The end of babysitting

My wife told our friend she would not continue as the babysitter for her after the end of the month.

My wife has the opportunity to earn extra money by doing some freelance work for a non-profit agency and my wife feels she is somewhat neglecting our son during the babysitting process.

She's also starting to resent our friend a little. Having no experience on this we spoke with several mothers about this and they said it's perfectly natural.

Our friend is not happy about it because she starts working in the office next week and she now has to find someone to take care of her two children. She hasn't spoken to my wife since learning about it.

Times will change.

Sunday School

We attended mass today and brought along my wife's cousin to talk with the priest after the class since we were not successful in speaking with the Monsignor. My wife's sister did not attend since she had to prepare for a convention and her company has a booth on the convention floor.

My wife's cousin and her sister were supposed to be the Godfather and Godmother but the Monsignor said no since her cousin was not a totally practicing Catholic and her sister was not a practicing Catholic at all.

We attended the class and the priest went over the Catechism of Church and the base teachings of the Ten Commandments. We had a quick rehearsal of the baptism and it was done.

We then sat down with the priest and gave him the full rundown. Our cousin and sister was unacceptable for Godparents and had to be removed from the Baptism registration. We had placed their name on the application initially.

I had my parents get their letters of acceptance from their Church. The priest accepted my parents as Godparents for the registration. The priest also accepted my wife's cousin and sister as the stand-ins since my parents are in Florida and cannot attend.

With all that resolved my wife felt much better and relieved.

Surprise

My wife conspired with my friends to throw a surprise party for me yesterday. We drove to a friends home and I found a few people there that weren't supposed to be there.

We had a nice time. It has been several years since I saw these people so it was a welcome reunion of sorts.

We got home about 2:00 a.m. and I expected to drive for hours looking for a parking spot. Fortunately it was only an hour of driving all over the place. I managed to find a spot.

We got home and went to sleep about 3:30 a.m.

Sister-in-law comes by

My sister-in-law flew in this morning. She got to us by 7:00 a.m. The two of them took our son and went out for breakfast, shortly after they took their showers and felt human again.

My wife went to her physical therapy session while her sister slept off the flight effects. When she gets back the two of them will go to Bloomingdales. My wife has $700.00 in gift cards to spend there and they are due to expire on Monday.

Baby dates

Today is week 27 for our son. Next week we baptize him in the Catholic Church and this weekend we work out the final details.

We have a class scheduled for this Sunday, I'm just interested as to what the class is for.

Subway Hijinks - Epilogue

The MTA now says the repair will be complete in 9 months, of course there was a great deal of dissent among the public in response to the 5 year projection.

The talk is now acceptable to everyone. It seems their tactic worked. Now passengers only have to put up with inconvenience for 9 months.

We shall see. I suspect in nine months, there will be an outcry from the MTA stating their acceleration to complete the repair of the panel was so expensive a subway hike is absolutely necessary now.

Or maybe I'm just a little cynical.

Anniversary

Today is our 2nd anniversary. I intended to take us out for dinner, however, since I am taking the railroad and subway to work and back I won't get home until 7 or 8 o'clock. By the time we get back I would have to go right to sleep.

I ordered in dinner from a restaurant my wife particularly enjoys eating from, and we had a nice meal. Until she took a business call, then it fell apart.

A non-profit organization needs help and can use her specialties with computers and organization.

Subway Hijinks

Yesterday a fire at a control panel crippled the service on the A and C trains. An MTA bigwig now says that it will take three to five years for the repairs to be fully completed.

If the MTA expects people to deal with reroutes and inconvenience for five years while the MTA continues to raise the cost of subway fares they have totally lost touch with reality.

Or perhaps they are just saying that to get people to accept when they say they will have the work complete in 2 years.

Let's see. Maybe next week, they'll announce their timetable.

Work day

I chose to take the subway and Metro-North instead of digging out my car and driving to the office. Of course it makes my trip back and forth 2 hours each way but it's better than taking that 2 hours and looking for parking.

Finding parking is hard enough, I don't need to add snow banks as competition for parking.

Snow Day - cont'd

It looks like I'm not taking my car out any time soon. The snow is over a foot and has almost covered my tires entirely.

Luckily I'm on the left hand side of a one-way street and the plows have practically buried all the cars on the right hand side. You see little hints of metal and glass poking out of the snow.

Snow day

We have been advised of a blizzard for several days now. I was awake this morning at 6:00 a.m.

I normally wake up at 4:15 a.m. So for the time I woke up today it was late.

My wife had an appointment with her physical therapist today at 10:00 so I waited until she left for her appointment to get ready.

I took a shower with my son and got dressed and ready to go grocery shopping with the three of us once my wife's appointment was done.

It was about 11:00 a.m. when I reached my the building my wife was at. It was fotuitous that we met up with my wife at the same time as I got there.

We spent a lot of time at the supermarket, it seems that the population at the supermarket exceeded it's normal occupancy rules.

After grocery shopping my wife went to get her hair done and I went home with our son to wait for the groceries.

Just as we left for home the snow began to fall. It is normally a 15 minute walk from the supermarket to our building. I was about 3 blocks away from our building when I felt the snow crunching under my feet.

They newscasters predicted that the snow was going to fall at about 3 to 4 inches per hour. We'll see.

Baby dates

Today is week 26, by calendar dates, he's officially 6 months old. Bah...he's been 6 months old for some time now.

He rolls over on his own now. He still falls asleep when I take him out for a drive but he's a lot more alert about what's going on around him.

More doctor visits

My wife has an appointment with her physical therapy doctor today. After a short visit with the doctor that included his review of the Othopedic's x-rays convinced him that my wife needed physical therapy because of the stress that her spine is undergoing.

She has an appointment with the physical therapist on Saturday. We'll see what happens.

More doctor visits

My wife had another visit with her Oncologist. It is just a follow-up but we have to continue to see her.

The last thing we want to find out is that my wife is having another attack of cancer. Her doctor says that she sees my wife is healing wonderfully.

I don't think I can be strong enough for both of us again if she's diagnosed with cancer a second time, we have a young child to care for as well.

Evening appointment

Tonight my wife had an appointment with our churches RCIA head. I went with her so the headmistress (?) can meet our entire family.

The Catholic church recognises me as a full Catholic but my wife has to undergo the full treatment of doctrines since she has only experienced a baptismal.

After a short interview, we stayed for coffeee and went home. I needed sleep.

Price of Gas

Queens Boulevard
Rego Park, Queens, NY
 

Sitting duties

I dropped off my wife this morning for baby sitting duties. I'm not sure how long she's gonna take this duty on because she's really frazzled by the end of the day.

I can tell because they are no longer doing the Mommie and Me classes. It seems that their relationship has devolved to a employer/employee one.

That means that either they will be hanging out as friends or my wife will take on the helper's responsibilities. I hope the former is true because the latter is not fair for my wife to take on.

She's a friend, she's not the hired help!

Sunday rest

My wife was very tired and could not sleep because she was caring for the baby all night. She was also a little sick. She slept through most of the day.

Doctor's visit

Today we took our son for his 6 month vaccination shots. They were only two shots but he did not like them very much. He cried quite a bit.

He eventually cried himself to sleep.

When we got home my wife and my son both slept for some time.

Baby dates

Today is week 25 for our son. He's now enjoying solid foods. Well, Gerber foods, not really solid but that pureed stuff. He's really eating it up too.

Next day

I'm still in pain, I hope that the shot takes effect soon.

Pain!

I woke up and my wrist feels just as bad as it ever did. It's not getting any better, my sister-in-law who fights professionally and has had several Cortisone shots says that it takes about 24 hours for the shot to take effect. Sheesh...

Yet another doctor visit

My wife and I went to our appointments with the Orthopedic Surgeon. My main worry is that my pain involves my bone disease and it will have to be removed.

We purposely show up early because forms will have to be filled out but no matter what, we always end up waiting. We sat waiting for nearly an hour. It annoys the hell out of me. Why go through the pretense of forcing people to make appointments if you take them on a first come, first serve basis?

Anyways...after taking x-rays, the doctor luckily determined it wasn't bone disease that troubled me but tendonitis. He gave me a Cortisone shot which hurt worse than the pain of tendonitis. He said I was going to have pain for the rest of the day and gave me a prescription of Tylenol with Codeine.

My wife's appointment didn't turn out as painful. They also took x-rays of her neck and spine. We happened to have the same doctor and he said my wife's spine was curving incorrectly, possibly due to a car accident she was in years ago. He prescribed her a neck brace and physical therapy to correct her spine.

Pains in the wrist

My wrist hurt so much I had to contact an Orthopedic Surgeon to look at my wrist. I mad an appointment for tomorrow. I also made an appointment for my wife since she still has pains in her back near the shoulderblades.

I dropped my wife off at our friends home, babysitting duties.

Co-op woes

Right before our son was born and in the middle of all that business we had some water damage to our living room walls. It just so happens that our living room wall is adjacent to our neighbors bathroom.

In the middle of all that activity and since I never bothered to prime and paint the wall. I figured I'd paint the entire living room since it really needs it and the repaired section would stand out like a sore thumb.

Anyways, the water damage came back just before Christmas. I informed the building Superintendent and he maanaged to repair it earlier this week. The Super came up and said it wasn't water damage but our failure to prime paint the walls.

I got into a slight argument with him over it, but the fact remains I did not prime the walls and in the course of this problem the building manager would stand behind his Super.

After I managed to cool down and with a small consultation with my company's attorney I learned any damage that would come at this point is the liability of the building.

I took the time to contact the building manager's office and informed them of my discussion with the buidling Super. I told him I repaired the problem and will proceed with painting the living room and that any future damage will result in a full reimbursement of all costs for repair and repainting and that I will be keeping an accounting of all records involved in this work. They didn't seem impressed.

Well today I picked up all the prime paint and completed that aspect of the work. Next week I'll pick up the paint and start painting the living room.

Baptismal

Today we met with our church's Monsignor who was not initially willing to perform the baptismal for our son since my wife has not completed her Sacraments for the Catholic religion.

After a short discussion with him, he agreed to perform our son's baptismal providing my wife completes her rites of indoctrination into the Catholic religion. My wife was very happy that he will perform the ritual.

Baby dates

Today our son is 25 weeks old. He's starting to use mono syllables, not in a coherent way mind you but he's using them. He's also started lifting himself up somewhat, you have to start him off with a slight tug on his hands, but that's his cut to start sitting up.

Every little thing he does just surpises me.

Electoral College

During the reading of the electoral college votes a debate broke out.

It sounds like there should be a punchline but there isn't. The jokes on us. There were many irregularities that took place on Election Day and only one Senator cared enough to do something about it.

These are the people that we chose to represent us. What a sad world our children will be living in. The gap between middle-income class and upper-income class will get larger and the difference between middle-income class and lower-income class will be barely noticable.

Where's Frank Capra when we need him.

What a surprise!!!

Just as I suspected. Now the newspapers are reporting that complaints were made about Vince Neil on NBC.

It shouldn't amount to anything since his use of the word was in passing and not intentional and more importantly....AT MIDNIGHT!!!

Additionally anyone that would make a complaint on Tuesday for something that aired on Friday night, clearly did not see the program. That's the kind of thing you respond to immediately, you don't think about that.

Vince Neil and the F-Word

This morning, sitting in the company parking lot, I open the paper and read a small article noting that no complaints were yet filed against NBC for Vince Neil's use of the "F-Word" on the New Year's Eve broadcast.

Is this the press trying to subletly get someone to complain about it to continue with the story? Are you still reporting the news when you're making the news?

Back from doctor

My doctor gave me a prescription for antibiotics to get rid of the infections i'm fighting. My wife is still sick as well. She couldn't get out to our friend's home to babysit.

I just want to be healthy again.

Another sick day

I have an appointment with my doctor today and it couldn't come any sooner since my sinuses and my chest are still infected.

Quiet Sunday

Today was a quiet Sunday as usual.

We went to church and headed to Babies R Us from there. We bought a few things a Babies R Us and my wife picked up a couple of things at Old Navy.

We went home from there and my wife slept for most of the day since my cold/flu has not hit her. I just hung out with our son until my wife couldn't stay in bed much longer.

Monk

I know this is totally off the mark but today USA Channel was running Monk for the entire day. Excellent show, and Tony Shaloub plays the neurotic, OCD crazed Adrian Monk perfectly.

Happy New Year

I hope everyone out there has had a good new year. Our's was quiet, boring and unassuming. Just the way I like it.