I can't believe I'm saying this
I can't believe that at 39 years old I'm saying this: "I am a grandfather." At 4:01 this morning, my daughter gave birth to her son, Eugene Alexander. He weighed in at 8 pounds 2 ounces. Mom and baby are both doing well. Eugene arrived three days before his due date. 1/24/08 - a birth date that any computer geek would be proud of.
It was the day before yesterday when Cady told me her story about how she thought she lost all bladder control. We were just going to the hospital to have her checked out and make sure things were going okay still. We each put some clothes together "just in case," packed stuff into the truck and at 10 PM drove to Rose Medical Center. They checked her in, and she went straight up to labor and delivery where they told us her water had broken. She estimates it happened at 4 PM while she was buying books for her classes.
I'm honestly too tired to remember all the details between then and now. I know that they used pitosin (no idea how to spell that) to induce labor. Her early contractions were easy and she was being lulled into a false sense of security over how difficult it would be. Her later contractions were intense, clustered in groups of as many as six spikes, and irregular - not ideal for first-time labor. Not ideal for any labor, I imagine. She felt really defeated when she asked for the epidural, having wanted to do a drug-free delivery, but that was ultimately a good decision for her. Once she was fully dilated and effaced, the doctor found that the baby's head just wouldn't fit, and a c-section was ordered.
She had a great support staff of friends/family: Lori, Ray, Dan, David, Jennifer. Oh, and me. Lori, Ray and I were her front-line for most of it, holding her hands, getting her to breathe, getting her through the contractions, shifting her from side to side, feeding her ice, massaging her, etc. Lori ended up going with her to the c-section while the rest of us waited by the nursery. Not long later, the nurse went by with the baby asking for the "grandfather." I don't know what kind of mental block I had, but the nurse disappeared into the nursery with him before I really reacted. I went to the window to watch him get cleaned up, measured, and all that jazz. Then I was brought in and got a closer look at him while the nurse poked his heel for the blood test (he didn't cry). I moved him to the wheeled bed and brought him down to see Cady.
Lots of details are missing, like the hour and something I spent picking up Dan at the airport, getting Rick from school to visit his sister, ... much more, I'm sure. Maybe someone will fill me in?
I'm home now to get some sleep (which I'm obviously not doing at the moment), and will visit again tomorrow. She should be coming home on Sunday or Monday.
Labels: life
Quotes and a Pun
Quote of the Day for Friday: "I just realized I left my lip balm in the truck. I better get it before it melts (and my lips fall off)."
Quote of the Day for Saturday: "I think my inner artist has painted himself into a corner!"
Quote of the Day for Monday: "I'll forget it if it's not something I can remember." -- Arminya
And a pun:
I was standing in the elevator at work today with one other person. I happened to look down as the doors were closing and saw the elevator manufacturer's name plate in the threshold. It said: Schindler
To the other person on the elevator, I said, "Oh, God." He asked, "What?" I said, "I just realized that we're on Schindler's Lift," and I hung my head in shame over the horrible pun.
Labels: quotes
What a Crappy Day
I probably shouldn't be writing this now. I should be working on my project. But I had to get this down. Why do most of my blogs fit best under "Life" as a category? I don't feel like I have one at the moment!
The Reader's Digest version is this: the main sewer line in my house backed up. Mr. Rooter came and cleared it.
The longer version goes a little more like this. I got the call from my daughter that the basement was starting to flood. We've seen this before. It usually means the tree in the front yard is getting a little too friendly with the house's main sewer line. It's not normally a big deal - just get by on as little water as possible and call Mr. Rooter to clear the line for another year or so.
I'll admit my part in the way this all plays out and tell you that I didn't get an appointment right away. I wasn't planning on being at the house over the weekend, and wanted to be there when the plumber worked on it, both to make sure that it's just the usual root problem and to pay for it. The appointment was made for today.
I got back to the house on Monday to find more -- let's just call it "water" to be polite -- in the basement than I've ever seen before! It is at this point that my daughter tells me a line I'm not likely to forget: "It kept getting worse every time I took a shower." Huh. Imagine that! This is the daughter that works in a health club. One with showers. I would say "blond moment," except that she's not.
To my son's credit, he used the mop and picked up some of the water that was collecting. Unfortunately, he then dumped the collected water into the toilet. Normally, I think recycling is a fine thing, but in this case, I think we could've done without.
So last night, we moved her cats upstairs where they're normally not allowed to go. I started on the task of getting the wet/dry vac out and sucking up as much of the water as I could. It's a pretty big vacuum, and when it's full of water, it's a bitch to get up the stairs, but I did just that about five times. I used the really wide, narrow nozzle so I could take it outside and dump what it picked up without worrying about anything chunky.
We looked around the basement and noticed that lots of things that aren't accustomed to the experience of water were experiencing water for the first time. Among them were my daughter's old laptop, a bunch of her clothes, my entire comic collection, and some of my board games.
Oh, and remember the cats that were put upstairs? One of them experienced water, too. She got past the door at the top of the stairs, slinked down the stairs almost fearfully, and perched on the bottom step above the edge of the pool that was once my basement floor. She desperately wanted to go back to my daughter's room, so she jumped for it... right into the water... on a tiled floor. Much clawing, scrabbling and splashing ensued, but not a lot of forward momentum, at least for the first few seconds. I was at the top of the stairs, so couldn't see where she went after that. Wherever it was, she went there fast once she got going.
The pantry area is pretty close to the center of the house, and pretty close to the center of the puddle that formed. There wasn't a ton of water here, though, and I found why. This is where we store things like paper towels, toilet paper and napkins. They valiantly gave it all! They did what they could to stem the tide. It wasn't quite enough, but they sure tried.
We finished up for the night, and I went to my ex-wife's to borrow her shower. (Thank you, Dana.) I really needed to clean up. Thank goodness I know someone not too far away. I got back to my place and went to sleep. In the morning, I woke up a bit late. Both kids were gone: Rick to school and Cady to work. I went downstairs to check on things and found that the puddle had returned. I'm guessing one of the kids flushed a toilet or something. It wasn't too terrible, especially considering the depth from the day before. I went to work.
Just after lunch, I got the call that Mr. Rooter was going to be at my house within 30-45 minutes, so I left work to meet them. When I got to the house, I unlocked the back door since that's the most direct way to the basement and the cats were upstairs. I then went to open the gate that leads to the back door and realized that right in front of the gate is where a bunch of snow from my driveway ended up. I broke out the shovel and dug a quick path to get the gate open. Right as I finished, the plumbers arrived. I showed them where they would be working and went back outside to clear a path through the snow for their equipment. They finished up pretty quickly, even cleaning up the shower in the downstairs bathroom that had caught much of the gunk from the sewer line.
After they left, I made a list of all the stuff that needed to happen, including moving the rest of my games upstairs, moving my daughter's stuff to the dining room so the rest of the basement could be cleaned, and lots of mopping. The first step was to move the washer and dryer and get the shovel to remove the gunk that settled under them. That was probably the most disgusting part of the evening, but sadly, not the only one.
Lots of moving of stuff, cleaning and mopping followed, and the basement slowly got back to the way it was before. Both kids were being pretty helpful, even if Rick stressed out over not being able to move the dryer very well. He didn't realize that it wasn't all that heavy. All he saw was a huge appliance. I had to say it to him: "Judge me by my size, do you?" The box fan is running still, trying to dry out the concrete in the laundry room. We'll mop the tiled areas tomorrow.
I'm done, and I'm grungy. I went up to my room and sat on my bed. My butt felt wet, which I attributed to working in the water for the past couple hours. I changed into sweats. I sat on my bed again, getting ready to work on that project I should still be doing. It was then that I realized that one of Cady's cats whizzed on my coat, which was sitting on my bed, and I sat right in it twice. I stripped the bed down and cleaned myself up before putting on the only other long, comfortable thing I own - my Led Zeppelin pajamas. I made myself some tea and talked with Ray for a little while, then sat down to... well, as it turns out, write this.
I better get back to working on that project now. If you'll excuse me.... Wow, is it 11:00 already?
Labels: life
Vacation highlights
I picked up a Halloween mannequin - basically a torso with arms and head that stands up well - from Dana and put it in the back seat of the truck one night. Then I drove home. When I got there, I left it where it was and brought the other stuff into the house. In the morning, I got in, started the truck and waited patiently for it to warm up and defrost. When it was all clear, I put it in gear, turned to back out and JUMPED OUT OF MY SKIN over the person in the back seat!
It was so much fun I had to share. I brought the mannequin into the house that evening and set it in the kitchen facing the front door. Erika and Richard were in the living room. I called Rick over to the front door. At first, he didn't see the mannequin, so I told him "nevermind." That way he would turn towards the kitchen to go back to the living room. He did and SCREAMED LIKE A LITTLE GIRL when he saw it!
When he sat down, I had Erika come to the front door. She didn't know what to expect, but knew to expect something. When she saw it, she jumped a little bit, but nowhere near as good of a reaction.
That was fun.
Christmas Eve, we all went to Ray's for dinner. It went pretty well. We had everyone open one gift each before we went home. Christmas morning, we woke up (the kids woke up first), watched a little TV, opened gifts and hung out a bit. Then we met Ray and her son for dinner and a movie. Que Bueno was overpriced and the food was not very good, but hey, they were open. The roads were pretty bad, but we got through okay in the trucks.
A couple days later, Erika and Rick flew out to Michigan. Rick's there to visit with his mom. Erika moved out there. With the snow, it only took 6 hours at the airport to get them boarded.
With my younger kids in Michigan and Ray's son away for a week, Ray and I found ourselves alone together. We had a second Christmas just with each other. It was really nice.
On the 29th, we went to the Mammoth game with friends. It was fun! The Mammoth seemed to want to give the game away, but after knocking the opposing goalie on his butt with a weird shot, they lit up the replacement goalie and came from behind to win the game. There's something fun about Lacrosse, but the way they put it on here is kindof white-trashy. At least it's not expensive. Maybe those go hand-in-hand.
Cady's baby shower was on the 30th. We showed up a little late to it. There were only a few other people there, though she also got gifts from out-of-state relatives, and some from Erika who had just flown out.
On New Year's Eve, we stopped at Bill & Toni's for a little while and played part of a game. I didn't realize how long of a game it was. I had to leave before it was over, so Bret H took over my spot. Then we went to Lori & Charlie's by way of my house to pick up games, arriving around 10:00. We didn't drink too much, and didn't turn into Mr. and Mrs. Inappropriate, though the antics from the Halloween party were talked about - some of the same folks were at this party.
Midnight arrived, and Ray & I kissed. (Yay!) Not like we weren't kissing all night anyway. Heh heh. After some games there, we slept on the couch in the living room until the younger kids started to wake up and make noise. Then we moved to the camp bed in the basement for a few more hours of sleep. I played a game of (I think it was) Five Crowns. By the time that ended, it was mid-afternoon, and we headed back to Ray's. She wasn't feeling well, and I was recovering from a cold, so we took it easy the rest of the day, watching a few movies and hanging around at her place.
It was back to work this morning. The commute from Longmont was easier than normal, but going in still kindof sucked after having time off. It felt too soon. My next time off is likely to come from Cady going into labor!
Labels: vacation
