The Wee Man took us on an outing today.
He wanted to go see the plants at the botanical gardens.
I won't spoil the pics with a lot of words.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Un-Monitored
I’m sure one or two of you may remember my story of the apnea monitor a while back. For those of you who don’t know what I’m referring to … read a little already … but anyway, the purpose of an apnea monitor is twofold.
First, should a baby stop breathing at night, it let’s off a loud alarm to hopefully wake the child up and startle them enough to start breathing again.
Second, once the monitor goes off at 2:00 AM, it’s supposed to be loud enough to alert emergency personnel that the father of such infant has had a heart attack and will need to be transported to the nearest medical facility.
The Monitor of course is designed only to alarm about the hour of 2:00 AM, just when you are in your deepest sleep (conversely I believe it also has a self timer to alarm a second time again at 4:00 AM) which is just enough time for your heart to stop pounding which allows you to fall into an even deeper sleep.
Now I’m a pretty heavy sleeper when I want to be, which is to say when I’m unconscious. It takes about 2 minutes and 10 hits of the snooze button to nudge my brain to wake up enough in order for me to rouse my body out of bed. I’ve told the wife that if an intruder breaks in, to wake me up when she wants me to drag the body outside and bury it.
Because of this fact, coupled by the timing of the alarm, you can imagine the keystone cops antics that have ensued at 2:00 AM as my body is off to the races while my mind is still dozing in LaLa land.
Well today marks the day that we are no longer using the monitor, which means that there are a few things that we are going to be doing without.
I can thank the monitor (or as I like to refer to it, the screaming box from H#ll) for the following:
8 bruises on the rib cages of puppies (what I call breathing speed bumps).
7 broken baby toys
5 dents in the wall, the result of daddy prying rawhide bones from beneath his feet and flinging them across the room
1 soiled carpet from a startled doggy
1 soiled mattress from a startled daddy
12 broken toes – all on the same foot (yes I’m in the Guinness book of world records)
18 trophies for the wife for the “Fastest to the room” award
1 Apology to the wife for tackling her in order to prevent buying the 19th trophy
3 broken alarm clocks (As it turns out, hitting the alarm clock snooze button with a hammer won’t affect the noise coming from the monitor at all)
32 bruised shins (I swear the wife re-arranges the furniture when I fall asleep just to see how many pieces I can run into on the way to the room)
And finally, more than one “performance evaluation” on the proper way to attach the monitor so that it doesn’t falsely go off …. Again.
I can’t exactly say that I’m sad to see the thing go, it was quite an adventure.
Farewell monitor, I hope you have a beeping good time somewhere else.
First, should a baby stop breathing at night, it let’s off a loud alarm to hopefully wake the child up and startle them enough to start breathing again.
Second, once the monitor goes off at 2:00 AM, it’s supposed to be loud enough to alert emergency personnel that the father of such infant has had a heart attack and will need to be transported to the nearest medical facility.
The Monitor of course is designed only to alarm about the hour of 2:00 AM, just when you are in your deepest sleep (conversely I believe it also has a self timer to alarm a second time again at 4:00 AM) which is just enough time for your heart to stop pounding which allows you to fall into an even deeper sleep.
Now I’m a pretty heavy sleeper when I want to be, which is to say when I’m unconscious. It takes about 2 minutes and 10 hits of the snooze button to nudge my brain to wake up enough in order for me to rouse my body out of bed. I’ve told the wife that if an intruder breaks in, to wake me up when she wants me to drag the body outside and bury it.
Because of this fact, coupled by the timing of the alarm, you can imagine the keystone cops antics that have ensued at 2:00 AM as my body is off to the races while my mind is still dozing in LaLa land.
Well today marks the day that we are no longer using the monitor, which means that there are a few things that we are going to be doing without.
I can thank the monitor (or as I like to refer to it, the screaming box from H#ll) for the following:
8 bruises on the rib cages of puppies (what I call breathing speed bumps).
7 broken baby toys
5 dents in the wall, the result of daddy prying rawhide bones from beneath his feet and flinging them across the room
1 soiled carpet from a startled doggy
1 soiled mattress from a startled daddy
12 broken toes – all on the same foot (yes I’m in the Guinness book of world records)
18 trophies for the wife for the “Fastest to the room” award
1 Apology to the wife for tackling her in order to prevent buying the 19th trophy
3 broken alarm clocks (As it turns out, hitting the alarm clock snooze button with a hammer won’t affect the noise coming from the monitor at all)
32 bruised shins (I swear the wife re-arranges the furniture when I fall asleep just to see how many pieces I can run into on the way to the room)
And finally, more than one “performance evaluation” on the proper way to attach the monitor so that it doesn’t falsely go off …. Again.
I can’t exactly say that I’m sad to see the thing go, it was quite an adventure.
Farewell monitor, I hope you have a beeping good time somewhere else.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Prunes ... ' Nuff Said
So I promised not to even say the word ... well you know what it is ... for a long long time. So I'll start this by saying that the Count recently had his first solid food.Here's a picture of the joy.
As you can see, he's REALLY enjoying it.
I tried to convince him to take more ...
Thus the result
After wrestling back the spoon, we tried again.
He was very excited.
Alas, after the kid gagged, the wifey said that was enough.
The next day I think he snuck the stuff to the puppies, because I was greeted by this when I got home.
We've tried carrots and for reasons I will NOT go into, we have now tried 
prunes. Results are getting better.
It's all exciting here, but we're not sure what to expect next.
........... and the prunes worked.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Piles of Fun
I had an interesting scenario happen to me last night … well at 4 AM this morning. The incident was in and of itself, rather unpleasing. It is of such a nature that I promised I would lay off the graphic details for a while, but it reminded me of something that happened a couple of years ago that should be slightly less disgusting and a little more humorous.
When Eve was a puppy, we had a difficult time with her eating poo. I don’t mean the fuzzy little bear named Winnie either.
We had to watch her constantly, pick up everything that came out, make sure we watch Samdog, etc because if it was out, she was going to find it and eat it.
I was in the back yard one early spring afternoon and I was raking leaves. H decided it would be nice for Eve to get some fresh air, so she locked her in the back yard fence with me and just let her run around while I worked. I continued raking and paid little attention to her as I enjoyed the spring day. It was probably about 10 minutes later that I noticed my normally hyper dog, who would be running around trying to chew something, was parked in one place just going frantic. She was in a pile of leaves with her head buried about 6 inches below the surface and not thinking of coming up for air. My mind immediately went to poo.
I rushed to the leave pile and picked her up, not seeing any evidence of the offending product, I began to wonder if my concern was unfounded and I was just being paranoid. I held her face up to mine wondering if I could perhaps catch a whiff of any unpleasant scent that may have lingered around her snout.
It was about that time that she let out the biggest sneeze I have ever seen a dog make. My suspicions were immediately confirmed as my entire face was covered with the nastiest smell I had EVER encountered.
Now I usually have a pretty iron stomach when it comes to unpleasing aromas, but this just about did me in. My nose was about 2 inches from her, mouth slightly open, eyes looking intently for remnants; to say I was completely caught off guard doesn’t begin to express my unpreparedness for what I had just experienced. I was just about to toss me lunch in the back yard when I recovered my composure.
So boys and girls, learn from my mistake and never ever check your doggie for that offense in this particular fashion.
When Eve was a puppy, we had a difficult time with her eating poo. I don’t mean the fuzzy little bear named Winnie either.
We had to watch her constantly, pick up everything that came out, make sure we watch Samdog, etc because if it was out, she was going to find it and eat it.
I was in the back yard one early spring afternoon and I was raking leaves. H decided it would be nice for Eve to get some fresh air, so she locked her in the back yard fence with me and just let her run around while I worked. I continued raking and paid little attention to her as I enjoyed the spring day. It was probably about 10 minutes later that I noticed my normally hyper dog, who would be running around trying to chew something, was parked in one place just going frantic. She was in a pile of leaves with her head buried about 6 inches below the surface and not thinking of coming up for air. My mind immediately went to poo.
I rushed to the leave pile and picked her up, not seeing any evidence of the offending product, I began to wonder if my concern was unfounded and I was just being paranoid. I held her face up to mine wondering if I could perhaps catch a whiff of any unpleasant scent that may have lingered around her snout.
It was about that time that she let out the biggest sneeze I have ever seen a dog make. My suspicions were immediately confirmed as my entire face was covered with the nastiest smell I had EVER encountered.
Now I usually have a pretty iron stomach when it comes to unpleasing aromas, but this just about did me in. My nose was about 2 inches from her, mouth slightly open, eyes looking intently for remnants; to say I was completely caught off guard doesn’t begin to express my unpreparedness for what I had just experienced. I was just about to toss me lunch in the back yard when I recovered my composure.
So boys and girls, learn from my mistake and never ever check your doggie for that offense in this particular fashion.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Renovations
I forgot to mention that I painted our bedroom a couple of months ago. I had a little help. Here's a picture to prove it ... they're taking their break.
Ameri-CAN’T Airlines
So I mentioned that I had taken a trip over the weekend for work, and how fun it was. Now I’ll do my best to explain it with a little more humor than I was feeling during my trip.
I was lucky enough to get H booked on my flight to Chicago out of Tulsa. We woke up early Saturday morning and drove to Tulsa for our 11 AM flight. The plan was to arrive in Chicago, pick up the car, and head to work with the two other ladies from the office that I was traveling with. I was slightly worried that getting through security with the count was going to be a headache, but actually, the airport was empty, the ticket counter agents were extremely helpful, security was very nice, and everything went extraordinarily smooth. This was going to be a pretty good trip.
I had just counted 8 eggs that were going to hatch.
They called our plane to board about 10:30 or so and we headed down the ramp. The little guy was getting a little fussy, but nothing out of the ordinary. We thought we would just feed him as we took off and it would kill two birds with one stone, take care of the air pressure pains in his ears and get him fed all at once.
About 11 AM when we hadn’t moved and the wee man was getting a little more fussy, the captain came over the speaker and said that he was waiting on some paperwork.
11:30 rolls around and the jet fumes are becoming REALLY pleasant, we finally give up and feed the kid hoping to placate him for a little while. The captain announces there’s a problem with the plane, they aren’t going to fix it, they’re just going to fly to Chicago and fix it there, now they just need the paper work. Thank Goodness, I don’t really care if the plane works, just duct tape the sucker and let’s get this puppy 2 miles in the air!
12:00, “Well folks, we actually tried to fix the plane because this is a major repair hub here in Tulsa and Bubba is a genius when it comes to things no one else can gifure out, but guess what, it didn’t work. So we’re just going to go ahead and fly to Chicago and see if we can bum a wing from United. Now we just need to finish a little paperwork.” Well if he didn’t say that, it was pretty close. I swear half the cost of a plane ticket must go to funding their supply of paper.
12:15 We’re away from the gate and on our way. HOORAY!
12:16 We’re at a dead stop 12 feet from the gate.
12:30 We’re back at the gate. “Believe it or not folks, something else broke. You know, you buy a plane off the side of the road and although the guy SWEARS it runs fine, I guess you just can’t trust anyone nowadays. I think we can fix this sucker this time. Sit tight and we’ll go get some more duct tape.”
1:00 “Allright, Everybody off. We ran out of duct tape and Bubba just doesn’t think the scotch tape’s gonna hold. Ya’ll go sit in the terminal and if you want a rag soaked with Jet fuel to take a few whiffs of, we’ll be handing those out at the door.”
They went and bought a new plane at Big Hearted Eddie’s used plane lot next door, and after boarding that plane and waiting another hour to take off, we finally got to Chicago about 7:00 PM.
I worked a couple of days with the normal drama while H visited family and dealt with drama of her own sort.
My flight back was scheduled at 4:00 and H’s was scheduled at 8:00. I knew my flight was going to be overbooked because our team booked the last 3 seats weeks ago. I tried to call the night before and volunteer to be switched to the 8:00 flight if they needed me to. They said sure, just give us $150 and we’ll do it, so I went ahead and stayed with my 4:00 flight. As soon as I got to the gate, the agent announced “We need 3 people to volunteer to take the 8:00 flight and we’ll pay you $250” so I walked up and was the first to volunteer.
The two ladies I was traveling with didn’t get seat assignments, so they had to wait until the last minute. Meanwhile I phoned for someone to come pick me up because I was now flying with H and the count. They let one of the ladies have a seat assignment, but didn’t give one to the other – but since they were riding together in Tulsa, that wouldn’t work. The one that had a seat said, I can’t go without her, so American said “Get on the plane NOW or we’ll give your seat away.” She said, “how can I get on if I don’t have a ride when I get there?”
With all of the tact of Donald Trump firing someone, American said “You’re not going now,” and gave her seat to someone else … the lady she was traveling with. So now guess who’s not getting on the plane.
After much drama and a ridiculous amount of ignorant, frustrating, stupid conversations for my level headed travelers to an obviously over-worked, under educated, non listening gate agent, they finally called both of them up, gave them a ticket, and told them get on a plane … then looked at me and told me to do the same thing.
I was floored. Not only was I not planning on getting on that plane, I had a ride coming, I could have really helped my wife, I wasn’t packed or ready, what the Heck?
Only later did I find out that the plane was over-sold by 3 seats. Although I volunteered first, three ladies traveling together volunteered after me, but they all had to travel together, so they changed my little number from 1 to 4, and stuck me on the plane. I have summed it up rather nicely here, I can tell you that the reactions that took place are definitely NOT suitable for printing. To say that American Airlines stinks, doesn’t begin to adequately explain all of the bad business decisions that the company made.
Now when H arrived to take her plane back to Tulsa, the gate agents were about as accommodating as a prison guard.
Apparently the Big Heated Eddie plane didn’t last very long because they had to again switch H’s plane and stick her on another one. She arrived in Tulsa a couple of hours later and we were all in a terrific happy mood … but at least we were home.
So, to summarize our story – Fly Delta.
I was lucky enough to get H booked on my flight to Chicago out of Tulsa. We woke up early Saturday morning and drove to Tulsa for our 11 AM flight. The plan was to arrive in Chicago, pick up the car, and head to work with the two other ladies from the office that I was traveling with. I was slightly worried that getting through security with the count was going to be a headache, but actually, the airport was empty, the ticket counter agents were extremely helpful, security was very nice, and everything went extraordinarily smooth. This was going to be a pretty good trip.
I had just counted 8 eggs that were going to hatch.
They called our plane to board about 10:30 or so and we headed down the ramp. The little guy was getting a little fussy, but nothing out of the ordinary. We thought we would just feed him as we took off and it would kill two birds with one stone, take care of the air pressure pains in his ears and get him fed all at once.
About 11 AM when we hadn’t moved and the wee man was getting a little more fussy, the captain came over the speaker and said that he was waiting on some paperwork.
11:30 rolls around and the jet fumes are becoming REALLY pleasant, we finally give up and feed the kid hoping to placate him for a little while. The captain announces there’s a problem with the plane, they aren’t going to fix it, they’re just going to fly to Chicago and fix it there, now they just need the paper work. Thank Goodness, I don’t really care if the plane works, just duct tape the sucker and let’s get this puppy 2 miles in the air!
12:00, “Well folks, we actually tried to fix the plane because this is a major repair hub here in Tulsa and Bubba is a genius when it comes to things no one else can gifure out, but guess what, it didn’t work. So we’re just going to go ahead and fly to Chicago and see if we can bum a wing from United. Now we just need to finish a little paperwork.” Well if he didn’t say that, it was pretty close. I swear half the cost of a plane ticket must go to funding their supply of paper.
12:15 We’re away from the gate and on our way. HOORAY!
12:16 We’re at a dead stop 12 feet from the gate.
12:30 We’re back at the gate. “Believe it or not folks, something else broke. You know, you buy a plane off the side of the road and although the guy SWEARS it runs fine, I guess you just can’t trust anyone nowadays. I think we can fix this sucker this time. Sit tight and we’ll go get some more duct tape.”
1:00 “Allright, Everybody off. We ran out of duct tape and Bubba just doesn’t think the scotch tape’s gonna hold. Ya’ll go sit in the terminal and if you want a rag soaked with Jet fuel to take a few whiffs of, we’ll be handing those out at the door.”
They went and bought a new plane at Big Hearted Eddie’s used plane lot next door, and after boarding that plane and waiting another hour to take off, we finally got to Chicago about 7:00 PM.
I worked a couple of days with the normal drama while H visited family and dealt with drama of her own sort.
My flight back was scheduled at 4:00 and H’s was scheduled at 8:00. I knew my flight was going to be overbooked because our team booked the last 3 seats weeks ago. I tried to call the night before and volunteer to be switched to the 8:00 flight if they needed me to. They said sure, just give us $150 and we’ll do it, so I went ahead and stayed with my 4:00 flight. As soon as I got to the gate, the agent announced “We need 3 people to volunteer to take the 8:00 flight and we’ll pay you $250” so I walked up and was the first to volunteer.
The two ladies I was traveling with didn’t get seat assignments, so they had to wait until the last minute. Meanwhile I phoned for someone to come pick me up because I was now flying with H and the count. They let one of the ladies have a seat assignment, but didn’t give one to the other – but since they were riding together in Tulsa, that wouldn’t work. The one that had a seat said, I can’t go without her, so American said “Get on the plane NOW or we’ll give your seat away.” She said, “how can I get on if I don’t have a ride when I get there?”
With all of the tact of Donald Trump firing someone, American said “You’re not going now,” and gave her seat to someone else … the lady she was traveling with. So now guess who’s not getting on the plane.
After much drama and a ridiculous amount of ignorant, frustrating, stupid conversations for my level headed travelers to an obviously over-worked, under educated, non listening gate agent, they finally called both of them up, gave them a ticket, and told them get on a plane … then looked at me and told me to do the same thing.
I was floored. Not only was I not planning on getting on that plane, I had a ride coming, I could have really helped my wife, I wasn’t packed or ready, what the Heck?
Only later did I find out that the plane was over-sold by 3 seats. Although I volunteered first, three ladies traveling together volunteered after me, but they all had to travel together, so they changed my little number from 1 to 4, and stuck me on the plane. I have summed it up rather nicely here, I can tell you that the reactions that took place are definitely NOT suitable for printing. To say that American Airlines stinks, doesn’t begin to adequately explain all of the bad business decisions that the company made.
Now when H arrived to take her plane back to Tulsa, the gate agents were about as accommodating as a prison guard.
Apparently the Big Heated Eddie plane didn’t last very long because they had to again switch H’s plane and stick her on another one. She arrived in Tulsa a couple of hours later and we were all in a terrific happy mood … but at least we were home.
So, to summarize our story – Fly Delta.
Welcome Home!
So I had to go to Chicago over the weekend for work, and the trip was an adventure to say the least. I’ll get into the wonderful details of our adventure when I recoup a little better, but I thought I would give a brief synopsis of my arrival home.
Since H’s family live in Chicago (more importantly, about a mile from where I was working), she took a trip too. We arrived home last night about 2:00 AM.
I needed to let the two puppies out to go potty, so I let them and Eve out really quick, then brought them back in. They had been in the kennel for several hours, so they were of course, more than a little hyper that Dad was home and apparently he wants to play.
As I bring them inside and try to corral them, it’s like trying to herd a dozen toddlers in a toy store – what’s this, what’s over here, can I get up on that, who’s in there, what’s that noise … not to mention that they are FAST and STRONG and NEVER go in the same direction. So as I’m scrambling to catch one, the other one is into something even worse.
The kid wakes up and starts crying, the wife is trying to cater to the Big Dog who has a booboo that she needs to pay attention to. I’ve been up since before 6:00 and have been doing heavy lifting all day, then air travel, then a 2 hour car drive home. I can barely see straight.
Evie is trying to tell me hello because I was gone for 3 days and she was SURE I was dead, so she needs to sniff me constantly to make sure I’m not an imposter. I’m herding hyper puppies into their kennels, pushing Evie off, hurrying to get to the Baby who’s now screaming his head off, Kennel! IN! Off Evie! Coming Little GUY! Quick! Come! Down! Hold! Humphrey! Iggy! Evie! Be Right There Buddy! No! HERE! STOP! COME! DOWN! HOLD! NOW!!!!!
Finally, things settle down …..
I wake up at 6:00 AM bleary eyed to go let the puppies out and as I round the corner to the office, gazing back through the double French doors is a little surprise …. There’s a little fat brown and white puppy waggling his tail at me and smiling as if to say, “Good Morning Daddy! The kennel didn’t shut, look what I did!”.
Uh Oh.
In order to hinder accidents, I had covered one of the big dogs beds with several layers of plastic sheeting, and then covered that with some bed sheets. The little Roly Poly figured out if you pull back the covers on the big dog bed, you can entertain yourself for HOURS by pulling back layers of plastic over and over again. There was also something no longer discernable on the bed. I’m sure it’s something important, but at the time I didn’t have time to discover what it actually was.
Between the 60 year old Oak Desk, the endless computer cables, pictures, and books, I’m slightly worried about what else I will discover when I get home.
I can’t wait ….
Since H’s family live in Chicago (more importantly, about a mile from where I was working), she took a trip too. We arrived home last night about 2:00 AM.
I needed to let the two puppies out to go potty, so I let them and Eve out really quick, then brought them back in. They had been in the kennel for several hours, so they were of course, more than a little hyper that Dad was home and apparently he wants to play.
As I bring them inside and try to corral them, it’s like trying to herd a dozen toddlers in a toy store – what’s this, what’s over here, can I get up on that, who’s in there, what’s that noise … not to mention that they are FAST and STRONG and NEVER go in the same direction. So as I’m scrambling to catch one, the other one is into something even worse.
The kid wakes up and starts crying, the wife is trying to cater to the Big Dog who has a booboo that she needs to pay attention to. I’ve been up since before 6:00 and have been doing heavy lifting all day, then air travel, then a 2 hour car drive home. I can barely see straight.
Evie is trying to tell me hello because I was gone for 3 days and she was SURE I was dead, so she needs to sniff me constantly to make sure I’m not an imposter. I’m herding hyper puppies into their kennels, pushing Evie off, hurrying to get to the Baby who’s now screaming his head off, Kennel! IN! Off Evie! Coming Little GUY! Quick! Come! Down! Hold! Humphrey! Iggy! Evie! Be Right There Buddy! No! HERE! STOP! COME! DOWN! HOLD! NOW!!!!!
Finally, things settle down …..
I wake up at 6:00 AM bleary eyed to go let the puppies out and as I round the corner to the office, gazing back through the double French doors is a little surprise …. There’s a little fat brown and white puppy waggling his tail at me and smiling as if to say, “Good Morning Daddy! The kennel didn’t shut, look what I did!”.
Uh Oh.
In order to hinder accidents, I had covered one of the big dogs beds with several layers of plastic sheeting, and then covered that with some bed sheets. The little Roly Poly figured out if you pull back the covers on the big dog bed, you can entertain yourself for HOURS by pulling back layers of plastic over and over again. There was also something no longer discernable on the bed. I’m sure it’s something important, but at the time I didn’t have time to discover what it actually was.
Between the 60 year old Oak Desk, the endless computer cables, pictures, and books, I’m slightly worried about what else I will discover when I get home.
I can’t wait ….
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
