Remodeling and the Giving of Thanks

So I am way late on publishing this week, not because I didn’t have much to write about but because I’ve been insanely busy.  Don’t expect too many words this week, I’m going to throw a few paragraphs together and apply a liberal dose of cute pictures just to get by.

I got back home from Durham last Saturday where I promptly began my week long vacation by finishing up some work.  We took my mom to the airport later that afternoon and began our longest stretch in our new home without visitors to date.  We had made tentative plans with a couple of our neighbors for Thanksgiving Day and there were a couple of projects around the house that I wanted to complete before then, specifically in the kitchen.  Most of the first half of the week was spent painting and installing cabinets in the kitchen… have I told you how much I detest painting?  It slows everything down.  Good thing that I have a wife who enjoys it and was willing to help.  Overall I felt pretty good with the work, I’m not a finishing carpenter by any stretch of the meaning, but I think it turned out nice.  There are still a few touch up items to complete and the addition of a plate rack I’ll install underneath the right cabinet, but most of the work is done.  It was a big deal to get the extra counter space and storage space in the cabinets since the kitchen itself didn’t have a ton of those to begin with.

Wednesday it started snowing and it snowed quite a bit, I think we ended up getting about 8” by the time Thanksgiving morning rolled around.  Needless to say Jack got up and immediately started squealing like a little girl who couldn’t contain her excitement at seeing the snow.  Leslie is giving me a dirty look as I read this out loud, reminding me that it wasn’t Jack who squealed like a little girl, rather it was myself.  Needless to say, we got our snow clothes on and immediately went outside to play in the snow, or should I say, Jack played in the snow while I shoveled the driveway. I think I’ll be ok shoveling snow out of our driveway as long as it only snows once a year.  It was a perfect time to drive around our neighborhood.  I never would have imagined myself living in the city, but I feel extremely grateful that we live in such a beautiful neighborhood.

The picture of Jack on the bottom is when we decided to venture out on Saturday afternoon, we found a McDonald’s with a PlayPlace (which is getting more and more difficult to find these days) and let Jack run wild while we ordered our food.  Rather than having fun going up and down the slide he found it more amusing to play peekaboo.

Thanksgiving Day didn’t go quite as we planned, it ended up being just our family, nevertheless we cooked all of our food and had a good time doing so.  It’s probably never been said that someone went hungry in a Filippo household and this past week was no different.  Our diet for the past four days has consisted almost entirely of a 5lb ham and a 10lb turkey.  Throw in some green stuff, sweet potato pie, and about 3 gallons of punch and you have yourself a meal… or two… or three.  You get the gist.

Our church search continued this morning as we attended a fourth church in the northwest Albany area.  It is getting more and more difficult since the churches we have visited have been incredible.  We are both ready to settle down at a home church and get plugged in.

Well, dinner is ready and it doesn’t involve turkey this evening so I’m not going to miss it.  I hope that your holiday was filled with the giving of thanks and the reminder of the blessings of family and friends.

Tell Me a Story

I wanted to thank all of you for your thoughts and prayers last week; I am happy to report that as of Sunday Leslie was back to 100%, or at least as close to it as she can get while still being 30 weeks pregnant.  Friday and Saturday were still a little touch and go, but by Sunday morning she was up and ready to go to church, that afternoon she was ready to restart the process of getting stuff unpacked.

While I was at work on Monday I had an interesting conversation with a seemingly very unfortunate coworker.  He was explaining why he had a natural distrust for doctors when it came up that he has been struck by a car six different times and struck by lightning once, all on his left side.  Later during the day we had a meeting in a conference room and when he came in I was already sitting down.  He sat on my right side and I yelled at him, “Aaah, don’t sit there!  Sit on the other side of me; I’m not going to be sitting between you and whatever is coming for your left side.”  But seriously, how does one go about being struck by a car six different times?  I would think you would learn your lesson after the first or second time.

A couple of weeks ago while I was working outside raking and bagging leaves (what else?) I offered to watch Jack as I worked so that Leslie could get some things done inside the house.  As I was bagging leaves I heard an odd scraping sound.  I looked over and I saw Jack dragging the rake over the lawn and all I could think was, “Just a few more years, son.  Just a few more years and I won’t have to rake leaves anymore; that will be your job.”  Of course that thought was quickly followed by, “man, if I had started having kids years ago I wouldn’t have to be raking leaves at all!”  Ah the joys of having children, that inexhaustible supply of completely exploitable labor.

Last weekend the church we visited had a pastor from a church plant in Rochester, New York down to speak to the congregation.  I was glad we happened to be there that week because this dude had one of the funniest stories I have ever heard, I was in tears upon his conclusion a few minutes later.  His story was an analogy to how we each have our own role to play in the body and that each role, regardless of its perceived significance, is important to the function of the whole and that we should treat our tasks and responsibilities within that role with the appropriate seriousness and gravity.  Anyway, his story went like this:

I was asleep in bed the other night when I heard the stairs creak as someone came down the stairs.  See, our bedroom is on the first floor and our kids’ bedrooms are on the second floor.  As I wondered which of my children had woken up I saw this blue glow outline my closed bedroom door.  My curiosity grew as my bedroom door slowly opened and I saw my 5 year old son standing there holding his blue lightsaber as he patrolled the house.  With all seriousness he looked at me and asked,

“Did you hear that?  It sounded like a giant stomping around.”

I said, “Son, do you think there are giants out there?”

“Don’t be silly,” he replied, “Giants don’t exist.  Something probably fell on the floor.”

Then, as he closed the door he said, “It’s dark out there,” and continued his patrol.  The whole time I’m sitting there thinking, what do my neighbors have to be thinking?  I wonder if they wake up and look across the yard into my windows and see my 5 year old son patrolling the house in the middle of the night carrying this blue lightsaber.

As some of you know, my father is the president of CEO of the company that is performing the role of the general contractor on one of my current projects.  It was a little bit of a hassle at first because I had to jump through a number of hoops to identify and work around the potential conflict of interest.  We are building this project on a property owned by GE so our customer is internal to the business and was made aware of the measures we put in place to prevent any conflicts of interest.  We’ve hit a few bumps along the way that have pushed out our schedule and as I was talking with my customer yesterday he kept telling me (jokingly), “Do they know who your dad is?  You need to call your dad!”

The story was humorous enough to me that I decided to relay it to the project manager for the contractor (my father’s company).  He got a kick out of it and told me, “you know, it’s funny you say that because when I drove in this morning I saw a dark gray Chrysler 300 with Tennessee plates (a car whose description matches that of the vehicle my father drives) parked in the visitor’s lot, and I thought, ‘Oh no, he called in the cavalry.’”

Next week, in addition to Thanksgiving, I am taking a few vacation days at the beginning so I will actually be off the entire week.  I am very much looking forward to being able to be home and spend some time with my family.  Assuming I do not have to repair any more leaks in the basement I expect it to be a time I can kick back and enjoy the home we just purchased.

A Difficult Decision

I apologize for not publishing last week, I certainly had enough to write about I simply just didn’t have the time.  When I missed my Saturday deadline I had even planned on getting it out on Monday, then life happened, a particularly eventful one this week.  Last week I was travelling from Tuesday evening until Friday evening and originally I had the same schedule planned out for this week.  I had drafted a lengthy and amusing anecdote about how at nearly midnight I wound up at the front of a long line at Hertz where I was issued the last remaining rental car on the lot, after this week including it no longer seemed appropriate or all that funny.  You see, this week I had to make one of the most difficult decisions I have made in my entire life, I had to choose between supporting the woman I love and caring for a son who needed me.

Tuesday was Veteran’s Day and fortunately it was also a holiday that I had off.  My plan was to spend the day doing some work around the house before I had to meet up with the guy who I was buying a truck from to process the paperwork around 1400.  Leslie woke up that morning feeling nauseous and in quite a bit of pain.  By 0930 the pain was enough that she called the doctor’s office and they told us to come in.  We loaded up the car and made the trip over to the doctor’s office.  When we got there they ran Leslie through a battery of tests including an ultrasound.  Ultimately they determined that both she and the baby were ok so they sent us home despite the fact that she was still in quite a bit of pain and had begun vomiting.

We finally got back to the house (where I had to break in because I had managed to lock myself out) and I told Leslie to go try and get some sleep, I would take care of Jack and do my own laundry in preparation for my trip that evening.  At 1400 I took Jack out with me and we went and completed the process of buying the truck and got everything transported back to the house.  At this point Leslie was feeling even worse than before and I made the unilateral decision to cancel my trip.

By 1700 Leslie called the doctor’s office again to report her increased pain and continued vomiting, they told her to go to the hospital and report to the ER.  Once again we loaded up the car and made the trip across town where she, this time, checked into the emergency room.  I dropped Leslie off at the entrance to the ER and by the time I had found a parking space and gotten Jack out of the car she had already checked in and been escorted to a room.  We waited around for about four hours while they performed a series of tests that ultimately told us nothing.  By 2100 Jack was starting to show signs of exhaustion and the doctor had just made the determination to keep her overnight for observation.  At this point I was forced to choose between being a husband and being a parent.  Jack need to sleep and wasn’t going to do so in my arms and his constant fidgeting and crying was proving enough of a distraction to keep Leslie from sleeping.  At the same time I could see the fear and uncertainty in my wife’s eyes, she didn’t want to be left alone.  In just about any other place this would be a no-brainer, I’d call someone from our church family and ask them to look after Jack for the night while I stayed at the hospital, but we’ve only been here for two weeks, we’re not even close to finding a home church, much less someone I would trust my child with.

As I drove home I kept praying that God would give me insight, that he would provide a way out of this issue.  When I got back to the house I put Jack to bed and I packed up the car with everything we would need if we were going to stay the night at the hospital, then I called Les.  I asked her how she was doing and if she wanted us to come back to the hospital since I now had everything we would need for Jack to sleep packed up in the van.  By this point she had calmed down and realized that she would sleep better if Jack wasn’t there in the room with her (awake or otherwise) and she told me that she was ok with us staying home for the evening.

Wednesday morning came around and I gathered Jack up and headed back to the hospital.  Sometime after Jack and I had left the evening before they had transferred Leslie from the ER to the Women and Children’s section of the hospital so she had a much nicer room that had a lot more space for Jack to play around in.  Leslie was still in quite a bit of pain and still very nauseous but she was feeling mildly better since she had gotten a few hours of sleep.  Leslie spent the rest of the day being run through a battery of tests while I spent my time watching Jack wander around the floor flirting with all the nurses.  I had to keep a pretty sharp eye on the kid because I’m certain one of the nurses would have ended up trying to take him home otherwise.

Thursday rolled around and we were essentially in the same spot we were in when she first checked in to the ER.  The doctors had not definitively ruled out anything and while they were pretty sure they had a good idea of what was causing the problem they couldn’t be sure.  They didn’t think it was appendicitis which was good because that would have had pretty big implications for both Leslie and the baby.  They did think it could be kidney stones but they weren’t sure because, as it turns out, many of the symptoms that are common with kidney stones are also the same symptoms of being pregnant and the normal procedure of determining if someone has a kidney stone or not is to perform a CT scan which wasn’t an option since she is pregnant.  They wound up taking a single x-ray that didn’t show anything in the kidneys which didn’t really mean anything since the stones could have been small enough they wouldn’t have shown up on an x-ray.  Long story short, they discharged her Thursday afternoon with a prescription for pain pills and anti-nausea medicine.

As of this morning Leslie is doing better, not anywhere near 100%, but definitely better than when she checked into the hospital.  To be honest, I’m still processing everything that happened this week, I’m not certain if there is something I learned (or should have learned) through all this.  All I know is that I was forced to make a difficult decision and while it ultimately ended up being the right one it still isn’t easy to look back on it.  Maybe next week I’ll have more on this, or perhaps I’ll just write about the New York DMV or how I’m ready to cut down all the trees in my yard (and my neighbor’s yard) after only having to have raked once.