A deep dark roasted secret

I've been keeping a secret from my wife, and this blog is going to be how she finds out about it. I am not proud of that, so my love, I'm sorry this is how you found out. Like most things, it started out innocently enough, once or twice a week. It was so easy, it came naturally, and it felt so good. I wanted that feeling more and more. I had tried before, but it was only on the rare occasion, and it never became a habit. I think it might be here to stay now. I'd like to blame my boys, or my mom, but really I am the one who has done this to myself. I'm an adult, responsible for all my actions, so I did it too myself and now must face the music.


I have been drinking coffee.

There I said it, it's out there, I'm sorry I didn't tell you J.

O's sleeping habits have been killing me, and some java in the morning makes me feel sooo much better. It's kind of weird, because I've never been one to drink much coffee, just on the rare occasion. I didn't want to have to rely on it, so even in college I didn't drink it. I did down my share of coca cola back then, but as I grew older and wider around the middle I knew I had to give up either that or beer. Beer won. I'm sure my wife is wondering how this could happen, we've never even had a coffee maker in our house. It started with a cup at the Starbucks in Target after a particularly rough night with O. After that it was a cup on Tuesday and Thursday at my mom's when I would go for a walk with her and my sister after dropping the boys off at school. Now it has expanded to stops on the way home from dropping O off at school. It's gotten to the point where I shopped the coffeemakers at Costco the other day. I'm even starting to get picky. No more Starbucks, not for some corporate boycott, but because I don't really like their coffee, McDonald's coffee is actually better. I am sticking to straight coffee too, no lattes or frappucino's, I don't need the calories. I can even rationalize that I am doing this for my health, because there has been research showing the benefits of a cup a day. I might have to start drinking more red wine for my health too.

My next step will be picking out the proper machine. Having worked in a kitchen store for years, I know I have many options. I also was spoiled working there and drinking the coffee from the $1000 we had there. I won't be getting one of those. I am a bit out of the loop on machines and what's available, but I'm thinking about one of the single serve or pod machines. I'd consider a coffee press, but there is much too much work and mess with those. Anybody with recommendations or advice is welcome to weigh in. Help me to further my habit, that is thankfully no longer my dark roasted secret.

And so it begins

My sweet lovely wife left out of town this morning to Tampa for work until Friday night. It went about as expected, O was up about every hour, I'm guessing because he was worried he wouldn't be able to say goodbye. Everyone was up earlier than normal and then O proceeded to have a fit that "he would die" if she went. Once it was decided that we would take her to the airport, he was fine about the whole situation. Most of the day went by swimmingly, the boys played well together and I got to watch football. Late in the afternoon they came out of the bathroom with a bottle full of soapy water. Says I, "what are you doing?" "we're doing an experiment". "where are you going with the water?" "outside". "not outside, keep it in the bathroom sink please. what kind of experiment?" "just an experiment" "ummm, okay, but please don't make a mess, and keep the water in the sink". "okay daddy". I don't know what I was thinking, I should have checked up on things, but I didn't. About 15 minutes later "Help!! Daddy help!!! There is water all over, it's spilling out of the toilet!" I'm still not sure what the experiment was or exactly what they were doing, they really didn't feel like talking once I started yelling. The only thing I got was that O was just trying to make the toilet paper go away by flushing it down. There was probably 2/3 of a brand new roll of tp gone too. Lovely. After that mess, I thought it best to go out to eat. My choice was to go to a microbrewery I can't go to with J, because they have stuffed deer heads on the wall, and she is phobically afraid of that. "No! I'll die if I have to go there, that place is awful!". Lacking the strength to argue or fight that battle, we went instead to the Italian Denny's, the Olive Garden. I don't mind the place, I quite like the salad, but tonight was less inspiring than normal. I'm not sure if our server was new or just lousy, either way a serious dink. At one point he comes to inform me the kitchen is out of penne pasta for my meal, but they will use ziti if it's okay. I'm fine with that, but how does a restaurant like that run out of a pasta. He brings me my beer, but no glass, earlier he tried to give me a Coke I didn't order. All the chairs have wheels on them, it's like the restaurant bought chairs from an old office building. Because of this, Q manages to fidget his chair out from under him and fall and bonk his head on the floor. The waiter does bring the boys food out when it is done, which is good, now Q can quit crying in my lap and eat. I wait for my dinner, O finishes his before mine comes, I am assured mine will be right out. A shrimp pasta comes out, but it's not what I ordered. Hungry and not wanting to try and explain this, I just eat it and wonder if the person who got mine liked it. About three bites into mine and Q has decided he doesn't like his and he's leaving. He pushes his chair back and hops down, except that with the wheels his chair slams back into the couple at the table next to us having a romantic dinner (or as romantic as any dinner can be at Olive Garden). I apologize and put him back in the seat explaining that I have to finish my dinner I didn't order. Q proceeds to start crying. The waiter comes back and promises more bread sticks to the delight of O (he had earlier been promised more), and takes O's drink to refill. He doesn't ask if I want another beer, nor does he refill my nearly empty water. I ask for a box for Q's. He comes back with the bread sticks, 2 boxes, and O's drink cup with a lid but no straw for him to drink it with. One might have thought he would leave the check since I asked for a box, but apparently I was too subtle. Mercifully the check comes, but at this point O, bored with everything, is trying to drink from his cup with no hands (and the lid off because there is no straw), and dumps it the table, himself and his chair. He yells that he needs a towel, I tell him to move, but he can't because he is sitting with his leg through the hole in the armrest and will get even more wet if he tries to get out. Our waiter tries to help with O's napkin, but he's basically an idiot and no help, so I tell him I've got it. Q asks, now can we go, slams his chair back again, and almost takes out the tables food being served to them. "yes as soon as daddy signs this little paper". I'm not a mean person, so I still left shit for brains a 15% tip, but I also left ice and water everywhere too. I'm hoping the rest of the week goes a little bit better, that and I never have that waiter again.

You have now entered the slacker zone

I've been having real motivational issues the last week or so. It probably has to do with the situation in my last blog, but regardless I have really been slacking. I just don't feel like doing anything I don't have to right now. The dishes are stacking up in the sink, Transformers are all over the office floor, puzzles are all over the kitchen table. The bathrooms are in desperate need of cleaning as are the floors and kitchen (in hindsight, I kind of miss the cleaning lady, and no dear I don't want her back). I haven't showered since last Friday. We end up having pasta, eggs, or getting food to go for dinner. Even the Tivo is almost full because I haven't been watching shows. In fairness there are a large number of children's shows on it that my son won't let me delete (we have 30 episodes of Phineas and Ferb alone), and my wife has many shows she is behind on. I have been feeding and clothing the children and making sure they get to and from school, but not much else. I should go work out, or do something otherwise productive, but I'm just not feeling it. I think part of it born of the frustration of parenting my two darling boys and their inability to play nice (I had one of those "what in the hell am I supposed to do with you two" moments earlier). In fact I have new nicknames for them, Q is now the Instigator, and O is the Reactor. Q right now is into doing things to test me and his brother, and see how many buttons he can push and for how many times in a row. O provides the perfect foil for this, and thus he is the Reactor (it also works on the nuclear reactor level, because that is the level of response O provides). So I'm just kind of through with the two of them, and that feeds into my blase.

I guess the next question is what exactly have I been doing? Writing this blog, it's a good distraction. Mostly I've been spending entirely too much time online on two things. No, one of them is not porn. One would be my usual obsessing over my fantasy football teams, for all the good it is doing for their success. The other has been looking into this whole blogging (mainly reading other people's blogs) and more specifically daddy blogging thing. Not that this is shocking, but I am finding I have no idea what in the hell I am doing with this blog or blogging in general. There are some really talented people out there doing this, not only do they know what they are doing technically, but they are great writers too. I mostly just ramble on incoherently. Some of these people are even making (or trying to at least) make money from their blogs. There are whole forums and groups devoted daddy blogging. I am way behind the curve on all this stuff. In matching my mood, I'm not sure I care. Would it be cool to be read and have my writing recognized, of course. I don't want this to become boring or tedious or even a job. Right now this is therapy to me, an escape, I'd like to keep it that way. Now I need to snap out of this funk and get the boys bathed and the kitchen clean before my lovely wife comes home. If she asks, I've been working really hard at home.

Pseudo-single parenthood

My family is in the midst of what I like to call my periods of pseudo-single parenthood. These occur during my wife's busy season at work, which as a CPA on the tax side means February through April, and then from mid August through October 15th. It's always a bit of an adjustment, because my wife is the sweetness and light in the family, she is the one who brings the joy and the happiness. I bring the grumpy sternness, I am the nagging, yelling enforcer. So without my wife around as much to balance the house, we all get a bit on edge until we can adjust. September is always the hardest, because we have the added adjustment of a new school year.
I don't want to make it sound like she isn't home at all, she just isn't around as much, and has to work more from home (thankfully today's technology makes this possible). For instance this past weekend, she logged 36 hours of work from Friday to Sunday, with only Friday and half of Saturday at the office. We do adjust, but it takes a couple of weeks, and usually involves me irrationally yelling more than usual (This is something I am really working hard to curb, to provide a better example for O, and because it doesn't do any good. Yelling doesn't change their behaviors or make things go easier, so I really am trying to find different methods to handle things.). The main problem I think is that we just get sick of each other, my boys get tired of looking at and listening to just me, they'd much rather look at the beautiful smiling face of my wife (can't say I blame them for that). Dinner becomes and adventure too, because it's a little hard to cook for two little boys and one adult, so we eat out more. Of course the boys can never agree on what to have (or anything for that matter, we've tested and no matter what, given two choices each boy will choose differently), so there are times when that means we have cereal for dinner since no one can agree. One nice thing, is that my wife always tries (and is successful) at being home for bedtime, because it is a very involved ritual that is hard to do alone. Over the years things have improved with regards to her work, when she first started she had to work many more hours as an associate, and she couldn't really work from home either. Of course we didn't have children then, so what it really meant was that I got to stay up late drinking beer and playing video games. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that this is hard on J too, she misses time with all her boys and the stress release it provides her. It's also hard on her health, she doesn't sleep well, or as much, and she forces Tylenol to up its production to keep up with her demand. That's why at the end of busy season we always take a trip, to come together again both physically and mentally and bring light back to our family. More to come about the trip.

The sad state of my fantasy football team.

I am in a deep depression over my fantasy football team. I take great care and pride in the drafting, maintenance, and success of my teams. After having won two years in a row, I currently sit second to last with a record of 1-3. It's killing me, I'm doing everything I can to stop my slide, waiver wire pick-ups, trade attempts, upside plays, but none of it is working. I'm trying to figure out where I've gone wrong, and I think it started with getting the first pick in the draft. It's not that I was disappointed getting Adrian Peterson, it was where it put me for the rest of my picks. I do not like picking first, I'd much rather pick later and not have to wait so long between picks. The league is a ppr (points per reception) league so with my second two picks I got top receivers, Roddy White and Boldin, neither has played up to snuff. I missed out on decent QB's because they all went earlier than expected. I was happy to end up with Hasselback late only to have him play well, then get hurt. My other mistake was drafting Raiders, as a Charger fan you would think I would know better, but I thought McFadden could go big (the Raider's rushed well last year), and Zach Miller was the highest TE on the board when I drafted. My sleeper WR picks all bombed or are hurt (Eddie Royal, Earl Bennett, Lance Moore). I did draft decent RB depth late with Ray Rice, Joseph Addai, and Felix Jones, but all are in timeshares and I'm never sure who's going to be the one to go with from week to week. That has been my other problem, guessing wrong on who to start. I would have won week four if only I had picked Addai or Rice over Mc Fadden (or if AP would have had a good game). I think my other big problem was holding on to my players too long and missing good opportunities to improve, I should have booted Royal, McFadden, and Miller much sooner. I remain hopeful I can make a turn-around, get in the playoffs, then maybe get lucky and pull off a miracle. I'm already fully obsessed with my team, so really I'm going to have to be smart and lucky. At least I have the satisfaction of my wife's team (which I also manage), being the top point scorer and in second place in her league, and fantasy basketball is just around the corner to give me a second chance at victory.

It's 3:00 in the morning, are your children sleeping?

It's 3 in the morning and I have a headache and can't sleep. This is all courtesy of O, I have spent the last hour trying to rationalize the fear away so he could go back to sleep in his room and me in mine. Funny thing is, fear is not rational. So he has ended up the same place he has most nights for the last week and a half, on a crib mattress on the floor to the side of our bed. We've developed a pretty consistent pattern, sometime between 12 and 2, he wakes me up, either by yelling out from his room, or scaring the shit out of me standing next to my bed. From there I make him pee and get back in his bed, he then tells me he can't sleep. "why not O?", I ask, "because I'm afraid", "of what?" say I, "of being alone". I then try to understand and convince him he's not alone, last night he got bored with that and went back to sleep and I got to go back to bed. Tonight, he was on to that, and whenever I would get up to leave he would stir and we would be back at square one, so now I'm at the computer and he's on a much too small mattress in my room. We came up with the crib mattress, because me sleeping on his floor or J trying to sleep in his bed was not working, and no one was getting any sleep. We have always steadfastly refused to allow our children to sleep in our bed with us, it's an excellent rule, I recommend it highly. Not to say there hasn't been the rare night they were allowed in, but that never turns out well. You would think a king size bed could hold 2 adults and a small child, but it ends up feeling more like a WWE cage match complete with eye gouging, kidney kicks, and wrestling for covers. I've never slept in a smaller section of my bed than the nights I've shared it with a child, how a little body takes up so much space I'll never understand.

All this lack of sleep, and O's fears of the weather (and other things) is pushing us to consider some alternatives. We've been taking O to a therapist off and on for about a year, since J had her surgery. It's been a help, if not to him, then to me in ways that I can deal with and help O. We're wondering if it's enough now as we become more sleep deprived. We're going to talk to a doctor about putting him on some anti-anxiety medication. In general I am very conservative about medication, don't use it unless it is really necessary. When it comes to medicating my child with something like this I'm even more reserved. You're messing with the brain with these drugs, his still developing, very bright brain. I worry about fixing one problem only to cause another, and that's without worrying about medicinal side affects. I know plenty of people (friends and family) on these sorts of medication, and they can be very helpful, but as a parent I worry. If it will help him live a better life though, I think I need to try it. J is worried that if left unchecked his problems will just continue to mushroom out of control, and that is a real concern, you don't want his fears to take control and limit his life. I have seen his fears keep him from fun before. At the happiest place on earth, Disneyland, he was unable to really enjoy, because he was too afraid to go on rides that he wanted to. He would go up to the entrance, and then turn around because he was too scared. He's threatened to boycott school over weather reports of impending storms, I had to pick him up from school one day because he had made himself sick worrying about dark clouds and strong winds. I didn't send him to school on Halloween last year because all the kids dressed up worries him. If medication can help him with these things I think I've got to try it, for him, I don't want him missing out on life because it rains. One thing I've had to fight through all of this, is worrying that I have somehow made him this way. Could I have done something different, was there something that happened that made him like this? It's hard not to beat yourself up about it, but I have to know this is just how O is, and maybe he doesn't have to be. That's why we're going to do everything we can to help him, even if that means medication. You can be damn sure though, that I will know everything I can before making the best decision for O.