We'll see

Today I may have convinced one of the managers at my location to start coming to Judo with me.  Don't know if he'll actually show up though. We'll see.
On Thursday, Minion was still awful in his afternoon karate class.  The new girl is setting him off. There's a boy there about his age who is acting dead-on perfect though... I asked Minion to emulate him instead of her.  We'll see.
The camera and lens I loaned to another photographer 3 weeks back came back today. The one I loaned out 8 months back came back last week. Still out on loan is a tripod to one photog and a camping tent to another... don't know if I'll ever see either of those again.  Guess we'll see.
So far I have gotten perfect scores on both of my Econ quizes, and on the one assignment that's been graded.  Will my second assignment, and the work that I have yet to turn in all come back with all the available points scored? We'll see.
Potty training with Minion is progressing slowly.  I had hoped he'd be out of his diapers by now. How much longer will this phase of his life take? We'll see.  But no matter how frustrated I become at this, I cannot understand this "father" beating his 3 year old son son so hard it killed him, over potty training. That's something I could have gone without seeing.
My cousin's daughter ran away yesterday.  I learned about it this morning on Facebook. The police found her this afternoon. I neither know what prompted that decision, nor what will happen next. We'll see.
I'm re-working a poster of the managers and administrative staff at work to reflect recent promotions and transfers. Some people had expressed a level of distaste for the image currently being used for them, so I made a sign to post offering re-shoots since I am re-working the poster now anyway. Wonder if anyone will take me up on that. We'll see.

I think I crapped my brains out.

Hmm, does that mean I have sh*t for brains? ... Probably.

Honestly, the mental mistakes began yesterday night as I was getting ready for bed.  I knew it was Thursday night, but for some reason I had Wednesday's schedule in my head, and I set my alarm with plenty of time to get the boys to daycare and make it to work by 9:30.

When my alarm went off I heard my wife getting the 3 year old ready to leave... "Oh yeah, it's Friday-- she takes the bigger buddy boy in on her way into work today." *SNOOZE* but before too much longer my gut grumbled greasily and I knew I had to get up.

What I didn't know yet was that I was going to make an attempt to propel myself into orbit with a hydrolic jet.  I felt awful. Among other things, I was feeling guilty for soiling the toilet.  When Mom had come over yesterday to help with the kids, she had scrubbed it clean... and this was... unclean.  The type of unclean where I needed Clorox wipes to clean the underside of the toilet seat.

I had weighed myself before I sat down. Once I was finally done and cleaned up, I got back on the scale. I had lost 1.6 lbs. And then, I wasn't done anymore. Round two struck. while that worked it's way through my system, I posted to FB and called in to work - there was no way I was going to make it by 9:30 in this condition. In between my 3rd and 4th bouts I tracked down some Imodium.

I found some irony in calling in today.  I had seriously considered playing hookey on Wed to get a research paper written for school, but I just couldn't do it.  Work needs me, and I am a responsible adult, and a reliable person, and all that jazz. I have a duty. Today doodie was more important than duty.  I didn't call in on Wed, but spent all day Thurs before class grinding on it, and got it to an acceptable enough place that after only a few in-class revisions the instructor dubbed it an A worthy paper... Now I call in on my NEXT shift instead, when I'm not under the gun.

Last time I was late getting the 6mo old to daycare, they were concerned, so once I felt it was safe to venture more than a minute from the bathroom, I packed up the baby, gave him the last his anti-ear-infection meds and a bottle, and headed to daycare.

As I was pulling into the parking lot I thought about how I always check in on the 3 yr old when I drop the baby off, and see how he's acting at lunch time...  but it's pretty darned early for lunch, isn't it?  This is when I first realize that this is FRIDAY and that means I should be on FRIDAY'S schedule... I wouldn't typically drop Nugget off for another hour and a half, because I'm not scheduled to work until 12:05.  This is when I decided I must have flushed my brain today.

I went and got a McIcedTea, and wondered about town for about an hour. By then the boy was starting to get restless, but I didn't figure dropping him off 20 minutes early today would hurt anything... Besides... I needed to find another bathroom... I wasn't certain there were more problems, but I didn't want to risk a fart at this point.

I abuse 1/2 price books for their facilities- things aren't right, but they are better than before. I shop around their photo section, martial arts section, amime, software, etc. and pick up a $5 book on a famous oddball photographer.

I head home and see a garage sale on my street, so I stop and look.  There's a steel dump truck toy that my older boy would adore, but there is no one manning the sale.  I knock on the door, and offer $2. Offer accepted, I take the prize home and leave in where the boy will notice it first thing when he comes in the door.

But walking home from the sale I noticed something I felt was photogenic, and I hadn't shot much recently... since the light was good and I didn't have much on my slate just now, I grabbed my camera and headed back to take a few shots. The shots of the neighbor's discarded furniture didn't come out quite like I had seen it in my mind's eye... but the crack in the weatherworn, wet sidewalk with the helicopter seeds pretty much did. In the full resolution image, there's a ton of little details.

I worked on polishing up one of my other English papers so I can turn in a revised draft for an improved score next week, and while I was chipping away at that, The Wife came home with the boys. Soon after, we headed out to Mama China for dinner.  My wife and I have been trying to arrange a Chinese buffet night for some time now, but things keep falling through.  The big boy is old enough now that we have to pay for him, but that's fine... he likes the fruit, chicken, noodles, and sweets. He eats well when we go to "the cookie restaurant."  My wife also gets the buffet, but since I have such a limited capacity, I order a dish off the menu and will have leftovers for a week.  The 6 mo old "eats" free, so Michele lets him play with a few rice noodles, a smashed pea,  a grape cut into eighths, a section of mandarin orange cut up... and I joke "What, no pudding?"

The boy plays with the foods and considerably more of his tiny helping ends up on the floor than in his belly. When wifey goes up for seconds, she also comes back with tiny dollops of the 2 pudding flavors on their cold service bar.  She breaks out the baby spoon and readies a itty-bit of the chocolate pudding, and puts it in the child's mouth. He looks unhappy, drawing  an "Awwww" from his folks. Then there's a little cough and my wife says, "buddy, it's just pudding, I don't think there's anything there to choke on." And that was my 6 mo old's cue to spew like a fountain.

It came in three rapid volleys, and thankfully didn't draw much attention from the waitstaff or other guests. We cleaned him up, changed his clothes, wiped things down as well as we could with a pile of napkins and a few diaper wipes, and took the boys home.

On the way home my darling wife pointed out this was sort of a belated mother's day dinner, since that's about when our first Chinese Buffet plans starting getting derailed...  And that makes 2 mother's day dinners in a row that ended when one of our children puked on her. Last year, the one that was outside her belly at the time got sick at the steakhouse we were at with my parents on Mother's day. I told her next year we should get a baby sitter.

Disposal delima.

My 3 yr old was devastated. He came to me a sobbing, half naked, wreck. I had sent him into the bathroom to go potty before bed, and what ever had traumatized him occurred after he had taken his diaper off.  It took a few moments to coax words out between his wails, but eventually he let me know he needed his blankie back out of the trash.

I assured him everything would be okay warned him that his blankie may need a bath after it comes out of the trash, to prepare him for going to bed without his blankie tonight, then I went to go help my son retrieve his most sacred possession.

I figured he had foolishly fetched it from his room on the way to the bathroom, and had dropped it into the diaper-filled trashcan by accident... but once I laid eyes on the situation I realized my son's folly.  Buried under a layer of soiled diapers was a wash-worn, threadbare swath of white cloth that was not, in fact, his blankie.  It was, instead, a discarded pair of underwear that I had judged too loose to continue wearing because of my 110 pounds of weight loss in the last 3 months.  It probably should have died long ago on account of condition, but regardless it was tossed this morning. I showed him that his blankie was safe on his bed, and not in the trash. He went potty, put a nighttime diaper on, and climbed happily into bed to snuggle his blankie.

In an entirely unrelated note, there was a free health screening at work today.  I ranked in the lowest risk class for heart disease, with a less than 1% chance of suffering its effects within the next 10 years.

Cluster Hump

I stayed up last night making edits to a poster we keep with all the pictures and names of the supervisors, managers and administrators at the store I work at.  My company has low turnover for a retail environment, but... it's still retail... and promotions are always happening, so the poster needs frequent maintenance to stay up-to-date.  I realize at 11:30 last night I didn't copy down the new Assistant General Manager's last name, and don't know it.  I txt or Facebook msg the handful of co-workers who are both (1) up at that hour and (2) friendly enough with me to find it normal for me to contact them... None of them knew, either.

My 6 mo old was fussy and not sleeping at all last night. So even after I stopped being productive on the poster, there was no sleeping.  I crashed at 1am, but remember my wife getting out of bed to take care of the boy at 2... and 6.  I got up at 7 to start my day.

First thing I did was call work and get the A.GM's name.  Finish the poster. Go to order a print of it from my photo lab through our website... and the website is down.

TimeWarner is sometimes pretty wonky, and the gear running my wireless network at home isn't terribly reliable either... so I chalk it up to my connection, copy the JPEG to a thumb drive, and bring it with me to work.

Before I clock in, I show the image to the other A.GM, and she points out I forgot to remove a supervisor who transferred to another building. I forgot to mess with him in part because they haven't filled his position again yet.  oops.  She told me to print it anyway, and update it after the replacement is announced, probably later this week.

Oh, and she need to talk to me once I clock in.
Convenient she should mention that... it's time to clock in RIGHT NOW.

I hit the time-clock, go back into the office and get turned down for the position I applied for. Not really surprised, and I don't dislike where I am at, so it's not a huge deal for me, but still a little let down.

Get back to my photohut to find the company's photolab server's are down; it wasn't just my connection. No internet orders today ... and since the boss closed down early last night to run some maintenance on the printer, the 90 minute order delay had been in effect for all of the orders that had been downloaded to the lab before the web broke.

Which turned out to be a small blessing because even thought the Net orders were not comming in, I was soon to be running behind...  one of the paper-magizne bays on my printer was malfunctioning, and trying to diagnose and repair it was eating minutes... meanwhile the equipment we use to refill customer's printer ink cartridges was fritzing... and the phone was ringing 2 lines at a time with customers informing me they couldn't place online orders and demanding I either fix it or tell them how long the outage would last.

When it rains, it pours.

On the bright side... I HAVE lost more than 100 lbs. since I started...

Timeline

T-minus 12 hrs 'till dissection.
I should be asleep now... but I just ain't feeling it, ya know?

Thought today: when somebody seems amazed at how well I'm doing after surgery, I'm going to say "It takes more than being stabbed in the gut 5 times and having one of my internal organs carved out to slow ME down!" We'll see how often I can work that one into conversations.

You run and you run to catch up to the sun, but it's sinking

Itenerary working backwards...
-Surgery starts at 11:00 am.
-I need to be there by 9:45 am.
Google says 30 minutes drive time from parents house to the hospital w/o traffic...
-Leave parents house by 9:05 am
Dropping the kiddos with Beba and Papa and getting their well-wishes and stuff will probably take at least 10 min
-Be at 'rents house by 8:55 am.
Driving from my place to the 'rents through the Grandview Triange... a.k.a. the SKCCF...40 minutes.
-Leave home by 8:15 am
45 minutes to get the 2 year old awake, fed, and dressed to leave. During which time we can prep the 3 mo. old...
-Start wrangling kids by 7:30 am.
10 minutes to get self dressed in loose fitting clothes
-Out of shower & dried off by 7:20 am
20 min Shower with special pre-surgery soap
-In shower by 7:00 am.
Snoozing and slowly waking from the sleep of the dead takes about 20 min.
-Set alarm for 6:40 am
wouldn't hurt to be running 10 minutes early
-Set alarm for 6:30 am instead...

Hmmm.  well then... I have to have a pre-surgery-super-soap shower tonight before bed too...

All of the sudden I am feeling a little more sleepy than I thought.  I think I'll shower and hit the hay.

Why is it possible to be stopped up and have a runny nose at the same time? The sore throat and dry-but-phlegm-producing cough are getting pretty old too. Is it feed a cold and starve the flu or feed the flu and starve a cold-oh wait... I last ate 12 days ago and wont eat anything I can chew again for  10 more days yet... then I can try a soft-cooked egg, non-fat refried beans, or cottage cheese. Hmm, chewing there is still optional... lets look further ahead. In 18 days I can begin trying to work foods I would chew back into my diet.  I should mark my calendar.

Meanwhile, I think my 2 year old is trying to skip meals now because Daddy isn't eating. But buddy-boy, how am I supposed to live vicariously through you if neither of us are eating?  I think I'm going to go play some pac-man.

A long night.

My two year old refuses to sleep. We let him stay up a half hour past bedtime. We put him to bed and tuck him in. Ten minutes later he's laying at the edge of the hallway staring at us in the living room. Send him back to bed... and again... and again.  An hour and a half after our initial attempt at bedtime he lets me know he's pooped his diaper and needs a new one. An hour after that I find he's snuck into another room to play on the tablet Beeba and Papa got him for Christmas.  (The fact that my two year old got a tablet before I did could be the topic of a separate blog post sometime.) Back to bed and lock the tablet away. 11:30 at night he's up again, telling me his room is scary.

Behold the dreaded FireMonkey

!

"Your bedroom is scary?"
"Uh-huh"
"Why is your bedroom scary?"
"Fire-Monkey is scary, dada."
It took me a moment to remember that "Fire-Monkey" is his name for the humidifier in his room. Okay, perhaps a monkey with steam billowing from the top of his skull watching over you as you slumber might be unsettling, maybe. I go and show him how to turn the humidifier on and off, ask him if he wants it off tonight, and we leave him vaporless, pile blankies on the boy... again, wish him good night... again, and go back to hacking away at the interwebs for about another hour. I'm wrapping up and have heard not a yip from my son since we extinguished his monkey, I briefly considered that mayhap our issues had been resolved and he had drifted off to slumberland following my last intervention. Alas, as I headed to the restroom for my bedtime preparations, I realized things were amiss. The boy's bedroom door was ajar. I peeked in to find him absent from his "big-boy-bed." He wasn't playing in the bathroom, hadn't padfooted past me into the livingroom or guest room. There has been times where he as attempted to sneak into my wife's and my bedroom to sleep on the floor next to our bed, so I check there next... and the little cuss didn't settle for the floor...

No. He hauled his little ass up into our bed and nestled down into my spot! If I wake him, we might just go all night without any sleep! Well, at least he's unlikely to crap the bed since he just let loose a couple hours ago. I go pass out in the arm-chair in the corner. Toddlers are Assholes, but adorable assholes.

As cute as my kids are, and as biased as I am, the Cutest Toddler of the Day award would have to have been given to the 3 year old who's conversation with his father I overheard in a public restroom today.
"Gee Willikers!"
"Really? 'Gee Willikers'?"
"It means 'Wahoo!'"
"Wahoo?"
"Uh-huh, 'Gee Willikers' means 'Wahoo' in Spanish."
Aaaand I try to stifle a chuckle.

That was while I was on a 15 minute break at work... you want to know what no one needs to hear the moment they return to their department after a brief break like mine? "Oh thank Jesus you're back!" Yeah, I was nearly ready to about-face as soon as that left the mouth of my co-worker. Turns out he was just less than half competent and I could clean up his mess in about 60 seconds. It's not his fault he was incompetent, he hasn't been trained to work in my department, but they botched the break schedule and they needed a warm body to stand in for me, and Jordan got the short straw.

Toddlers are Assholes

It's become a mantra in our household... we try not to let the toddler hear us say that.

Crying w/o cause @ 2013 Ren-Fest

Today, my older boy shoulder rammed his mother and infant brother while she was trying to pick the little one up off the floor; told his mommy that she can not turn off the television because it is his, from his time-out spot; swiped and hid a glass ornament from mommy's nightstand, while he was supposed to be napping in his room; TPed his room, while he was supposed to be napping; and hammer-fisted the baby's face without preamble or cause.

I could tell you all about how awful my day at work was, what with this season being eight to ten fold busier than any other time of year, and myself the only veteran employee while we understaffed the department by 60 man-hours/week according to company payroll planing metrics, but it seems insignificant when compared against the struggle of surviving a malevolent, attention seeking two-and-a-half year old boy.

It is my belief that my darling angel of a child is not engaging in this rage-inducing behavior without impetus, but is rather is acting out in ways that garners our immediate attention because he is not entirely adjusted to sharing our time and energy with his baby brother.  Though I empathize with his new plight, I can neither excuse away nor condone improper behavior, especially when it is violence towards his defenseless sibling. I need to be sure he gets a fair amount of attention, with the understanding that "fair" is not defined the same as "equal;" that he learns acceptable ways to communicate when he need more attention; and how to cope with times when he will have to wait for our attention.

When you are a two-year-old you are the only important person.  You have only a vague, fuzzy concept of empathy if any at all. Hedonism is the primary mindset; if it feels good to me, it is right for me. If I want it, there is no reason I should not be able to have it, regardless of what "it" is.  Enlightenment and oneness are a long way off for a two-year-old. Until my boys learn to either respect others, or to act like they do because it makes their parents happy, my wife and I will continue our mantra: Toddlers are assholes!