A place where posterity can revel in my wit. Or, more accurately, a way I can pretend I am keeping a journal without getting ink smudges on my left hand.
You Snooze, You Lose 0
I woke up at 6:20 this morning, decided “Nope,” and set my alarm for 20 minutes later. Then I had a dream in which I lost Allison in a huge, crowded church building and was running around frantically, trying to find her. I was even crying in the dream. Everyone else was being spectacularly unhelpful, and finally I went into the women’s bathroom (which was an enormous open room in which the stalls lines the wall and had velvet curtains instead of doors), and she was in there, just fine.
The lesson here is that the snooze button is dangerous.
Too Tired to Think of a Title 2
I feel like I’ve been complaining a lot lately. So let’s get started.
Last weekend we went down to southern Utah for the wedding of Katie’s sister. On Friday we packed up the car, got in and… the car wouldn’t start. Eventually we sorted out that the battery had been drained the night before, when Katie had the doors open for a long time vacuuming it. So I got it jump-started it, and we were off.
Everything went fine until that night, when we finally got the kids to sleep in the motel room (which is always a challenge). I didn’t get much sleep because I was in the bed with Allison, and she rolled around all night. In addition, there was a screaming baby in the room next to us that was apparently up all night too. The next day we discovered that it was in fact screaming triplets. And the people kept their door open all morning to more effectively share the joy with the world.
The wedding itself went fine, and they had a nice outdoor reception with beautiful weather. But that day Sam’s ear started hurting, and by that evening it was really causing him problems. We got about an hour of sleep before he woke up screaming. We had dosed him with acetaminophen before bed, and not enough time had passed to give him more, so after being up for a while I eventually had to make a pharmacy run at about 2:30 for some ibuprofen. After that we managed another 3 hours or so, until he was up screaming again.
And so Mother’s Day dawned with us even more tired. We rushed to get checked out of our room, and finally found an Instacare that was open. The doctor saw how bad his ear infection was (it in fact started draining that morning) and prescribed a couple of antibiotics and Tylenol with codeine. The pharmacy down there was unable to get our insurance to work, so I paid the cash price for the Tylenol, figuring we could fill the antibiotic later in the day near home.
We said goodbye to the family and headed north again, until we had a tire blow out on the freeway about 25 miles away from Beaver. (The funny thing was, I had been feeling pessimistic earlier and had told Katie that I was sure the car would break down.) So I got to change a tire on the freeway with the cars whizzing by a couple feet from me. (It was one of the 80 mph test areas, naturally. And I learned something interesting. You know how they say when you’re up high you should avoid looking down? Well, don’t look back at freeway traffic speeding by your head, either.) The spare tire got us to the shop in Beaver minutes before they closed (shout-out to Katie’s brother Carlin, who made some calls and found an open shop while I changed the tire). $400 later (another of the tires was close to going, and it had a nail in it too) we were on our way again.
We had planned to go up to Salt Lake for dinner with my parents, but it was 8:00 before we got to Lehi, so that wasn’t going to happen. And neither was the last pharmacy run for Sam, which will have to wait for tomorrow. And now I’m going to bed.
I’m torn between gratitude that we survived, and frustration at how generally crappy the weekend was. I think I’ll go the “let’s forget this experience ever happened, and never speak of it again” route.
A couple other details I forgot: The tire blowout shredded our bumper and destroyed the brake light. On Mythbusters they showed how a tire blowout from a truck in front of you could go right through your windshield and kill you. Also, Sam slept all day in the car, so he wasn’t tired at bedtime. Katie very kindly allowed me to go to bed so I could get up for work this morning (insert comment about how terrible I am for allowing her to do that on Mother’s Day).
A Toadal Surprise 0
We spent the weekend in southern Utah, because Katie’s sister got married. In the sprinkler valve box at her parents’ house, we found a little surprise.
None of the pictures I took turned out very clear, but this is a little toad. It was a cute, fat little thing.
And another cute, fat little thing:
Oh, I’m just kidding. But it made for a nice segue.
Wait, Wait, Wait 0
One of the advantages of getting a bit older is that waiting a few weeks for something doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Even 7 or 8 years ago, if I had to wait for something, it was a horrible, long ordeal. And now, while I can’t say I am 100% patient and calm, it’s less of a big deal. Possibly because my memory is also less sharp than it once was, so it’s easier to forget that I’m waiting for something anyway.
Also, when I was a teenager my friends told me I sounded like a duck when I said, “Wait, wait, wait.”
Saturday Is a Special Day 2
Are you ready to laugh? At me, I mean.
Last year I got our sprinklers all in, except for our little flower bed in the front. I had stubbed it with a pipe so all I needed to add was a drip line for the plants. Then this spring I decided that I needed an extra part to make it work (a pressure reducer, if you care, so all that pressure going through one tiny area wouldn’t blow out the pipe). So I went and got the parts, which required several fittings to make the right pipes connect. Then on Saturday I had to dig a short distance from the flower bed from the main line and add the fittings there. I hooked everything back up, turned on the water, and… nothing happened. I realized that I had left the valve closed at the main box. I went back to open it and discovered that I had put the pressure reducer on that end of the line last year. So I wasted the money on the parts, I wasted the time on the digging, and then the drip line didn’t seem to be working anyway.
I called my dad, and he suggested that having the extra pressure reducer on the line was maybe making the pressure too low for the water to bleed out of the drip line. So I cut it off and hooked things up again. Still no dice. I knew it had water in the line, but nothing was happening. After some discussion with neighbors, it appears that line doesn’t actually drip the water, but you have to add some little drip lines or whatever right at the location of the plants themselves, for things to work (this was not explained by the guys who sold me the parts). So in the end I bought parts I didn’t need, wasted time hooking them up, and then didn’t even get the parts that I did need. And it was all done on the day I was supposed to be running the marathon but couldn’t because I messed up my knee. Happy day!
Get Rich Quick 3
Okay, in terms of “the good of humanity” and all that, it’s important to cure diseases like cancer. But if you want to help improve the quality of life for a larger portion of the population, and invigorate the economy, someone please figure out a way to safely tranquilize children at night. Whoever does that will become a billionaire overnight, I guarantee.
Spice 0
I love the variety of life. It’s fascinating to me how many different ways there are to keep me from sleeping at night. Sometimes I’m sick, and there’s an endless variety of symptoms that can keep me awake, from a cough to congestion to a sunburn. Sometimes, as was the case last night, I’m perfectly fine but everyone else is sick and the kids wake up every ten minutes. Sometimes they just don’t go to bed until really late. Sometimes the neighbors’ dogs won’t shut up. Sometimes there’s a thunderstorm. Sometimes I can’t get the temperature right. I really am amazed at the sheer number of possibilities, and sometimes I just laugh at whatever it is on a given day.
My Latest Idea 1
I’m sure this exists, but I’m afraid to verify it. I’d like some measuring spoons with flat bottoms, so I can rest them on the counter, pour in the vanilla, and leave it there until I’m ready to pour it in.
Whiney Whiney 0
Saturday was a weird day. I ran 17 miles in the morning. Then I mowed our lawn for the first time ever, which was kind of an interesting experience after all the work I put into things. Then I took Sam to the park for a while.
Then I had a bunch of bricks I bought to edge the flower bed in the front yard, but I decided to take them back and get something different. So I loaded them up and went back to the store. Then I had to load up the new blocks, of which I needed twice as many. Then I had to try to push that huge cart with 400 pounds of stone on it, and it was unbelievably hard. So I had to push it around the store and then out to the car. Then I had to load them in the car (I nearly bottomed it out, which I’ve never done before), then I had to unload them again when I got home. Then I spent a while leveling the dirt and laying out the stones. I honestly don’t know when I’ve been that tired.
Happy Plot Conflict to You 0
Last week I was reading this book to Sam, and he made a brilliant observation.
I’ve pointed out before that Sam is surprisingly insightful for a six-year-old. In this case, he very intelligently pointed out that, “There’s no problem in this story.” He recognized that there’s no conflict in this book, unlike most books that we read. I probably would have been in high school (if not college) before I could have made that observation. The kid is pretty amazing.