Spook-tacular!

Twas the day before Halloween and all through the house, there was no sign of the season, not even a decapitated mouse.
The costumes were made(mostly) in a pile downstairs as my wife worked to finish the last one for our son, he'll be Pooh Bear.
Our few decorations are still in a box even though our neighbors have lights, jack-o-lanterns and witches in socks.
Our kids are excited and who wouldn't be? They get to go house to house and get candy for free.
Out on our lawn the grass is slowly going yellow. There are no headstones or spiderwebs or arms in wheelbarrows.
With kids in costumes and us in our coats, we'll head out tomorrow among superheros and ghosts.
They'll say "Trick or treat!" as we go door-to-door and somehow I feel they'll wish they got more.
But when all is said and done and they are sound asleep in their beds, hopefully no nightmares filling their heads,
we'll be responsible parents as we know we should, sorting through their candy and taking out what is good.

Being worthy of your spouse

There is a great line in the movie, "An Ideal Husband" at the very end. As he is walking down the isle with his new bride, Lord Arthur Goring's father says, "You don't deserve her." To which Arthur replies, "If we men married the women we deserved, we would have a very hard time of it." And so it is that I come to blog again.

Last Friday night we went to see the musical "The Ark" by Michael McClean. It's a cute musical and very fun about Noah and his sons and their wives on the Ark. There is a lot of interplay about the relationships and how most of the husband's just don't get it one way or another. One is rebellious, one is a gadget freak and one is a momma's boy. Two of them are newly weds. It was so easy to see mistakes of these husbands and I came away laughing and glad I wasn't them. Unfortunately, I am.

This came into sharp relief on Saturday as I made rude and stupid remarks to my wife. I acted without thinking (an age old male custom) and the tension in our house was suffocating. Eventually we talked it through an I apologized for my jerkiness. It took until Sunday for the tension to fade but luckily, the lesson has not....yet. I'm hoping to learn it. I need to think before I speak. Speak before I decide. And decided before I act. A lot of men skip to the last part making a decision in haste with no thought. It makes you wonder why our wives let us have power tools.......

In the end I have been humbled. My ego has been shown it's rightful place and I appreciate my beautiful wife more. I fear that 10 years of me and 5 kids along the way has worn her patience down to almost nothing. So I had better learn this lesson or it will be a long 10 more years sleeping on the couch.

Sick day

Today has been a sick day. Not that I stayed home but I didn't realize I was sick until I was on my way to work and my throat started hurting. I have that flu ache that hurts at your joints and makes moving a real effort. My head is fuzzy. I seem to be fixiated on hippos and umbrellas and tapioca pudding. I'm sure there is good reason. I've had to retype about 15 words since I started...make that 16. Wish I could sleep but here I sit in my computer science class not really paying attention because she is rehashing everything about 10 times. Not only is the horse dead but we buried it 20 minutes ago and she is pounding on the dirt. I have a conference call for my communications class after I get home. Tomorrow, I'm gonna be buried next to the horse. Don't let her beat my dirt.

Over the river and through the traffic

So it's been a while since I bothered to post anything. I should be more diligent but I'm taking 4 classes this semester and I'm swamped, feeling overwhelmed and generally losing more hair. I know it's hard to tell. I'm taking 3 classes online and one at night after work. The hardest part about that for our family has been that Ethan has been doing soccer. He wanted to play so badly there was no way we could say no and we had no idea when we did sign-ups in June what September would be like for us.

I have been able to see the last few minutes of a couple of his games but not much when he has been playing. I have spent virtually no time with him working on his game because I always seem to find other things I need to do. I never was very good about managing my time. But due to "Fall Break" I didn't have class on Thursday and got to watch the entirety of his final game. He played goalie in the second quarter and did really well. I was proud of him. Then he played defender for the 4th quarter. He has really improved and likes playing defense.

The twins are getting more able....and that is some good but mostly bad. They can open the fridge and throw eggs on the floor or dump peach gravy out. They can find pens and crayons that seem to appear out of nowhere and draw all over our walls. They can take toys from each other and scream very loudly when their brother takes a toy away. They can climb up on chairs and table and break ceramic nativities. Good thing they are cute or I'd be in the market for some gypsies.

For my birthday this year I got WII. Yeah, the video games in this house are Dad's. But Ethan wanted to play it so much that I finally decided he needed to read a book before he could play. The best thing I ever did. His reading ability jumped leaps and bounds. Now he is more confident and does so great at reading. Whoever thought getting a video game system would improve my son's reading??

We are having scones for dinner. I found this great recipe here: http://workingwomanfood.blogspot.com/2007/12/christmas-traditions.html. And after too many interuptions for snack and diaper-changes and more hair-losing, I'm out like a 'no down payment, adjustable-rate interest-only mortgage'.

Guess what, Honey? It's an 'A'!

The summer semester is over. It was brutal and long and I didn't feel like I really had a summer. But it's over and to my disbelief, I got A's. No '-''s just A's. For the first time in my life I got a 4.0 GPA. *listens to the stunned silence of his siblings and parents* Yeah, that's what I thought your reaction might be. I am just as surprised. I owe it all to a whip-cracking(supportive and encouraging) wife. Seriously. Without her, I might have some B's and C's but she wouldn't let me be content with that. She knows I can do better and I'd better do it. :) I also have to give some thanks to lenient managers who let me take a class during the day and didn't mind me doing homework when I had some waiting time.

I can't fully express what it means to me to get a 4.0. I did horribly in middle school and only sort of pulled my act together in high school. Sure I graduated with a 3.6 but there are a lot of chior, theatre and creative writing credits padding that. It's not that I wasn't smart enough...I was just lazy. I procrastinated. I didn't have the drive for perfection. And I'm pretty sure I didn't believe I could do it. I had 4.0 older and younger siblings. I'm almost positive my 3.6 is the lowest overall GPA of any of my siblings. But I wasn't as smart. I wasn't as good. Granted my drive for this 4.0 was me being thrown in the trunk and my wife steering and holding the gas pedal down but I did it. I took the tests, did the assignments. I DID it. I stared at the computer screen for hours studying. I DID IT!!! Of course now...the only problem is I know I can, I know I should and now...I can't settle for anything less. Crap.

Being exhausted...and other parental myths

What a summer this has been. On July 3rd and I had 5 tons of 3/4" rock dumped on the street in front of my house. It was so heavy it shook the houses and my neighbors wondered if we were having an earthquake. I don't want to count the amount of wheelbarrow loads that I hauled as I laid rock over weed blocking material down both sides of my house and a 10'ish by 10'ish pad in by the back 'fence'. That doesn't include the loads of pea gravel I moved to make space for that pad. But it's done. It was long hard, heavy work and I lost inches even if I didn't lose weight. Which is at least some consolation for the back-breaking arm dislocating labor. Oh and I had to dig up a bunch of weeds to make space for the rock. In the end I was able to look proudly at my work and it looks so much nicer than the weeds that used to live there.

Well, while that was going on my garden was growing. Not anything I wanted to harvest but a couple of weeds were as tall as the 6' fence. Last week I took some 'weed-death-juice' to them and watched them go from green to tall yellow-brown sentinals of pokey evil. I was hoping to be able to pawn the job off on some local boys for cheap. Think Young Men's service project. But I never got around to organizing it and the boys who's mom said they might be interested never called. I wouldn't have either. You would have needed to pay me quite a bit if it wasn't my own yard. We're cheap. We don't pay quite a bit.

So this morning I went out to play paintball at the unholy hour of 6am. It was a nice temp out at least. I got to use my flatline barrell that I got for Father's Day finally. I also learned why paintballs break in barrells. It was a couple of really good games though and I enjoyed it. But what the heck does that have to do with the price of SlimJims at 7-11? Well, then I came home and took a nap. THEN, I told my wife that I needed to mow the lawn and I was considering pulling weeds. She said she would rather I pull weeds than mow the lawn...and if I was only going to do one, it should be weeds. But I didn't mow the lawn last week. So it's two weeks of "growth" that needs to be cut. I went outside and decided it was only going to be one. Weeds, here I come.

Now I sit here with legs so tired that I can barely stand. You can see the garden again. That's good, right? With school this summer I just haven't taken care of my yard like I want to....ok to be honest I never take care of my yard like I want to. But I took care of it even less than that. It's just lucky we have autmatic sprinklers or it wouldn't be watered either!

And now I'm being begged for some ring-around-the-rosey with my twins so I'll be signing off.

Taking a left turn

I'm halfway through the first real week of a new job. It's not a company change or a career "change" per sey. It's more of a left turn. Just like real left turns I had to wait to for a while for traffic to clear so I had an opening to go into but I've known that this is where I wanted to be for some time.

So the saga began in early May when one of the Software testers in engineering came and told me they had an opening on their team. I had applied for a couple of testing jobs already and talked to lots of people in engineering about being a tester and eventually becoming a developer. Well I sent my resume to the hiring manager only to find out that authorization for the position hadn't been approved yet but he'd let me know.

A week later I had a meeting with my boss and he asked if I was going to apply for anymore testing jobs. I said no because with school starting soon I was worried about trying to get back into school after a decade and learning a new job. School started and was just as I feared but my good wife keeps me focused. Then at the end of May, the hiring manager contacts me and says the position is open am I interested? I just don't know. I ask him if I can have the weekend and over the next few days I pray and stress about it. By Sunday night I know. So Monday I contact him and tell him I'm interested.

My boss wasn't happy but he shares some of the blame for me looking elsewhere. But I knew that this was a great opportunity and my schooling is to go into development so this gets me a foot in the door. I finally took the left turn.

With the help of my great wife, I've made the transition and found something wonderful!! This job is so much less stress that I can't even believe it! I don't dread coming into work knowing I have more work to do than I can accomplish. I don't prepare myself for dealing with whatever attitude my coworker decides to show up with or adopt during the day. It has not been so hard learning the new things as I have already been in school for a month and that part of my brain has been jump-started again.

And to cap it all off, I get to have a root canal on Friday. Joy just can't put into words how I feel about that.