Maleficent Odor

Whew, last week was an extremely busy week for us.  Between flying to Orlando late Saturday afternoon and visiting Disney World until Wednesday night, and then returning to Lubbock on Thursday we are all exhausted.  That said, we had a great trip and it was entertaining to see all of my family and to have them see Jack.

Last Saturday Leslie and I spent much of the day making final preparations for our departure at 1600 that afternoon.  That morning I had to go into the office to finish up some work I hadn’t gotten done Friday night.  Knowing that I was going to be the only one in the office I went ahead and took Jack with me so that Leslie could finish packing.  I got back home about an hour and a half before we wanted to leave, plenty of time to pack my bag and get the truck loaded up.  Fifteen minutes before we needed to leave I noticed that the tires on the stroller were looking a little low, so before I packed it up I aired up the tires.  After I pumped up the last tire the nozzle on the air pump got stuck on the valve stem and in my efforts to pull it off I rendered the tube completely useless by ripping off the entire valve stem… It was a side tire as well, meaning I couldn’t simply put Jack in and pop a wheelie, go figure.

Frantically I told Leslie that we had to leave immediately and the get Jack in his car seat.  Knowing that there wasn’t a Walmart on the way to the airport I began calling the closest ones to ensure that had an inner tube of the appropriate size.  Finally, as I was about to pass the exit for the particular Walmart I was on the phone with they got back to me and, yes, they did have a tube of the appropriate size.  Thank goodness.  Driving as fast as I could without exceeding the speed limit I headed to the Walmart where I ran in and bought two new tubes, one for good measure.

Eventually we made it to the airport just on time… of course, being a Filippo, arriving at the airport on time means we were still two hours early, and of course, the airport being Lubbock, we made it through security and were sitting at the gate with an hour and 45 minutes to kill.  As an adult an hour and 45 minutes is no big deal, I’ll just pop open my Kindle and get started on my next book; as a parent with a child who has learned to disappear faster than Houdini himself an hour and 45 minutes is just short of eternity itself.

Knowing the poor kid was getting ready to be forced to sit in one of our laps for the next four and a half hours I wanted him to be able to crawl around as much as he wanted so we found a slightly less populated section of the airport not too far from our gate… by not too crowded I mean that it was occupied by a janitor, a bored looking TSA official (keeping America safe from the dreaded 90 year old terrorists), two ants, and a housefly.  About 37 seconds after having turned Jack loose we had lost sight of him; after frantically spending the next couple of minutes searching we finally found him right below our seats sharing a French fry with the two ants previously mentioned.  After we took the French fry away from him we began imagining what other treasures he might find while crawling around on the floor at the airport… paper trash… used gum… a hangnail.  “Jack!  Come here buddy, why don’t you come sit with dad.”

I won’t go on into too much detail about Disney as it was pretty much what you would expect, other than to say that apparently my child is terrified of Goofy.  Mickey and Minnie didn’t really pose a problem but Goofy brought us to a whole new realm of terror.  Think back to the whole harmonica fiasco.  I will say this though; you know you’re hardcore when you develop a blister just from riding the Teacups at Magic Kingdom.

Thursday we had an early morning flight out of Orlando, and when I say early morning I mean the bus picked us up at the hotel at 0330.  So yea, it was a long day.  We arrived in Houston to find that our very short layover had been extended due to “maintenance difficulties.”  I swear the airline must have had a premonition of the potential disaster to come.  As Leslie and I were walking down the skyway I’m holding Jack and I hear this tremendous groan start coming from between his clenched lips, he sounded like a constipated wildebeest; which, come to find out wasn’t too far from the truth.  As we approached the aircraft this powerful cloud of noxious gases surrounded me, my eyes beginning to water I handed the boy off to Leslie while scrambling for the diaper bag.  “Take him to the [airplane] restroom and change him,” I told her, “I’ll take care of the bags.”  As she walked onto the plane, she turned to me in dismay and said, “But there’s a long line, can’t I wait?”  “Do you want to live?” I asked her, “Do you have any idea what will happen when those doors close and the air begins recirculating through the cabin?”  “I’m sorry fellow passengers of flight 4601; I don’t think any of us are going to make it out of this alive.”

Fortunately there were a number of survivors from flight 4601 and Leslie, Jack, and I were counted among them… kind of ironic if you think about it.  And it is with those images that I will leave you this week.

To B(lind) or Not to B(lind)

I know, I know, I missed last week’s publication.  What can I say?  It was a relatively uneventful week and I was pressed for time on Friday and Saturday.  This week was also fairy uneventful, but there was enough to make a newsletter about it, so here we go.

Monday I had my one month follow-up appointment with the doctor who worked on my eyes.  While much of my eyesight has been restored it has been gradual enough that I was quite surprised to discover that when the nurse came in to do the vision test I tested out at 20/20 in both eyes.  When the doctor came in he asked how I was doing and I told him that I wasn’t doing too bad… a very typical answer for me.  When he started looking at my charts he kind of chuckled and said, “Oh, you’re at 20/20 in both eyes; when you said you weren’t doing too bad I figured you’d be around 20/40.”

Well then… excuse me for thinking you cared about my overall wellbeing, not just my eyesight.  But seriously, now that I’m five weeks out from the surgery and seeing great I am feeling a lot more grateful for the whole thing than I was 4.5 weeks ago when I was still mostly blind.  Especially when I consider the fact that I am much further ahead in my recovery than the average PRK patient at this point in time.

Most weeks after I publish my newsletter I wind up having a conversation with Leslie where she asks me if such and such occurrence that I recounted in my newsletter actually happened.  She is frequently surprised to find out how much of my stuff is made up, or at least greatly embellished.  On that note, Leslie asked me this week if I thought that she was smothering Jack with her constant attention.  After I removed the pillow from on top of his face* I told her, “Honey, you can’t spell smothering without mother.”

It never struck me just how competitive I really am until Leslie and I volunteered at VBS this past week during the evenings.  On one of the last nights, during game time we were playing the equivalent of musical chairs, only instead of sitting down in chairs the kids had to stand on colored circles on the floor.  Of course, I had decided to join in with the children to demonstrate how the game was played.  During one of the rounds I noticed that this little boy wasn’t moving from atop his circle so I walked over to him and told him that he had to move off of the circle until the music stopped playing.  “Why?” he asked my with those pleading eyes.  “Because those are the rules,” I told him, “and if you don’t play by the rules you will lose.”  Nervously he stepped off the circle and moved a couple of feet away.  Immediately the music stopped.  He whirled around to return to his circle only to find it occupied by yours truly.  “Sorry kid, sometimes life’s rough like that.”

A couple of weeks ago we were able to entice Jack to climb up the stairs into our bedroom (3 large steps).  He did pretty decent for a kid that just learned to crawl about a month ago.  Last week, shortly after I got home Leslie and I were talking while she was doing laundry in the living room.  As she moved into the bedroom I followed her to continue the conversation; Jack gave a little half cry when he couldn’t see us anymore, but other than that left us alone.  Not even a minute later I turned to look back in the living room to check on him and was startled to see that he had crawled across the trailer and up the stairs and was very quietly sitting on the floor right behind me, smiling.  Had I been someone who startled very easily *cough* Leslie *cough*, I probably would have jumped.  Turns out he takes after his dear ol’ dad and enjoys scaring the living daylights out of people.  This kid’s going places.

This weekend Leslie and I are flying out to Orlando with Jack to meet up with my family and go to Disney.  I am assuming that at this point next week I’ll either have a success story for how much fun we had or a terrifying recounting of how my child is deathly afraid of extremely large mice.

*Sheesh, I’m kidding about the whole pillow thing people, lighten up.

Kids Make Us Say the Darndest Things

This past Sunday was Palm Sunday, or as we used to call it when we were kids: Whack your best friend in the face with a palm leaf Sunday.  I got to relive some of my childhood when I started whacking other parent’s children in the head with palm leaves, it was quite entertaining; and I’m almost positive that the other parents were absolutely thrilled that I was teaching their children to whack each other in the head with palm leaves.  I don’t know how else to explain the looks I kept getting.

I imagine it won’t be too much longer before I have to start saying things like, “Jack, don’t whack the other kids in the face with your palm leaf.”  Having children has given me the opportunity to say things that I never before have had the occasion so say.  Things like, “don’t lick the end of mommy’s laptop charger, buddy,” or “daddy’s nose is NOT a chew toy,” and “if you don’t like the taste of the wet wipes then stop putting them in your mouth.”

Now that Jack has started to get mobile… not in the sense of crawling or anything, more in the sense of rolling all over the floor and licking things he’s not supposed to lick, like the bag of dirty diapers or the charging end of Leslie’s laptop cord.  Anyway, not that Jack is starting to get mobile I’m going to have to start worrying about childproofing things in the camper, things like electrical outlets.  It just so turns out that those little plastic doohickeys that plug into your electrical outlets serve a purpose other than annoying the snot out of anyone who doesn’t have children.

Now, what has really been entertaining is trying to teach the little guy sign language.  Much like many parent’s this day in age, Leslie is attempting to teach Jack the sings for things like milk, diaper, more, all done, and stop.  That last one is hilarious because it requires both hands, but usually whatever he is doing that you want him to stop doing requires you to use both of your hands to keep him from doing it.  I’ve tried to do my part, I really have, but Leslie is not appreciative of the fact that I associate the sign to the right with drink.  While we have yet to see any fruit from these efforts he has started using actual syllables when he talks.  Syllables like dadadadada (which apparently doesn’t count as his first words, according to mom anyway) and AAIEEEEEEEEE!  Leslie is working with him on the mamama sound so that she can claim mama as his first word.  Of course, none of that could beat the “nananana, Batman!”  Personally, I have settled on trying to teach him the word “brains” as his first word, because think about it, until the time he learns a second word he will be the cutest zombie in the world running around yelling “bwaaaains!”

Last week Disney had a meeting with their board of directors and shared some information on the direction they are heading with their movie studios.  There was a lot of information released about movies that I don’t really care about (but I’m sure I probably will in the next few years), but one little tidbit that they did release was about Star Wars Episode VII set to release sometime in 2016.  Turns out that there were a lot of complaints about the diversity of the human race, I mean sure, there was Mace Windu, but he died.  In response to these complaints it would appear that Disney has given nod to a more racially diverse Star Wars universe; on that note I am proud to present the new C3P0 and R2-D2.  For those of you unfamiliar with my writing, this last paragraph was written with a healthy dose of sarcasm and should not be taken as fact.

Unfortunately I do not have a mission statement to present to you this week, though we are reaching the final stages of drafting it.  Leslie and I will set aside some time this Sunday to sit down and condense all of our research and analysis from the past couple of weeks.  I will say this, after having spent a couple of days trying to summarize everything I want to include I have condensed a page full of notes into roughly a page full of text.   I’m not very good at summarizing.

Have a happy Easter and remember why it is that we choose to celebrate this day.