Tag: harry

My Step Son is Good People

We have gotten into the routine of watching Marvel and Star Wars shows on Disney+ with my step son. If he’s home we watch together. If he’s away at school we have watch parties so we can watch together. I love it. I love being able to share my fanboy geekdom with him.

The other day we had a FaceTime call with him and I asked if we were going to watch MoonKnight together. Yup. We made a tentative plan to watch the first episode tonight at around 8:00pm and we were good to go.

Today he sent us a text. He wanted to know if it was okay if he watched MoonKnight with his friends. He said they were excited to watch it too and he wanted to know if we would be okay with it if he watched it with them.

19 years old and he wants to make sure it’s okay if he watched a TV show with someone else. Correct me if I am wrong, but he is the single nicest person ever. My step son, Harry, is just good people. Through and through.

Of course it’s okay if you watch with your friends! Jen said that it just means we’ll have to talk about the series when he gets home. I forwarded that along in the text thread and he agreed. We’ll deconstruct the shit out of it. Then he added that we’ll be watching Ms Marvel as we do it.

Yeah, we will!

Harry is good people.

Six Years Ago Today: Diabetes-aversary

Six years ago today was a Friday. Friday November 13, 2015. It was the worst day of my life. No question. There have been other bad days, but none of them can hold a candle to 11/13/15. That was the day we almost lost Harry. I was working from home while he was home sick. All morning he just kept getting worse. I called Jen and she came home and probably saved his life by taking him to Holy Family Hospital. One of the nurses took one look at him and said he had Diabetes. Oh good, we thought, you can treat that. He’s going to be fine. The nurse saw the look of relief and let us know that it wasn’t going to be that simple. He wasn’t just really sick. He was really sick.

They moved him to Boston Medical Center where an ER doctor was straight with us. There was a chance he wasn’t going to make it. There was also a chance that his system was so fucked up it might cause other damage on top of just not being able to produce insulin anymore. We were scared shitless. You may think you know what being scared feels like, but this was so much worse than that. The head of Endocrinology told us that he had never seen a kid that far gone come back, but Harry, being the 12 year old bad ass that he was, pulled through. He was right as rain after a couple of days. You might think you’ve felt relief before, but it’s nothing compared to what we felt that day. Believe me.

The story has a happy ending though. One that has continued unabated for six years now. Harry was not only up to the challenge of managing his diabetes, he thrived on it. I have lost count of the number of doctors I’ve heard say they were impressed with how well he handles it. Sure there are days when his blood sugar spikes and it scares the crap out of everyone, and there are days when his blood sugar takes a nose dive off a cliff and scares the crap out of everyone. There are even days when they both happen. Still, Harry has been amazing. He continues to be amazing. He is amazing.

I just wish he didn’t have to be. I wish he didn’t have to manage things. I wish his pancreas was still holding up it’s end of the bargain and he didn’t have to track his blood sugar and manually inject insulin. That would be great and all, but fortunately Harry was and still remains more than up to the challenge. Again, he’s amazing and I love him and I am so thankful for the way things turned out, and I am thankful that he still lets me be a part of his life.

My holiday wish, year round wish really, for everyone is that they never have an 11/13/15 of their own. Hug your kids.

The Final Sunday

Well here we are. Today is the last Sunday we have with Harry before he leaves for college. Next Sunday is with dad, and the Sunday after that he’ll already be two days into his college career.

So we’re being weird today and driving up to the New Hampshire lakes region for some mini-golf and some wandering and exploring. It’s kinda our thing. The wandering and exploring, not so much the mini-golf, but that’s our excuse-destination.

Pics will be shared, I am sure.

Off we go!

Rough Times are Imminent

This is totally selfish. We’re just focusing on me here, not on anyone else, m’kay?

I am about to have a really rough time. I am leaving work early today, at 3:30. The plan is to spend the extra two hours off hanging with Harry. After that I head to my parents house for nana/papa sitting shift… for 48 hours. Two whole days there without a break. Without going home and seeing my family. It’s going to be a nightmare.

It is the price I had to pay in order to get most of the last week of August off so that I don’t have to miss a Bellana visit and so that I can help Harry move into his dorm. A double shift is going to suck, but it is absolutely going to be worth it.

We are hopefully going to watch the first episode of Marvel’s What If? tonight. Then when I get back Friday night we’re watching The Suicide Squad. It’s our last weekend with Harry before he leaves for school so we’re going to super hero the shit out of it.

Starting around 6:30 tonight I am going to have a miserable 48 hours, but after that it’s going to be great. Run that gauntlet, red head. Run it.

Lunch Break

It’s the tail end of my lunch break. What’s going on in the world?

What the hell is the deal with Apple’s podcast player? Both on iOS and iPadOS? I’ve been using them both for years but over the last few weeks they’ve become useless. I’ve found myself using Stitcher out of frustration. The app is garbage these days. I’m almost afraid to try it on the MacOS, though it’s pretty much always been garbage there.

At this moment, the third podcast I have queued up is a hockey podcast talking about game one of the Stanley Cup Final from last night. I only watched the first period and I fell asleep before the third period started. The final score was Tampa Bay 5, Montreal 1. That’s what I am talking about, hockey fans! I hate Tampa Bay but anything is better than Montreal. Tampa Bay, keep up the good work. Let’s win this one in four. Pretty please?

Work has been weird today, and I am not talking about my idiotic forgetting of my badge this morning. Not sure if it’s something in the air or what, but lots of weirdness going on. Nothing we can’t handle, just… odd.

I finally made myself an eye appointment. I’ll be visiting my local Lens Crafters this weekend. I think I am 100% on board with a dedicated computer glasses. I think that will make my work day a little less blurry.

I am a bad person. I have to nana sit tomorrow, which means I need to go over there around 6:30 or so. Harry has a new job and he won’t be getting home until after 7:00. That means we can’t watch the new episode of Loki on the day it’s released. At least we can’t watch it together. Maybe we could do one of those… what do they call them… viewing parties? Or we can just wait until Thursday. Or Harry and Jen can watch it without me. I don’t want that, but I would rather the two of them be happy than anything else. I feel like I am breaking my own heart every third day. I just feel awful.

It’s 95 degrees out right now. As bad as that is, it’s better than 110, or whatever it is over in the Northwest. The air conditioner is keeping up here. May it continue it’s good, heroic work.

Okay, it’s 2:00. Back to work, red head.

Patches Doesn’t Dig Pink Floyd

I’m feeling a little blue today. Fathers Day often has that effect on me. I always feel like an imposter. It’s not right or wrong and I don’t want to debate it, it’s just the way it is. It’s okay.

Harry cleaned his room today and Jen shuffled around some computer equipment. Harry’s back at his father’s now, given the day I believe that’s the right thing to do even though I always want him here with us, and Jen was wrapping up her desk set up. She asked me to carry something into Bellana’s room for safe keeping, and she also said something about a mouse. She was referring to the personal computer peripheral input device but it instantly put a completely unrelated song into my head.

Patches was curled up in a ball on Bellana’s bed. I performed a dramatic poetry reading of the song lyrics in the hopes that it would cheer both me and her up a little…

I know a mouse, and he hasn’t got a house,
I don’t know why I call him Gerald.
He’s getting rather old, but he’s a good mouse.

Patches just sat there looking at me. No response at all. I don’t think she really gets Syd Barrett.

We Are Home

We are home. We actually have been for a while.

The forecast said there was a 1% chance of rain. It poured for a bit while they were walking the graduates to their seats, then it rained again about halfway through the distribution of diplomas. It did not rain on Harry though.

Now he’s going to a school thing where they lock all the kids in the building for the night. That cuts down on the post graduation drinking. Does it also cut down on the post graduation teen pregnancies? My senior class had trouble with both of those issues.

So proud. So happy. Crazy proud.