Saturday, January 22, 2005

Oh Hello, And You Are...

I know, I've been gone far too long, but the week's just been too bizarre. The kids ended up having the same stomach flu that floored me and JL, but luckily to a lesser extent of vomitus and poopitus. Still unpleasant as hell to have to deal with sick children, though. You never realize how vulnerable you are until you have sick children because there's so little you can do for them. Well, of course there's Pedialyte and fluids and plenty of rest, but you can't suck the viruses out of them and make them better instantly. You can't give them their appetite back. But they got better, and now this stomach flu has come full circle and finally hit my wife. A week later, she's feeling the same symptoms, and she had to come home from work sick today, which means that we have together lost 17 hours of work this week because of the flu. See the other thing about us is that if one of us is sick, the other has to stay home and take care of the babies, so it's not like we can even make it up. In fact, I was supposed to work my makeup shift tonight but since my wife was not feeling too well, I had to wrangle young'uns tonight.

Tonight my wife wanted to watch some baby videos, so I popped in a DVD and there it was, some kind of infinity effect because Alex, watching from his high chair, was watching himself on video, who was in turn watching himself on video crawling about the park. It boggles the brain.

Also, yes, we finally got Satellite TV installed, and I have to say I'm about 80 percent happy. The picture quality is either the same or actually, even a little worse than cable. I think the issue is that cable comes through as an analog signal, so there's that. The Satellite signal is digital, but I think the compression issue makes the picture seem a little... artifact-ish. My wife doesn't notice it, and I doubt that 90 percent of people would notice it. I do because I work with video, and I can spot if something's off. Also, changing channels produces a bit of a pause in surfing, meaning that once you change the channel, there's about a second of black screen before the channel pops up. People who've had cable boxes would remember that. A second doesn't seem like much, you think, but it does annoy me immensely because it would take me almost 3 or 4 seconds just to glance at a channel. And also, having to pay an additional 5 dollar fee per month for an additional receiver that I was trying not to do bugs me too. I'm working on that problem.

That said, I love the features a lot. On screen displays means that whenever you change the channels, it'll list the title of the show, and how much time is left for that show. That made my wife pretty happy. Also, perhaps to make up for the slow surfing, is a browsing feature. Basically, you can browse through other channels while still watching the current channel, through an on-screen display and with the aforementioned titles. If you find something else, like The Simpsons, you can even click on "info" to get the summary of that particular episode to see if you've seen it before. And then you can just go directly to The Simpsons. So, it's Channel surfing without the epileptic channel changing, which I suppose is neat. Also, there's an on-screen guide that lets you see all the shows that are on, and in the future. This is handy in between commercials too, because I can literally look around, find something else to watch once The Simpsons ends, and then set a timer. Once Simpsons ends, the TV will automatically switch to that channel. It is that cool. And of course, DVR, which is like Tivo. I haven't used it in a practical sense quite yet, just once. But it's neat because I got to watch a show that played at 7 am, and also recorded a bunch of other stuff I don't stay up late enough to watch, for later.

But that's all, really. Just getting sick, taking care of sick people, and watching TV. Life is exciting! Called on a Production Assistant position today, but it didn't pan out because it was a volunteer position. Just don't have the time for something like that if it doesn't pay...

I feel a baby post coming on.

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Baby Recipes!



Tuesday, January 18, 2005

As if living within poverty levels and not having enough time to see my wife wasn't bonus enough, somebody thought it might be a good idea if I was inflicted with some sort of cleansing affliction. The swift hand of disease dealt me (and JL) a good dose of either food poisoning, or the stomach flu - which, we haven't decided yet. But it struck fast and hard, because JL was throwing up a few hours after dinner, and I was holding it down barely until 2 am, when I just had to wake up and toss some cookies of my own.

Luckily for me, that was all the tossing I was going to do, but the cleansing process continued on the other end. By the early morning I was actually feeling dehydrated and needed to drink from the sink just to keep from choking. Oh, all the good fun.

My wife had to take half a day off in order to come home and watch the babies on Sunday, and throughout the whole day on Sunday I heard my wife play with the babies, having tons of fun. By 6pm, the babies have gone from laughing and giggling into full-blown crying and whining, and my wife was starting to get frustrated, but there wasn't a whole lot I could've done because I couldn't even sit up straight without getting dizzy.

I had to take today off myself because I still wasn't up to par, though I was feeling a lot better. Just sat around and spaced out a lot, and dreading my baby watch later on when my wife had to go to work. And lemme tell you, it certainly was a dreadful experience. Being sick and then having to deal with babies is kinda like coming out of a coma and having the nurses scream and slap at you. Or stepping out of a fog and being ran over by a bus. Kinda jolts you back into reality.

Alex was inconsolable over something, and Zoe was just not a happy girl. Alex has figured out how to climb onto our kitchen chairs so that he could sit at the kitchen table, but hasn't learned to climb off them, so he cries for help when he's stuck. Tonight he fell off one, prompting me to tip all the chairs on its sides. I think mostly they just miss having both parents at home, and honestly, so do I. It's basically inhumane for anyone to have to watch cranky babies. All they have to do is play the soundtrack of babies crying to drive cult members out of their compounds. Forget hard rock.

So, it's back to work for me tomorrow, and then baby night again. Can't really figure out what's making the babies so cranky. Maybe they're having to deal with all this gas building up in their stomachs. Or maybe it's just me.