Saturday, January 08, 2005

Due Date

Dear B and M,

Your baby is due on the 4th of this month, but is still hanging out and going to work on snow days. He is to be induced on the 13th of the month, but I realize there is a conflict on that date because that is also the day we have satellite TV installed. Please come earlier, baby. I will give you a candy bar if you do. And to the parents, well, it'll be hard to find since my wife and I have been shopping for it, but we'll buy you guys Sanity, Money, and Time when it becomes in stock.

Sincerely,
Diego

Snow Day!

We all know that my wife is a wonderful and loving mother to my two babies and an excellent wife I'm proud to be the husband of, but while formulating a blog entry in the shower, I realized that the massive amounts of infomation that I want to write on the blog is pretty much because of her. She just makes life more interesting, and without her around, life just gets to be a little more boring and stressful.

It actually started snowing all day Thursday, and even when we were on our evening walk, we were pretty convinced that none of it was going to stick. The air felt warm and it was starting to turn into rain. But when I woke up this morning, I looked out the window and went into some mild form of worry. After much debate and some light drinking, I decided not to go into work because I really didn't wanna get stuck at work when more snow comes in. We tried going back to sleep but by then we were just spritely so we went for a nice morning walk before the babies woke up.

When Alex woke up, he was in for a treat by having some fun in the snow. He had gone out the first time yesterday, but today he was in for a ball. He got all bundled up and then he played around in the snow, batting the powder with his makeshift sock mitten (we later found his regular mittens, they were in the drawer having some glove love with the oven mitt) and just having a ball. I videotaped him screaming and talking about what a great time he was having, even if his hands were frozen.

The downer was that whenever he had to come in, he'd throw a little fit. But usually we hand him a banana and he'd forget what he was upset about. He went out another time later when my wife tried to use a baby-gate cardboard box as a makeshift sled. That worked extremely badly, but was really glad for comedic value.

I went for another walk with JL, taking lots of snow pictures and having most of them turn out indifferently, because the snow had blanketed everything to this nothingness. No shadows or textures, just a bunch of smooth white snow. And snow just freaks cameras out anyway, throwing off the white balance completely and making people seem really blue.

But my wife and I got to go on two walks today, get into a snow fight, watch Spider-Man 2 (finally!), and yeah, both conspired to topple a 4 foot snow penis. Turns out these damn college idiots built one, complete with scrotum and twigs for hair, in front of their house by the sidewalk. The immature side of me thought it was pretty funny, but the parental side of me was pretty pissed because it was facing the street, and there was a playground across the street and a daycare as well. That's just not cool. So I gave it a swift kick after we discussed its untimely assassination.

Me: I'm going to kick the dick now.
Wife: Ok.
(Kick.)
Me: Damn. It's hard.
Wife: Hee hee hee. You said it was hard.

(We walk away, then return to finish the job. Wife decides to karate chop the dick.)
Wife: Ow! It's hard!
Me: Told ya.
Wife: I think I broke my hand.
Me: Here.
(I ram it with my shoulder, toppling it over.)
Me: There. I castrated the snow dick.
Wife: I'll call in and say I broke my hand on a dick.

The damn college punks have since rebuilt it. Bastards. I need a flare or something.

Snow Boy!




Click on the Photo to see all 13 photos of Snow Day!

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

In this continuing theme of evolution due to necessity, today saw more changes, and some of it notably sad ones because it only serves as a reminder that I'm a different person now. But all things must pass indeed, and here's hoping that not too much will be different.

Started off the day (after the morning routines) going to the post office with the gang (my wife was supposed to work today, but she wasn't feeling too hot, so she hung out at home. I decided not to renew my PO Box, which is honestly, been in my name for over 5 years. Could be six or seven, but it's just been that long. It was my PO Box when I was living in shared apartments while in college, then it became my business address, and now it's just a place where my magazine sit while I try to find the time to get my mail. So I decided to nix the box after years of service.

After that, we went across the street and started a joint checking account at the bank, and thus starting a new checking account. It sorta signifies the end of my individual checking account that I've had for all these years, and it's another sad but necessary transition in order to get our bills in order. It'll take a while to move things over, but we're now acting like a real married couple. There will soon me no me and her, just us. That's not a bad thing, but financial-related affairs are always touchy anyhow.

And tonight, I decided to no longer delay the inevitable task of killing my videography business by closing my business account. I had hoped to one day restart the business, but I think what I really need is a better job, not a more complicated one. It's heartbreaking to close this business especially after I've put so much into it - not money nor time, but heart. Everything I did for that business was from my own heart and mind, I never paid anyone else to take care of anything. But after dealing with the taxes for so long, it's really stupid for me to hang on to the business when the logical side of me says that it's never going to happen again, and if it did, it wasn't the wisest decision to make.

Too many changes. And Zoe, perhaps deciding to evolve today, started a strange habit of fussing. She usually just fusses like a normal baby, crying or beginning to cry whenever she needs something, but today she would actually do a low-grade scream, as if she was a really bad scream actress or someone was poking her in the forehead repeatedly. It wasn't crying, but it wasn't cooing either. Just a scream that was a relatively normal speaking volume. It was cute for the first half of the day - now it's just grating our brains. She's also not going to sleep tonight, and hopefully when I'm ready to go to bed, she'll be out.

Well anyway, I'm nearing the 10,000 visitor mark soon and that's pretty cool. The counter was even set at zero when I first started.

Oh, a favor to ask, can supporters please click through some of the ads? It's kinda died on me for this month. Thanks a bunch.

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Cranky Babies and No-Shows

Evidently, Santa thought I have been a bad boy and so he took away my broadband and gave me dial-up instead. I'm coping only because I'm really looking forward to my Dish Network installation, perhaps unrealistically estatic about it even though it's pretty much the same deal as what we're watching now. Having a different provider doesn't necessarily mean that the content gets any better, but that's what I'm clinging to, I suppose. We also signed up for DVR, which is basically a service that lets you pause (or record onto the hard drive on your receiver, but "pause" sounds cooler. Like you just freaking froze time or something.) TV, and skip recorded commericials. It's like having a VHS without having to search for a blank tape. So, looking forward to that. Looking forward to Sirius Satellite radio that comes with it too, that's cool. And the five Spanish channels, not to mention the 9 religious channels.

But broadband still sucks. Downloading porn is now tedious and too time-consuming, so I'll have to resort to more productive things like writing, or cleaning, or playing with babies.

Just kidding! I love my babies.

Speaking of which, we are still awaiting the arrival of Brendon and Maralise's bambino, who is still hanging out in there, probably waiting past the due date. I think Brendon's tearing his beard out, but we're expecting to get the call anytime. Just not at 4 in the morning. We can wait till daytime for that.

As for our babies, they decided to gang up on my wife today, because Zoe just didn't take any naps (or refused to, rather) and Alex was just cranky and crying. We think that his tooth might be bothering him, because sometimes he cocks his head to the side against his shoulder, as if to apply some sort of pressure against it. He'll sob unconsolably, and there's really not much either of us can do. But actually, tonight he did really well in part of me constantly playing with him. He doesn't seem to notice the pain as much when he's busy chasing me around or laughing. He even went right to bed when I put him down. He's a great kid.

As part of my cycle of dealing with life, I am once again at peace with where I'm at. Whenever I surrender myself to my situation, I'm generally a happier person. No worrying about getting a better job, or thinking about all the stuff I'm not doing, or trying to get other projects done while watching the kids - basically, when I focus on my specific task at hand, at work or being a Dad, I'm pretty contented. When I try to be an artist and a multi-tasking monkey, that's when the gears begin to grind and my angry twin begins to take over me. Yesterday, I even got to watch a movie and relax while watching babies, and it actually made me happier because I got to think about the movie all day today.

It was "Collateral", by the way.

Well, I got apples to pick.

Monday, January 03, 2005

The Big Switcharoo

I mentioned some of the switches I'd like to make before, and some of them are already done. I've moved all the movies and photos from old posts onto the new Earthlink address, which merely took FIVE MONTHS. My eyes are crossed from doing this, because it's not easy to find old posts and change those codes over. Ah well, should be all done anywho.

I also ordered the Dish online, should be here on the 11th. Quite excited about that, though I don't really know why. Anything different warrants a positive emotion, I suppose.

Also, my wife absolutely loves the DVD's I'm burning from home movies. They were pretty much out of reach before, because they were in their original Mini-DV format, and it just took too much trouble to hook up to watch some random footage. Now I have the DVDs labeled by date, and though they're unedited, they have chapter stops, which makes a huge difference.

Watching some of the old stuff really brings back a lot. It's amazing how much you miss when you're busy parenting. We're seeing all the old tricks he used to do but has since replaced with better tricks, and furniture we used to have, and stuff we used to do. I even told my wife, "You know what's weird about this video? We're both home and its daytime." And it's the sad truth, folks. The only day when I am home with my wife during the day is Sunday, and that's only because she works a 5 am shift. Otherwise, I either see her for a short period of time, or just in the evenings.

Ugh, I can feel myself getting sick. I hate that feeling of something icky coming on.

Well, that's it.