4 Happy Family The personal blog of Kevin R. Hoffmann

Sunday is to relax, Sunday is to relax

(I know my friend Chrismon got the Digable Plants reference)

Last night we went out to dinner for our eighth wedding anniversary. We have been together for almost 14 years. Wow, our relationship can almost drive itself. It is great to still be in love after all of these years, not just in love but in love with my best friend. (Mmmm.......syrup)

Since we are broke we used a gift certificate to go to a place called Holly's in Lake Bluff. Good food, nothing crazy. Maya was good with the sitter, she is warming up to them a little better, but she was not happy that we were leaving.

Coming home we received a call from Courtney's (I guess my friend too) friend Barb. She invited us over to their house for a bonfire. They are the people who bought our hold house so it was kinda crazy kicking it back over there, They broke out the guitars and it was a lot of fun sitting outside and just hanging out. We got home a little later than we thought, but it was worth it.

C is lying on the couch next to me with some bad sinus issues again and Maya is taking a nap. I have a work conference call at 3 so I thought I would write a couple of quick paragraphs with the movie One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest on in the background while I go through some E-mail. It is coming up on the point where Chief throws the thing through the window. I am hoping Maya doesn't wake up before then.

We took the dogs for a nice walk this morning and we are going to go for a little bike ride and try to get Maya's kite airborne this afternoon. I think we are doing steaks on the grill tonight and just trying to enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Loose Screws

Pretty interesting Saturday. Interesting as in typical craziness going on.

Saturday morning we took Maya to the ENT to get her nosebleeds checked out. We know that it is very common to have nosebleeds at this age but our subscription to Hypochondriac Parent Monthly dictates that we go and check it out. He said that she was good and had us go across the complex to get X-rays to make sure. The Dr. said that she is not a picker, she just has sinus issues or possibly allergies, Apparently they don't really cauterize any more, just mostly in cases where the scab doesn't heal. We get the final results back on Monday.

Decided to go for a run today. Since my watch seems DOA I dug up my old normal-sized uncool, no maps one. Of course, the battery was dead so off to the store. Had to go to the home improvement store because of course, there are four microscopic screws that had to be removed to get to the battery and this was going to require a special screwdriver.

Now, I am not sure how you feel about this, but I have a problem with buying a $5 specialty tool just for four screws. The idea was to keep the packaging on, replace the battery and then return the screwdriver. Pretty cheap or justifiable?

Either way, karma came back and kicked me in the ass about 5 minutes later. I have these goofy sausage fingers that are not good for intricate work. I was sitting in the car in the parking lot trying to get the  screws back into the back of the watch when I fumbled and dropped it into the top part of my zipper.

Now, when you are trying to do something in the car like that you are cramped and in an awkward position where my stomach is pushed out if you know what I mean. It is not like I had to jack up my girth to find a screw, but I did have to thrust my hips up to try and find it. Looking over I did not realize a car had pulled in next to me and this woman and her teenage daughter were gawking at this middle-aged pudgy guy thrusting his hips in the air like he was in A Christine Aguilera video. I just sort of nodded and picked myself up the best I could.

Anyway, got it working and went for a 5-mile run. I have been running for aout 8 years now and you would think that I would have figured out how to prepare myself. I had not been running religiously for a while lately. so I knew I was in a for some hardship. If you are a runner or planning on running, here are some things your should probably not do

1. Do not eat grilled cheese with Girardinera before you run
2. Do not drink gin and tonics the night before a run
3. Do not run in the hottest part of the afternoon
4. Do not forget the sun block

Obviously, I could have been better about somethings. Still, it felt good to get out on the Des Plaines river trail here in Libertyville again. The waters had subsided and, even though it was like running in an armpit because the heat humidity is stuck under the canopy of the trees, it as awesome to get out.

Mile totals:
8:29
9:08
10:33
10:16
10:38 for a total of 49:06 I think. NOt bad for the first longish run, but you could see that things atarted falling apart later in the run. I really tried to listen to my body and walked when I thought I needed to . I have a motto:

"If your arms start to tingle, Courtney is gonna be single"

This kinda keeps me from psuhing myself to hard. I was a wreck when I got home, but yes, I am trying to listen to my body a little better.

Society’s Precious Snowflakes (Pt. 1)

Story

Oh, the horror of only owning one car. Yeah, I/We can turn up our nose(s) at you environmentally unfriendly two-car owners. Yes, we have only one car and it has not really been an issue for us, we can even fuel it with the fumes of our smug superiority (kinds like when I joke with my friends that have kids and call them: Damn, breeders.)

I kid, I kid.

The real issue is that people I were talking to at work today were surprised that kids actually walk to school any longer. Come to think of it in the vast suburbs of Libertyville I rarely see kids walking or riding bikes much anymore. Could be because of my work hours, but it seems that kids are ferried to and from their over-full schedules.

I would like to think we are going to always only need one car (as long as I can walk to the train for my job), but I wonder if we would make Maya walk the 1.5 miles to school. I guess it depends on the weather, but we have a few more years to think about it. Until then we will keep locking her in her chair like some kind of amusement park ride. (Meaning if C is driving. Ha Ha. Ha.....sorry.)

Success!

I was able to get this upgraded to Wordpress 2.5 without much effort. The previous post written at lunch was caught in limbo so that is out now too. Doesn't look like I can edit files directly through the admin, so I will have to figure that one out.

Sweat, blood and tears

Dammit, I hate that I need a watch to be motivated. I thought I had everything figured out last night, but I could not get my watch working this morning on my 3.5 mile run. Called Garmin and talked to a pretty unknowing rep again. Some of the website research shows that other people's experience with the problem of only the reset button working on the Garmin 201 means that it could possibly be in its' death throes. I am going to let the battery run down and try to get the paddles to it to resuscitate. I am sure you are dying to know the outcome.

Maya was up sporadically with a nosebleed last night.  She did nap yesterday and again today, so that is getting better. She had two bleeds before I came home, one induced by crying and the other sporadic. I took her up to give her a bath and she was crying again and had another one. I carried her downstairs to get some towels; she had wiped her nose with her hand all through her hair and and her face and her body-- pretty disturbing. She woke up a couple of hours later moaning so we went to check on her. She had been leaning over the side of the bed and had soaked the skirt ruffle thing making the whole scene pretty Mansonesque.

Courtney is taking her to the doctor today for a check-up which is good timing to explore this. In the mean time we put her humidifier back in with her. One thing I did not realize was that you are not supposed to tilt their heads back when they get a nosebleed. I love being the stupid Dad. Courtney graciously corrected my behavior.

I also noticed last night that the admin screens for the Wordpress application failed on me so I could not post. I was able to get a band-aid solution on it and backup everything so I can (hopefully) post this, but I need to upgrade to the newest version of the application which could take the whole site or some archives down. Fun stuff. So, if there is a blank page tomorrow or you have not seen an update in a while, it means I am still trying to work out the kinks at night.

Stumbling Blocks

I was going to get up and run again today to try and continue on the path back to better health, but ran into three obstacles. As mentioned yesterday, my dork watch that lets me graph and track my runs (which is a great motivator for me) is on the fritz. I called the Garmin support line for my Forerunner 201 and the tech told me that it appears that it is DOA. Pleasant guy, just at the end of the conversation he did tell me that I could send them my 5-year-old watch and they can fix it for $70 plus shipping OR he could send me some information on their new line of products.

Come on $70? You know they are trying to upsell you that is why they make it so cost prohibitive to fix your old equipment. The newest watch is $300. It is damn sexy and fits like a normal watch on your wrist instead of a block of colby jack like mine. The good news is that I was able to pull it out of its coma. It appears that it has a problem with turning itself on sporadically and running don the battery. So I charged it up overnight which caused some issues. (Gotta love the foreshadowing)

The second issue we had last night was that Maya had a low-grade fever after not napping all day. She wan't that sassy, but she was definitely tired and it showed. We gave her some meds and ut her to bed early. She woke up at about 3AM and we gave her another dose and her fever had risen to 103. We tucked her back in and went back to bed. Poor kid.

Never really fell back asleep. About 4AM I hear a weird beeping coming from the bathroom. I tried to ignore, tried to ignore. Then C asked me "What the hell is that?" For those of you that are not married, this is couplespeak for "Get your ass out of bed and check out that beeping/grinding/barking/screeching/banging noise." Dutifully, I complied. Of course, it was my watch telling me that it is fully charged. It would then stop charging, start running and bring the battery level down where the charger would kick in and charge it full and beep to let me know it is full. Circle of Life.

At this point I was still determined to run, even though the sleep would do me some good. Since waking up, I began to notice that my leg was itching really badly. Lying in bed I tried to ignore it and my sleep suffered too. I know, whine, whine whine. I managed to catch some sleep for about 45 minutes, got up and showered in a zombie-like state. I heard Maya moaning a little bit so I checked on her and she felt much better. Took her temp. and it was almost normal. Much better.

As I am writing this on the train, I pulled up my pant leg and saw the source of my itching. Apparently, I am a dumbass. Many of you know this already, but let me confirm. We have a back porch that used to have carpet that we (couplespeak) pulled out. There was a layer of glue underneath that needs to be removed before we can paint the floor. We want to tile it when we have money, but this will get us by for now.

I bought a really caustic adhesive remover that makes our porch smell like a meth lab. It had the consistency of snot and I spread it out with a little spatula, let it sit for fifteen minutes and then scrape it off into an old kitty litter pan. Repeat 3000 times. I finished about half of the room when I thought that I could do this better, smarter, easier. I started using a paint roller and it was working at first until the remover removed the roller and left me with a cardboard husk. Of course, I continued to use this not realizing that it was kicking up droplets of caustic material onto my legs.

So, yes, now I have divots all over my shins that itch like crazy. Reading the can, it sas to use elbow-length rubber gloves, eye protection and pants and my dumb ass just wanted to get it going so I was in shorts, a t-shirt and walking around barefoot until I got some of my senses back and put on some sandals. Picture of the room below.

The goal is to get it sanded and etched by this weekend and paint it on Sunday if everything works out. 

I saw from my upper deck train cantage point that the Des Plaines river trail running path is almost clear so I am going to check it out in a day or two. I also talked to C and we agreed that signing up for a half-marathon would be a good motivator for me to keep running so I found a nice and inexpensive one ($35 --the Chicago Distance Classic in the city one is almost $65) in Lake Zurich that I am researching further.

Hopefully, it will all work out.

Porch of melting skin:

Update: Got to work and C said that Maya seems to be feeling much better.

Back in the Saddle

Started running again this morning. I ran once a couple of weeks ago to play volleyball at the beach with work. I used muscles that I have not used in a while which debilitated me for the next 4-5 days. I played with a bunch of mid-20 YO people (kids). They showed up with 40s of King Cobra. Man, I am old. The sad things is that malt liquor is not as bad as I remember it. Made me feel like Billy Dee.

So I reset and picked today as a day to start getting healthy again. Run was smooth, a quick 3 miles in about 25 minutes. I had charged my running watch (Garmin 201) and it would not turn on. This sucks because that is one of my main motivators to graph out my slowness and see it over time. Need to research to try and fix it. I was bummed that the Des Plaines river running trail that goes through Libertyville was still under a little bit of water so I had to run on the sidewalks.

The weekend was fun. Frinds in from StL with two kids of their own so Maya was able to play with their older daughter. They also had a Baby which fascinated het to no end. She would go up and kiss the baby and stroke her head. It was sweet. We went to Painted Penguin, the mall playground and Portillos in Vernon Hills with them. Also took them down to the beach we live across the street from. Really chill and enjoyable.

After they left on Sunday we went to the newly opened Loews in Vernon Hills to check out a stackable washer and dryer. We found lengths of fence to fix where the tree fell through and it was just a little more expensive then the wrap of chicken wire I bought that day and will be a semi-permanent solution. Had to fight a ton of mosquitos, but got it in. The whole reason we are gettig this stop-gap measure in place is that one of our dogs got out on Friday through the temporary barrier we put in place. Got a frantic phone call from home, C could not go search with Maya. Luckily, it started raining (the dog loathes the rain) and came back to the house.

We are currently working on our porch and trying to get the upstairs closet completed for a washer and dryer that we can't afford. Ahhh 12 months no payment/interest really helps you live out the American dream. We watches the gymnastics trials last night.  Maya is a freak for gymnastics. She watched with wide-eyed awe and would attempt to replicate the moves on the screen. Our coffee table (which looks like a minature pommel horse) served as her balance beam. Caught a little bit of it on the video camera, but I am trying to get out of here for work so you probably will never see it.

 Pictures below are of Maya and her new friend getting ready to go out on the town and the second is from her bounce house; she likes to smash her face into the netting. (PS - Just saw that George Carlin died. Bummer.) 

Kiddie Kicks and the Carnival

Today's ridiculous story. Jimmy Choo infant line coming soon.

++++++++++++

 Maya is like that kid in the movie The Ring lately. She just won't sleep and it is driving us crazy.

 Here are a couple of pictures from Libertyville Days last weekend. Check out the super freaky monkey in the foreground. That is basis for some good trauma there. Of course, Maya had to ride on it. The first day we went we could ride on pretty much everything at the kiddie carnival. The second day I think the first-string carnie team was working and would not let her ride on anything except the MGR and the Dizzy Dragons which I had the good fortune to go on with her...twice. Not used to spinning. You are supposed to be 36 inches.

The car ride below is one of the ones she "snuck" on. Day 2 mandated that she ride with a partner. She loved the cars; the glee was contagious. Now she asks us everyday to go to the carnival.

Friends in from StL this weekend, supposed to rain, enjoy.

Why not 17 bags of flour wrapped in tape?

It is funny how things change when you become a parent. It seems that at a particular high school in MA the newest accessory is offspring.

"They're so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally," Amanda Ireland, 18, said. "I try to explain it's hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 a.m."

Yikes.