Tag: Kids

It is Wednesday

Today is Wednesday. Know what that means? It means two days until the kids come home for their Thanksgiving break. We only have them for a few days, and one of those days is actually Thanksgiving. Somehow we have to cram all of the Christmas decorating into the rest of the time. That includes a Christmas tree. Home Depot is already selling them, so they are there if we need it. Harry wants to get one at a tree farm. I am 100% out of my element there. Personally, I want to put up the fake one we had last year. We had so many lights on that tree (including the ones that came with it) that you could LITERALLY* see it from space.

What else… I don’t know. I want Santa to bring me a new cellar. Fat chance of that. Maybe a new MacBook Pro instead? hehehe

Okay, going to work. Talk later.

*No, you could not literally see the tree from space. There were a shit load of lights though, and it was super, super bright.

Bed Time Musings

I’m tired, but not that tired. You know?

I just scratched a little bug bite on my shoulder and it’s bleeding like an open tap now. Gimme a second to deal….

I grab one tissue from the box and four come out. Chaos! I guess it’s just one of those nights.

I’ve gotten consistently bad sleep over the last week or so. Last night I even turned in without putting on the CPAP mask. Jen woke me up an hour later with a yo, ‘sup? That wasn’t enough to cause the bad sleep that followed, but when all was said and done it probably didn’t help much.

Did I mention we got an unscheduled call from Bellana today? No reason, just saying hello. How cool is that? Both kids will be home for Thanksgiving break on Friday. I can’t flippin’ wait! harry is already planning out when we watch Shang Chi together. Bring it on!

Okay, I’m going to try to sleep now. I promise I won’t forget my O2 mask.

Good night, dear readers. Talk to ya’ll tomorrow.

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.

Attenuation

Usually when we go up to Vermont we leave as early as humanly possible so that we can spend as much time there as we can and still get home at a non-ridiculous hour. Today is a little different. I have to time my arrival to match up with his class schedule. That means I have another hour or so before I have to leave.

I was thinking about playing some guitar before I go, but Jen is working and a few minutes from now she’ll be in a meeting. Better for me to keep quiet. It got me thinking about gear though. The amplifier I am going to use for November is a Vox MV50 Clean. There are a ton of MV50 models, but the Clean is the only one that comes with an attenuator. The others have a master volume. Blah.

It’s supposed to be a 50 watt amp and the attenuator has three settings; Off, 1/10th power, and 1/100th power. So it can be 50 watts, five watts, or 0.5 watts. At 50 watts it is loud. Great googlymoogly it is loud. At 0.5 watts it’s not. It’s a nice, useable at home volume. Well… still maybe a smidge loud, but not bad. I keep it at 0.5 all the time.

But should I? I was complaining the other day about it caving in when I bomb it with signal out of one of my overdrive pedals. Maybe I should set it to 1/10th power and just keep the volume control really low. Hell, maybe I should turn the attenuator off and see if I can use the volume control to keep things manageable. It’s doubtful, but maybe worth a try?

Huh… we’ll see.

Change of subject: Last night I don’t know what I was thinking. Two nights ago I had a memory lapse and got into bed without putting my CPAP mask on. Dumb ass. I realized the mistake before my head was on the pillow and all was right with the world again. Last night I missed two things. I forgot to top off the CPAP machine’s humidifier tank. Oops. It didn’t run out, but it’s close to empty.

I also forgot to charge my friggin’ watch. I finished my 30 minutes of exercise and just forgot to put it on the charger. Next thing I know I’m dozing off and my battery is at 30 something percent. Crap. Well, if it dies it dies. What’s a red head to do? I went to sleep. When I woke up today it was at 12%. It’s good to know that I can go 24 hours without a charge. The downside of course is that it’s been on the charger for about 90 minutes and it’s only back up to 52%. It’s probably not going to be fully charged by the time I have to leave. That’s okay. It’ll be charged enough.

I still need to top off the gas tank (it’s about 190 miles each way. In my hybrid Kia, if I start with a full tank I can get there and back and still have about a quarter of a tank left. I friggin’ love science) and pick up some caffeinated beverages for the ride. After that the only question is music or podcasts? If it’s music I might go with the new live record from The Pineapple Thief. I first stumbled across them a couple of years ago and it’s all good stuff, just nothing that sets the world on fire for me. Their new live record (they couldn’t tour last year so they did one show in an empty room and webcast it everywhere. The new record is that show) does it. It sets the red head’s head right on fire. Great album. I was seeing all this potential and waiting for a record that lived up to it. The last one was close. This new one nails it. Having said that though… I’ll still probably go with podcasts. That’s just kinda where I’m at this morning.

Happy travels, folks!

Road Trip on the Books

It’s official. I’m Vermont bound in the morning. Three hours up, drop off a laptop, three hours back. Sounds like a fun day to me.

The last time we went up there we took the kids to lunch. Covid dictated we get take out and eat it in the car. Someone, I’m not sure who, did not finish their lunch (it wasn’t me, I scarfed my sub down like the universe depended on it). I went to get something out of the car this morning and… oh the smell was powerful. I cleaned out the food and opened all of the windows. I think it’s okay now.

I mentioned before that I started a time lapse video with my iPad before work this morning. It’s still running. I’m going to stop it soon. It’s been over 10 hours. That should be a pretty good chunk of data for the iPad to work with.

I was thinking about time lapses and the road trip that’s coming and trying to figure out a way to have a time lapse running out the window of the car for the whole way up and the whole way back. Can I do that? I’d have to figure out a way to either aim out the window, or balance the iPad against the window. I think it might be more trouble than it’s worth. I wish I still had that little iPod Touch. If I could keep it plugged in that would work. Too bad it died.

Oh well. Probably not worth the effort.

Okay, I need to go blow out the candles. Talk to you later.

Unplanned Road Trip

I may be making an unplanned drive up to Vermont this week. Possibly soon.

Harry’s laptop has suffered a tragic accident and may be on laptop-death’s door. There is a strong possibility that I might have to run a replacement up to him. Not sure yet, but I gave work a heads up I might have to bolt with little to no notice.

If only his school let Freshmen keep a car on campus. He would have already been here and been halfway back by now.

Oh, the webs the universe weaves.

Late Sleeper

I went to bed last night a little before midnight. I woke up once around 6:00 but went right back to sleep. Next thing I know it’s 9:00. Eight hours and 45 minutes of sleep, six hours and 30 minutes of restful sleep, and a sleeping heart rate dip of 30%. That might be the best night’s sleep I’ve had since I started paying attention.

We have a scheduled FaceTime with Harry this afternoon and we’re planning a Great British Bake Off watch party too. Other than that… we’re plans free. So some TV, some World of Warcraft? Maybe some more guitar. How about definitely some more guitar.

I started watching two shows that have pretty completely hooked me. Midnight Mass and Y the Last Man. Midnight Mass took a couple of episodes to grab me, but Y the Last Man was more or less instant. There is one more episode of Titans to go and I don’t know how many more episodes of What We Do in the Shadows. Walking Dead World Beyond is on tonight. That’s okay. Fear the Walking Dead comes back tonight too and I don’t know what to think about it. Season five is still the worst season of television I have ever made myself watch. Season six started out better but spiraled right down the toilet and may have ended up worse than season five. Why am I bothering with season seven? It can’t be worse, can it? At the same time, it can’t be good either, can it?

The Red Sox are not playing today. It’s a travel day. The Bruins finally opened their season last night and they don’t play again until Wednesday. No Boston sports for me tonight. Suddenly that feels weird.

I’m having a bad time with the intermittent fasting this weekend. I thought I was going to be driving to Vermont yesterday so I stopped the fast and had breakfast. Today I slept late and did it again. Two sub 16 hour fasts in a row. I think that was the first time I’ve done that in 13 months.

So what am I getting at with all of this?

It’s going to be a lazy Sunday and I like it. Go play your guitars, kids.