply for three or four new cards every day. But the green and white paper-pitched Mastercard was different from those other Mastercards. The green and white paper Mastercard earned money with every purchase you made – money that went into a fund; money that went into a fund for your child’s eventual college education. I stared at the paper for quite a while, y’all.

College? Hey, Lil’ Chino? Listen up. I think you still have a vestigial tail at this point and Mastercard wants me to think about saving to send you to college? I don’t even own my diploma yet, and Mastercard wants me to start saving for yours. Hey, Mastercard? Listen up. Why you gotta scare a brother like that? That’s just not cool man, totally uncalled for. College?

G’night friends and family.

Posted on

three days without pills

Paydirt?
Sunday night and I wrote more than one entry’s worth, so I split it in half and will post the spillage tomorrow. Makes things easier for me, and helps to avoid last week’s spotty posting style. This entry can be summed up as a “blog update,” so to speak. The “meat” of it is down below, but here’s a couple shorter updates before we get to that. Enjoy.

First off, an update on my post about my attempts to kill off the bermudgrass armies marching on my front lawn. This past Friday, nearly a week to the day I sprayed, I finally started seeing results. The weedy areas are browning up, but the good turf still looks healthy, untouched. I’m not sure if I need another application or not, I was going to do it on Saturday – but I think I’m going to give it a few more days lest it just needs more time and I over-poison.

Next, remember that ridiculously obscure state-mandated test I mocked when we learned Sharaun would have to take it for her teaching credential? She took two of the three units (the hard two), and, to her immense surprise, passed them both. The day after the test, she came home so bummed, convinced she’d failed. She didn’t even logon to the website to check her scores. But, when the official results came in the mail – she had passed both. It really made her happy, and that made me happy. One more unit to go (the one about songs and dance and whatnot), and she’ll be done.

Flashing waaaay back to the entry where I learned of my allergic-to-cold malady – last week I ran out of my allergy medicines, and I forgot to fill them right away. By the third day without pills, I was nearly unbearably itchy. I itched when I got out of the shower, when I drove to work with the windows down, after coming back into the air conditioned building where my sheen of summer sweat slowly cools off. Guess this nuisance disease is here to stay for a little longer, which really bums me out.

Finally, remember when I told you that Pat and I had talked about fixing up my grandpa’s old highbanker? We were planning a camping trip with a gold panning theme. Well, we finally pegged the weekend for the trip – Labor Day, and on Saturday Pat urged me to bring over the pieces parts of the machine so we could try and get it up and running. My previous description of the machine, linked above, was actually inaccurate. What I was describing was a dredge/sluice combo – where my grandpa’s old equipment is really just a water-assisted sluice, also known as a “highbanker.” It consists of an engine, which runs a pump. The pump sucks water from the river and routes it through a hose to a sluice. You then dump buckets of sediment onto the sluice and the running water powers it over the “riffles” (bumpy-edged stuff) in the sluice. The heavier stuff (including gold) collects at the bottom of the riffles, usually on black rubber mats. These “leavings” are then panned to reduce them to the “take,” or gold. It’s a fairly brilliant idea – elegantly simple.

My grandfather’s old highbanker was in need of some repair. First, we had to ensure that the old Briggs & Stratton motor was still operable. Once we emptied out the old oil and fuel and replaced them with fresh stuff, we mounted the motor to a piece of 1″ board and fired it up. Without much effort, the old motor was puttering away like a champ. Now, let me explain the basics of how the contraption works. While modern power-sluices or highbankers employ a motor/pump combo unit, my grandfather’s solution was simply a small engine powering a stand-alone pump. The two are connected by a drive belt, the engine turning the pump. In my grandfather’s original implementation (which I only know about because I was given hand-written instructions from my mom’s cousin when I inherited the machine), simplicity ruled. Both the pump and motor were mounted to pieces of 1" thick wood, and these two pieces were connected by way of a couple door hinges. When you connect the pump and engine with the drive belt, the two hinged planks can’t lay flat, and the weight of the pump pulling on the hinges provides the tension on the drive belt. Imagine it like this:

I spend too much time in Visio.

With this “clapper board” arrangement, there’s no elaborate mounting constraints to ensure the proper amount of belt tension – gravity takes care of that. Not to mention, you can tap out the hinge pins and separate the pump and engine boards for easier transport and storage (also mentioned in those hand-written instructions). When I got the parts, both the engine and pump mounting boards were missing, as was the drive belt. Pat and I made a trip to the hardware store and picked up some hinges, 1″ board, and a drive belt for an edger. We quickly mounted the engine and pump, and connected them with the door hinges. The gravity-tension on the belt worked perfect! We then moved the whole rig out to his backyard, where we’d be testing it in the pool. We attached the short intake hose to the pump, and dangled it into the pool. Then stretched out the long output hose around to the other side of the pool. Pat suggested we “prime” the pump by pouring some water into the intake hose and pump itself, this way, the pump would start sucking water as soon as the engine started turning it. His suggestion was a good one, as the pump would only start sucking water well after it was properly primed. Once we got it – it worked like a charm. So good, in fact, that we were both surprised by volume of water the little rig was transferring. Some imagey-goodness for your approval:



Affixing the hinges to the engine side of the “clapper board.”

Mounting the pump, the clapper is attached and hinged.


The hinged pump providing tension for the drive belt.

Hoses attached, getting ready for the test.


It works!

Labor Day could be payday if this thing works out right. Well, not really… but it would be super cool to at least get some dust/flakes from the process. I’ll be happy if we find anything. Changing subjects a bit, we’ll be camping for the next two weekends. This coming weekend at Erik and Kristi’s wedding, we’ll be camping on their land – where the ceremony and reception will be held. I’m actually in the wedding, so I’m really excited about heading down. I’ll be taking Thursday afternoon and all of Friday off from work so we can head down early for the rehearsal and dinner, and get in a couple more evenings of camping. It should be a great time, the weather is supposed to be perfect – and they dug a true firepit, ringed in stones and accented with stump-chairs – not to mention the beer. So, wedding camping this weekend and gold-prospecting camping the next. I’m pumped… really looking forward to both.

With that, goodnight or good-day – depending on where you are.

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chapter two


They say bad things happen in threes. Not sure if that’s true for good things too, or maybe just “things” in general. I guess if you lose the bad/good qualification, the statement doesn’t make much sense: “things happen in threes.” Sure they do, and fours and eights too. Good things, to me, though, have indeed seemingly been happening together. I may even talk about one or two in today’s entry.

Let’s get right down to it then: we’re having a baby.

We created life. I wrote this the day I found out:

Your birthday will be in February or March. Which means you’ll likely be an Aquarius or maybe Pisces or, in China, a Dog – not that I hold with that kinda stuff. I will be 29 when you arrive, a good age for a father, right?

I thought about you when I called my pops on father’s day and it hit me that it would be my last non-qualifying one. I thought about you when I remembered our non-refundable tickets to World Cup in Germany next year. I thought about you and how much I’ve been away from home for work this year. I thought about you a lot when I was drunk in a seedy club at 3am in Manhattan; and how I feel like I’m ready to be done with that scene and wished you were already here so I wouldn’t have been there.

I kinda think I want you to be a boy, but I won’t be mad should you choose a vagina.

I’ve already started thinking about converting the spare bedroom into your nursery, about whether those little outlet covers are just 1st-time parent paranoia, about diapers, and high chairs, and carseats. Your coming arrival has got me thinking about all sorts of things I’ve never considered before… Money; you make me think about money.

I guess I wonder the same things as most people… and I guess, in reality, I know the answers to most. I mean, things like how our relationships with our friends will change. I know the answer already, it’s just kind of sad to realize that a whole way of life that we’ve become accustomed to over the past few years is coming to and end. Then again, it’s the most exciting prospect I’ve ever dealt with… not the changing relationships part, the creating another human part.

Like billions and billions of humans before us, we’ve managed to do our part in sustaining the species. It’s an amazing prospect, really, and completely mindblowing. To think that there is a completely “new” human, growing up from what I’d consider essentially “nothing” somewhere inside my wife’s own body. This thing is busy transforming from nothing into something completely amazing. It will come out as a working thing, and I’m sure one day when it’s a teenager it’ll love that I referred to it as such. “Thanks dad, I’m a ‘working thing’ huh?” But really, I’ve long been staggered by the thought of babies. What an amazing process, how incomprehensibly complex and precise, how perfect that it just “works.” Oh, we’ve been reading books and doing our research and whatnot, and, man, I can see how you could potentially get really freaked out that it might not “just work.” I mean, it’s amazing how precious this little developing thing immediately becomes to you, even if it looks more like a tadpole than a human right now; you want to protect it and the vessel carrying it like they were the Crown Jewels.

I remember reading somewhere that, in the old days, expectant Chinese women would work tending the rice fields right up until they went into labor, and, after popping out their new child, would return to the paddies as soon as they could walk. That’s interesting to me, because it tells me that, at some fundamental level, pregnancy is supposed to work. I often find myself falling back to the “caveman argument.” It’s something of my own invention, really, but, I always catch myself thinking things like, “Cavemen didn’t have toothpaste,” or, “Cavemen didn’t know about cholesterol.” Likewise, cavemen probably didn’t do much in the way of prenatal care… yet here we are, living proof that their lineage survived. Makes me think that the process has been designed to just work, designed not to go wrong. Not that I’d use that as some Christian Scientist cult-think and forgo the benefits of modern medicine… it’s just a point of comfort for me with all the potential fear-mongering out there.

In other news, I continue to work myself ragged. I’m not kidding. I’m working till midnight most evenings, trying to do my best to suppress the list of “to do tonight” things that I pile up during the day. Semi-related, work promoted me to a management position. It’s not the reason I’ve been working so hard, but it sure isn’t helping. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not going to start talking about work in depth here, I firmly decided against that on blog day one, but I figured the promotion is having a big enough impact on my life now that it’s worthy of documentation. Anyway, it’s exciting, and a bit daunting, to think that I now have people who “report to” me, whatever that means. I’ve never been a control freak… and I still maintain that I’ve managed to coast to success with the help of luck more than skill or knowledge. Call it humility or whatever, but I know my deep-down slacker core, and it is alive and well. Underlining it all, though, is a intense feeling of accomplishment. I feeling of vindication, like I’ve been formally recognized for doing well, officially acknowledged in front of my peers as someone who’s worthy of leadership. Maybe that’s a bit big-headed, but it’s honest.

So, those are my two big things. I’ve been keeping these couple things to myself for over a month… trying to write around them and come up with other things to talk about, even though they’re really the only two things that’ve been on my mind at all. Work has been all-consuming from a non-emotional standpoint, and Lil’ Chino (what we call the growing child in my wife’s belly) all-consuming from the emotional side. I’m not sure to what extent either happening will or won’t change the blog, but it’s kinda silly to think there’ll be no impact at all. Blogging with-child will at least give me plenty to write about, and blogging as-manager will likely reduce my already slim “grindstone” category… as I’ll likely be more guarded where I may have previously been somewhat candid.

I wanted to mention that, at my ten year high school reunion this past weekend, someone I literally hadn’t seen in ten years told me that they’d been to this very page. Now, I don’t know if said person is a recurring visitor, but it was an interesting statement to hear. It of course made me happy, being the attention-feeder I am at heart, I always love to hear about unknown readership. I shouldn’t try to pawn it off as some amazing thing, after all, I did link our classmates.com profile directly to sounds familiar… so it’s not all that far-fetched that someone I went to school with might happen here. Continuing on the reunion theme, I wanted to give it a proper writeup.

I thought it was excellent, although I wish we’d had more time to socialize. There was a dinner even the first night, which Sharaun and I were able to attend in full, as well as an after-party that night. But we had only ten short minutes at Sunday’s “kids invited” BBQ, which is where I really wish I could’ve spent more time catching up with those whom I didn’t already know what was going with. The first evening’s after-party made me a bit sad… to see some folks seemingly still stuck in that endless cycle of booze and dope, despite the fact that they are nearing their 30s and now responsible for children as well as themselves. The drugs in my hometown are plentiful, to say the least, and it’s all to easy to get trapped in that scene. I didn’t like seeing mothers whose children were asleep in beds far away puffing on joints or coming out of the bathroom in threes. I dunno, I guess that’s the real world, or something… I still don’t have to like it. Not that I’m knocking you, dope-smoking mothers, should you be reading this… you can do what you want and may be a stellar parent – you’re bag just ain’t my bag, that’s all. We’re still cool.

I shoulda split this one up over two days, to at least guarantee some posting consistency… but I didn’t. Before I go, someone at work turned me on to this homemade thing the other day and I thought it was pretty funny. Maybe that means I’m a huge nerd…

‘Night.