Saving Raphael...

Okay, let's talk about yesterday morning before 7:30am, shall we?

So... Brad's away (which of course is the only reason this kind of thing happens) and I'm getting the kids up and going so I can get them off to camp and still make it to work on time(ish).  Their camp is in the opposite direction from our house as is my office so we have to leave at about 7:30am in order for me to get to work on time.  (Obviously Brad takes them when he's in town).  So.. I'm a tasky kind of girl and there's a schedule in my head about what has to happen when so I can get them out the door without anyone getting upset. 

I'm up and showered on time - early even. Check.  I've got the end of Thursday's stage of the Tour on (I'm completely obsessed with it) and I have enough time to watch the very end of the stage which is perfect.  Check!  Jack's working on his pool bag. Check.  Ted's sort of moving.  Check-ish.  Lunch is started. Check.  Ted is now sitting up - sort of.  Check-ish-ish.  I'm downstairs making breakfast right on schedule and Teddy calls and tells me he needs my help.  Well of course he does - he's Teddy and not always able to perform simple tasks especially first thing in the morning - like say - find underwear or a shirt.  Whatever, I head upstairs to see what's going on - I got up early so I've got even more extra time than I normally build in. 

Ted: Mom, Raphael (the little catfish in his fish tank) is stuck and is going to die. 

I look and Raphael has adhered himself to the top of the little sunken ship in the middle of the fishtank and I'm not worried at all.

Me: Ted, he's fine.  In fact when you were at camp, Daddy thought he was dead cuz he was sitting in exactly the same spot for seemingly days.  Dad was all worried he was going to have to tell you he killed Raphael.  He even went so far as to take the ship out of the tank because he was so convinced he was dead and not until he was several steps away and he saw the poor fish try to breathe did he realize he was still alive and quickly got him back in the water.  So, he's fine, I promise.  Finish getting ready.

Ted: Mom, he's really stuck.  I swear he is. 

(at this point we have a whole back and forth something like this - he's not stuck he just likes it there, no he really is stuck and won't be able to eat and will die, no he's fine I swear it, Mom I promise you he is stuck you have to help him, no I promise you he's fine.)

Finally we get to...

Ted: If he dies, it's not my fault. 

Me: He's not going to die, but if he does, you're right - it'll totally be on me.

I start to leave and my big, strong, taller than me boy bursts into tears.  OMG - okay baby, I'll push him out of the way,  you'll see.  I reach in the tank and push Raphael out of the way so he'll swim somewhere else and damned if that fucking fish isn't compleltely stuck.  I pulled and pushed and did everything I could think of to get him out of there, but he'd somehow managed to wedge himself in between the fake barnacles and the deck of the ship.  My first thought - Fuck, there goes the schedule.  My second thought - it's probably in bad taste to take pictures for a future blog post while my son is crying.  My third thought is - I really don't like having my arms up to my elbows in the fish tank - ick.

Okay... hmmm how to unstick a fish?  I will cut off the barnacle.  I go downstairs and get a pairing knife cuz it's small and start sawing.  I'm barely making a dent.  This ship is made out of industrial strength resin of some sort.  This is going to take FUCKING hours, but you know my motto - the turtle wins the race - so I just stick with it.  Of course I'm deathly afraid I'm going to slice through the end of it and filet poor Rafael and there will be blood in the water both literally and figuratively, but I don't mention this to the boys - both of whom are watching intently now.  Finally I give that up and go in search of a sharper knife.  I go through a few options discarding them as I went - too big, too unwieldy, not sharp enough, until finally I had an aha moment.  I have jewery making tools upstairs and there is a wire cutting thingy in the shape of a small pair of pliers - this should work.  I dry the arms (for the 27th time) find the tool and head back to work.  It's like surgery - I have to get it in there just so - so as not to pinch (read: cut into ribbons) the fish, but still cut off the offending barnacle.  I get it in place and squeeze it home and viola!  It snapps off and Raphael can move!!! No blood!!  I tell Teddy he's free and the poor boy bursts into more tears.  Poor guy!!! 

Okay - let's see what we can do to salvage the schedule - Run downstairs, get the boys to get their bags packed, finish lunches, finish packing my lunch, make my chai, and all the while.... my beloved dog is barking at us - please don't leave me, please don't leave me, please don't leave me, please don't leave me, please don't leave me.  All we hear, though, is barkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbark breathe barkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbark breathe barkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbark breathe rinse lather repeate.  Finally I can't take any more of it and I snap.

WILL YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP (as I'm storming after the dog with my fist raised) IF YOU DON'T FUCKING STOP BARKING, I'M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU DEAD, DO YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND ME YOU LITTLE FUCKER??

I'm sort of consious of the rest of the world enough to notice my cute little 10 year old looking up at his nearly 13 year old brother with glee in his eyes as if to say - Man, I love it when mom cracks.  He was full out laughing by the time I'd finished yelling at the dog.  The dog wisely hid under the table for at least 30 seconds before he started barking again.  And my boys wisely didn't say a single word about the incident.  We headed off to camp and I was less than 10 minutes late to work.

Have a lovely day!

bad parenting, the massacre, and us

More evidence of good parenting…

So – Jackson’s head is healing nicely and this is a good thing.  I’m wildly anal about making sure there is sunscreen on his scar at all times.  There are sticks of sunscreen in my purse, his backpack, his baseball bag, and both our cars in addition to the plentiful supply I have in the house.  On Saturday before Jackson had a football game followed by a golf outing with our friend Jamie and Brad and Teddy I put sunscreen on the scar and then headed out to take Teddy to his baseball game.  We met up for lunch between the games and golf and I reminded him and Brad to put more sunscreen on before they went golfing – okay all taken care of, right?  Yeah well.  His scar was white as a ghost at the end of the day but the rest of his face, a vee in his chest and his legs were, however, burnt to a crisp.  Oops.  Poor boy.

The mutant ninja massacre

Wow am I lucky or what?  All three boys went golfing on Saturday and I got to have the house to myself for several house.  It was bliss.  Okay, well… it was going to be bliss.  Seriously.  I even had a small mountain of laundry to do, and I was completely excited about cranking up the tunes and cranking it out while I had The.  House.  To.  Myself!!  Best laid plans and all…

So, there I am, first load in, tunes blaring away, I’m singing at the top of my lungs.  All is right with the world.  I’m wandering around cleaning this, putting that away, thinking of napping, thinking of reading.  You know how it is.  I decide I need some water; I’m suddenly not drinking enough water especially on the weekends.  I practically skip down the stairs and into the kitchen when something out of place catches my eye in the family room.  Our house is really open so you can basically see into all rooms at all times and there’s something scattered on the family room floor.

This isn’t the big surprise it should be.  Have you met my children?  Okay, well maybe not, but let me tell you they are messy little things.  And then there’s the dog – who I’m sure I’ve mentioned I don’t love.  If Bandit gets pissed he gets destructive.  It’s usually some poor hapless stuffed animal and we find tufts of stuffing flung around the house in little piles.  Based on what I’m seeing out of the corner of my eye, I’m thinking I’m going to have Bandit to thank for what I’m about to clean up.  Eh.. I’m alone, life it good.  Bandit can not ruin my mood.

Okay, I was wrong about that.  Big sigh, let’s go pick up whatever needs picking up and move on, shall we… Okay, not so fast.  My behated dog (that’s a new word and it’s maybe my new favorite) has systematically dismembered a turtle - and unfortunately not one of the stuffed persuasion - on the floor of my family room.  There were blood and guts and shell pieces all over the floor.  Every where I looked my horror increased.  It was the single most vile thing I’ve ever seen in my life – but a fair margin.

I am not a typical girl in most situations.  Generally I just roll up my sleeves and do what needs doing.  I’m here to tell you, I met my limit.  I was a total girl.  I started flapping my arms and saying; Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God.  I finally got enough of a hold of myself to get the dog locked outside and to keep from totally losing my cookies.  Then I did what any self respecting girl would do… I went upstairs and hid.  I called Brad and was not surprised to get his voice mail as they were golfing.  I waited a while and called him back and left a very simple, if extremely flat voiced message.  “I need you to call my at your earliest convenience.” 

Of course Brad didn’t get the message until he had pulled into the driveway, but upon hearing how I sounded he called immediately and sent the boys to play instead of letting them come inside.  I told him I’d be right down and once there apologized for being a complete girl (which is new) and explained how I needed him to be the man (which he has no problem with).  He did his best to calm the strange zombie like creature in front of him before he went inside.

He later described it as similar to cleaning a crime scene which I’m hopeful he only knows from watching TV and not from first hand experience, though we’re never ever going to speak of it again so I will never know.

Anyone want a used Jack Russell Terrier?  He’s really cute, I swear he is.

And finally... a family picture

Taken on Easter and not so good of me cuz I’m all leaned back on the slouchy couch – but aren’t my boys cutie-pies???

 

The ipad as crack and funky servers

I've been totally absent and that's never good for me.  Here's a few things to catch up.

The ipad as crack
It's an amazing thing.  I'm sure that's true, though I don't know this from first hand experience.  I got Brad one for his birthday.  It was a great present because he wanted one so badly and he thought I was going to put up a real fight about it.  The problem is its crack-like properties.  It's only been in the house for a week and already all three males are completely addicted.  As an example Jackson comes into my room at 6am this morning.  Brad and I were still sleeping.  He marches over to my side of the bed (cuz he's nobody's fool and knows not to poke the sleeping bear on the other side of the bed) and immediately starts whining.
Jack: Mo-om, Teddy got up at 4 and has been playing the ipad the whole time don't you think it should be my turn now?
Me: uh... what?
Jack: It's not fair.  He set his alarm for 4 and he's been playing this whole time.  (let me break in here and say it normally takes an act of congress to get Teddy out of bed)
Me: I'm sleeping here, is it fair that you just came in and woke me because you want to play a video game?
He left with his tail between his legs because as I said - he's no fool.

But... this isn't the first time.  Clearly I am the fool as it's taken me this long to think about doing something about this powerful drug in our home.  Earlier this week, they both together slammed into my room looking for the damn thing (again this means that Teddy was up before anyone bodily pulled him from the bed) waking me before they slammed out again.  There's been constant whining and fighting about the need to get their fix - even Brad has gotten in on it. 

Of course here's the best part.... Teddy gets up at 4am this morning and discovers his eye all gunked up and uncomfortable, what does my very bright boy (who's now taller than me by the way) do???  He wipes it off and desperately makes his way to get his fix on.  Phew, that was close.  He gets his soccer game up and he's finally able to get the shakes under control, even if he can't completely see the screen.  Does he mention his eye problems to his parents this morning? No.  No he does not.  Does he think about possibly spreading whatever he's got that caused said gunk?  No he does not.  So he happily heads off to school high on the soccer game and hands over the ipad to his brother (who's not doing his homework by the way!!) who happily gets his shakes under control with Angry Birds.  Teddy gets to school and realizes his eye is really still bothering him.  So... now our brain trust tells his teacher - I think I've got pink eye.  He was home within the hour.  After Jackson got his fix on and Brad got his as well.  My hypochondriac husband immediately complained of eye problems. 

Our CFO is gone
He's in Ireland for two weeks where his son is studying abroad.  I'm so thrilled for him I can't stand it.  While he's gone, of course, I take care of whatever he might have handled.  This wouldn't be a problem if he wasn't also our IT Manager.  He just happens to have a personal affinity for it and we are lucky to have someone so capable of wearing two such distinct hats.  I've been the number two IT person for years and for the most part have the company fooled about my abilities.  I can talk a good game and know who to call who can walk me through whatever needs to be handled - but the reality is - I'm mostly freakin clueless.

Normally things run very smoothly and and I'm just making sure the back ups work properly.  No biggie.  Yeah, well in these two weeks we've had 4 separate servers go down, been attacked by man eating viruses, had to shut part of or the whole system down multiple times, had two computers have to be taken out of the building to be repaired or rebuilt and about a million other things that I can't remember at the moment.  Any thought of doing any part of my job was killed very early last week.  I've met every single employee of our outside IT consultant firm; I'm hosting a happy hour tonight.

Oh and now the President has also gone away for two days.  Yippee... Seriously.  And today is monthend.  What am I doing?  Am I doing one of the million things that I need to get done before I leave tonight??  Uh that would be a no - I'm blogging.  Cuz, as I've previously pointed out - I'm a fool.