Thank You Micro-Machine Man!

Remember the Micro-Machine Man? That Super Mario looking guy that sold those microscopic cars and the idea that tiny Hot Wheels were some how cooler than the regular sized models. We may not all realize it, but parents everywhere learned a lot from that guy. Don't believe me? Think about the last time you tried to get your child to do something in a hurry. Did it sound something like this?

Come here Come here Come here Come here k-ear k-ear k-ear k-ear COME HERE!

See just like the Micro-Machine Man taught you. I can do it with Fred's name too: Fred Fred Fred Fred Fred Fred F-ed F-ed F-ed FRED!

If you think about it after their child turns three every parent should be given an honorary Auctioneer's degree that would allow them to just jump up and take over whenever they please.

"Can I get a dollar dollar dollar. Got two got two got two. Can get I a five a five....what? Mama I'm sorry but this is my auction and I'm the only one that can run this microphone...oh hey there little buddy I didn't see you there. Yes I know owls are brown. Yep that baby has orange on. Now don't starting calling me Doo Doo that's not nice. On second thought maybe I do need a break so as I can get a glass of water....I concede the microphone to the lady with the little boy who just broke that lamp."

Off To A Rocky Start

At the end of the day after the sun is set and your child is sleeping soundly in his bed, it's easy to look back at what took place hours before and think "Boys will be boys". Four hours earlier when you've just walked into the door from a day that was every bit of a Monday only to find your precious child spent the day in Time-Out for throwing rocks....you're not so inclined to write things off so easily.

Needless to say we sort of started this week off on a slippery slope. The only thing that stopped him from getting a serious beating was that Lucy and I soon realized the whole thing may have been our fault. We took him to see a local waterfall Sunday afternoon and the entire time he was there he was tossing rocks in the river. Since he seemed to be having so much fun, we went to a quiet spot with picnic tables where he could sit next to the water's edge and throw pebbles until his arm fell off. Great family fun right? Of course! I'm sure we told him the only time you throw rocks is when you are at the river...we just may have not mentioned it a lot...or more than once.

How do you explain to the Director of your daycare that in the same sense that Lucy and I can be looked proudly on when Fred is well behaved.....sometimes we must also be scolded when he's not. While I figure out how to answer this question, enjoy these pics!

Now Serving Lobster!!

Thanks to the miracle that is DVR, commercials are a thing of the past. Really the only time I see a commercial is if I'm watching the morning news or happen to hear one on the radio. Even then I'm only half listening. This morning I saw one and found it so disturbing I couldn't shake the thought of it all day no matter what I tried. I'm not talking about the new Burger King Sir Mix-A-Lot Sponge Bob Square Pants Square Meal Deal ad. I would rather not have Fred walking around looking at every one's butt wondering why it's not shaped like the ones he saw on T.V. What has got me so repulsed is the Long John Silvers Lobster Bites for $2.99. campaign.


Admittedly I can be some what of a food snob. For years I boycotted Subway because they didn't have a clue how to make a sandwich and kept asking me what to put on a Spicy Italian when it was their idea to put it on the menu in the first place. Lucy likes it so eventually I just accepted who they were (and I hate going to more than one place for dinner). Then I was anti-Burger King for a whole year because they told me that if they had to give me free food because they messed up my order than they would have to do it for all the customers whose orders they got wrong (which would obviously teach them to get the #@$& thing right in the first place and we can't go around expecting people to learn from their mistakes can we). I lifted the ban because of the invention of the Chicken Fry which was simply too tasty of an idea to ignore.


Back to my point though....if the food is good I'll pay more for it. For example a $20 steak cooked to perfection is a gift from above. A $16 plate of Chicken Marsala with angel hair pasta and fresh vegetables is to die for. I'll even go as far as to say $10 for a fat eat it with a knife and fork double bacon pepper jack and mushroom burger is a steal. Some foods are good no matter what the cost and some foods should only be served at a minimum cost. In this case lobster. When I think lobster I think giant just pulled out of the fresh coastal waters of some local bay boiled with some corn on the cob and potatoes cry because it's so good once in a blue moon LOBSTER. NEVER have I EVER thought man I got 3 bucks and an empty belly. I think I'll go get me some lobster. I wish you could come, but $2 dollars won't get you something this good. No you need to go find you another .99 cents. If you bought your last lobster dinner with money you found in your couch cushions, I hope your insurance premiums are paid up.

The Tupperware Two-Step

Our kitchen is small. "HOW SMALL IS YOUR KITCHEN?!" Our kitchen is so small it makes The Michael Scott Paper Company look like Dunder Mifflin headquarters. Since you can't very well see how far my hands are stretched out....and I can't type with them that way either...let's just say it's the size of McDonald's bathroom minus the urine stains (thank goodness Fred is potty trained).

We live in an older house which was built in a time when only one person (the woman) did anything. Since only one person (the woman) was going to be in there, then only one person (the woman) needed to fit in there. Fast forward 45 years into a very different future and what you have is a meal made with love and mutual respect i.e. by a man and a woman. At first it was a task, but eventually we got the hang of it.

One, two you cut down there while I fry down here
Three, four I'll empty this while you load that
Five, six I spilt the spaghetti let's all pick up sticks.

Growing up I remember a joke about how to tell if an elephant had been in your refrigerator (footprints in the jello). Truth is all these years later as I stare into the far reaches of our icebox I have learned that it wasn't really an elephant after all, just a large footed monkey looking for the grape jelly.

The Fruits Of Labor

When you first think about having children, you immediately begin looking around at all the parents around you. Suddenly strangers in the mall become examples of what you want and what you don't want in terms of the personality of your child. Basic decisions are made as to the values you want to instill in your son or daughter. Things such as spanking (we do), putting a leash on your child (we will never do), and using the T.V as a babysitter (we don't as much as we used to do) all become things you spend months tossing around. No matter how much prep time you put into having a baby though you never really get any sense that all your hard work is producing the right fruit until years after the child has arrived home wrapped tight in that blue and white striped hospital blanket.

Recently as if he got caught up in all that is coming alive around him as Spring takes a hold of us, Fred is sprouting more and more each day. Take this past Easter for example: After church while Lucy and the Gigi prepared the feast, Fred decided that what he wanted to do most in the world was ride up & down the road passing out pennies to our neighbors while making sure to wish them a HAPPY EASTER!

Getting to the bottom of a Happy Meal only to find that he had already gotten the prize once before used to be a bummer, now is a chance to give a gift to a friend. "This one is for Max!" he said with giant smile on his face.

A kiss goodnight was once a request and now it's a gift given to Mommy before bedtime.

Words like Thank you, Please, You're Welcome have taken the place of I WANT THAT!

The best fruit of all though is that which is given in the form of a compliment from his teacher at church or from a mother at a birthday party he was invited too. These are the ones that mean the most simply because it means that he's being polite and good not because we are standing over his shoulder, but because it's who he is. And who is he is, is my favorite thing in this whole world.

Random Thoughts

1. Why does my cat only want attention when I'm getting ready for work and not the day before when I barely left the couch?
2. How much more of a man do I need to be in order to feel like I deserve to eat at Hardee's? I mean come on already we get it. You have big hamburgers and your customers like to eat cheese paper. Back off already.
3. George Carlin hit the nail on the head when he joked that the entire history of the world could be traced back to the need for more stuff. Eve wanted stuff. She wanted the apple. Nomads roamed the world collecting stuff. The Pilgrims came to the New World for more stuff. They fought the Revolutionary War because the British were trying to claim the stuff for their own. Ever week I go to Target to get more stuff and once a year we sale all the old stuff we no longer have room for.
4. Does anybody out there really like butt bread? I mean other than ducks.
5. What is it with the Mini-Statue Of Liberty yard statues? I'm as patriotic as the next guy, but this is one trend I don't get. How about just putting a flag up.
6. Honestly who are the Adam Lambert fans? Are they listening to the same thing I am every week?
7. Who cares that KFC will soon have grilled chicken? The last three times I've gone there they've been out of everything I ordered. Do they really serve chicken at all? Maybe they should change their name to Kentucky Fried Potatoe Wedges, cause that's all they seem to be making plenty of.
8. Can I not see things in 3-D because my eyes are bad or because I know that the 40-foot tall alien that is "shooting at me" is not really real.

This Does Hurt Me More

Today I'm here to prove a cliche. We all grew up hearing our parents say "This hurts me more than it hurts you.", right before they hit you with a belt so big it would bring a smile to the face of Rick Flair as he imagines holding it high above his head. Before we had Fred I always thought this was just something parents said to their kids to justify the beating that was about to take place. After all, what the phrase really says is that "I want you to learn this lesson so badly that I am willing to cause myself pain if it means that maybe just maybe you'll never make this mistake again." As if every swing of the switch simultaneously leaves a visible red mark on the child and a deeper unseen mark on the parent.

As I am now officially the parent of a 3 yr-old I can tell you that while I don't feel every smack on the butt, I definitely am pained before, after, and during the experience. The most painful thing about punishing Fred is that it simply kills my night. All day I spend my time at the office day dreaming about playing cars, tossing the football, playing golf, putting together a puzzle. Not once do I ever think "Man I can't wait to get home and make my child cry all night. What I wouldn't give to sit on my couch and not hear what I'm watching as the sounds of Fred whaling his lungs out echo across the neighborhood." You can't very well head off to the Space & Rocket Center moments after discovering your son took a swing at his "favorite" teacher. Plus...and this may sound wussy, but remember I've worked behind a desk for ten years and have been a part-time freelance writer for 2... it kinda hurts my wrist a little. Even if we pull out the dreaded wooden spoon of pain there's still some wrist action that takes place and typically causes a few aches n's pains.

Instead of "This is going to hurt me more than it will hurt you." maybe everyday I should just wake up go straight to my son and say "Look I know you can't help yourself, but could you pleeease not do anything bad today? I don't want to spank you. I don't want to talk about the bad thing you did with your mother all night. I don't want to hear you scream like you've been shot after only one pat on the but. Basically I don't want you to ruin my night. So before you go out into the great wide open, before you crawl under the class room rug after being told not to, could you please remember your dear old dad and just go make a tower?"

Crap And Other Words I Can't Use No More

Now that we have a 3 year old the time has come in our journey where we learn how fun it is to copy all the things that people say. Sure it's fun to copy something just moments after you hear somebody say it, but it's even more fun to spring the new word or phrase when you least expect it.

Among the words/phrases that Fred has begun throwing out there recently are:

• Crap-this one is all me as I've even caught myself saying it at church


• Stupid-this one got him beat within an inch of his life


• Oh My Gosh- this one has been altered some what and now comes out Oh My Goodness


• What am I going to do now- I think Lucy says this on a regular basis


• Well (pronounced Whale)- the moment Fred is bored with the conversation this is his clue that he's moving on


• I'm the boss- this one disappeared for close to a year, but now for some reason has reared it's ugly head once again.


• I can't do it- another phrase that is heavily discouraged


• Your my best friend- this one gets thrown around a lot and typically gets bestowed on whomever is spoiling him at the moment and not telling him no all day


• We going to do it after later?-this one is automatically thrown at you the moment you tell him no.


• Okay but after later?- comes after the no to the question above

3rd B-Day Pics

Under The Influence

Things have been swirling around our lives lately faster than I dare even try to blog about. I truly believe that if your life isn't a constant mix of coming, going, doing, and seeing than you aren't really living. Don't misunderstand me; I'm the first to scream "I need a break" as I head to the couch for a day of napping/movie watching. Still though now more than ever it seems that we just don't stop until we literally pass out in front of the T.V around Midnight every night. More and more I feel like a weather man attempting to predict what is going to happen next only to change the forecast at the last moment when it's obvious things aren't going to work out like I planned them. Every week brings a new storm or an unexpected event that leaves us feeling....Under The Influence.

Under The Influence Of Career Changes
Lucy began working from home this week. She's still with the same company, but they merged with a larger firm and part of the deal was that she got to move her office into the front room we never use. Meanwhile it seems I changed jobs at the worst possible time and although Accounts Receivable has always been a guessing game, now more than ever it feels like circumstances change with every passing moment. How many days past due should you let a customer go? When is the time to hold all orders? Who will fold under the pressure of the bad economy next? I never stop asking myself these questions.

Under The Influence Of The Thundering Three's
They say the Terrible Two's are the worst time in raising a child, but here a week away from Fred turning three I'm starting to wonder if those that believe that ever managed to survive long enough to see what pending doom lingered just over the horizon. Fred is...is...my favorite part of life, but he's also the most frustrating (he can understand when Diego speaks Spanish, but the words "Come Here" are foreign to him), most terrifying (how many times can one person hit themselves in the head without having a concussion?), most rewarding (last week I was his best friend, this week it's GiGi), most laugh inducing (recently we found ourselves at an auction waiting for a painting to bid on. Fred thought we said something else and began running around the room screaming "WE ARE WAITING ON BIG PANTIES!!), most peaceful (there's nothing like having him fall asleep in your arms while watching an old movie), most guilt inducing (Do I spend too much time working? Are we teaching him enough? Is it ok he only eats goldfish and cheese burgers?) thing I have ever experienced. Some days I want to kiss him. Some days I want to choke him. Some days I find myself wanting to the both within the same half hour. Now that he has discovered my ability to be a Smart Alec I just know we haven't seen anything yet.

Under The Influence Of New Friends
Fred has been making some new friends and the results have not all been positive. This week our son learned the word Stupid. This may not seem like much but after hearing it uttered for a large portion of my life, I'd rather he had learned on of those 7 words that George Carlin was told never to say on TV. On the flip side there are a couple new names on the invitation list for his birthday party (10:00 this Saturday @ the Highland Park COC. It's a cowboy party so don't forget to wear your chaps) which brings me to....

Under The Influence Of God
There for a while I thought maybe we would stop going to church all together. Part of being a christian is realising you are far from perfect and that sometimes without even knowing it you can find yourself in a position which seems a million miles from where you know you should be. We could blame it on a lot of things, but ultimately we were the reasons why we almost quit going to church. We got lazy and stopped working on our spirituality. Thankfully some very nice people never stopped telling us how much we were missed. We are back in church and I know it's God's influence on our lives that has made me happier than I have been in quite some time.

10 Signs Of Aging I Wish I Didn't Have

Once again I find myself in between freelance writing jobs and though at first I welcomed the break, now after only a month I've suddenly discovered that all this extra time has left me feeling a bit old. I'm looking at things differently, hesitating when I used to charge in head first, and dare I say....finally becoming an adult! I decided to list the changes:

1. I'm incredibly excited when I discover my mailbox contains the latest issue of Family Circle.....and not just because of the great recipes either. I'm actually reading the articles.
2. I can't seem to stay awake past 10 without taking a short nap first
3. I'm biting my tongue. I used to see something I thought was wrong or disagreed with and immediately begin telling the offender why they were wrong. Now I simply say something nice and keep my opinion to myself.
4. My DVR is set to record Jeopardy every day.
5. Sunday isn't complete without watching CBS Sunday Morning. I love the nature scenes and the tales of how life used to be.
6. I can't sit the same way too long or my ankle begins to hurt for hours at a time.
7. I'm always watching, reading, or listening to the news and can talk hours about the weather.
8. I'm always barking "WE NEED TO EAT AT HOME AND QUIT RUNNING THE WHEELS OFF THE CAR!"
9. I'm thinking about dying the grey out of my hair.
10. The moment I hear it's 55 or below outside I cancel all my plans and begin telling people I think I'm coming down with something.

Won't You Be My Neighbor...

This past weekend under the cover of darkness our neighbors across the street packed up and slipped away over the horizon. In a lot of ways they were mirror images of us. A hard working, scruffy, easy to get a long with dad. A beautiful wife. A small boy a couple of years older than Fred. A new baby.....okay honestly I'm just romanticising the entire thing. The truth is a Uhaul pulled up in the middle of the day and it took them the entire weekend to leave. The husband was nice, but more so than ever I tend to be a grouch who tells old ladies to mind their own business after they have just commented that the reason Fred is screaming his head off in the mall is because he must be tired. (Like myself and the other thousand people in the food court didn't know that, but hey thanks for making sure everyone within ear shot who wasn't already staring at me became witness to the meltdown). I got the wife part right, but who knows how old the kid was because they left him alone so much that he was practically raising himself anyway. For all I know he's a tall 1 year-old who was wise beyond his years. And no baby announcements here yet for at least a few more months

Neighbors are an important thing. Too nice and they are always over at your house bothering you. Too mean and you end up having to bring in everything that's not cemented into the ground before you go to bed at night. That's why the moment a near by home goes up for sale people immediately begin trying to hand pic who they think has a shot at the place.

"Aunt Lisa is looking."
"No Relatives!" Scratch
"What about that girl from your office?"
"She's goes through men like copier paper" Scratch

Ideally you want your neighbor to be a mirrored version of yourself, but less nosey. I'm a nosey guy and I'll just say it "Sometimes the show going on across the street is better than anything happening on HBO" There's the old guy down the block that refuses to take his medicine which means Fred gets to see an ambulance and a firetruck up close twice a month. The guy that refuses to cut his grass so eventually his wife has to breakdown and do it herself. The old lady with the looser son-in-law who might be a pedophile and must be kept an eye on at all times.

This is why I'm sad to hear that the folks across the street were forced to move. The economy is bad and their fixed payment apparently wasn't that fixed after all. Now instead of tuning in to "Look what they are letting that kid do now!" a new series has just been announced called "What if the new people have teenage boys!!!!"

He Wrote The Songs I Know By Heart

I must have started listening to him back when I was 16. I remember a group of us would all hang out at this old dead end out in the Industrial Park area of Florence just down the road from where I found myself working 15 years later. Ole #7 is what we called it cause it was right next to Tee Jays Plant#7. No matter what else was going on we'd all find ourselves out there at some point on a Saturday night just hanging out and having a good time. Good times and Jimmy go hand in hand so it's no surprise that over the all the laughing and hollering, "Son Of Sailor" could often be heard in the background. I remember Matt Parker and I driving around looking for trouble in his old navy blue pickup truck singing "He Went To Paris".

I forget when I bought my copy of Songs You Know By Heart, but it must have been somewhere between my senior year in high school and freshman year of college. That summer when all I wanted to do was sit at Tommy's lake house drinking anything I could get my hands on. That summer I made my first trip to Margaritaville. I didn't join a fraternity because of which celebrity was also a member, but it was always cool to know that we both shared the same rituals and connections.

Lucy and I would head off towards the beach quite a bit back in our early twenty's and the rule for me was all Jimmy all the way down there. Even now I insist on leaving the station on the Jimmy Buffet channel the whole time we are in Orange Beach, Al. We even stopped in to visit his sister Lulu's restaurant this year and will be back a dozen more times in the years ahead.

Despite the fact that I own a dozen or so of his CD's, I've never seen him play live before. Something I plan on correcting very soon. When telling their stories of how they came to meet somebody famous, most will say they went to their concert, snuck around back, waited for them to come off stage, and the rest is history......I've always been different so it shouldn't be a shocker to hear that this week I met Jimmy Buffet on an airport runway on my lunch break on a Tuesday afternoon. Thanks to my Aunt Lisa who works at the airport. When hearing Jimmy might be flying in (Muscle Shoals has a huge music history and Jimmy has recorded many an album here) she gave me a call on the off chance that I might get close enough to meet him. At first I figured it would never happen and almost didn't show up. Then at the last minute Lucy cancelled our lunch plans and instead of sitting at home for an hour scanning the web for freelance work, I decided I'd rather show up and not see him, than sit at home and not even have a chance.

So there I was along with maybe 10 others, shaking the hand of the man that had pretty much written the soundtrack to my entire life, and there with me was that simple yellow CD cover with the red letters that I bought some 15 years before. Here is the picture I took of Jimmy Buffett. Very soon it along with my signed copy of Songs You Know By Heart will be framed and hung on the wall of my home. Guess I better go buy another copy....

A Blanket Apology

Honestly I'm sorry. I should never have laughed and for that I apologize. It wasn't just me though, your mother was laughing just as hard as I was. In fact she almost fell off the couch. In my defense you guys laugh at me all the time when I talk in my sleep. Of course I've never ate an entire slice of bread while catching an afternoon nap, but hey congrats on multi-tasking. Still, that's where it should have ended. We should have just woke up or at the very least we could have quit laughing.....then just when we thought we had seen it all you slowly reached out once again, grabbed for your snack, and continued eating. Only this time....this time your reach was off a bit and while you lay there dreaming of eating a fresh piece of loaf bread, you were actually chewing on the corner of the blanket....and that's when I laughed so hard I almost wet myself.....again I'm truly sorry....but I tried to wake you up and your mother said no.

New Year's Rejuvenation

This past weekend was supposed to be our New Year's Revolution. For weeks we talked it up. Telling all our friends that we were going to put our recent bad luck behind us by righting all that went wrong on New Year's day. We had planned to eat the traditional foods (hogs jowl, black eye peas, turnip greens), make new resolutions, and even watch the ball drop via You Tube. It was going to be a ceremonial end to our bad Karma......and we never went through with it.

Instead we got up like a family and went to church on Sunday morning for the first time in ages. We sang songs in worship of God. We took the Lord's Supper for the first time this year. Even Fred went through the entire service barely making a peep. Afterward we joined our friends that had been doing everything they could think of to include us in their activities at a birthday party for one of the kids.

No at the end of the day there weren't any streamers or Midnight kisses under a sky full of fireworks, but just the same things feel new again and I have no doubt we did manage to fix what once went wrong.

Me And JD

I wouldn't go as far as saying I'm a huge Scrubs fan, but I have watched it on and off since it premiered 7 or 8 years ago. One problem I've had like others is that it gets moved around the schedule a bunch and I also tend to be the type that stops watching a show the second the story lines don't go the way I want them to. Still I consider it one of my favorites. This season it made the jump to ABC and the show got more of it's heart back. The plots are better, there are less fantasy sequences, and there's some real emotion being mixed in with the floating heads and visits from the Sesame Street muppets.

I may have brought this up before (and really after 305 posts, what haven't I talked about), but during the first few months Fred was born I borrowed seasons 1 & 2 from a friend. Shortly after Fred was born Lucy broke her toe so I took on night duty. For weeks Fred and I would wake up at 2:00 for some milk and a couple episodes of our favorite sitcom. Most of the time I found myself staying up later than he did.

I've been thinking a lot about those days lately and how nice it would be do it all over again one more time. Fred's officially sleeping in his own bed the whole night through now. He's learned to go potty without us even being in the bathroom. Maybe it's time to see what happens next.....

New Year's Revolution

We each have our superstitions; those things we do a certain way every time in order to avoid some cosmic disaster falling upon us. If you step over somebody, you must step back over them in reverse or face a curse. Honking when going under an overpass to scare of the devil. Holding your breath as you pass a cemetery so the ghosts don't get inside you and take over your body. Sitting down together on New Year's day for hogs jowl, turnip greens (or green beans in my case), and black-eyed peas. Each symbolising something, just don't ask me what.

This year we were interrupted just as we were about to sit down by a call to help a friend who was being sent to the ER. The dinner never happened.....since then Pops had a heart-attack(he is now doing fine of course), we were left without a kitchen until we could find somebody to help install our new dishwasher (which Pops says saved his life), the new dishwasher caused our pipes to break (again leaving us without a kitchen), Fred got a stomach virus (which meant we couldn't visit Pops in the hospital), Lucy got a stomach virus, our dryer has broken, the repair people lost our service claim and never showed up, I went from two freelance jobs to one freelance job to no freelance job.....again all minor problems when considering the great issues we face as country (except for Pop's health problems), but frustrating just the same. We think we have found a way to fix things though.....we are taking doing a do-over. A mulligan. Using our free spin. Cashing in our get out of jail free card. Rewinding and Re-living New Years. In the words of Scott Bakula "we are putting right what once went wrong". We are going back to January 1, 2009.

This February 1st, 2009 as the rest of the world gathers around to watch the Super Bowl, my family will be supporting the Steelers while eating our hogs jowl, our turnip greens and green beans, our black-eye peas, and attempting to turn back time in hopes of taking a second crack at starting the year off on the right foot.

What Goes Around Just Came Around

In my last post I mentioned Fred was sent home with a stomach virus and how we were praying we wouldn't catch it...well we didn't, but Lucy did and boy did she ever. It's now late Tuesday and although the waves of nausea stopped late last night, she is still feeling the effects of one of the worst stomach viruses we've seen in ages. It looks like we aren't the only ones that have felt it's wrath either, our friends Jules-N-Jud also went around with it. Trust me if you see this thing coming run the other way! Oh and speaking of name dropping do yourself a favor and check out my new pal Clayton's blog at Walking The Dog. Dude is writing the kind of stuff I wish I could find time for.

Yes...I'd Like To Schedule Puke For This Saturday

Kind of an odd title I know, but that exact phrase went through my head today as I was picking up Fred early from school. It seems that just about the time Pops got the news that he could go home after his successful heart surgery, Fred started a session of up-chucking that can only mean he's caught the stomach virus that is going around. When you are new at a job, and your the boss, and you only have 5 vacation days compared to the 15 you had at your old job, and you just received 10 days off in which nobody got sick....the last thing you want is to have to burn a day puking your guts out. So what you do is immediately attempt some type of negotiation with the powers that be.

"Dear Lord, please if I must get sick give me the strength to make it to Friday afternoon before the virus hits me. I mean I'm just asking for one day and I promise I will gladly claim my spot next to the toilet bowl."

I'll let you know Monday if he accepted my offer.

Heart, Soul, And Thoughts Of The Unknown

This past weekend Lucy's dad Aka Pops suffered a major heart attack while attempting to help me install our new dishwasher. Lucy and I have both mentioned this on our Facebook pages and before I go any further I want to thank the countless friends who have gone far far out of their way with everything from offers to watch Fred, tons of prayers, and helping us get our kitchen back to something we can function in. Thankfully Pops will be fine with some help and after a quick surgery planned for Wednesday morning, he should be getting close to coming home. That doesn't mean things will return to normal though.

Other than the obvious changes in Pop's lifestyle which will include kicking that cigarette habit and working some exercise into his routine, things may never be the same for any of us who were around him that day. First off there's the guilt. Guilt over fixing him that big breakfast loaded with his favorite country ham. Guilt over asking for his help to install the dishwasher. Guilt for the years spent depending on him to always be there. Obviously this is all silly and in the end does nobody any good, but still the "What If's" have suddenly crept upon us all.

Just that morning we found ourselves under the kitchen sink covered in grime. Men in our natural habitat. I mentioned we were talking about having another baby and asked if he had heard. As it turns out he had and wondered what my thoughts were on the subject.....somehow we got distracted before I could answer, but I now believe that if I'd gotten back to the topic my answer would have been vastly different from my thoughts on the subject later that night. Something about being in that hospital, wondering it's long halls looking for a tucked away coke machine, the uncomfortable chairs, and the smell of sanitizer reminded me of all the great things that took place the last time I spent hours there.

We are all looking at ourselves differently in the mirror. Not to dare say we are overweight, no it's more a look of fear. Fear for what may be going on inside us that we aren't aware of. Every little pop and pain that we have convinced ourselves is nothing more than part of the aging process, is now something we are considering having looked at. Personally I wonder how my heart is holding up under 250lbs of bacon, pork chops, and double quarter pounders with cheese. My ankle has been killing me for months and I swear the second Pops is back home and safe, I'm going to have it looked at. During those hours waiting to get the latest news on how he was progressing, I took a sleep apnea test that was on the back of a well placed brochure...turns out I have all 5 symptoms.

We are severely lacking in the emergency prep department. Lucy took off with Pops in the car leaving her cell phone behind. I struggled to remember what hospital they were going to. Gigi didn't have a clue what Nani's number was so Maynard (Lucy's boss and Fred's new uncle) was asked to watch Fred while Gigi tried to find what happened to her family which had not called in almost an hour.

Over the past couple of days a million thoughts have ran through every one's mind. What if he had not shown up to help us that day? What if he had been by himself? What will we ever do without him. What happens next? I wish I could say I knew, but the only answer I know for sure is the one that follows the question of : Will I ever take life for granted again? No....among my prayers every night is the small request that I never forget how quickly things can change.