Pool days of summer.

I’ve told you what I do on my work days, now a post to say what I’ve been doing on my off days.  I have a relative (I think) who has a pool.  I put I think because I don’t know what she is to me.  She’s my grandfather’s brother’s widow.  Not sure what that makes her to me, but what I do know is she’s been telling us for years “Come over and use the pool anytime.”  Well, now with the hour change at work, I have days off during the week so we’ve gone over to her pool a few times.

This was on Tuesday.  It was freaking hot out but I never got in the pool.  To many damn kids.  I took my 2 youngest over and let my cousin and brother know we were there so they brought their kids.  Plus an additional kid showed up from my “relative’s” side of the family that I didn’t know.  So there were 9 kids.  They had a blast.

Here’s what my daughter does, she goes off the diving board, goes down the slide. swims with her cousins and has lots of fun.  Most of you weren’t here last year, but this is how I taught her to swim in the deep end at her birthday party last year.  I’ll give you a minute to read how great of a parent I am.  Ok, you back now.  That’s right, after arguing with her for awhile, I threw her ass in the deep end.  But here she is a year later, swimming with the best of them.  Then I have this.

This is what my son does, plays by himself, in the shallow end.  I have tried and tried to get him to learn to swim and he just doesn’t care if he knows or not.  Yesterday, we were at the pool again (pictures to come later in this post) and I took him out to the area between shallow and the deep end.  I held him up with my hand on his stomach and told him to swim.  “Don’t let me go, daddy”.  “I won’t, just swim” was my response.  But he wouldn’t swim, I kept telling paddle, he would do it half-assed, barely moving   “Paddle, at least try to swim” I said.  But he wouldn’t.  So I let go, thinking he would panic and swim.  Nope, he dropped like a rock.  Didn’t even try to do anything, just sank.  So I grabbed him and pulled him up.  How can you teach anyone to swim (or ride a bike in his case) who just doesn’t care to learn?  And he truly doesn’t care if he knows or not, he’s content playing by himself in his own little world.  Don’t worry, he still loves me after his drowning.

He’s my little wussy boy.  That was on Tuesday, I worked Wednesday and Thursday and had Friday off, so we went to the pool.  Most of the same kids were all there, but it wasn’t sunny nor blistering hot.  So I decided to get in this time.

I took this picture up and down so you could see the cloud cover.  It was still plenty warm, in the high 80’s but without the sun beating down on us, it was much more pleasant.  We were under a thunderstorm watch but we figured we could get an hour or so worth of swimming in before we really needed to evacuate the pool.  We had a good time in the pool, my brother and I sat in the shallow end most of the time, watching the kids, and timing our shots with our water guns to hit the kids in the face.  I know, we’re mean.  Trust me, the kids deserved it.  I even shot 2 kids in the eyes.  But before you get angry at me, they were shooting me at the time, so I just have a better shot.  Well, better than Trevor, his 5 year old cousin shot me in the eye too at the same time.  It was like a movie, we both shot each other in the eye at the same time.  Don’t worry, no eyes were hurt during the shooting.  Although I thought I lost my contact during it, but I didn’t, so all was good.

We started swimming around noon and around 1:30, we told the kids to get out and start cleaning up all the pool gear and get it put away.

Here’s my brats after they got out.  I’m thinking the slicked back hair isn’t all that attractive on Samantha.  We gathered everyone up but had 1 minor problem.  A storm was coming and my brother and I were there with 9 kids.  The problem, how to get them all home with only our 2 vehicles.  I have a Mitsubishi Galant and he has a Jeep.  I took the youngest 3 in my backseat.  One kid (technically 2) needs a booster seat.  Trevor still uses one until his birthday this year.  But I let him sit without one so his 5 year old cousin could use it.  And a couple of the kids are old enough to ride in the front (damn teenagers) so we all piled in the 2 vehicles.  Before I got in the car, I took this picture.

Yeah!  Not pretty.  Pretty cool, but not pretty.  We got in the cars and decided to take them to our aunt’s house as it was close and my brother had a key.  As soon as we get out on the road, here came the rain.  As we were driving over there, the wind picked up.  It was howling, enough that if it had been swirling, you would have thought there was a tornado.  We get to my aunt’s house, we all pile out of the cars, and run up to the house in the rain.  All to realize, that my brother didn’t have my aunt’s key with him, it was on his other keyring.  So we all ran back to the cars and headed to my mom’s house.  Along the way, we saw all kinds of branches and half of tree’s down.  We eventually made it to my mom’s house.  Got inside, took a picture of all the kids in one room and sent it to my mom.  Told her we were having a party at her house and she wasn’t invited.

That was our exciting day yesterday.  And what I’ve been doing on my days off.  Which is why on my blog reading, I’m only on June 24th.

Insane in the Membrane, track 7

Now, usually, my “Insane in the Membrane” posts are music that gets stuck in my head.  Today is no different, but yet, it is.  It’s a bunch of music, crammed into one song.  Take a listen.

No, I didn’t have one of those songs stuck in my head.  I had all of them stuck in my head.  Right in a row, like on that damn commercial.  For probably 3 or 4 hours on repeat.  I even texted all the words to my wife, her response, isn’t that a commercial?  I tried switching my brain to another song, over and over and just couldn’t do it.  This was the first day, I was worried about actually going insane.

So kudo’s to the makers of the commercial as far as making it memorable, except all I could remember about the actual commercial was it was about streaming music.  I had no idea it was AT&T until I went looking for the video on YouTube.  So I’m guessing that’s a fail.  No kudo’s to you, come back next year.

How hot is it?

I’m in the air conditioning now.  I’ve showered and had supper and have finally started to get some energy back.  What have I been doing?  Working.  I’ve said how we’ve gone to 12 hour days now, what I haven’t told you it was I really do.

Where I work, we anodize aluminum.  I work up on the anodizing line, which means I work on the line where we actually anodize the aluminum.  So I work with all kinds of chemicals, all day long.  I takes 6 weeks to train to do my job.  There are only 3 position on each shift for my job.  And it’s the highest paid (not that it’s enough) in the plant as far as line positions go.  In October I will have been there for 13 years.  12 of those up on this line.  I have the most line experience up there by far, the next person probably has half the experience.  I am around 40th position on the seniority list.  That’s just a guess because a lot of people quit when we went to 12 hours, I was just under 50 then, I may be closer to 30 now.  They haven’t printed out a seniority list recently.  Anyways, for the most part I run one of these.

Ignore the back wall, that looks nasty.  I run the orange crane, or one just like it.  I pick up carriers that are loaded on the other line with parts.  The crane’s are 2 ton crane’s (4000 lbs).  Here is a carrier with parts on it.

Our parts come in many sizes.  These are the longer parts, we have parts as big as these or as small as your fingertips.  Basically I pick up the carriers and dip them in certain tanks of chemicals.  Some of the tanks use massive amounts of electricity to put the coating or to color the loads.  As a matter of fact, I’ve heard we are the top user of electricity in our county.  Don’t know if it’s true or not, but it wouldn’t surprise me.  Some of these tanks are heated up to 200 degrees.

This pic shows a load in a tank.  This is a caustic etch tank.  It is normally black, but when loads go in, it forms a foam or gas that sits on top of the tank.  Just for fun, let’s see what would happen if you went to pick up a load and scraped the side, causing a spark.

Yeah, It burns.  And as long as the load is in the tank, it continues to put off the gas that is burning.  The only way to put it out, is to take the load out.  Which will also usually stay on fire until you get into the rinse tank.  Not that I’ve ever done that.  Shhh.  When this happened, as I was taking the picture, the plant manager walked up and asked if I was going to take it out.  I said, nah, it only has a few minutes left, I’ll wait.  He probably didn’t like that answer since he was walking some customers through.  Oh well.

This pic shows how big the tanks are.  I took this last weekend when we were cleaning tanks.  I also took it without Frank looking because he’d kick my ass if he knew I’d taken it.  I am 6’3” and I have to stretch to reach the top of the tanks.  You see the gloves and boots, those are more or less required when getting in the tanks.  I don’t usually wear them but most of the other people do.  Or people wear the yellow suits on the right.  Yeah, I don’t ever wear those either.  I prefer to just not get stuff on me.  And if I do, the burning is minimal until you get some water on it and wash it off.  Plus, as mentioned here, I wear a uniform now.  Before, my clothes all had holes in them from the chemicals.  Since I don’t pay for the uniforms, I don’t really care what I get on them.

Anyways, back to what I was saying.

This is a pic of another one our tanks.  With a little bit of my finger apparently.  Notice the steam coming from it.

Here I tried to show the steam coming off the etch tanks.  I mentioned above the tanks that are heated.  This one is at 130 degrees.  The green one above this one is one of the 200 degree tanks.  Why do I bring up the temperatures?

Here is the forecast for this week.  Starting with tomorrow, or today depending on when you read this.  Let me put it to you this way, the line I works on is very humid because of the heated tanks.  So humid that I’m guessing tomorrow while it’s 99 degrees outside, it’ll be close to 120 inside, if not hotter.  Are you starting to see why I come home exhausted after 12 hours.  It’s not even the 12 hours that does it to me, it’s the heat.  It’s very draining.  And tomorrow and next week are going to be horrible.

Why am I telling you this?  Well, when I get home after work.  I tend to veg out on the couch, which I do at other times as well.  But after work, I tend to not even want to get on my laptop.  So I may not be around as far as the blog goes.  I said may because tonight I felt that way.  But I got a second wind and shot this post out.  But I will be heading off to bed soon.  It’s after 11 here and I am probably heading to bed soon.  Got to be up again tomorrow morning a little after 6.  It’s going to come to early.  So goodbye until next time.  I’ll leave you with a photo of what everybody thinks I do at work.

That poor trash can!

Non-Drug Induced Dreaming

“Let me tell you something” – I just pictured Jim Carrey doing Fire Marshall Bill.

Anyways, let me tell you about the dream I had last night.  It was kind of a “the Walking Dead” type of dream.  It had action, it had drama, it had zombies.  I think it took place on the farm in the show “the Walking Dead”,  I remember running from zombies but here’s where it gets weird.  I remember sitting down at a table with a zombie chick.  I remember being afraid and cautious as I sat there and the zombie chicks kid came into the room and sat down too.  Here’s what I determined was going on.  The zombie chick was a hybrid or an evolution of the zombie and we were supposed to co-exist with them.

I swear, I didn’t do any drugs before bed.  And when I woke up, before my alarm clock went off, it was one of those suddenly awake moment where you still feel the fear from your dream.  Took me a second to realize where I was and I couldn’t go back to sleep.  Not that I needed to, because it was only 10 or 15 minutes before my alarm.

That is all, go about your normal day, just had to share.

MS Parking and Drugs

I should be reading my Google Reader, I’m so far behind.  I’m on June 14th and it’s now the 21st.  So I’m a whole week behind.  But I’m just not in the mood to read blogs, no offense to you fellow bloggers.  It’s my day off and it’s my lazy day off.  No plans, no need to leave the house other than to return a Redbox DVD to Walmart but I can walk that over there and be back in 10 minutes.  They repaved our parking lot so now I’m waiting for it to dry otherwise I have to walk all the way around to get to Walmart.  I may be the only person in our house who isn’t lazy enough to walk next door, but I’m not going to tack more mileage on it if I can wait a few hours.

Our parking lot had a few spots that needed paved but doing the whole thing was unnecessary.  But I am glad they did.  I think all they did was kind of a spray thing on the top but what I like is they are marking the handicap spots.  Before, all they had were signs marking the spots with arrows.  So people would park in them all the time.  And even though Cheri has a handicap placard, we don’t use it all that often.  But regardless of at the apartment or anywhere else, I get pissed when I see people abusing the handicap spot.  I’m trying to be a little better about it, now that I see the looks we get when we use the spot.  Because on first look, Cheri doesn’t look like she needs it.  Which is why we only use it on certain occasions.  If it’s really humid out (heat kicks her ass for days) or if there is going to be a lot of walking (such as the mall) but if there is going to be a lot of walking, she generally uses her wheelchair so we don’t get the looks once we start breaking that out.  I’ve always gotten upset at people abusing the spots, that’s nothing new.  But I try to be a little more sensitive if they get out and don’t look handicap, because you never know.  But I’m still thinking they aren’t because people suck and are lazy so that’s where my mind always goes first.  Cheri has purchased and placed this on her car as well.

I’ve read on MS forums where other MS patients have had people say things to them about using the handicap spots.  I’ve actually read it a bunch of stories about it.  Nobody has said anything to us, but I have seen some looks.  And I dare them to say something because I won’t be biting my tongue.

Since I ended up talking about MS, I’ll give an update on how things are going here.  She still has her days where she’s just exhausted, too exhausted to do anything but not really as many days as before.  The recent heat wave has really been keeping her homebound as of late.  She hasn’t even been able to go to the last couple of Trevor’s games because of it.  It has been mid 90’s here for a week or so.  It’s cooled off today so hopefully it’ll stay a little cooler.

She’s been doing her daily injections of Copaxone,  We still don’t use the injector pen and to be honest, I don’t know why anyone would.  Yes, it’s more convenient.  But there is so much more pain when the med is shoved into your body at that rate of speed.  We inject the meds in about a minutes time, just push the plunger nice and slow and she feels very little.  Plus, when using the pens, the needle goes straight down into the skin.  When we inject manually, we pinch the skin and then go in at a 45 degree angle and most of the time, she doesn’t even feel it.  She still has the injection site stuff, itching and knots, but nowhere near the pain.  And this doesn’t make her sick all the time like Rebif did.  Really, as far as we know, it isn’t really doing anything.  But they told us that it was just to slow the progression so I’m not sure we would see any improvement on anything anyways.

We seem to be in a financial hole this week and it may get deeper before we get out of it, but we have gotten good news in that respect.  Cheri has been approved for disability, which is great.  Because we can’t make it on my paycheck alone and there is no way she could work on a regular basis.  If disability didn’t get approved, I was going to have to work another job, which is more time away from my family.  And that’s the last thing I want.  Well some days anyways.

I really should drop that DVD off being as I hear thunder.  So before I go, if you see me post a comment on one of your posts from a week ago, you know why.

Chalk up a win!

My wife refers to our little league team as the Bad News Bears.  We were put together at the last second because the 5 teams had too many kids.  So the park funded our team and the other coach’s selected 2 kids each to come to our team.  So naturally, I got most of the kids with little experience.  Because they try to keep the ages of the kids the same per team, I did get 2 kids that are good hitters.  The team didn’t even have a coach, which is where they begged me to do it because I had already helped out with a couple of practices.  So rookie coach’s and a bunch of rookie kids.

Due to the late start of our team, we only had 4 scheduled practices on diamonds.  2 of them got rained out and 1 had a scheduling conflict with the diamond.  So we ended up only having 1 practice before we started games.  Our first few games were horrible.  We had one kid who could hit, nobody else could.  So we would basically go 3 up, 3 down, almost every inning.  Loss after loss.  We signed up for batting cage time for a couple of weeks and gradually a couple of the other kids starting to hit the ball.  Not all the time, but they got hits here and there.  We had a few games where we hit the ball well but couldn’t quite get over the hump to get our first win.  We ended up going 0’fer for the season.

Tonight was our first game of the end of season tourney.  We came out early and scored 2 in the first inning.  I was hoping we could get on a roll for the game.  We ended up giving up a few runs and were down.  Then we had a 5 run 4th inning that put us on top for good.  That’s right, for good.  My boys came through for their first win.  And in the tournament at that.  I was so proud of them and they were all so excited.  I bought them all slushies in celebration.  Trevor was so excited.  A couple of the kids that don’t get very many hits had a couple.  And we actually had a kid with his first Grand Slam in our 5 run inning.

I don’t know how many games we have to win to take the tournament and I don’t even care.  They won a game, and when it mattered the most.  They came out and hit the ball and played some defense in the heat.  And pulled out a win.  I was proud of the boys tonight.  Even if it’s our only win this year, I’m still proud of this team.  Every one of the boys have improved throughout the year, and that’s what I told them that I wanted.  To get better every game.

Our band of misfits

We got pictures back tonight as well.  Apparently all the Coach’s got a copy of the team photo with the inscription above.  I thought that was pretty cool.

Father’s Day weekend

What does Father’s day mean to me?  Well, nothing really.  But I do enjoy our annual weekend tradition.  Every Father’s Day weekend we gather up the kids and families and head out to camp all weekend.  I did very little with my cell phone as well so I more or less disconnected from everything for a few days.  I did use it some, check scores for the Sox games and such, but did very little Facebooking and of course texting, which is a given since most of the people I text were there with me.  My mom, wife and brother, that’s pretty much the extent of my texting.  Told you I didn’t have crap for friends.  But I’m ok with that, less people I have to deal with.

Friday

Actually, we’ll go back to Thursday night.  The kids were with their mother so I texted her to find out if her JackAss could meet me in the morning since she was working Friday.  He said he had to go to Fort Wayne early in the morning so I asked her who was watching the kids.  She said she was going to leave them alone for a few hours, but it was ok, because she would leave them a cell phone.  My kids are 9 and 7, too young to be left at home by themselves for that long.  So I told her I didn’t have time to drive all the way out there and asked them to meet me that night.  Then all of the sudden JackAss’ story changes and he’ll be home after all and will meet me at 10am.

So back to Friday, I wake up to a text from JackAss that Tina left with his keys in her purse so now I have to drive all the way out there to get the kids.  I don’t believe his stupid ass but what can I do.  I go get them.  I meet up with my brother and his family at my mom’s at 1:30 and after some maneuvering of supplies and a quick lunch, we head out.  I rode with my brother in his new Jeep pulling a trailer.  My son and his son rode with us.  And my mom just about lost all the men in her family in one fail swoop.  Here we are, doing 65 down a highway and this idiot in a truck starts to pull out, see us and stops, right in front of us.  Had he not made up his mind to go ahead and go, we would not have been able to clear the rear end of his truck.  My wife, who was following, said she thought she was going to lose her husband right in front of her.

We arrived at the Indiana Dunes state park and got all the tents set up, pulled out our chairs and relaxed and waited for the rest of our family to arrive.  That’s my brother and I in the pic, doing the relaxing.  It’s one of the few pics we took this weekend.  We apparently matched up our wardrobes before we left.  Anyways, we picked out our lots last fall when we were there so we knew what to reserve at the beginning of the year.  We grab a couple of spots between a restroom and a playground.  And right next to the restroom, was the path that led to the beach.  They were pretty huge lots, not quite big enough for 3 so they only made it 2 with a lot of extra space.  Which was good because we ended up, with a pop-up camper, and 4 tents.  Including my tent, which they call “the Mansion”.  It can be divided up to 3 rooms, plus has a screened in porch.  My brother’s tent is about the same size without the porch, and then 2 smaller ones.  We got all set for the evening, grilled some burgers and hot dogs for supper and hung out around the campfire till bed.  We had 14 people stay the first night.

Saturday

Cheri and I woke up, didn’t sleep worth a crap.  We use this huge air mattress bed that my mom used to use before she got the popup.  It stands at about 3 feet tall, all air mattress.  It’s the only way Cheri can survive with her back.  But we set it up in the tent on a slope and it was hard to roll over so we didn’t sleep well.  We got up and had some breakfast.  Cheri got hooked on “Amish Crack", or at least that’s what my niece called it.  They were donuts but I guess they bake them.  She loved the Caramel Cinnamon ones, she couldn’t put them down.  After breakfast we packed some food and drink coolers in our car and headed down to the beach.  Samantha played in the water with my niece and nephew while Trevor pretty much stuck to the beach and dug in the sand.  He went into the water here and there, but for the most part, he dug just outside the water.  It wasn’t as horribly humid as it was supposed to be so it wasn’t bad.  It was still too hot for Cheri because it kicked her ass.  We were there most of the afternoon until Cheri and I had to leave to go meet her mom and give her our son back because they were heading back to Virginia.  The air condition in the car (and some sweet tea’s from McDonalds) did Cheri some good.  She got some of her energy back before we got back to the campground.  But she was still tired.  We got back to an announcement by the DNR that their was a pretty big storm coming with possible hail.  So we buttoned down the hatches and waited.  Then decided to eat while we waited so we grilled our marinated chicken under the back van door and Cheri cooked her potatoes in our screened in porch through a little bit of rain.  By the time everything was done, the rain had stopped and we gathered around and ate.  Played some cornhole and had some smores.  But just as it was starting to get dark, more rain came.  Along with some thunder and lightning.  So we headed to bed early.  Little did we realize the night we were in for.

We turned our bed so we weren’t fighting the slope and we were looking forward to a good nights rest.  Until we started to get dripped on.  We started turning on lights and somehow, the rain was getting under the rain guard and running down and dripping on us.  So I made multiple trips out into the rain in my boxers trying to throw towels down between the rain guard and the top of our tent.  We also cut small holes in the top of the tent so Cheri could direct the towels where we needed them.  Eventually we got everything stopped, at least from dripping on us.  We also took time between fighting the rain to take a picture of my kids, you know, to torment them with later.  We told Samantha she was probably dreaming about her boyfriend.  Mainly because she gets upset it you call anyone her boyfriend.

So for those who know me and have been around before this blog, this would be the 2nd time in the last 3 years that we had a huge rainstorm nail us.  Not last year, but the year before (2010) we got the tents set up just before a huge storm hit us all night long.  Ended up being tornados in the area.  I spent that evening standing up against the wall of our tent while the kids slept so it didn’t get blown over.

Sunday

Today, we had eggs, bacon and sausage when we got up and then packed up and headed out.  Sometime this week, we’ll have to run over to my mom’s and set up the tents and clean and dry them.  We got home, unloaded and then realized that we didn’t have any laundry detergent so Samantha and I ran over to Walmart and picked up some detergent, and a few other essentials.  Samantha took her money and decided to buy a movie with it.  So we came home, had some lunch and watched her movie together while Cheri crawled into bed and slept all afternoon.  Camping really drained her.  After the movie, I turned on the White Sox game and fell asleep on the couch.

It sounds like we didn’t do much this weekend but that what I like about our camping trips.  It’s nice and relaxing and I always have a good time with my family.  I’m not sure Cheri wants to go back again, but we’ll see.  She secretly loved it too, she just won’t admit it.

I did spend a little time this afternoon setting up a FB page for this blog.  So head over and like it to be notified of new blog posts and maybe get a little interactive with me.  I haven’t found where I can get the html to put it on the side bar yet, but when I do, I’ll add it over there.  Until then, you can go here:

http://www.facebook.com/RandomThoughtsFromARandomGuy

Bloggers vs. Bloggers

For those that don’t know, I have a couple of blogs.  The one your reading, and “My Sports Obsession”.  Even though this Random blog is older, I have only really been using it the way I am now since February of this year.  While my my sports blog, I’ve used since March of 2011.  Here is some of the differences.

My “Random Thoughts From a Random Guy” blog is a “daddy” blog, a “MS caregiver” blog, a “random” blog, a “humor” blog.

My “My Sports Obsession” blog is what it says, a “sports” blog.  Or more specifically, a “baseball card” blog.

You can see the differences in the graphic above. (Random = 21 page views per post average, Sports Obsession = 47 page views per post average),  The also glaring difference is the followers. 

What differences you don’t see is, my Random blog doesn’t really have a network where as my Sports blog does.  All those followers on the Sports blogs, I have followed their Sports blogs.  In exchange, they follow me.  I comment on their posts, they comment on mine.  I have a lot more interaction on my Sports blog (470 comments) then I do my Random blog (78 comments).  Where as my Random blog, I followed a bunch of “mommy” blogs as well as some “MS caregiver” blogs and got hardly any other followers.  I comment on other blogs as well, and never get any follows.

I’d like to say I don’t care about followers, but we all do to a point.  Having only 7 followers isn’t going to stop me from publishing because I do that for myself.  But it’s nice to know your being heard.  And I realize I don’t have gripping stories and amazing content so it doesn’t hurt my feelings at all.  I also know I have some followers who don’t actually click the follow button because they are regular commenters as well.  So that number is deceiving as well.

Another big difference is the trust.  And I think this is where the sex of the blogger comes into play.  The bloggers in the Random network are mostly female, but the Sports network bloggers are mostly male.  The majority of the Random bloggers don’t post pictures or use real names.  The majority of the Sports bloggers use their real names.  Family pictures don’t really come into play for that network.  Even e-mail addresses on the blogger profile are different.  If someone leaves a comment on my Random blog, I have to leave a reply on their reply which with the new blogger set up, means that they don’t receive it unless they come back and check it.  But with the Sports blog, I get a comment, I can reply to most via e-mail because they aren’t hidden.  When I reply via e-mail, it usually turns into a conversation.  So I have developed more relationship’s with my Sports bloggers.

I have developed friendships on my Sports blog, and I don’t see that happening with the Random blog.  I do have a few people who I comment on their blogs and they comment on mine so I do have somewhat of a relationship with a few.  In all fairness, there is a lot more interaction off of the Sports blog because of trading, and we all have one major factor in common, sports cards.

I often feel like an outsider on this blog, but I don’t on my sports blog.  And I realize that some of that is because this blog wear’s a lot of different hats “daddy” “random” “humor” “MS” so I don’t have the regular following, but I don’t feel like having 4 or 5 different blogs.  I have thought about it, but I would rather just keep it all together.  So I guess I am my own problem.

But that’s fine, this post wasn’t about begging for friends or followers.  It was just to show the differences between the blogs.  I think the network that I try to have with this blog, could learn a lot from the network of my sports blog.

It’s only Monday?

This may be a long week.  We have Cheri’s family up from Virginia.  To explain it fairly easily, Virginia family loves the Virginia family.  Indiana family loves the Indiana family.  If you mix it, there’s a tolerance to the other.  But there is usually lots of strain and stress.

Today, the first full day the family was up here, everything came to a boil and then boiled over.  It was ugly.  I’m not going to go into much detail, but I will leave it with, it was not a pretty sight.  I kind of got dragged in and I just tried to keep out of it.  I tried to be a peacekeeper when I could, but nobody wanted to listen to me.  I don’t know how it finished, I’m not even sure if some of the Indiana family will still talk to us.  I’m hoping they will.  I’m hoping the stress of the situation will go away when they go back to Virginia.  This family is so screwed up because of past grudges that some can’t let go.  So everything builds up until it explodes.  I rarely see my wife cry, and she was to that point today.

Stuck in the middle are the kids.  I felt so bad for my niece and nephew while everyone was going at it.  I tried talking to them, asked them if they were ok.  They said they were, but I don’t think they were.  They had this, get me the hell out of here look in their eyes.  I’m still not sure if they are ok, but I hope they are.

In the end, we have a houseguest.  Our son is staying with us for the week and as far as I know is going camping with us this weekend.  It’s nice to see him again and I know Cheri is enjoying her time with him.  I know our oldest daughter is really enjoying seeing him.  The brother/sister combo hate each other when they have to live together, but now that they live in different states, they love each other.  It’s nice to see.  The only bad part is our son is bored, there really isn’t much for him to do here.  Especially since his bed is the living room couch.  He went out with his sister and her friends, but I get the feeling that his crowd and her crowd are 2 different crowds.

All I know is, I volunteered to go to work tomorrow.  So hopefully, I stay out of everything.  I’m looking forward to getting out of the house for the first time.  Even though I’m pretty sure my wife thinks I want out of the house all the time.  I definitely want out this week.

I do have some posts planned for this week, the question will be whether or not I get to them.  Guess we’ll see.  I may want to stay away all week.  Think they’d notice if I snuck in and took my laptop to the nearest Wifi spot?

Shhh! Don’t tell anybody.

So, today is my birthday.  Ho Hum!  Not a big deal for me, it’s just another day.  As a matter of fact, it was a scheduled day off but I went to work anyways and put 9 hours in.  I had forgotten it was my birthday until I started getting all the Happy Birthday’s from my Facebook to my phone.  It’s amazing how many people say Happy Birthday even though they never comment or like anything else.  I only wish Happy Birthday to those that I actually converse with on Facebook.  Nobody at work knew it was my birthday which is the way I like it.  Although, the HR lady posted Happy Birthday on my Facebook wall while we were both there.  If they find out it’s your birthday, they usually announce a Happy Birthday Jeff on the intercom over the whole plant.

After work, I came home and took my daughter to go buy her first car.  This is where it really shows that my birthday is just another day.  As I’m filling out the paperwork, first, I asked what the date was.  As soon as the question was out, I was thinking, oh yeah, duh!  My daughter just looked at me with a “really?” look.  I don’t think she gets the whole, my birthday means nothing to me, attitude.  She’s 17, they are all a reason to party for her.  Enjoy them while you can.

The bad part was, when I was signing my name and date.  Every time I went to write the date, I wanted to write 6/6/73, because that’s what I’m used to saying when I say 6/6.  I’d write 6/6/  then have to think about what year I wanted to put down.  I wondered if they would have noticed if I had put ‘73 on it.

I came home to some Meatloaf and Mashed Potatoes, one of my favorite meals that my wife makes.  Then topped it off with some cheesecake, which is my favorite dessert.  My kids both gave me the cards they made for me.  Nice, quiet birthday, that’s what I like.

 

And for something completely off topic, I just saw a KFC commercial, where the kid and his grandfather are wrestling for which side dish to get.  At the very end, the grandson reaches for the last biscuit and the grandfather grabs his hand.  Hilarious!  Why you ask?  Because one of the stories I hear about, every time we have biscuits at a family get together, is when my grandfather and I fought over the last biscuit when I was a kid.  Let’s just say the story ends with me storming off down the hall, elbows flaring.  I like to say that I respect my elders and let him have it.  But I don’t think anybody buys it.  I’ll see if I can find it on YouTube.

And there you go.  The commercial is about extra sides.  But the last few seconds are the part that cracked me up.  I texted my grandfather after I saw it and told him about it and said it made me think about him.

I’m too pooped

I’m too tired to come up with a real post, this will have to do.

I didn’t even pick up my laptop yesterday, which is a rarity.  I usually spend at least a few hours on my laptop daily.  Most days, more than that.  But I just haven’t been in the mood.

We started the 12 hour days last week.  I only was scheduled to work 2 days.  I left early on Wednesday by and hour and a half (worked 10 1/2 hours) so I could go to Samantha’s first tourney game.  Then worked 12 on Thursday.  It wasn’t as horrible as I had thought.  The worst part was around 1:00 when I get back from my lunch break.  I used to be pumped because it was my home stretch, less than 2  hours left to go.  Now at 1:00, I think, “Damn, I’m only half way through my day.”  So 1:00 to 3:00 sucks.  But after I get past 3:00, I got a second win and made it through all right.  So much so that I volunteered to go in on Friday (my off day) and worked 9 hours.  The only reason I didn’t stay for 12 was Samantha had another game.

So Wednesday night, Samantha won their game 29-28.  She was the tying run in the bottom of the 6th (they only play 6 innings).  She drew a walk on a full count and later scored on a bases loaded walk.  The next girl that came up, is our best player.  But she had struggled all night, a couple of strikeouts.  But she ripped a line drive through the infield that rolled to the fence.  It was such an exciting game.  But we didn’t get back home until after 10:00.

Friday night, they had to forfeit because they were a player short.  They only have 8 girls on the team, and you have to have a minimum of 8 players to field a team.  One girl didn’t show up.  That one girl, was the one that hit the walk off in their last game.  They played the game anyways, even though it was freezing and raining.  And it was an automatic loss for the tournament.  This time I made it home by 9 though.

Today, Samantha had her little league pictures at 10:00, and a game at 11:30.  Trevor had his pictures at 12:15 and a game at 3:30.  Tomorrow, we are going to Cheri’s nephew’s graduation.  Tomorrow night, I get the kids back, and work 12 hours on Monday and Tuesday.

So as you can see, or read, I’m spent.  And probably will be until I get used to the 12 hour days or until little league is over in a few weeks.  I’ll post when I can.