Calli's First Christmas

Busy, busy, busy. That's where I've been. By the look of my Blog Updates Page, that's where a lot of people have been. Not to say that it's been totally quiet, but I haven't cornered the market on being kept from the computer

I had the Tuesday before Christmas off work, but it was a far cry from a day off! Cleaning, dusting, vacuuming, laundry, etc, etc. Then I had Christmas Eve, Christmas, and Boxing day off. Christmas Eve, we had family over (hers & mine) for H'ors D'oeuvres/dinner, which meant more touch-up cleaning & prep. Christmas was present-opening, then to her family's for dinner. Then Boxing day, another wonderful dinner at my family's. I must say, the vittles are what I look forward to the most!

Today is my first real day off in over a week, just me and my two beautiful girls!

The best part of the holidays, by a country mile, came on Christmas Eve. After everyone had gone home, Andrea & I we talking to Calli, and she giggled! I was a quick "Ah-ha-ha," but it surely counts as a laugh! It was our Christmas Miracle, and it made our Christmas more special than anything we could have planned

And how was Calli's first Christmas? Allow me th summerize:
Family Members: "Oooh, she looks adorable in that!"
Us: "Hurry up and get your pictures before she spits-up on it!"

Yeah, it was a photo-op, plain and simple. All the activity really tired her out, too. I would have thought that being held by a half-dozen family members would be no different than being held by just Andrea & I, but all the fresh stimulus sure took it's toll!

Hope you all had a great Christmas!

1 and 1/2 sided Conversations

A couple weeks ago, Andrea had some friends over, and one was schooled in Early Childhood Education. One thing that really stuck with me was how children develop better when their parents talk to them as infants. On one hand, it seems a little silly, when they don’t have the mental equipment to understand. But I’m starting to see reactions. She’s smiling a lot more now. She’ll “talk” back to us, even! It’s freakin’ crazy, watching her mind develop!
She’s winding-up for her 3-month growth-spurt (she’s officially 3 months on Monday). We’ve seen this sign before: she’s eating like she’s preparing to hibernate!

In other news, I finally registered on FaceBook. I actually registered awhile ago, but didn’t do anything with it. I thought I was the last one to register with Face Book, but apparently not.

Asking a couple of friends, they aren’t there. I guess the main reason I’ve been hesitating is that there are people I don’t necessarily want to get back in touch with. You may remember me writing about how I was really religious in high school (I enjoyed my adolescence throughout my 20’s). Already, one of my high school friends ‘Friended’ me. He’s currently a pastor in Michigan, working as a pastor, and has expressed some very conservative views. I guess I didn’t want to explain why I’m not in that head-space anymore. When I say it like that, it sounds a little cowardly. Well, there it is.

I must say, quite the time-sink! If I let it, it could eat up hours of my day, and I’d never see them go! But I’m not there for the games, as I’ve got enough on my plate already. So if you’re there, look me up!

That’s about the end of my news. Thanks for the comments on the last post! I love a good yarn! One I heard in a movie was “I’m the back-end of Snufflufagus” (Sesame Street). Dammit, I wish I’d used it!

Enjoy some pictures!

Spinning Yarns

About a month ago, I heard that 30% of what’s written in Blogs is fabrication. Either I’m only reading that 30%, or these authors are really uninspired.

Now, when I told you that in labor, my wife was in active labor for two hours, and really pushing for about 35 minutes, I can see it if that sounded a little far-fetched. If you don’t believe that that’s how it happened, no sweat off of my brow.

Other than that, there’s no reason to doubt me. I can assure you that I can be more clever if I wanted to spin yarns. Such as:

“When Calli was born, the umbilical cord was wrapped around her ankle, and she bungied out of my wife, to bounce back up into the doctor’s arms.”

“I’m spending Christmas in Jamaica with Jimmy Page”

“I played a Jawa in Return of the Jedi.”

"I’m really Kurt Cobain, and I faked my death to throw-off the media”

See? Good, tall tales! But I believe that of all the Blogs you read, very few of them seem phony!

I work with a guy who does this in real life. Really, he’s a Sho Ren priest, he’s done Black Ops for the CIA, and has a family in the US that he can’t visit because 9/11 tightened up the border security. I don’t talk to him much anymore, because of a BS allergy.

Tall tales are a lot of fun, and I tell them often, but when people say “Really?” I say “No, not really.” A good example is when I 10-year-old lad comes through my line at work, I say “When the ladies ask, tell them you broke that rescuing puppies & orphans from a fire.” One of the mothers actually came back and said that her boy was telling that story!

Pardon my Absence...

So, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted, and here’s why: life happens.

It’s always a busy season, but my hours don’t really change. My darling child, however, has been sleeping later, so I’m not up at 6AM. This sounds like a good thing, but it means that I don’t have the familiar routine: get up, heat a bottle & brew coffee. Half-hour feeding, with either TV or Podcast, then about an hour reading Blogs, then write while Andrea sleeps. Win-Win.

Another glitch was after a power-surge. Our computer seized on a black screen and said “Reboot error. System halted.” It was a scary time, believe you me! That is until my much-more computer literate wife applied the tech-equivalent of “Abracadabra;” Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Hopefully, I can remember for next time!

With Cali sleeping later, my wonderful wife will take the morning feed, because she’s up anyway, and has some bra-pressure to relieve. Honestly, it’s been nice to sleep, but I miss this, so here I am. Sorry if you’ve been missing my comments, but there’s my reasons.

We watched the GI Joe move last week. If you were never a fan of the comics or cartoons, and you don’t have to pay for it, it’s not too bad. I was chin-deep in the comics as a kid, so it drove me right-fucking-snaky to see the story bastardised! Were the producers not aware that many of the viewers would be long-time fans, who would see the holes in their story? It seemed to be a good action story, aimed at 15-year-olds, with a well-known name attached for marketing. Lose the GI Joe name, and it would have been much more enjoyable.

But enough of the movie rant. Tonight, Kuma & I are going to a buddy’s place, and it promises to be good times! He owns an RV Park that’s closed for the season, so my pooch gets a rare opportunity to run free! He’ll sleep for days!

Date Night

Yay, Date Night! Last night, we went out on our second Date since Callie arrived, and it was great! First, we went Mini Golfing. We hadn’t been in years, and it was a lot of fun. The place had a black-light, glow-in-the-dark motif, with pop music, that I normally would have found irritating-as-shit, but last night it suited our mood nicely. We had nice little boogie-breaks between puts. Being 4:30 on a Tuesday, it was quiet there – there was one other couple that we never saw. The patron of the place warned us that there were security cameras, and winked. No kinky shenanigans here!

Then after a lovely dinner at Boston Pizza, where we discussed the parenting challenges we were expecting, we went to my workplace for a few things. When people asked, “Where’s the baby?” I’d look wide-eyed at Andrea and say, “Oh SHIT!” I’m confident enough in my parenting that a good child-neglect joke can be funny on occasion!

By the time we got home, she was well into her “Active” time. Whether she’s fussy or not, she’s wide-awake, and wants to be entertained. So now we have the riddle of how to entertain a 10-week-old. Well, we just make up songs, hold her up by her armpits, or swing her on our arms, with her head on an elbow. She’s a little young for Baby Einstein just yet.

Any other infant-amusing ideas?

Carnegy-izing

As I mentioned awhile ago, my store has a gas station, and I’m often out there. I don’t think I could do it all the time, but it’s a nice break from time to time. Time is spent coaching people on how to use the pre-pay, cleaning spills when people want to round their bill up to the nearest dollar, and general tidying. Mostly, it’s pacing, and waiting for someone has a problem for me to solve.

Not long ago, someone asked me about gas caps being left behind, and if we just throw them out. Yeah, if no one’s come for them after 3-4 days, we figure that they aren’t going to. Then said that we glue them together and make modern art sculptures.

He replied “That’s funny. You’ve got a great sense of humor.”

I’m a big fan of my humor; I find it well-tailored to my sensibilities, but that was surely not one of my gems. This fellow was clearly Carnegie-izing. (I learned that term from Alice Schroeder in her recent biography of Warren Buffett, The Snowball. It loosely means “flattering until the subject wants to do what you want them to do.” The concept is based on Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.) So this gent was clearly blowing sunshine up my ass.
I’ve seen this approach twice before at work, so I had an idea of what was coming. “Have you considered way of making some extra income?” Here we go…

Now, if you want to do Network Marketing, good for you. D. Trump and R. Kiyosaki endorse it, and I’m not going argue on wealth-building techniques with either of them. But when someone’s working retail, they’re getting paid to be polite. If we’re listening to your spiel, it’s because we’d get reprimanded for being rude.

My first experience with this was when I was cleaning up a water spill, and a guy said “I’m in insurance, and I’m looking to open offices in this city, and looking agents; people looking for a career change.” I guess mop-swinging made me a good candidate.

The second one was just precious. He offered me $900 for my earrings if I signed a contract saying I’d never get another piercing. When I asked what else was involved in this amazing (?!) offer, he got really vague. He tried convincing me that when a woman sees piercings on a guy, she assumes it means he wants to be led around (see “Whipped”). Then asks his wife, “When you see piercings on a guy, what does it make you think?” “That he wants to be led around.”
“Yeah, and you didn’t have any time to rehearse that at all, did you?”

Thank God a manager came along and told this guy that I had work to do. As soon as he was gone, I thanked her profusely!

Happy Thanksgiving, My American Friends

It’s been pretty quiet on the Blogging front lately, but many of our American friends are posting about what they’re thankful for. I think it’s great that we have a holiday to focus on gratitude; it’s just good for the spirit. They must be having a great time too, ‘cause not many of the ones I follow have posted yesterday. I imagine that Christmas will be the same.

What am I thankful for? I have a beautiful wife (if you haven’t looked at the picture lately, look now. Seriously, I landed me a Fox!) I’ve got a healthy child, who makes hilarious wide-eyed ‘Ooooh’ faces when we hold her in a standing position. We haven’t had any snow to speak of yet, but that could change at any time. I work with great people, and when I make my fortune, I may stay there awhile, limited part-time of course. My 10 year old cat is showing no signs of slowing. My four year old computer shows some slowness, but still works just fine. And last year, The Beastie Boys finally put out an instrumental album, though it lacked the diversity I would have hoped for

And my child sleeps through most of the day, until early evening, then she’ll be fussy until about 12:30. I’ll tell ya, it’s a special kind of hell when I think she’s out at 11:30, but when I put her down, she winds back up instantly! It’s hard to remember my mantra: “I’ll look back on this as The Easy Part.” I don’t imagine that I’ll be able to read & write from 7-9AM when she’s two. But I can hope…