Monday, October 31, 2005

It’s all so Drama and ABC After School Special-ly

We have returned from the grand and great metropolis of NYC. Enriched by its culture, awed by its size, grossed out by a few of the smells, annoyed by its taxes and generally thrilled by the whole experience. I had been there once before in college, but Re and the kids were NYC virgins. Carrie, I think especially enjoyed it. I’ll have more on some specific stuff, but for now I’ll just toss this out.

First of all, getting there wasn’t the smoothest process we’ve ever enjoyed as a family unit. Reha had a perma-cold that left her stranded on the couch for most of the evening before, left to give orders to children on what to pack and what to take, etc. We ended up going to bed a bit late and in the grand tradition of the Deal family, no one was sleeping in their appointed beds (except Carrie, who always sleeps in her own bed), people were sprawled all over the place. Specifically, Reha was in Lucas’ bed, Jonah in ours, Ellis on the couch and Lucas scrunched up in a chair in the living room. The practical upshot of all of this bed switching was that Jonah, in his quest to have silence and solitude, had inadvertently locked himself in our bedroom. And it’s not just one of those “pick with an untwisted paper clip” jobs. It’s a real live lock, and requires a key or some real lock picking skills. We don’t have clue one where that key is. It’s possible we didn’t get it when we closed on the house, I don’t know. And I don’t have mad skillz in the lock picking department.

Now normally, I’d let that slide. I could probably wake up in time to get people out the door without the aid of an alarm clock. Sometimes I can just rely on circadian rhythms and my own preternatural ability to be on time to get me moving. However, we had to be up yea, verily early in the morning. The plane left at 10:20 and there was still “final” packing to do. Toothbrushes, toiletries, etc. Plus, the Deal family is a lumbering beast and it just takes us a while to get moving in any specific direction. Out the door being the direction we need to go usually.

Not wanting to disturb anyone else in the house (especially Reha as she’s just this side of being dead with the nasty head cold), I tried lightly tapping on the door. “Jonah. Jonah! Jonah!!” I whispered through the crack between the bottom of the door and the floor. Silence from our room. He’s got all the lights on in there, though, I could see that.

Reha wakes up from the next room and shuffles out. I let her know what’s going on and she gives me this knowing little smile that says, “This is the kind of thing that only happens to us, you know.”

She tried calling to him a couple of times. I was sort of hoping that some kind of maternal call-of-the-wild-supernatural thing would kick in and he’d rise to his mother’s voice. No luck there. Finally, we decided that I’m just going to have to break the door down. We have to get in there. Both for the alarm and for the good hair gel the master bath holds.

So I huff and I puff and take a flying leap and do some serious violence to the door. It was impressive, if I do say so myself. I went in so hard that I fell down into our room. Ripped the frame right off and the door bounced back and hit me in the shin on my way down.

Jonah did not budge an inch, I’m sure. He has no recollection of any of that. Not the 10 minutes of calling and knocking, nor the HUGE thud of the door breaking down. He’s hard to get to sleep, but once he’s down, he’s not getting back up until he’s good and ready.

So add “new door frame in Master Bedroom” to my giant list o’ things to do.

There is also a delicious story about almost missing the plane the next morning, but that shall have to wait. But the moral of that story is that the siren call of a tasty Cinnabon is difficult to resist.

The only other thing I’ll leave with you is a nice bookend scene from the plane ride home. We are nestling into our seats and Lucas begins to play with the near useless AirPhone that’s in the seat in front of him. No one EVER uses those things, do they? Reha tells him to stop touching it and Carrie chimes in with, “What if he were wearing gloves so he wasn’t really touching it?” which starts Lucas down the road of getting a piece of plastic to put in between the AirPhone and his hand and then Reha gives both Carrie and Lucas the “Stink Eye” that says, “I’ve been cooped up with all you people for four days in small-ish hotel rooms, crowded subways and sidewalks and in the back of a limo, so DO NOT START that kind of thing with me.” It was an amazing look. She didn’t utter a sound. Carrie, sensing danger, wisely retreats but leaves us with this gem, “Fine, OK, I will take and wrap myself in this blanket as a substitute for motherly affection.” Which I’m sure she meant with the best of intentions.

Jon scribbled this mess on 10/31/05 at 10:16 PM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

What it’s all about

Just the other day, while doing the hokey pokey, I wondered “What if this IS what it’s all about??”

Look for my book next Spring from Knopf entitled, In, Out and Shaking, One man’s journey into the existential abyss.

We are going to NYC for a for the rest of the week. Reha has a conference. And since I don’t have a laptop (sniff), there ain’t going to be any posts for a bit. Somehow I’m sure you’ll muddle through, dear readers.

Jon scribbled this mess on 10/25/05 at 08:10 AM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Lagoon-a-thon

Oh my goodness on a popsicle stick, could yesterday have BEEN any more busy? No, I don’t think so. We are trying to clean everything out of the garage, both so we can FINALLY (after three years) put a car in the garage and so we can finish up the remodel and also try and de-crap our lives. We did a garage sale and actually earned a tasty bit of cash. Carrie made out like a bandit selling collector dolls my mother-in-law willed to her.

First of all, people who frequent garage sales are a breed unto themsleves. They get up VERY VERY early. Which makes sense; they want to hit the sales before everything has been picked over. But people please, when we spend $55 on an ad in the paper that says the sale starts at 8 am, we don’t mean, Sure, come knock on our door and ring our bell to ask about the desk that’s for sale at SEVEN damn THIRTY in the morning. Really, the ad didn’t mean that. I promise. And I don’t care that you are down from Centerville, we are just UP from bed and I’m not going to dicker about stuff before the appointed time. Mmm, K? Thanks.

Second, people bargain weird. That quilt was for sale for that price and we did know it was stained, so take it or leave it, fraulein. If the stain doesn’t come out after you wash it at home, those are the breaks, my dear. You’re getting a $300 quilt for $25, so just pipe down, will ya?

Third, memo to the Management of Lagoon. The Bat sucks. Tear it down and put something better in its place. I’m sure you spent a ton of cash on it, but it’s just embarrassing. I can roll down a hill with more thrills that that thing. Put another one of those Blast-off and Re-entry tower things in its place. Those are incredible, though I’m terribly sorry about losing bladder control when the Re-entry ride started that time. And the Spider? Genius. I’m not a roller coaster fanatic or connoisseur by any means, but a coaster with a car that spins independently as it’s also traveling up and down, etc. is a kick in the head. We went twice, even though the lines are a bit long. And I’ll just add the same comment that anyone would make: $6.71 for a mini-corny-dog combo meal is a tad too much. But if you promise to use the money to tear down The Bat and build another something that will make me lose sphincter control, I’ll buy a few more next summer.

When you have to stand on line for what seems like days in order to get on a ride that lasts approximately 4.5 seconds, you can get to know that people in front or behind you. For instance, while waiting to get on the Colossus, Lucas and I talked about physics with the couples behind us and I assured that one nice lady that she’d fall just as fast as her skinny husband because of the gravitational constant. Only Newtonian physics need apply at Lagoon. Also, that hot chick IS going to break up with you, Don. You keep telling her she’s wrong about stuff and treat her like she’s stupid and one day in the near future I suspect she’ll figure out she was REALLY wrong about you. I don’t have a ton of experience with that sort of thing, but even I know that.

Favorite thing from yesterday I overheard while on line for The Spider: “Yeah, we made out, but we don’t like each other, so it doesn’t count.”

Jon scribbled this mess on 10/23/05 at 10:44 PM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

Friday, October 21, 2005

Oh snip!

I’ve got medical stuff on the brain right now, so I might as well share this little gem.

A couple years ago Re and I decided that we were ready to be done having kids. There were other things that we may have also been done with, which are stories for another time, but we were dang sure that her getting pregnant should never be on the agenda again. Since permanent birth control is a MUCH less involved process on a man, we decided to get me snipped.

It wasn’t that bad a procedure. The shot they use to numb you in your nether regions is quite uncomfortable and way too much of my very private parts turned purple, but it’s not that bad. The strabismus correction was much more unpleasant. The unsightly and fiery magenta/purple color faded after a couple of days, but it was still a bit disconcerting. And having hair regrow “down there” wasn’t great either, but it’s all fine now. And, having your vas defrens yanked outside your body isn’t a walk in the park, either. It’s like those little tubules are not only attached to your prostate, but also all the way up to your liver. I swear when he pulled them out with that little hook doo-dad, I could feel it from my toes to my adam’s apple.

Less invasive, hell!

Anyway, I was just thinking about the procedure and at the end, the doc was pretty much done, sutures were in, blood mostly cleaned up and gauze was lying there on the “damage.” He then told me, “I want you to grab this gauze and squeeze. It has your scrotum in between there. Squeeze hard since this will help stop the bleeding. It won’t hurt at all since you are still numb.”

Or something like that.

And then he said good-bye and went out to do whatever he does after a snipping.

Unfortunately, I did not have the presence of mind to say what came to me later. “You mean, notwithstanding the fact that I am paying you (well, my insurance company will be paying whenever they get around to it), and you are specially trained and everything, *I* have to squeeze my own scrotum to abate the bleeding? You’re joking, right?”

Though now, in retrospect, I guess I’d rather do the squeezing instead of him or worse, the female nurse who was there apply pressure.

I mean, maybe messing around with scrotums and urethras would make it so I wouldn’t want to squeeze one, either. I don’t know, it just struck me as far too “do it yourself.”

Needless to say, there is no comparable gallery for this procedure so don’t go looking for one.

Jon scribbled this mess on 10/21/05 at 06:51 PM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

Thursday, October 20, 2005

SLC Marathon

Yesterday I registered for the SLC Marathon. I haven’t gone running since it started turning cold around here. Plus, with the strabismus eye surgery I wasn’t in the mood and I just got cleared today for stuff anyway. So I’ll climb back on the treadmill and will just watch Scrubs and Friends and West Wing on DVD while plodding along until all the snow melts and the trees begin to bloom. (boring!) Plus, I can’t use the Garmin thing I became infatuated with last month. A GPS on an inherently stationary conveyor belt doesn’t do a lot of good.

Though I might break down and buy some cold weather running stuff. The treadmill gets way old after a while. Plus how many times can you really watch Friends before your head explodes?

Reha joined a gym downtown close to where she works.

We are now technically members of 3 gyms. That will end in a couple of weeks. (Memberships expiring, cancelations, etc.) An aside: It’s a HUGE pain in the booty to try and cancel a gym membership, but more on that later. But it’s funny because Re has this great habit of getting on a “I need to get in shape. I want to lose weight. Mostly I want to go SHOPPING!! And I’m fat.” thing [Note: she’s not fat.] and she gets all busy and joins a gym or joins Weight Watchers. She’s done it in the past and we’ve [she] been members of two or more gyms at the same time. It’s like the more gym memberships you have, the quicker you’ll get in shape.

So anyway… yeah… the marathon. gulp. It’s in June 2006. Surely even I can go 26.2 miles by then. Plus, it’s not the 26 miles that kills you, it’s the .2 at the end.

Jon scribbled this mess on 10/20/05 at 07:48 PM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post Running Log. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link
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