Tag: Family

Cake

I mentioned in this morning’s edition of The Daily Writing Prompt that Jen baked me a sugar free cake over the weekend and it is wonderful in both the figurative sense (how great is my wife for doing that for me and my weird, redesigned, stomach pouch thing) and the literal sense (de-freakin-licious chocolate cake!!!).

I had a second piece tonight. Just a sliver. I can’t take much more than that. The downside is that I will never be able to eat the whole thing at this rate. Some of it is going to go to waste. That is sad, but I will never not be grateful for the gesture, and I will eat a little bit each day until it goes stale and can’t be eaten any more.

Like I said, how amazing is my wife? Amazing! I think she might actually like me. Insert a gigantic happy grin here.

In other news, I also mentioned earlier that today is my father’s birthday. 82 years old and still going strong. My sister setup a birthday party for him this coming Sunday. I’ll go to that in the afternoon and then go to band practice. It’s going to be an epic Sunday. Maybe I can talk Jen into going to New York on Friday after work and then coming home on Saturday after dinner. Let’s make the epic Sunday a full on epic weekend! There’s zero chance of that, but a boy with cake in his rewired innards can dream, right?

Friday

It has been a pretty quiet day at work today (JINX!) apart from my brief stomach rebellion. I have 32 minutes to go until I can punch out for the day. I am starting to day dream about the weekend a little.

Music. I recorded a vocal track for one song on Thursday. I have a couple more songs that could do with some car music vocals. I have to practice for Sunday’s band rehearsal as well. I have nine songs to brush up on. I don’t know if we have a working PA system or not, but I did pick up a replacement for my dead Shure SM58 microphone. If our old, dinky little PA still works I’ll take it for a test drive. My Vox AC15 amp is in the rehearsal room along with my great big use-with-the-band pedal board. It’ll be nice to visit with my sweet RYRA The Klone overdrive pedal again.

I suddenly find myself in the middle of a whole bunch of TV shows. The X-Files epic rewatch continues, and we’re in season seven which means the quality is taking a steady nose dive. Uh oh. Only a few episodes to go until we reach the two season mostly-Mulder-free stretch. Yikes. I have a new episode of Star Trek Discovery (Disco) to watch. I have a new episode of Manhunt to watch. I have 6-7 episodes of Fallout left. I’ve watched the first two. I didn’t expect it to be so… goofy. I never played the video game so I really didn’t know what to expect. Silliness was not on my menu though. I like the show so far even though I don’t really know what’s happening yet. I’m caught up on Star Wars The Bad Batch. There are only a few more episodes left and I am thinking about rewatching the whole final season. I don’t know. There’s so much else to watch. I’m in the middle of Ripley on Netflix too. It’s pretty twisted. I never read the book or saw the movie so this one is all new to me too. I am enjoying it in a sick and twisted kinda way.

What else is going on? I am hoping to spend some quality time hanging out with my wife, of course. That’s the best part of the weekend. She mentioned she’s going to have to work a lot, which is a bummer, but we’ll make time. I hope to cook for her now and then. Lunches and maybe dinners? We use one of those dinner delivery service things. You know, where they send you all of the ingredients and a recipe with (somewhat) detailed instructions and you prepare the meal yourself. We are supposed to get a delivery today. I like it best when we cook those together. I find that both less stressful and generally enjoyable. Mostly. Some of them are still stressful even when we gang up on them. Does everyone think they are stressful or is it just us?

I did not promise myself that I would avoid the sugar free bakery in Salem, NH this week… so when I go out to do errands… yeah, I am probably going to buy some cookies there. I can stop any time, really. I promise I can stop any time. Totally.

Okay. 20 minutes until quitting time. I haven’t had anything to eat in two hours and 56 minutes and my stomach is starting to ask me why it’s empty. Three hours is usually how long it takes for my stomach to wake up after a meal. We’re pretty much right on target. Here’s hoping I don’t mess up with my snack on the drive home. A repeat of The Foamies… in the car… yeah, that would be annoying. I keep a spit up cup in the car, though I have never used it. Here’s hoping we keep the streak alive!

TMI?

The Blind Selfies the Blind

We were outside looking at the eclipse as it hit its peak. Something like 92% eclipsed. Way to go, Moon!

I tried to take a selfie of us with the glasses on. It’s tough to do when the glasses literally blind you. I did my best. Laugh at our goofiness.

Happy Eclipse Day

Today’s the day! We get to experience a solar eclipse. In my neighborhood we’ll see the moon block about 90-something percent of the sun. Where my step kids live, they will get to see a total eclipse. Here’s hoping the weather is clear for them and they will get to see it.

Channel 5 news in Boston was kind enough to give the start-peak-end times for both Boston (which isn’t where I live, but it’s close enough) and Burlington, VT (where the kids live) in one handy dandy infographic!

The only question that remains is… are you ready for this? My wife and I sure are…

Now if the work day just takes it easy on us so that we can sneak outside for a couple of minutes to put those groovy eclipse glasses to work. Fingers crossed.

17 Years Ago Today

17 years ago today was a good day. I had met this woman on Myspace (hi, Tom!) and we’d been chatting and emailing for a while. On April 5, 2007 we met in person for the first time. An actual, honest to goodness date. We went to dinner at the Outback Steakhouse in Lowell and then went to a bar nearby and hung out for a while longer. It was a good date.

17 years later and we’re married. Still together. Like I said, it was a good first date.

Happy first-date-aversary, Jen. I love you more than ever.

She’s Fine

I found Miss Lilly. A few hours went by but she eventually came out of hiding. She was laying down on the ottoman in the living room, just relaxing like nothing happened. She let me pet her for a few minutes.

Shes fine, everything’s perfectly all right now, we’re fine, we’re all fine here now, thank you, how are you?

Plans for Tomorrow

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. We have one plan for the day but I have a few additional things I want to get to.

  1. Wake up and do my daily exercise
  2. Eat breakfast
  3. Grab my laptop, a microphone, a USB audio interface, and a pair of headphones and jump into the car, drive someplace quiet, and record vocals for my two songs for this month’s Record Every Month Challenge
  4. Come home and take a shower and shave
  5. Put lead guitars onto the same two songs
  6. Make lunch for me and my beloved wife
  7. Mix one of those two songs
  8. Go to my father’s for Easter Dinner. Maybe watch a couple of innings of the Red Sox game
  9. Go home, spend some quality time hanging out with my beloved wife
  10. Mix the other song
  11. Sleep

I think I can manage that.

Until then, I am worried about one of the cats. Lilly. About half an hour ago she made a ton of noise. She was running around like crazy, crashing into things and skidding all over the tiled floor. She somehow got wrapped up in a plastic bag and was absolutely freaking out trying to get untangled. She ran into the bed room where I was sitting up in bed and watching something on my laptop. She then dashed out again and went into hiding. I can’t find her anywhere. I’m worried that she might have hurt herself in her struggles. I’m worried that she might have wrapped the plastic bag around her neck. She hid herself so well though that I can’t seem to find her anywhere. I’m sure she’s okay, but I would like to find her to know for sure.

Poor kitty.

You Know You’re Old When…

You know you’re old when your wife asks you if you have any interest in going to bed and just sitting up reading for a little while before nodding off for the night…

And it’s not even 8:00pm yet…

And you are absolutely interested. Absolutely.

Dad’s Appointment is Done

Nothing Earth shattering. A plan of action that is more or less the same plan of action we already had, just with mini-tweaks in place. No actual changes in the care plan. We have a follow up mid-April though, so we’ll see.

He’s not in trouble or anything, just a nagging thing that doesn’t seem to want to go away but will if he’s a good patient. I’m not sharing anything beyond that.

Starting to Get Nervous

The nervousness is creeping up on me.

No details will be forthcoming, but we have an appointment with my father’s doctor today. It will be Dad, the doctor, my brother, my sister, and me. There is a potential for some difficult conversation about my father’s care going forward. There isn’t anything wrong right now, but it’s just day to day stuff that might need to be adjusted, and those adjustments might lead to some tough talk.

The appointment is about 2.5 hours from now. I have some errands to run (I might share the source of those later because it’s a “funny” story) and then I have to go and pick up my dad.

Stay calm, Robert. It will be okay.