• Oh shit!

    Cheryl and I disagree on when it is appropriate to swear. Cheryl is firmly in the “never” camp. I on the other hand am a firm believer in the well placed, as needed, off color explicative.

    We were all walking through the park. I feel kind of silly because I was looking down, so I should have seen it coming. No sooner did I notice the writing on the floor did I feel a thump on my head. “Holy Newtonian physics Batman, that bird just let go on your head!” At that moment, in the middle of Bush Gardens, I let out a perfectly timed, fully appropriate, “oh shit!” Cheryl showed her disapproval of my suddenly colorful language with a color full gesture of her own, a none to subtle whack on the head. It wasn’t until she looked at her hand that she understood.

  • Life.

    I found out my wife was pregnant about three months ago. At first I was dumbstruck. What can I say, we had been planning to have another child for some time, but it’s one thing to plan it and quite another to give it a date certain. Soon enough I was planning for life with another child. Joy had replaced the shock of discovery. I began to wonder what it would be like to have another daughter, a protoge for Beth. I fantasized about Beth treating another girl in the house like one of her dolls, acting more like another mother than a big sister. I also wondered what it would be like to have a son, someone to torment Beth and vise versa. I began to think about day care options, and wether or not I wanted to work a four day work week to lessen our day care load.

    This weekend I remembered what it is like to have those fantasies come to a premature end. It started with those words … words that mean nothing but trouble coming from your pregnant wife … words that I don’t really want to repeat. We went to the hospital and the doctor told my pregnant wife of 13 weeks that there was an eight week old fetus in her womb. Even before the doctor said he could find not heart beat we knew that womb had become tomb. Now I’m left with another dream of a child that has died. Once again the shock of discovery was upon me, but this time under much worse circumstances. Once again the realization did not come until a day later, but it was born out of despair instead of joy.

    Where do we go from here? What choice do we have? We move on. I held off telling my coworkers about our latest pregnancy until Cheryl was a little further along. It turned out that I learned my baby was dead three days after I told all of my friends that my baby was on the way. Now I find my self going back to work to tell them much different news. I find myself trying to reassure them more than they are reassuring me. More than once I’ve said, “it happens.” I just wish it didn’t happen to us.

  • Surprise!

    We went to Bush Gardens on Saturday as a reward for Beth’s performance in school this last week. Our Bush Gardens routine involves sleeping in, moseying over just before lunch time, and stopping for a bite to eat for lunch upon entering the park. This time we decided to eat at the Crown Colony Restaurant, at the table service restaurant on the third floor. It was much better than all of the other restaurants I’ve tried in the park. Although, eating something that doesn’t leave me feeling like I’ve just eaten a case of Malox would be an improvement. This was actually pretty good.

    But then something happened.

    There was a guy sitting with his wife two tables over but in my direct line of sight. He was eating what looked like fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Next to his plate was a gravy boat. He was eating his fried chicken with vigor, so I assumed he was enjoying it. Then, he made a move for his gravy. He picked up the gravy boat and tipped it over his mashed potatoes. This was the first sign of trouble: nothing came out. He was looking right at it when he picked it up, so I’m assuming he would have noticed if it was empty – and he wouldn’t have picked up. No, he knew something was in there. He tipped it a little further … and still nothing came out. After slight hesitation, he whipped that boat like you’d whip a sock coming out of the drier inside out. His whole body was involved in the follow through. As a result, the alleged gravy came out of the boat with the consistency of a tenderized hamster. It plopped out into a crater in his potatoes in one sickening mass. If I was watching from a less advantageous angle, it might have looked like he vomited in his plate. I have no idea what this guy was thinking, but he obviously has lower standards for food than I do. He grabbed his fork with all the subtlety of a plumber wielding his pipe wrench and stirred up the mass of gravy and unsuspecting potatoes with nary a look of displeasure. He was about to take a bite and I had to look away. Through force of will I managed not to look back though the remainder of our stay. It’s a good thing to, failure would have ruined a perfectly good lunch.