Well That Was Unexpected, Part II

The past couple of weeks have consisted of me attempting to coerce Leslie into thinking that trying to move her scheduled C-section up a few days wouldn’t be that big of a deal but that it would be awesome from a tax break and health insurance perspective (considering that Leslie has already had two hospital visits this year). Of course all of this was in jest, but it was hilarious when one of Leslie’s friends made a comment on her Facebook page about how the tax break is nice for a December baby.

Wednesday all of that changed. Christmas Eve started out as a fairly normal day for us, we didn’t have any big plans, we weren’t going to do anything special since we had already had a Christmas party the previous Saturday; shoot, we didn’t even have a meal planned, we were still debating on whether or not to have leftovers… again. This, in itself, was a bit unusual for me since we have traditionally celebrated Christmas with my family on Christmas Eve. Nevertheless, it was a typical day for us that involved me working out in the garage (building a workbench) while Jack napped. Our big meal occurred at lunch time and consisted of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for everyone.

That evening I was giving Leslie a hard time about making a new tradition where we don’t open gifts until the day after Christmas. I found this hilarious since Leslie had been very impatient to open the gifts we received in the mail as they came. Finally I relented and told her we could open a few of them that evening. As Leslie walked across the room to get a gift she stopped dead in her tracks and looked at me and said, “My water just broke.” Incredulously I just looked at her and watched as her face turned to horror as she realized it wasn’t water, rather it was blood. Now, I’ll try to spare you the gory details but it is important to understand just exactly what we were dealing with. I cannot claim to be an unbiased observer, but same quantity of blood coming out of any other person is usually indicative that a major artery has been cut and would be cause for great concern; the fact that it was coming from my pregnant wife rocketed my concern into the stratosphere.

I called Leslie’s doctor’s office and described what was happening where I was then told to come into the hospital. At this point we had a decision to make, go to the public hospital about 4 blocks down the road or go to the hospital Leslie was supposed to deliver in, about a 30 minute drive away. I explained my dilemma to the doctor and he proved to be most unhelpful as he vacillated back and forth weighing to pros and cons of each. Finally, I half made the decision for him by once again going into graphic detail about the amount of blood streaming from my wife, a quantity that had only worsened while we were on the phone. The local hospital it was. I threw Jack in the car and then went back into the house to get Leslie and we headed to the ER. By the time they got her onto the bed and found the fetal heartbeat Leslie has somewhat stabilized and had mostly stopped bleeding. Within 30 minutes the ER doctor decided that Leslie was stable enough to be able to make the ambulance ride over to St. Peter’s, the hospital we were supposed to be at.

I kissed Leslie on the forehead and told her that I would meet her there; I needed to go back to the house, grab a few items for Jack, and then drop him off at a friend’s house (thank you, Christmas party connections). Within 20 minutes I had dropped Jack off and was on my way to St. Peter’s. I got to the hospital, parked the car, and walked through four different departments before I finally found someone who could tell me where my wife was. As I walked into her room I overheard the nurse tell her that they were prepping the operating room now and she would be having her C-section within the half hour. Wait, what? We went from opening gifts to having a daughter five weeks before we originally expected her within three and a half hours. Ayla Jordan Filippo was born at 2120 on December 24^th, 2014. She was five weeks early and weighed 5lbs 14oz. If she had gone full term she probably would have beaten out her older brother in terms of size. She really does not look like a premature baby, while she doesn’t have the fat rolls Jack did when he was born, she definitely does not have that skeletal appearance premature babies often do. Apparently Leslie and I breed them big.

After they stapled Leslie back up and let us look at Ayla in the NICU for a few minutes, they took us to Leslie’s recovery room where we were able to get settled for a longer stay. Knowing that there were still some things I needed to get from the house (phone chargers being the biggest one), I decided to make the trek back; at this point it was well after midnight. I got back to the house and got everything packed up and did my best to soak up the water in the basement (yep, it’s still raining and my French drains still aren’t functioning properly). By the time I was ready to head back to the hospital it was after 0200 and I was starving; I decided to hit a 24-hour McDonald’s on the way. It didn’t dawn on me until after I drove up to my second McDonald’s why they were closed, despite the fact that they had these huge signs saying “24-hour drive thru.” With all that happened I had completely forgotten that it was 0200 on Christmas Day. I couldn’t even find a gas station open… sheesh, what’s wrong with these people?

Both Leslie and Ayla are doing very well, although Ayla is in the NICU that is simply the standard process with an infant born that early. This early delivery has presented its own set of problems, because while we had someone who was willing to watch Jack overnight we don’t simply want to leave him with someone for extended period of time… for their sake, not ours. The trouble is compounded by the fact that it is flu season and the hospital has implemented a policy of no visitors younger than 12 beyond the waiting room. This means Jack cannot go into Leslie’s recovery room, if she wants to see him she has to come out into the waiting room. Nevertheless we’re working through it and we’ve had enough local support that I’ve been able to address the issue in the basement (I think) and still make a couple of trips to the hospital to visit Les.

To everyone who has kept my family in your thoughts and prayers, thank you. Despite the craziness surrounding everything that has happened the past couple of days it is clear that God’s providence has reigned. The lesson that has been at the front of my mind and the challenge throughout this whole ordeal has been, whatever my circumstances can I still say that it is well with my soul? Even as I drove to the hospital I fell back to those words. Whatever my lot, thou has taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.

The Punch Does It Again

Well, Christmas is right around the corner and it is the first time that I will have spent it with family in my own home. Up to this point, every Christmas in my adult life has been spent in someone else’s home. It will be interesting to see how that goes. We hosted a Christmas party at our home yesterday and while remodeling is still well under way the laundry room portion of the work had at least been completed. Even so, we had some serious cleaning and prep work to do for Saturday. Add a leaking basement on top of that and it made for a very eventful weekend.

Our party went very well, we had a number of people over that varied from neighbors to realtors, mortgage brokers to church pastors. When I sent out the invitation to everyone via email one of the big draws I used was the world famous Filippo holiday punch (I could tell you what is in it, but then I would have to kill you). The one thing everyone agreed upon was that I had not oversold on the punch. I admit it was a bit strange to hand someone a glass of it while asking, “You don’t have any odd fruit allergies do you?” I’m also fairly confident that at least two of my guests walked away later in the evening thinking that there was alcohol in the punch… Whoops, I probably should have clarified that bit as well.

To expound on the leaking basement topic, I am now convinced that the last snowfall (and subsequently, the melting of it) has caused the water table in my area to be raised to approximately eight feet above the ground floor of my home. My sump pump has been working almost around the clock trying to keep up with the flow of water into my basement… Seriously, if you look at the holes leading into the pit it is like someone turned on a faucet. Of course, all of this is compounded by the fact that I now seem to have sprung leak in an unidentified location that deposits a large quantity of water in the middle of my basement floor at a rate roughly equivalent to that of snow melt. At this point I am thinking I ought to change the name of my blog to ‘Adventures in Home Ownership.’

For those of you who were curious, I was able to get Leslie’s gift completed this week. Now that you are able to see the picture I hope it makes a little more sense how a few carefully placed nails constituted about 75% of the work. And before any one comments on it, yes, I know the ‘M’ is improperly capitalized, the company I used to do the printing sent me a different proof than the actual final proof, as such I didn’t catch the error until after I got the print. I figure as long as I can avoid actually having to look at the clock I won’t notice the mistake, the downside of this is that I have this clock prominently displayed in my living room… We might have to move.

For those of you that haven’t heard, the doctors recommended that Leslie schedule a C-section several weeks prior to her due date to minimize the chances of her going into labor. This week when she went in for her doctor’s appointment she was able to schedule the procedure; barring any unforeseen and disastrous circumstances we should be seeing baby girl on January 9^th around 0900. That’s only about three weeks before we originally expected her and less than three weeks from now… wait, what?

Two months after we moved into the house I finally broke down and bought a microwave. Granted, a month of my delay was simply because up until the point where I finished the cabinetry we simply did not have a place to put it. Shortly before the Christmas party I took it out of the box and put it next to the refrigerator. I think I might have to move it… Because it is winter and because I have been wearing house shoes I have had a tendency to build up quite a bit of static electricity, this morning I shocked myself bad enough on the refrigerator that it reset the clock on the microwave; that can’t be healthy.

Well, it is time for me to wrap things up; I’ve got to go stare at the dish washer for an entire wash cycle to see if I can figure out why it begins to leak at the end of each wash cycle. Just call me Handy Andy… well, except that my name isn’t Andy.

It’s Snowing… Again

This week was possibly the first full week I have spent back in the home office since I started this job. I’m not quite certain if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I was in town the full week because of a series of meetings my group was hosting in the middle of the week highlighting some of our business strategies and areas of improvement. Of course this meant that I was home when a winter storm moved in Tuesday night and then dumped 12” of snow on Wednesday. Being that the temperatures hovered just above freezing all day Tuesday and Wednesday the snow was a wet and heavy snow… very heavy. After having shoveled my driveway three different times over 24 hours my resolve not to purchase a snow blower this season is quickly fading. On the other hand, several days of above freezing weather and rapidly disappearing snow (although it is debatable how rapidly 12” of snow can melt) has slightly softened my outlook on the whole matter. That said, the sump pump in my basement has been working double duty the past week.

I received my first full electric/gas bill this week and boy was it a shocker. I had heard how high electric and gas prices were in New York, but when I called to establish service I was able to lock in a three year rate at $0.105kWh, not a bad price considering it beat what I had been paying in Texas. My first bill which covered a grand total of 2 days seemed to accurately reflect this; then came last month’s bill. Every electric provider has those little fees that are not part of the rate structure you pay, but those don’t usually amount to a significant portion of the bill. Because of the way the New York market works I wind up paying for supply services (the price per kWh) AND delivery services, something not factored into the quoted price and something that doubled my utilities bill, meaning I am actually paying much closer to $0.21kWh. Yikes!

The price of my utilities has me questioning whether or not I will actually be able to afford the slight remodeling that is currently going on in my home. We were finally able to get a contractor nailed down to come in and do the work on our laundry room and the master bathroom (the master part of it is called into question since in most homes this would hardly qualify as even a full size bath). Jack has been absolutely fascinated with the work going on and the work crews have been equally enthralled by him. During this process we discovered that Jack could probably sleep through the apocalypse. Thursday when they began the demolition work Leslie said that Jack took a two hour nap while they were using the jack hammer and sledge hammer right outside his bedroom. Leslie texted this to her mom and dad and the response she got back from her dad was, “When we were there you made us whisper!” Yea, about that…

Speaking of construction, I finished my latest project in the kitchen, a plate rack, because apparently when you own fancy dinnerware you aren’t allowed to just stack your plates in the cabinets where no one can see them. While as an engineer I am ashamed to admit that things weren’t aligned quite as straight as I had hoped I am still pleased with the overall result. In my defense, when I created a 3D rendering of it everything lined up, I blame whoever installed crooked cabinetry… not that cabinetry, the stuff I installed was straight… ish. I’m an engineer, not a carpenter.

Leslie, you’re not allowed to read the next paragraph.

This Saturday I spent a little more than an hour working on a birthday/anniversary present for Leslie, one that I am installing directly on the wall. As such Leslie has had to operate on the honors system since a couple of weeks ago; she hasn’t been allowed to peek under the blanket I have draped over my work. Saturday’s involved working on alignment and spacing of some items, in addition to applying touchup paint to the areas that I had penciled in some lines. Before she arrived back at the house I hung the blanket back up but not before I realized that all there was to see anymore was a few carefully placed nails in the wall, although to the random observer the nail placement alone makes it practically impossible to determine just exactly what I am making. When I pointed this out to Leslie and made the claim that I was 75% complete with the necessary work she was a little disbelieving. Ha, if you thought I was going to give away the surprise you’ve got another thing coming to you. If everything arrives in the mail like it is supposed to AND if I find time on Thursday to complete the installation then I’ll share pictures next week.

It is courtesy of my flight arriving half an hour early (despite a 20 minute delay) that I am able to complete this newsletter while sitting in the Atlanta airport waiting for my connecting flight, but my potato skins have arrived and I’m starving so everything else will just have to wait until next week.

Parenting Merit Badges

If I told you that not much had happened this week as I was originally inclined to do I would be lying. Wednesday morning saw Leslie with a return visit to the hospital with some troubling symptoms, fortunately not the pain she had been in a couple of weeks ago, but troubling none the less. Of course it was made all the more difficult by the fact that I had flown back to Durham, NC to visit a project the evening before. After several hours of frustration she finally had an ultrasound and was able to talk with the doctor where he basically told her that if they had read her chart before telling her to go to the hospital [when she called the doctor’s office that morning] they never would have told her to go to the hospital, rather they would have directed her to the Women’s Clinic where she would have gone through a more routine and less stressful checkup that would have told them the exact same thing the hospital visit did, that both she and the baby were ok and the symptoms she was exhibiting were perfectly normal with the particular difficulties Leslie has been experiencing during this pregnancy.

Despite the fact that we were essentially told that nothing was wrong and we had no reason to worry, we did find out a couple of things. We confirmed that she will need to have a C-section which is kind of nice because it removes the question mark surrounding the delivery date and allows family to make travel arrangements ahead of time. We also found out that Leslie will be unable to travel for Christmas this year. While we are disappointed that we will not be able to travel back to Atlanta to see family this year we are also somewhat relieved because that is another question mark that has been removed from our future (originally we wouldn’t have found out if they would let her travel until the week before Christmas making travel arrangements uncertain and likely very expensive).

It has certainly been an interesting transition moving into a project management, particularly when it comes to what time I arrive at the office. For the past six years I’ve gotten used to getting up around 0500-0530 and being the first in the office by about 0615. Knowing I was moving into a different setting I decided to scale things back a little, the problem with that was it wasn’t enough. Even showing up at 0730 I am beating everyone in by 30-45 minutes. Now I’m starting to wonder if any of these people actually work for a living. Where it gets kind of funny was earlier this week I rolled into site about my normal time but I didn’t actually get out into the field until around 0900 since I was tied up in my office getting some other work done. When I walked out and started talking with the foreman he razzed me a little saying, “Man, it must be nice being able to show up at 0900.” I immediately replied, “You know, when I used to have guys reporting to me directly from the field I would occasionally be late into the office and you know what my guys said every time? ‘Good morning, boss.’”

I was looking at my blog stats the last week and something I saw really made my day, for a couple of days the most commonly searched for item that returned a hit to my blog was the phrase “maleficent odor.” Sometimes I wish we got merit badges as parents, like they do in the Boy Scouts. If they did that I would have just gotten one of those all elusive badges that only like three scouts have. That’s it, there is my million dollar idea, parenting merit badges. I would have earned two badges this week, that one and the one for “You just caused your child to face plant on the kitchen floor.”

And it is with that last idea that I will leave you this week, no barrage of cute pictures to compensate for sloppy writing, just sloppy writing this week… I don’t really have enough time to go find any pictures.