Computing our illnesses

Do you right click? Not us. We’re no longer part of that group. We’ve moved on and all I can hear is Styx in that background . . . you know the one . . . babe we're leaving, must be on our way . . . We’ve made the switch and I think we’ll be much happier for it. What am I talking about? I’m talking about switching from PC to Mac. We've decided to make the switch and I have to say I feel like I belong. I know it’s just a matter of no longer needing to right click, having a white or silver computer vs a black one, and having a computer that actually works. But there seems to be such a fervent Mac cult out there that I can’t help but think, what took us so long.

Oh yeah, I remember. Price. That’s what got in the way.

Holy cow are Macs expensive, and if we hadn’t won the lottery, we wouldn’t have bought one. But really, all I want to do now is buy Mac products and outfit my home in lovely Mac white. It’s not like I want to sleep with our new computer or anything, but maybe I would take the ipod to bed. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be connected 24/7 to their apps. What if I wanted to play monkey ball at 2 am?

On a different note, last night we had to deal with our little girl. It went something like this.

(Picture the overcrowded, smelly house of the Raich’s. It’s the middle of the night and all are sleeping).

Mia: DADA! (yells to me to come to room)
Dada: What’s wrong , honey? (says with empathy and compassion, at least as much as can be mustered at 2 am)
Mia: I had a bad dream?
Dada: What was it about?
Mia: I don’t remember (she says this as she rolls over and appears to go back to sleep).
Dada: Okay, I am sleeping in the living room. If you need me just call.
Mia: I love you (she says in a voice that melts your heart)

(Some time passes and then we hear little feet going across the floor to our old bedroom (I say old bedroom as we can no longer sleep in there, but that’s another issue that has been discussed in past posts). We yell/whisper for her to come to living room).

Mia: My eye hurts (she says while crying).
Mama: Where does it hurt?
Mia: Right here (she says while sitting in total darkness).
Mama: Try to blink it out. Sometimes if you blink it will wash out whatever is in there.
Mia: It’s not working.
Mama: Does it hurt on the inside or outside?
Mia: It still hurts on the outside (she says still crying).
Mia: Maybe an ice pack will help (I’m not sure what they learn in school, but this seems to be the standard response to any issue a child may have. You have a headache, how about a wet compress and ice pack. You cut your finger off, how about a wet compress and an ice pack. You somehow managed to get spaghetti stuck in your ears, how about a cold compress and an ice pack).

(Mama gets an ice pack (actually a bag of frozen popping corn) and applies. Surprisingly it doesn’t work).

Mia: It still hurts (she says while crying)

(and now the action starts while Dada gets up to get a hot compress).

Mama: Honey she’s throwing up, get a bowl (she says in total calm).

(Dada has no glasses on and tries to make his way to kitchen in total darkness . . . oops! The bouncy playset should not be put in middle of room again).

(Mama and Dada clean up the first mess).

(Dada returns to the kitchen get Mia a glass of water...Damn! The baby swing shouldn't be there).

(second vomit happens. Dada goes to the kitchen to get more paper towels. *$&!"%~#!!! Those sharp little leggos shouldn't be in the middle of the floor!)

Mama: Are you feeling better?
Mia: Yes (as she rolls over to sleep)

(Just as it seems that maybe we might all get a little shut eye, Jonah starts crying. Mama goes to Jonah's room--aka our old bedroom--attend to jonah, and dada stays with mia).

(A short time later--mia has third vomit)

Mia: I’m all done.
Dada: I love you and am sorry that you feel so bad.
Mia: It’s okay (she says in a completely happy voice). If I stay home from school tomorrow, can I watch two movies?

Seriously the most rediculious of all things

Last night a man and women went to bed. They are married. They love each other. They have two children. The man considers himself fairly bright and reasonable. Sure there are occasions that he does something a bit crazy, but nothing like buy a convertible at the age of 41. Really, wouldn't that just mean that he's having an affair and really, with his hair line, what good is a convertible.

Now this man and woman live in a nice, but small house. The house has barely enough room for the four people and one dog to live. It's the sort of house that's always cramped; smells sort of like a mixture of wet dog, wet basement, and old clothes – some might call it lived in and others might call putrid. It could be nice if it weren't for the four people's and one dog's stuff spread out in a sort of way that makes it appear like a garage sale. It's the sort of house that one can't walk in if anything is out of place, which is actually how the house looks on most days.

So in this house the man and woman found themselves with a dilemma: how to manage to move out of their room and sleep somewhere else. The house itself is a two bedroom house (you can already see the problem, can't you). There is one bedroom for the older child and sleeping in there is really not an option. If you think it is I will just remind you of a prior posting with a description of sleeping with her and how it was compared to an alligator killing its prey. The upstairs is also not an option as the man has found that there is little joy in sweating profusely while at the same time sucking down sheetrock dust. The basement is not an option as it was learned the humidity level is at 90 percent, essentially the equivalent of a tropical rainforest and with all the similar insects and creepy, crawly creatures. This leaves the living room.

And that's where Andrea and I found ourselves last night. I really don't mean to go on about Jonah's sleeping, but quiet frankly there is little else going on in our lives. Sure we both work, have another child and are trying to be involved in about a thousand other things. But the reality is that nothing happens that doesn't reference his sleeping and as such I write about it.

Last night we gave it one final effort as he has started to not sleep again. But this time he's not so cute. In the past he used to cry and whine, whimper and roll around. Sure it was annoying and sure it kept us up a bit, but we didn't have people from bordering counties coming to our door to protest the racket. He has now taken to screaming, full-on, blood curdling, ear drum popping, screaming. I don't know from where he gets this, but crap it hurts and really he just needs to stop. The only thing to which I can compare it is to imagine the most annoying dog barking and yapping all night without stopping to breathe and it's next to you in bed wanting to snuggle. Yup, that might be the same or maybe not quite as bad.

So last night we decided to sleep out of the room to see if our presence in the room was contributing to his night waking. Andrea says I can be noisy. She says that I have this habit of stretching in the middle of the night and making all sorts of noise. I say what she's hearing is actually me getting up and trying to find things to stick in my ears to stop the noise. Things like cotton balls, knives, arrows. Those things don't work.

What we ended up doing was having a slumber party in the living room Poor Mia was so jealous. I got the couch. The wonderfully old, smelly, probably bug infested couch. Andrea got the brand new, cute and comfy bean bag bed (which, by the way, is child sized and not long enough for adult legs). And then there was no way at all to walk around the room, except over Andrea and the fear at that point is that I will step on her face, which may actually cause her to scream just like Jonah, and thereby void any efforts we made at sleeping in the living room.

We have done this two nights in a row now. Has it helped? Actually it seems to have helped a bit. I mean, child protection did not come on the second night after being called by neighbors that we were doing mean and terrible things to our children. So there was slightly less screaming. We will keep going with this plan and see what happens. Maybe tonight I will tell a ghost story. You know the one . . . the one where a young couple moves out of their room and ends up sleeping in the living room . . . maybe you've already heard it.

Just Pics

so sorry

I apologize for the wait. However, it's going to be a little, wee bit more. Thanks. The next post will be worth the wait. It's sure to include pictures and stories about me (just kidding).

Life, as it happens

John Lennon once said that life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. I say life is what happens while you’re busy trying to clean up and catch up from the last disaster. From the time you wake to the time you sleep, life is happening. Sure it would be nice to be able to take a step back, breathe, and say isn’t life wonderful. But you know something, when I do that, I find that I have snot on my shoulder, old strained peas on my shirt, a 6 year old pulling at my sleeve to play school, a house that has missing upstairs windows and no outlet covers in the downstairs, a wife whom I haven’t actually spoken to in 6 years, and a baby who is just finding his lungs. Did I mention work, lawn, laundry, dishes, dinner, lunch, breakfast, etc, etc, ad nauseum. The point is that life is what happens while you’re living – who has the time to make other plans?

So here’s my life now, as I’m living it. My first grader, yeah I can’t believe that either, had her first day of class. Once again she has returned to French Immersion and continues to learn how to communicate in ways I don’t understand. Not a problem, because I’ve learned that I can respond in one of two ways to most of the things she says. They are: No and No way. If I respond in either of those ways I’m sure to upset her, but at least I won’t be allowing her to go out with her other 6 year old friends in a car they ‘borrowed’ from someone’s parents so they can go to the DQ even though none of them has dime one to their names where they will proceed to order three Blizzards each just to ‘try’ them and then stop at the movie store where they will pick out movies that they can watch at the same friend’s house from whom they ‘borrowed’ the car and stay up all night because the parents aren’t home. See where I’m going with this? If I shut her down right away, she can’t get into trouble.

My 4 month old, who is the size of a small truck and as dense as a rock, has actually started to . . . oops I almost jinxed it. How about this, I will say it in Latin. He has started to sleepius throughus the nightius. I’m not sure it will continue, but for the past two nights this has happened and I can’t tell you how good it feels. I would imagine it’s similar to the feeling one has on drugs or sugar or both. It’s total euphoria. The problem is that now I’m still tired as my body is remembering what it’s like to sleep. Of course Andrea still gets up to feed, but at least it’s not every hour. He has been in day care now and it appears to be going well. He still has all his fingers and toes and isn’t screaming when we pick him up. Of course he is asking who we are, but we hope that will come back to him on the weekend when we spend more time with him.

My wife is good, so I’m told. We’ve taken to leaving cryptic messages with one another – not quite caveman drawings, but not quite legible words either. Our schedule is such that we now only see each other when she’s leaving in the morning and when we go to bed at night, which actually leaves us no time to speak as it would be a violation of rule #1: No speaking at night in Jonah’s room while he’s sleeping. I mean God forbid he should actually work around us and our needs. My last message to Andrea went something like this:

Dear Madam, If you are indeed my wife, I love you. Please pick up the stuff we need. You know, that stuff that we ran out of, that we use daily. Also, let me know if you want to do those things on Friday. I wrote it down somewhere. I ‘m sure you’ll see it. Please do your thing with Xcel. Love, your bed mate.

In retrospect all I can say is . . . What the hell does that mean? I guess I need to work on my writing skills a bit.

And as for me. Well, I’m just a total mess. Nothing new there. Here’s what’s going on in my life. The upstairs still isn’t finished. I think I’ve been working on this project for 13 years, but I lost count some time ago. The progress I’ve made includes taking both windows completely out. The rational went something like this: How can I know exactly what size window to buy if I don’t exactly how big the opening is? The best way to know is to remove the window. Any problems with this? Only one – windows won’t arrive for three weeks. Ooops. Otherwise it’s going well. The walls are white and the floor is covered in white dust. I would imagine this is a health hazard. Don’t tell the city.

I still have the garden outside, but it’s mostly covered in stuff I know I didn’t plant. The weeds are out of control. I actually can’t tell the difference between the weeds and the plants. Just last night I tried to serve dandelions for dinner by accident. Ooops.

Our basement is wet, the doors don’t shut, the molding is still missing, the outlets and switches are missing their covers, there is no electricity to the lights in the kitchen or upstairs, and there’s mold growing in the bath. Ooops.

As you see, Ooops is a consistent theme in my life. As in Ooops, life is happening again.

One of three family photos. Thanks to a woman who passed us by and asked if we wanted a photo, even though I was a cubs fan.


Mia loved this picture. It is in the tunnels at the University of Minnesota. Behind Mia's head is where Charlie missed the toliet.