NaBloPoMo 2010 Day 26 -- Long Day

Today was a weird one. It started last night. After a long Thanksgiving Day filled with a gluttonous amount of food and drink, we came home a little after 8:00 pm. I probably should've gone to bed then. Instead, I fell asleep downstairs for a couple of hours. Then, of course, I couldn't fall asleep. I watched most of the movie Radio. I'd never seen it. Decent flick.

Eventually, I went to bed in the wee hours of the night/morning.

K-Man was up a little after 7:00 this morning. Jen leaned over and asked if I "wanted" to get up with him. As opposed to what? Sleeping for a few more hours? Sure, I'd love to get up. I knew Jen wasn't feeling well, so I didn't mind getting up to give her some more hours of shut-eye.

Kee did a great job "playing quietly" downstairs so he didn't wake up Mommy. And Jen managed to get several more hours of sleep, but she struggled most of the day with the crud. Similar to the crud I had the other day, but maybe a little more flu-like. We'll see.

Jen stayed up for a few hours before taking some more Nyquil. The Nyquil required a nap. Keegan always "gets" whatever Jen has, so when she said she needed to nap because she wasn't feeling well, Kee said he needed to rest too because he had a cold too. Kee laid down, but only lasted about an hour. Jen was out for over three.

When Keegan woke up, we planned a trip to the Thrashers game tonight, but I told him not to tell Mommy -- because she was still sleeping, and I didn't want him to wake her up.

Just as we were about to leave for the game, Jen woke up and came downstairs. The first words out of K-Man's mouth were: "We're going to the Thrashers game."

And after two beats, he added "but I'm not supposed to tell."

Priceless.

We headed downtown for a little pre-game Chick-Fil-A at CNN Center before the game. Here's Kee working on his last chicken nugget:

We lasted the usual two (of three) periods because Keegan was ready to leave. We had a little incident in the restroom, so I had to introduce Kee to the freedom of "going commando." He adjusted well. Better than I thought he would. He can be rather particular about his clothes. I think the fact that he was wearing his fleece-lined jeans made the transition a little easier.

NaBloPoMo 2010 Day 24 -- Thanksgiving Preparations

I'm working on my oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies tonight. The first batch is in the oven as I start this post. So far so good. Here's what they look like in the bowl:

Here's what they look like cooling on the cookie rack. (Yes, I have a cookie rack for cooling my cookies. Shut up.)

Based on the required precautionary taste test, I think this batch will be well-accepted tomorrow at my parents' house.

Jen is a fan of oatmeal raisin cookies, but she hasn't asked me, until tonight, to set aside a portion of the cookie mix to add some raisins to. Done. We'll see how they turn out.

I enjoy Thanksgiving a lot. The football games. The food and drink. The time shared with family and friends. I'll probably have a list of things for which I am thankful tomorrow.

It would be funny (or odd) if Thanksgiving came with a tradition like this one: Slapsgiving!

And Slapsgiving II - The Revenge

Happy Thanksgiving!!

NaBloPoMo 2010 Day 4 -- Boys Night

So K-Man and I went to Taco Mac tonight for a little dinner. We refer to it as "Boys Night." It's a fun time to get away, and Kee gets his usual -- cheese quesadilla and french fries. Typically, I ask him questions about his day, and he may or may not answer. The "discussions" never go the way I envision them going, but I keep trying. One of these days, we'll actually be able to have a conversation during one of these boys nights. It's still a great time because inevitably, he does something that makes me laugh.

The first time I laughed tonight, we'd been sitting in our booth for about 10 minutes. We were munching on some chips and salsa. Keegan looked across the room and said "there's a girl." I said "yes, that is a girl" (and I was thinking, "there are about 10 others within our line of sight too."). But it's "boys night; there're no girls tonight."

The second time I laughed was when we were taking pictures at dinner. I took a few shots of him enjoying his quesadilla. Like this one:

Then, he wanted to take another one. This time he wanted to take one "backwards." Here you go:

He loved it. And I laughed out loud!

NaBloPoMo 2010 Day 1 -- Halloween Surprise

So we woke up this morning to find a surprise on the front porch. We've all heard stories of Halloween pranks of many varieties. Egging. Toilet-papering the front yard. Smashing jack-o-lanterns. Flaming bags of poop. Fortunately, none of these were awaiting us at dawn's early light.

Instead, Jen found two small cages sitting side-by-side. Each one containing separate members of order rodentia. Yes, we'd been visited by the rodent fairy. Well, the domesticated rodent fairy -- like Glenda the Good Witch, but not without the knee-jerk thoughts of the Black Plague. We found ourselves with two mice and a rat. Thankfully, we'd watched the Pixar flick Ratatouille about 379 times, so we were able to personify the "little guy" as K-Man referred to him. Jen took them to the vet to have them checked out. One of the mice has a little skin issue and got some antibiotics (yes, they make antibiotics to nurse rodents back to health.) The other two seem to be just fine -- as fine as abandoned rodents can be I guess.

Keegan gave them all names. The mice are female and were bestowed the names Gabriella and Molly. (Gabriella is a character on "Sid the Science Kid" and Molly is from the Toy Story trilogy.) The rat is a boy, so Kee declared him "Costco." Maybe because he instinctively knows that a rat could eat through a 5-pound block of cheese or one of those Millennium Falcon-sized cheesecakes that are readily sold at the warehouse retailer.

This was destined to happen because Jen made the comment over the weekend that she didn't think we were ready to get another furry pet. She jinxed us. And K-Man has a few new pets as a result.

"Costco"

Halloween weekend highlights

The Halloween weekend started with, uh, Halloween (hence the name). Keegan got things started with a party at school where he enjoyed pizza and Capri Sun. In case you're wondering, K-Man went as a penguin.






Then he got ready for the real Halloween festivities in the neighborhood.







Posed for a picture with his Aunt Nicole and Uncle Jonathan.




On Saturday, we had some friends over (all of whom were dog fans) to watch the annual Florida-Georgia game in Jacksonville (a/k/a the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party). I expected the game to be a Big 12 shootout with the winner being the last team with the ball. Fortunately, it didn't matter who had the ball at the end of the game ... or all of the fourth quarter for that matter. UF took advantage of some "timely" penalties by Georgia and Matthew Stafford auditioning for the Detroit Lions by throwing 3 interceptions. The final score was 49-10.

By the fourth quarter, John Mark, one of our UGA friends, had capitulated.



And decided to get a new tatoo.



On his forehead. See.

6 quirky things

I have been tagged by h to share 6 quirky things about myself. The hard part is limiting the list to 6 because I have a long list of hang-ups, um, quirks. See how many you can find that fall into the Freudian column of "anal-retentive."

So without further ado:

1) I always blow my nose after I take a shower. First thing. Something about the heat of the shower just loosens up the nasal contents. And post-shower, they must be eliminated. If I reach for the shaving cream or razor before blowing my nose, this alarm goes off in my head telling me that things are amiss.

2) I don't use dressing on salads. Waiters always do a doubletake when I say "no dressing." You have no idea how many waiters or fellow patrons have recoiled and blurted "No dressing?" like I was choosing not to breathe.

3) The clock in my car is set 10 minutes fast. My alarm clock beside the bed and my watch are set 5 minutes fast. I hate being late. This helps prevent that. The clock in Jen's car is not set ahead. Oh, I'm not going there ....

4) When I get a new CD, I have to open it up as soon as I get in the car and listen to it. For the younger crowd that only downloads music, let me explain. See CDs are these things that were like records .... Wait, um, records were these things that you played on a record player with a needle .... Oh, nevermind.

5) I hate it when papers are stapled and the pages are not flush together in the corner where the staple is. When the pages are all messed up or fanned out and then stapled, it just looks like you don't care. People should care about how pages are stapled together. As an attorney, I deal with a lot of paper and a lot of stapled sets of paper. A while ago, my assistant copied some documents and put them in an envelope to send to a court and to opposing counsel. At the last minute, the client wanted to change something so we decided to wait a day to send the documents, so we held back the copies that had been made. I took the envelopes from my assistant to avoid inadvertent mailing (shut up, I confessed my anal-retentivism above. It could happen. Why not prevent it if you have the chance?) So the next day, on a lark, I opened the envelopes just to see what she was planning to send. The stapling was atrocious. (Yes, stapling can be atrocious people.) Fanned pages just stapled. FANNED! Then I flip over the document to see that the copies had come out of the copier that way (you can tell this because the staples from the copier close differently then that double-humpbacked way they do on your traditional Swingline model.) So, I'd identified a lack of attention to detail but maybe not a stapling deficiency on the part of my assistant. The documents in the court's copy were the same way. Not acceptable. You think I'm anal-retentive. You don't want to cross a judicial version of anal-retentive. Trust me. So I walk over to my assistant and show her one of the copies with the crazy stapling. You know what she says? "Yea, I saw that."

Don't tell me that! You saw that these things were coming out of the copier all cock-eyed, but you just threw them in the envelope anyway? At least fake ignorance. So I nicely tell her that we cannot send out copies that look like this even if they come off the copier like that. This sends an impression of me, the other attorney on the case, and the firm in general. No can do. (I didn't actually say "no can do" -- THAT would sound so condescending.)

6) For all my anal-retentiveness, I keep a messy office. At work and at home. I just pile things up and work on what's at the top. When things from the bottom or middle of the pile require attention, they get moved to the top. See, look for yourself:


So those are 6 of many quirks. Now, I get the opportunity to pick others to provide 6 quirks about themselves. I tag Randel, Caroline, John Mark, Sean, and Matt.

Not crazy about this Easter egg hunt thing!

A couple of weeks ago, we took our son, Keegan, to an Easter egg hunt that the city was hosting. We were intrigued to see how he would respond to all the kids, the eggs, and the giant Easter Bunny. Keegan is 15 months old. He's been walking since 10 months, so he is relatively adept at getting around at this point -- except of course when he is tired which is when he looks like a tiny drunk man stumbling about moments away from some head-first plunge into the coffee table, floor or wall. From about 4 months old, Keegan has had an obsession with wheels. Some friends of ours (the Fritchman's or Fritchmen -- however you pluralize that), gave him a bulldozer when we brought him home. At four months, he could care less that a bulldozer could be used to plow into things and move them around. All he wanted to do was flip it over and spin the wheels. Which we did regularly for the next 8 months. What does this have to do with an Easter egg hunt?

Well, this obsession with wheels has grown. It's like any addiction really. You build a tolerance. Hot Wheels cars don't do it for him any more though. Larger Tonka bulldozers don't faze him either. He's moved up to full-size tires now. He can't walk past a car and not reach out to touch the tires on it. We're saving money to send him to a clinic for his addiction -- one of those where you have to shave your head bald, get a tattoo and forego undergarments to gain access.

Back to the Easter egg hunt -- this will all come together, I promise. So we arrive and get out of the car. But I made the mistake of putting Keegan down in the parking lot. Yes, I am an enabler! First thing he does is start touching the tires on the adjacent car. But that's not enough. He has to touch all four tires. At 15 months, he's figured out that every car has 4 wheels -- and they must ALL be touched. But we're here for the egg hunting and cute moments of toddlers falling all over themselves in search of candy representative of the Resurrection of Christ! SO I pick him up. Fit ensues. I persevere. Wiggling kid in tow. I put him down on the grass closer to the nice petting zoo set up by the city -- because what is more symbolic of the Risen Lord than penned rabbits, a baby goat and a rooster? When I put Keegan down, he just stood there. Angry. Angry that I had deprived him of the full enjoyment of running his hand across radial tires. And maybe a bit unsettled by all the commotion of expectant kids cornering barnyard animals. Whatever he was feeling, it was captured in the above photo. Priceless.

As for the hunt itself, like many things that parents await with anticipation, the result was rather anti-climactic. The hunt was scheduled for 10:00 to 12:00. We arrived at 10:00. Unbeknownst to us, the hunting would not commence until 11:00. So we had to kill an hour. We played on the playground. Walked on the trail. Walked up and down the bleachers -- which was very exciting when we realized that by stomping, we could make a lot of noise on the metal bleachers. After an hour though, Keegan was wiped out and ready for a nap. Oh, there will be no napping. We came out here to gather eggs. You will hunt eggs son. So, we lined up with the other parents along the right-field line of the baseball field set aside for kids under 2. On the signal, we walked in search of our bounty. "Disinterested" doesn't describe how little Keegan could have cared about this thing at this point. We walked away with 4 plastic eggs -- and 2 of those ended up in our basket because a little girl didn't realize which basket she was using. Three of the eggs didn't even have candy in them. They were filled with plastic gold coins. What's the message there? Are you calling my kid Judas? "No sir. Those are the eggs with the plastic silver coins." Is this some sort of prosperity gospel message? Believe and you will find gold coins laying about the local ball fields. OK -- that was a bit cynical.

All in all, the morning was fun if for no other reason than it gave us a great story to tell about Keegan's first Easter egg hunt. It also gave us that great picture. And I am sure there will come a time in the not-so-distant future when I will be wishing for the days when he could care less about all the stuff that comes with the holidays.