Category: Life

  • Illness Strikes Again!

    The wife is sick. She came down with something over the weekend, which is pretty close to the worst time to get sick. Just when she thought she was about to get two days to relax, her body decided that it needed a fever and body aches. Poor girl.

    Me and the kid are now in nurse mode. Checking on mom, making sure she is comfortable, get her medication and lots of fluids. We even ordered ramen for her, which really wasn’t a sacrifice, as it sure did make everyone in the apartment happy!

    As I sit on the couch writing, she’s in the bed sleeping, with an occasional cough coming from under the covers. The dog is up with her, curled at the foot of the bed. I am sure the dog thinks that this has been a wonderful couple of days; napping all the time!

    I don’t think I’ll be getting much done this week, and that is fine. I like taking care of her. I like making my wife feel better. Giving comfort and making her laugh.

    And I have a really good chicken noodle soup recipe that I can make as well.

  • The Dentist

    I understand that going to the dentist is important, but I don’t spend much time thinking about the dentist. I actually spend more time thinking about the kid seeing the dentist. She’s at the tail end of losing all her baby teeth, and getting all her grown up ones. It means that braces aren’t too far away. I do spend time thinking about that.

    The kid loves going to the dentist. In fact, when I took her the other day, she told me that she didn’t want me to go back into the exam room. I guess that was something that most kids don’t request, because the kid’s technician asked her twice if that’s what she really wanted. Clearly, most kids are very nervous to see the dentist. But it’s what she wanted. She wants to do things on her own.

    The funny thing is, when I started going to the dentist, which I believe was kindergarten or first grade, I went back by myself. I don’t think there was an option for parents to join you. In fact, if your parent had to go back, it meant something went wrong. My mother stayed in the waiting room, and I was on my own. I wasn’t nervous to do this because my mom was a nurse, and I saw going to the dentist was just like seeing any other doctor. I grew up around hospitals, clinics, and medical offices. They all were there to make you feel better. Maybe I was outside the norm, but the medical profession never felt scary.

    Anyway, I was in the waiting room today, reading and passing time. In all my years of being taken to the dentist, I never once thought about my mom, and what she was doing while I was back getting my teeth picked at. Same thing with when I got braces. Getting those put on took some time, and did she sit out there, waiting? Did she take off and come back? I never asked. I just assumed that she was out there. Waiting for me.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Hair, Dogs, and My Website

    (My dog’s breath smells like shrimp…)

    I am a balding man. My brothers are balding men, and my father is a balding man as well. His father was bald, as was his father. As far as I can tell, men in my family have been bald. It’s just who we are, and I am fine with it. My uncle, who was my dad’s brother, told me to get a wife before I lose all my hair. I followed that advice, and my wife is good with a balding husband. And as my hair leaves the top of my head, I have started sprouting hair in my ears and nose. It is enough of an issue that I now have a trimmer specifically for those spots. Yet, I find myself wondering as I shave my ears and nose; why does my body grow new hair in my ears and nose? When I hit puberty, I started growing hair all over, EXCEPT for my ears and nose. So, what happened at 45 that caused my body to say, “Yeah, we need more hair at the nose and ears!” But what about keeping my brain warm? “I said EARS AND NOSE!”

    Is it odd that it costs more to board my dog for a week than it would for me to buy the dog her own airline ticket? I know that where we are going, there is no place for the dog to stay, but I feel like the dog boarding industry is pushing me to take the dog on the trip. Or they know that I’m in a situation and will pay whatever as long as my pet is taken care of.

    I’m thinking about updating my website. I am aware that this question might back fire on me, but anyone have any suggestion of how I should update/improve this site?

  • Hot in the City

    It was warm yesterday, but today it’s going to be hot in NYC. Like Summer hot. Early July hot. And we don’t have our A/C’s.

    Like reasonable people, who keep fooling themselves into thinking that the weather patterns of the past will continue into the future, we took all of our air conditioners out of our apartment at the end of September. You know, at the beginning of Fall, when everything starts to cool down. Normally, we don’t go and get the A/C’s out of storage until late May, and even sometimes into June. We should have just kept them in the widows, and suffered through our amazingly mild winter.

    Currently, we are in a three-day heatwave. Technically you can only call it a heat wave if the temp is above 90 degrees for three days in a row. But being that it was 85 yesterday, t will be 90 today, and then 88 on Friday, I think it is fair to say that it’s a heat wave. I mean, on Sunday the high was 55. I had a sweater on for god sakes. I was drinking coffee to stay warm at an Easter Egg Hunt with my kid.

    Now, I’m sitting by my window, in shorts and a shirt, praying that a breeze will come through, but it won’t because the new construction behind our building is killing the cross wind, and I think we are all going to die tonight.

    The only winner here is the kid because she’s going to get ice cream, pretty much all day, because nothing is better than ice cream on a hot day.

  • A Place Upstate

    I have been distracted this morning. I did get my errands and chores done, but when it came time to do this, write a blog, I let myself get sucked down the old rabbit hole of looking at houses for sale. Not that we are in a position to go buy a home, but hopefully in the next two years, it might become a possibility.

    You never can tell. We, as a small family, are right on that cusp of entering the world of home ownership. I do feel bad for anyone under the age of thirty because unless you are earning a huge salary, which most people don’t, then you will never live in a house that you own. We still can, but just barely. It is my job to get the family finances in order, so when the opportunity arises, we can jump on it.

    Anyway, all of this came about today because it’s already 75 degrees in the City, and should make it up to 80 today. The windows are open in the apartment with a nice cross breeze blowing in. The wife is working away in the office. Music is playing, and the kid is in her room enjoying not doing a damn thing on her Spring Break. With all of this going on around me, I had the thought that, “Wouldn’t it be great to do this in a house, surrounded by trees, upstate?”

    “Yes,” I said, “It would be great.”

    “Then go look for a home.”

    “Yeah, that would be fun, but we aren’t in…”

    “I SAID LOOK FOR A HOME!!!”

    And off to Zillow I went. Besides, who needs self-discipline?

    For an hour I looked at places that are all about two hours away from the City. I enjoyed the daydream. A place for books, and reading. A fireplace to use in the winter, and a back yard for the kid to play in. All the wonders, relaxation, and serenity, cleanly away from the City. A home that gives me a chance to wake up with the sounds of birds chirping and the wind blowing through the trees.

    This “window shopping” took up most of my writing time, but I don’t feel bad about it. Perhaps I have lost the desire to have a goal. Like a goal that isn’t just for me, but something that I can provide for my family. Ambition bounces around in my brain like a dirty word that I cannot muster out loud; but a goal? Perhaps I should say out loud that I want my family to move into a house in two years? Maybe I have forgotten what it is to strive on the high wire where one can fall to failure? Maybe.