We had an odd finish to my writing week: it rained – all day. Folks I know in the northeast may not find this in the least bit odd, but in Florida we’re lucky to get any rain at all, let alone all day. Folks around here don’t know whether to take joy in the fact that we’re getting some much needed rain or despair from the gloomy weather. Me, I’ll take it every now and again. It’s a nice change of pace from the unending glare of the bright Florida sun. Last night, as the sun was setting, it was nice to step out on the front porch and soak up the sounds and sights of a good shower.
My floor is my life.
This week we answered the call. The call to tear out our floor and put in a new one ourselves. We should have told them it was a wrong number. First, we moved out of our bedroom. This was no big deal, I went to college – and so did my sisters. This has no relevance to my ability to move furniture (you would think that it would have taught me well enough so that I could pay someone else to do it for me). I only mention this because it gave me plenty of experience moving furniture: moving from home to the dorm, from the dorm to my first apartment, from my first apartment to a storage facility for the summer, from the storage facility to my second apartment – and on and on… Next came the fun part: pulling out the old floor. Carpet comes out really easily, but this is a fool’s paradise. What lays underneath is tack strips. If you live in Florida, this means that the tack strips are likely fastened down with nails driven into a concrete slab. If you don’t know anything about concrete let me tell you this, inch for inch it holds onto nails better than wood – a lot better. The first step in removing the tack strips involves prying up the wood strips. Nine times out of ten the nail head pulls down through the strip. The fun part is pulling out the nails. This involves a long pry bar and the weight of a full grown man. We applied the two in the obvious manner. The result is a suspenseful pause followed by a loud pop and a small, sharp projectile flying across the room. Actually laying down the new floor was kind of anticlimatic after flinging nails around the room.
We started on Friday night. It is Tuesday night. We are not finished with one room.
I don’t really have anything to add to that. Like I said, our floor has been our life.
Writing as an exercise in futility.
With the exception of a rare burst of inspiration this evening, I’ve not been overly excited by the results of my self imposed deadlines to “create.” I continue to hold out hope that I’ll get better with practice. And who knows, maybe I’ll find some time during the days to come when I’ve the time and lack of distraction to do better. Time will tell.
Ballet, Tap and Tumbling.
The weekend was not all bad, we got to see Beth’s much anticipated Ballet recital on Saturday. Is there anything more precious than a bunch of preschoolers doing just about everything except the rehearsed number on stage in front of the live audience? Beth only had a couple of classes leading up to the recital, so she hadn’t had as much practice ignoring the pleas of the teacher. She was a good sport, and gave her best shot at following the lead of her more experienced classmates, so there were at least two people doing something similar on stage.
All roads point to heartburn.
I finally decided to see my allergist about all of the coughing that I’ve been doing lately. Naturally, he suggested that the problem was likely in my stomach. You may laugh, but I’m not joking. The kicker is that the treatment prescribed to treat this ‘stomach’ problem has helped my cough. I guess that’s why they call him DOCTOR. It’s been something of a relief for a doctor to give me a diagnosis that I’ve heard before, however unlikely I thought it going in. You see, I’ve seen a couple of doctor’s for a couple of different reasons, and all of those “reasons” have lead to the same diagnosis: reflux. If my life had a soundtrack, the Hallelujah chorus would now be playing.
Bookshelves: buying vs building?
We concluded last week with a stop at a furniture store, to browse through all of the furniture we couldn’t afford. We began this week with a furniture purchase. This week’s aguish is brought to you by Barewood Outlet. Why pay less for a finished bookshelf when you could pay more for the hassle of finishing the bookshelf yourself? This was the question we asked ourselves this week, and we failed the test. To be fair on ourselves, the bookshelf we bought at Barewood was bigger than the one we saw for less at Haverty’s, so we weren’t comparing oranges and oranges. What we got was another kind of citrus – think tart. Throw in a case of Polyurethane fume overdose, a family room that still smells four days later, and a clothes dryer that now converts clean smelling, damp clothes into burnt polyurethane finish smelling dry clothes and you’ve got yourself one hell of a weekend. Hell Cheryl, for an encore let’s go set fire to the kitchen table! No, the real encore will be the do-it-yourself Pergo installation next weekend. Look ma, I’m holding my breath.
Helping those who want to see the light
We had an unexpected visitor on Friday, a little boy who lives down the street. Beth was just tickled to have someone over to play at her house again. Later, when the boy’s father came over to pick him up, he was bathed in the glow of our tech savy. Sitting in the corner was our old bondi blue iMac and our new iBook. “Youv’e got to talk to my wife”, the boy’s father exclaimed. Later that week, the boy’s mother (who works with Cheryl), began a conversation with the words, “after spending time with YOUR HUSBAND….” I knew instantly what was comming next. The boy’s newly emboldened father gave his family the gift of tech enlightenment, a trip to the Apple store. They didn’t walk out with a new computer, but I feel some sense of accomplishment. The war is not over, but a small battle has been won.
Working backlogs @ work.
Is there anything more fun than accumulating a backlog of work at the office? Sure there is…working through that backlog. That has been my chosen task this week, and it can be a little mind numbing – sort of like a lobotomy without the surgery. On Monday we welcomed a new person to our little family on the third floor, whom I will be training over the next few weeks. It’s hard to get a handle on someone in a few hours, but the initial signs are positive.
This Week: 5/29/2002
There’s not much to say about this last week, but I’ll try…
Dad got out of the hospital on Friday.
There was nothing wrong with that.
We had a long weekend, by virtue of the holiday on Monday.
There was nothing wrong with that.
I got to sit in bed until 11a.m., on a day when I would normally be at work.
There was certainly nothing wrong with that.
I was in bed with the lingering effects of a pesky cold.
There might have been something wrong with that.
Dad did in deed get sprung from Moffit on Friday. Mom and I followed our normal hospital routine, and got there around 1 p.m. Dad already had the remainder of this tubing removed, and was pronounced ready to leave. Of course, in hospital speak, this means you are free to go when the paperwork gets done – sometime in the next two hours. Those two hours were like the last two hours at work before a week long vacation. I was once again less than my perky self (yes, you are allowed to laugh) due to a healthy dose of cold medication, which didn’t help. As nice as Moffit was, compared to my other hospital encounters, it was nice to leave. Listen to me, I wasn’t even staying there!
Our weekend was more pleasant than most. We spent most of our time visiting with friends and family. We went to see one of Cheryl’s coworkers down the road on Saturday. Beth had a good time playing with their little boy, who is about one year Beth’s junior. The evening was spent over at my parent’s house. Dinner was served ala Quizno’s, the entertainment ala New Jersey’s colossal choke. YES!!! Sunday morning we were surprised by a musical sermon in church. Once a year or so, one of the couples from our church performs a series of musical pieces, which takes the place of a sermon. The wife plays the piano/organ and the husband plays a violin-like instrument. They played what amounted to a 30 minute concert, and I really enjoyed it. I’m not sure I can say the same for Beth. Sunday afternoon we saw some other friends for lunch, and had them over to our place afterwards for a Beth – Madelynn play session. As usual, Beth had a wonderful time leading Madelynn around the house like a four year old mommy.
Memorial Day, a state holiday…a day that we all got to stay home and relax. Only we didn’t stay home and relax. After the aforementioned extended stay in bed, the pressure to “do something” built to a climax and we went out in search of “something to do.” It wasn’t so bad though. Beth got to play at the indoor romper room at the International Plaza, and Cheryl got a darn good cup of joe at the Nordstrom’s Espresso Bar. On a whim, we stopped in on a few furniture stores and plotted the destruction of our meager savings. Prudence won the day and we left the furniture store with the same amount of cash savings that we entered with.
Beth was a little challenging this week. Late last week Beth earned the death penalty of Kauffman household punishment, an early bed time with no opportunity to play after school. Fortunately, things were much better afterwards. She even earned a trip to the bear store to cash in her poopy sheet. (For those of you out there not reading this who don’t know what the poopy sheet is – you’ll just have to go on guessing.) My favorite Beth image for the week present itself on Friday evening. Beth was gorging herself on drinkable yogurt. After a couple of bottles we advised Beth that she would not be allowed to have any more. Since she could not have any more, she was determined to get every last drop out of the ones that she had. She spent the better part of half an hour walking around the house, looking at the ceiling, with an inverted drinkable yogurt bottle between her teeth.
This Week: 5/22/2002
What will I have to say this week?
There was another week at the office. There was a weekend to follow. There was another trip to the hospital. There was the onset of a cold. Oh, and there was a graduation.
What can I say about work? While I enjoy my job, I still have those times where I’d rather be just about anywhere else. Last week was like that. You go to work, but you’re there in a literal sense only. Your mind wanders at every oportunity and the time seemingly stands still. I obviously survived, but it wasn’t easy.
Beth “graduated” from pre-k on Saturday. I thought the idea of graduating from pre-k was kind of silly, if not a little cute. Beth and her classmates got to dress up in full graduation garb and walk down the isle with pomp and circumstance. Beth had a grin on her face most of the time so I think she enjoyed it. Lisa and I were tickled to discover that a new family tradition would live to see another day. At the end of the ceremony the class walked in procession to the front of the stage where stairs awaited them. The stairs disappeared behind a wall which the kids emerged from at the bottom. Beth was following right along and began to slowly disappear behind the wall. She got about half way down when she disappeared suddenly, appearing in the middle of a sudden flury of action where the floor met the stairs. Ah well, Beth is in good company – you know who you are.
The rest of the weekend was a blur of fatigue and illness, the kind that leaves you lost in that zone between consciousness and sleep. I can’t blame it all on the cold. To avoid further discomfort, I switched antihistamines, going for my tried and true cold formula: Actifed and Motrin. My runny nose and congestion were quickly put behind me, but the side effects are always a killer. Fortunately, I was awake long enough to see my Celtics take a beating at the hands of the Nets. Thank goodness for that.
This leaves me at the hospital, waiting for Dad to come out of surgery and typing this week’s entry. I’m here with mom. If you know either one of us you probably know how much conversation is going on. That’s o.k., we’ve got plenty to do. I’ve made two trips to the hospital cafeteria, giving me more confirmation for my theory: hospital cafeterias have something against heat. This holds true for humans and food alike. The dining room, aka the refrigerator, is cold enough to chill and preserve last night’s leftovers, which brings me to the food. I was there for lunch just as they were setting it out. You would think that this would be your best shot at getting fresh, hot food. Well, I’m glad I’m here to set you straight. I can’t speak with certainty about the freshness (although I could guess), but I can say that the food was anything but warm, with the lone exception being my Sprite. I could have put a couple of my brocolli spears in my Sprite to cool it off. It was a shame that the food was so bad because it was not a good reflection of the rest of the hospital.
Now for the highlight of last week, celebrating the eighth anniversary of my marriage with Cheryl. Cheryl’s parents graciously agreed to look after Beth while we went out for a long overdue date. We had a lovely, if not pedestrian dinner at the Outback Steakhouse, followed by a trip to the movies. We saw what I consider one of this summer’s must see movies: Star Wars Episode II, Attack of the Clones. Unlike the previous movie in the series, this one lived up to my high expectations. It did everything I wanted it to do. In short, it filled in the gaps and introduced some of the history that is behind the original trilogy. The end left me somewhat satisfied but craving for more. It is sure to be a long three years until the release of episode III.