9:06 AM Warzone or Reason #14 for why I love my wife

So my wife was out of town for a few days which left me in charge of taking care of the children. Before we begin, I need to disclose that currently I am working a 3 - Midnight shift training. In general, my wonderful wife is the morning provider, and I take care of the evening meals for our kids because she works at crazy early hours of the morning, like 8AM or earlier! I shudder at the thought.Working overnight, I have a need to sleep through the morning so I can have my best hours when I'm teaching a class. Also, I know that since I'm not Mom, there's a level of "we can get away with this" and "you aren't doing it like Mom does" going on.

We have 5 children: Edgar the Older Brother, Ellie the Little Princess, Agnes the Rat, Loki the Kingpin and Puck the Terrorist. Now the night prior there was a bit of a thunderstorm around the time I went to bed - around 3AM. If you do the math, it's actually going to bed early if you're working that late normally.
Now, Edgar the Older Brother is a giant wuss when it comes to thunderstorms, and he thinks the only way to be safe is to shake uncontrollably, and climb up your face to where you notice and protect him. Since he was already in his crate for the night, he had to tell me all about how he was going to die and rhythmically shake the squeaky part of his crate to match his whiny point. Eventually, he stopped enough so everyone could fall asleep. This was probably around 4:15 or so.

At 9:06AM, the house was on fire.

I awoke out of a peaceful, solid sleep to the news and a flurry of panicked pounding on, and yelling outside, my bedroom door. Loki the Kingpin was on patrol while Puck the Terrorist screamed "BLOOD AND FIRE ARE FALLING FROM THE SKY!!!! EVERY MAN FOR THEMSELVES!!"

This, naturally, caught the attention of Edgar the Older Brother and Ellie the Little Princess, who immediately chimed in "We wanna play too! Fire and Blood is exciting! Why does Puck get to have all the fun?"

Then my senses came to me, I remembered all of our children are four-legged furry things, and my wife, who I love and missed dearly, was not around to save me from the impending hell-borne collapse of my house on my family. It was just breakfast time. Unfortunately, I'm all Night of the Living Dead at this time, so here's my recap, with the underlying drone of "braaaaaaains" the whole time. Just plug it in yourself as you read.

Awake. Roll out of bed. Try to get feet down first. Shuffle to crates. Release the hounds. Open the bedroom door. Terrorist and Kingpin scatter as hounds give chase. Stumble through the house to let the hounds outside. Release the hounds. Terrorist is on the counter, screaming orders. Kind of like the vietcong leader in that famous russian roulette scene in The Deer Hunter, only with way less face slapping and guns.

Pick up cat food dishes. Place them on counter. Take Puck off counter. Thank Puck for his help. Get canned food from fridge. Avoid tripping over The Kingpin. Scoop Puck's dry food from bin. take Puck off counter, thank him for his help. Place Puck's food in the dish. Cover food with canned food so The Terrorist doesn't push the dish on the floor. Scoop Loki's food. Avoid tripping over The Kingpin. Take The Terrorist off the counter. Avoid his helpful claws.

By now, the hounds have been outside for a few minutes. Since it rained the night before, and Edgar doesn't like dealing with wet feet, he is now howling his displeasure to all the neighbors. "Sounds like the Floro's are butchering dachshunds again Millie." "Oh Roger, those awful people! And to think I gave them a green Jell-O mold when they moved in. Green, Roger!"

Meanwhile, Ellie is mopping up the yard with her wirehair and 2 inch stature. At least, I assume she is. Ellie has the desire to show how she can get under anything (she will walk under the cats just to mess with them), and anything includes the fences in the back yard and all points beyond.

But I can't worry about that now. In my moment of distracted hesitation, The Terrorist has taken a glass hostage near our sink. He's now pacing back and forth, nudging it closer to the edge of our new speckled green Corian counter top, escalating the volume of his list of demand to painful heights. If I was more awake, we'd have the makings of an epic, botched bank robbery turned hostage situation negotiation scene if I was Denzel Washington, and The Terrorist was the shaky gun-toting masked assailant. "Put DOWN the Gun" "I'll Do it man. DON'T PUSH ME!" "DROP IT NOW" "AAAAAAHHHHHHH"

Meanwhile, The Kingpin sits on the table and smiles. All is according to plan.

I finish preparing the cats' food as The Terrorist has moved on to more intense tactics to get the food on the ground faster. For the best example, watch the brown striped cat with the white belly for the first 30 seconds.

 

 Ambitious little bugger climbing up people and furniture to make his point? Now instead of a tiny cute kitten, picture this guy.

 The Terrorist, while The Princess sleeps.

Edgar continues his ballad of sorrow. Now from round the corner of the house I hear the bearded bark of The Princess. She likes to join in whenever there's a good amount of noise from The Older Brother because she wants to be like him. At least I know she's not in Toledo. Yet.

Open the door. Call off the hounds. Catch them on the way in with the towel. The Princess would like to inspect the cat food with her face. The Terrorist would like to inspect her skull with his teeth in the process. Separate impending disaster. Feed dogs. Set up Living room to pen in dogs, and let me sleep again.

Edgar gets it. Time for tunnel and sleep after meal and potty? Sign him up. Ellie says it's time to play with The Princess. Everyone come play with me! Now! My arms are washed clean within seconds of my hand dozing off while playing with her, prompting more play time until the next nod off.

Right around the time everyone settles down enough for me to stop droning "braaaains" and start drooling in to my pillow again, The Kingpin Strikes.

I'm certain the mail from yesterday is better served on the kitchen floor. But this draws the growly attention of Edgar, and the Princess is ready to play again. Puck now sounds his schoolhouse fire alarm "I'm full now?" song to the toilet. (It sounds like "brrrrrrrrrringgoow?" only it gets progressively louder after the first 3 verses, and there's delightful call and response bridge where he handles both parts)

There are many reasons why I love my wife. Her morning routine for the furballs is reason #14.

Trying not to notice the lint or Do you know the writings of Shan Yu?

Once again, time makes fools of...well me. It is amazing what things fall by the wayside when life demands more attention than time allows. This post will likely be more introspective than the blog's original intent, but to be fair, I always expected I would default to pushing the boundaries of omphaloskepsis with this tiny portion of the internet. So, first, my due diligence to my premise.

I have barely been to the gym, but I have gone more than once a month if you average the entire year. -1

I spent the majority of March and April averaging way more time at work than spent in my own house. -3

I have not gained or lost noticeable weight. Even

I have earned myself some "ab dimples". Meaning I have an ab, and it has darts of definition directly near my ribs. Bonus point, I also did it without piles of situps. No, I'm not selling exercise equipment for 12 easy payments of $19.99(though maybe I should...). No, you may not see them for fear of scaring them off. +2

I have accomplished 0 words of personal writing. -2

Final score is -4. Kinda lame. Could be way worse.


2011 in many ways has pushed me to be...well something. Allow me to clarify the second half of my pretentious titling as it will position the remainder of these thoughts.

I was approximately 3 years too late to jump on the Browncoat Bandwagon and be outraged at the mismanagement of the Joss Whedon show Firefly. Similar to Bruce Timm and Paul Dini's Batman Beyond, Firefly was a show in the wrong place, wrong time, being pointed towards not quite the wrong audience. Firefly was the first of many to fall to the curse of Summer Glau (I'll miss you The Cape). Firefly also introduced me to the wonderful yet under-appreciated Alan Tudyk, whom I'd later see replacing Hank Azaria as Lancelot in Spamalot. It brought the cult following of Nathan Fillion's work to light (because Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place was collectively forgotten by everyone. Even Ryan Reynolds.)

The episode "War Stories" begins with some references to a semi-fictional ancient warlord known as Shan Yu. In the Firefly universe, Shan Yu was a heartless mass murdering general, who "fancied himself a warrior poet." This Shan Yu wrote "live with a man 40 years…share his house, his meals, speak on every subject…then tie him up and hold him over the volcano’s edge.  On that day, you will finally meet the man." 2011 has been both my rope and my volcano.

I have pushed and been pushed, striven, strained, stressed with and without need, raised bars, dropped balls, and in the end I have spent time holding myself over the volcano. If I have finally met the "man" that is me, I still have a lot of growing up to do. I hope that the petulant, arrogant, miserable, petty, vindictive child that has been uncovered is more an uncomfortable reaction to heat exposure than what I am after any layer of defense I have has been melted or charred away.

I'd love to say "I know it's not just me." In fact, I originally wrote that exact sentence. I have plenty of reasons and factors and explanations and evidence that so many things are not my fault. But what good does that accomplish for me in my quest for self improvement? In the interest of SCIENCE I have to consider that, in fact, everything could be my fault.

This theory does not excuse the external factors that have bound me this far. While I search for some self-perspective, I will not simply ignore or forget what decisions and actions have influenced me, but rather I will try wholeheartedly to make my decisions, actions, and reactions be a better representation of who I want to meet the next time I encounter myself. I need to take inventory of the lessons I've learned in the last few months, and find out what I have (aside from great hair).

If nothing else, I still have a need to just...do better. I think that's lesson number 1. When I stopped trying to do that, just about everything else fell apart. I'll add it to my list, but not my blog title. Self-aware(ener) is just too far. Wish me luck!

BUUUH! or Bloggening 2, Electric Boogaloo!

The Brief Unexpected Unintended Unfounded Hiatus! is over. [ED: The editor would like it known that BUUUH! is the noise made when a human brain grinds to a halt.]

In super short recap, I've been working out. I continue to keep up with it. So far, I've not lost a ton of weight, but I've been able to lose a little and not change the rest of my life too much, which is great.

However, I've not been keeping up on the "and written(er)" aspect of my declaration of reformation. So let's consider this an addendum:

Resolved(ish): I will continue to dump my thoughts and progress to this electronic void on a more regular basis. Like weekly. (ish)

Work has exploded in its quantity and lack of rationality. This was expected, but that doesn't make it easier. It also doesn't make for a valid excuse for cutting off half of my goals. Getting up at a time when even birds are like "What're you, drunk?" might be valid. But I haven't been doing that for too long. Just the past few weeks.

I have a longer, more interesting series of thoughts that have been milling around for a few weeks that I should put to e-paper. Aside from that I really want to start holding up the other end of the bargain, and I need to get to work on that if I'm going to meet my goal. It's been hard though when I've had a bedtime that's earlier than when I was in 7th grade.

So again in summational summarizing: I'm back though I never left. I'm starting though I never stopped. I missed entertaining 5 additional people and having the opportunity to dump my amalgamated thoughts into a more coherent string of words.

Alright. Enough screwing around. Let's get back to it. Again. From the beginning. But not really.

For Reals.