Head Shot!

My parents left me home at 7 with my brother, 12 alone. We watched this movie.

I thought of this tonight as I was turning on a movie for the kids. It involves cartoon ants and bugs and has probably nothing that would warp a kid's mind.

I turned out okay... we hope. :)

What The Hell?

So much going on in this picture, I don't know where to begin.

Time Warp...1988

I spent the weekend with Elijah at my mom and dad's. What a weekend, especially with the seizure and all. Every doctor and everything I read tells me that febrile seizures are not uncommon and that kids grow out of them but dude... freak... me ... out! Holy Shit... I never got to rest like I planned too. I figured, I'd have him down there... he'd run around... Oma and Opa would be playing with him and I could chill for an hour or two on Sunday morning sleeping in or something...

My parents moved me from a big city with hundreds of thousands of people to this desolate little town of 200 people when I was 14. This ironically was the first night I have spent in there has in roughly 9-10 years. Wow!! Things I forgot. I stayed in my old room on the top floor. This was a cool room because it was the highest room in the house and I had my own bathroom. It was really private but I was probably stuck up there for my Baritone Horn/Tuba playing I was doing back in high school and college. I don't know what I sounded like downstairs but I was stuck up there for a purpose with all the practicing. It must have been loud. I wasn't liked so much in the beginning when we first moved there. Music became my refuge... my outlet... I'd blow those horns to make them sound like nothing else before. There is an feeling of peacefulness when I walk into that room... A box of my old hot wheel cars was outside the attack door that the other grand kids have played with over the years. I browsed through them to see if my two favorites where in there: Porsches... a white and a black one. Both RS's I believe...

To this day, my parents house does not have central heat and air. I was reminded of this this weekend. It was chilly yesterday afternoon so the house was cool. My parents are experts at building fires and accumulating firewood for their stove. They had a nice roaring fire going when I got in from the hospital. It was nice...

But I was reminded of how really out of civilization they are. Their internet speed blazes along at a whopping 31.2 kbps on dial up. Satellite TV is a new concept and they seem like they "just got it". My cellphone had faster internet speeds to see this blog, check email, etc. It is just so backwards to me. I can walk down the street with my iPod and pick up an open WiFi here in Sactown to check my email but out there... nothing. The nearest neighbor is a close 300 yards away. Everything is just far away as far as convenience. I left Elijah at 7pm Saturday night to run 15 miles up the road to Starbucks so I could be on the internet at a decent speed to collect all my work stuff. Posting my blog yesterday was a chore, watching my mom's computer, which has a decent amount of speed, try to upload text to blogger.

But spending the night in my old room was odd, especially with Elijah. The bed was in the wrong spot... It used to be over by the other wall and I was reminded why at 5:45 when the sun came up. The room is also bigger than any single room in this house which also shocked me because I felt it was so small growing up. The smells though, were the same. That house never smelled like my first home, there is always a smell there to me that seems to remind me when I am there that I am only visiting. Same smell I smelled 20 years ago at 14.

Then there was the bathroom. This huge bathroom with a toilet in the middle of the room. You feel really isolated and almost naked doing your business there. The cool thing though about this toilet though is when you are taking a leak, you can see the lake. But I think the shocking thing was the mirrors in the room. For the 8 years I lived there until I finally moved out (the 3rd time...LOL) I entered that bathroom every day. Nothing has changed. The fittings, the mirrors and the sinks. But the mirrors... so many times I had looked at myself in these two huge mirrors to shave or brush my teeth or something. What was weird is that you have this memory of yourself and these mirrors and what you looked like in them in the frames and how much different I look now 20 years later. I didn't seem to age so much those first 8 years but the last 12... sort of took it's toll I guess.

I forgot how many clocks made noise in their house. 11 o'clock.. tick tock... I thought all night long as Elijah gasped through his snotty nose while laying on my chest all night upstairs. I didn't sleep much but it was very peaceful for me to hold Elijah like that for me last night. I love my little boy, far beyond my own imagination...

It was nice to have my mom make pancakes this morning. She just bragged the whole time how she doesn't make pancakes or breakfast for my dad anymore but the cupboards are lined with Bisquick. My poor mom though, she always tries to reconcile and/or revise history for the sake of her own sanity. All the same stories I had heard hundreds of times I had heard again this weekend. I kept having to either finish them for her or cut her off because I felt they were stupid and had no point. I guess I am mean for doing that but my mom I think never wanted to live there. My mom and dad are great. Been together going on 43 years now. Pretty much perfect raising us and stuff. But something about being out there always bugs my mom. It always relates to the vastness of the yard which used to be 10 acres until they sold 5 a few years back. It's the lack of everything out there, like trees at first (my dad took care of that) or the lack of the neighborhood comfort you might get living in a city. My mom was always a suburbanite... I think I put my finger on it finally. She is forever lonely out there without actually being alone. Puzzling if you think about it? To my dad though... living there is Mecca. Give him his trees, his garden and his tractor and he'll never stop moving. No matter driving 40 minutes to work each way. He doesn't care. The weather is great most of the year and he's got his stuff to take care of. We took Elijah out on the tractor. Totally unsure but I bet the next time he sees the tractor he'll want a ride. My dad has only 200 hours in 20 years on that tractor, 100 of which are for driving the grand kids around.

I left at 4 o'clock today. Elijah's rough weekend was made easier though even though I was immensely stressed out. Never got to shut the switch off this weekend and I got a rough start in the morning... I gotta make the time to take care of myself...

Check Your Rearview Mirror

So I took Elijah out to the country to spend the night with Oma and Opa. He has this little cold that I talked about yesterday, where he "faked" mom into leaving him home.

This morning I had got him some kiddie Sudafed type liquid medicine at Walmart when we went out for our Saturday morning latte, pastry and car wash. So we gave him a dose this morning and I gave him another at 1 when I got to Oma's. The left to VS for some soy milk.

10 minutes later... as I am heading into town... I hear Elijah coughing... but it was a weird cough... I look in the rear view: Eyes rolled up back into his head, white foam coming out of his mouth... convulsants...

Shit I thought... What a run! Between the roof collapsing from the rat chewed pipe, the storm blowing glass onto the Porsche, the storm window being blown out... the fence... the cat making a repeat trip to the vet for the asthmar, the electrician... now this.

So I called home yelling at the answering machine until DW picked up. Then since I was right there... I ran into the fire dept. driveway. No one there?!?! WTF? Elijah "looked normal" as opposed to the blue color he turned during the last seizure. Still not acknowledging me. I had him up in his car seat. I stood up scratching my head... Fire station... paramedic ambulance right there (like 300 yards away), where are these people? Fuck it... 911

Then suddenly, paramedics came in like a minute, the garage doors open to the fire dept and I had like 15 dudes checking out the Porsche and my son in his seat. Elijah was just hot. I had pulled clothes off and assisted the paramedics strapping oxygen to him. In all...12-14 minutes, Elijah came out of it. Never cried. Just had a look on his face like, "Hey fire trucks!!" They gave him a stuffed dinosaur and I signed my life away. We were 15 miles from the hospital so I chose to drive up myself.

I took him in and waited. He was real hot. They checked his vitals and his temp was 102. Wow... a kid who was throwing rocks at the house, wicked sick minutes later was just too crazy. I had of course was in a minor state of panic but felt stable when I took him into the emergency room. They took care of him. Motrin to bring down the temp. Chest x ray. They gave him Benedryl to decongest him.

Basically... the doctor thought the Sudafed crap accellerated his body temp and that chance again for another febrile seizure. He'll grow out of it eventually but...wow!!!

What's next?

He's sleeping on the couch... peacefully... Poor little guy. Rough day.

Home Alone With Elijah

Kids Songs Sung By Rock Stars - Watch more free videos

ROFL!!!

Elijah "faked" being sick so I got him home alone. I did it. I survived. He napped for two hours. We went to the park. He ran up and punched a kid in the face who was being an ass. The kid deserved it. He was 10. I mean it was a closed fist, which is a new thing this week. Right to the cheek.

He didn't drop a deuce.... (yet...)

The above video is the funniest thing I have seen in a long time. Enjoy.

When Elmo Visits: The Dark Side of Parenting

Yep... Elijah turns a year and a half and Sunday and we are corrupting his young life...

Elmo videos...

Netflix and Elmo are a bad combination. So we got one that talks about hands... DW flips it on and holy crap... Elijah can be a wild child, running around the house, getting into shit he doesn't need to and chasing the cats... but as soon as the music starts and it's Elmo's world, Elijah stops in his tracks and the world stops. He's fixated. We could leave the room, hell, even go outside... and Elijah is sitting there glued. The world has stopped and he is gone...

What is it with Elmo and the kids? I watched it for 15 minutes and it sounds like one of my buddy's at work from South Philly after 7 or 8 beers. Elmo actually laughs at shit and in a way he his making fun of it. There was this one seen and he was like, "This is my fish Dorothy" and the goldfish just sat there and Elmo gave a little stoner laugh at it like, "Heh". I almost fell over because in a way those belly busting laughs sounds like a bit of Mickey's with some Jack Daniels chasers. Wow!!! Maybe I can finally take up World of Warcraft.

Father and Son go to Oma and Opa's...

Elijah discovers fire!

Yeah... Elijah loves Opa and Oma's house now. Now since he has discovered the sheer pleasure of burning piles of brush. The sinister laugh and exciting applause he wailed as he danced in the smoke was a key sign that he was having the bestest time:


Here's some more great fun as Opa burned more leaves and twigs from the Eucalyptus pile. It was cool man... He had a cool day running out on the "farm". (LOL Calaveras Country... a farm, heh heh)



A distant shot of Elijah with his newfound bestest friend Opa. Next time he wants a ride on the tractor.

Two Short Stories...

Two Stories

I don't know if these are really stories.

But quickly,

Number 1... Flying home from Denver today I was listening to my iPod on shuffle. So... you know how the pilot likes to get on the horn and tell you stuff like in a sinister yet calm voice reminiscent of your dentist,

Good afternoon folks from up here in the cabin. We have reached our cruising altitude of 37,000 feet so I am going to go ahead and turn off the seat belt fastened light. We had a bit of trouble getting out of Denver but I can assure you that we'll pick up the pace and get you into Sacramento 4 minutes late.

So we're like flying along and my iPod is shuffling through a mix of the Doors and Dave Matthews and shit, and I got my "free" ginger ale as I always do to calm my "nerves" flying in a sheet metal tube at 37000 feet. And the flight goes quick for a two and a half hours... And so my iPod is pumping along and the captain gets on at the end,

Well... we have began our final decent. So (DING!) I need you all in your seats as I have turned on the fastened seat belt light.

And I was half asleep and I wake up when the dude says that and my iPod had shuffled to Jon Bon Jovi's "Blaze of Glory" and as soon as he said "final decent" all I heard from my iPod was,

I'm goin' do-o-o-o-o-o-o-own in a blaze of glow' ry

All anyone wants to hear as their plane is going down...

Number 2,

I took DW, Elijah and Goofy my sister in law out to dinner at Paesano's here in Sacramento. It's a cool place here in downtown Sac that makes pizza and pasta but in a way that sets it apart from a chain store like Pizza Hut or whatever. Plus they serve alcohol. The SIL and I split a bottle of Boeger's Barbera. Good freaking wine, man seriously. I hadn't seen Elijah in a couple of days so it was good to get out. They brought Elijah some pizza dough to play with. Which eventually... we were all playing with as well.

So the meal came and went. And we finished our wine and DW was holding Elijah. So I grab the dough and start playing with Elijah. I am the master juggler with one piece of dough. I tossing it around... throwing it in the air. Making it go in circles near Elijah's face, then BAM!!!

Oh Fuck!!

I accidentally jam my hand into Elijah's face poking my finger into his eye. Pretty hard too. I immediately feel like shit. Here I am gone for a couple of days... I hear stories of him asking for "Papa" by the door and I accidentally jam him with my forefinger. So I pick him up from my wife's arms. I hug him. And you know babies... They get hurt, you pick them up, you hug them 30...45 seconds go by... You look at them to see if they are okay. And there eye's are squinted, the mouth is wide open... face is purple as the wine left in your glass.... Nothing is coming out. Just a purple face with a mouth wide open, like me frozen in the picture above with out the sarcastic expression. Time has officially stopped because Elijah hasn't taken a breath yet. Then all of a sudden, the gates of hell open and all you hear is "WAHHHH!!!!!!" I hug him and kiss him and he doesn't stop crying of course...

I felt so bad... He's all good though... trashed the SIL's house with water.