Life Imitates Youtube

Cameron Frye's Day Off

yesterday osita and i were both home sick. sicks days certainly take on a different tone when you have to take care of a little one and yourself.

where in another life i might have flopped on the couch, watched movies (ferris beuller's day off?), and sipped gatorade cocktails yesterday morning found me out and about at 8 am with the baby girl making doctor's appointments...planning our day. like ferris beuller calling me up out of my sick bed, it was clear that alexandra, smoker's cough and all, had bigger plans for us than lying around in the house.

9:40
daddy/baby nap? nope, dr's appointment in brooklyn heights. turns out she's got the croup cough.

10:30
nap time? nope. text message from lori to come by cobble hill high for some visiting. one way too pleasant of a walk through brooklyn heights (how does that neighborhood do it?) and we arrived at school. we had such a good time with the kids and seeing the little learning room lori has made for her kids that we stayed for over an hour! lori said it made her week and it was one of the better points of mine too. apparently the kids think the baby is a cute and that i'm hot. awesome.

12:30
nap time? nope. cheesy organic hot dogs for lunch (would see them later).

1:00
a bottle later and it's, at long last, nap time. down she goes and i barely make it to the bed before i crash too.

1:15
lori calls and inadvertantly wakes me.

1:20
baby wakes...please go back to sleep.

1:30
not going back to sleep

1:40
i call lori and explain that she's not sleeping but is throwing a tantrum trying to get to sleep...head in blankets, etc. lori suggest rocking.

2:00-4:00
and rock we did. normally i'm more of a shush pat in the crib guy but today the rock was what alexandra had cooking for us. together we would nap. sweet babe in my arms and be snoring with my neck snapped back over the back of the rocking chair. these are the moments i know i'll recall a long long time from now. 2 hours later and lori home from work i had to tap out - my neck was so sore from being stuck in that rocking chair.

4:01
alexandra is crowned snuggle champ by outlasting me. she rubs it in by continuing to snuggle with lori.

5:00
off to ikea. you know you've got a little ferris bueller magic working on you when, your sickness cured, you muster the strength to take the ikea bus to red hook. by the way that's the subject for another post.

5:30
sunset at ikea waterfront. kudos to lee weintraub landscape architects.

5:40
$5 meatballs. see also organic hot dogs for results. what was i thinking?

8:00
back in the apartment arms heavy with ikea booty. baby to bed.

9:45
daddy to bed.

what a day! probably not exactly what the doctor ordered. today i'm totally wasted. but amazing how a little girl's spirit can move you. i don't know if you remember the part where ferris rolls back his sick day chart as principal rooney's assistant watches in disbelief. but i could definitely use a hand from him now. zero sick days left in the bank! at least i went out with a bang. love you osita!

pan for vp!

who is this mythical creature? why none other than sarah 'pan' palin.

lori and i watched a youtube clip of s.p. playing flute last night. cross eyed with concentration and playing a fairly elementary piece of music, she was trying to score her way to the top of the miss alaska pageant.

i've seen better flute played, but as palin performances go it's teh best i've seen so far.

we'll see what tonight's vp debate holds in store for her. there's lots of talk about how we will 'meet' palin for the first time tonight, but i must say biden's been pretty quiet lately too.

i can't wait for the kick off tonight. i think to add dramatic effect i'll watch palin while imagining her as our first woman president (sorry for any jinx mccain, ditto obama...you're still my man). picturing her man as 'first dude' and her litter of kids and theirs. reality tv never looked so promising!

green office culture -or- bring your snot to work day

(at right. an image search for "sinus infection")

1 day of sick time left in my sick bank and 4 months of my daughter in daycare left before it refreshes. this is what runs through my head with some regularity (everyone knows that a kid in daycare equals an opportunity to catch every cold in town). but today it was a constant concern - i think cold and flu season arrived at labor day this year.

all my best hopes for a speedy recovery to my "podmate" at work who hacked, coughed, and blew into tissues this morning...our office is near her doctor and she has a big time deadline tomorrow so why not pass the time in the pod rather than dr's office or at home in bed? but seriously, what is it with american office culture and the badge of honor it awards for playing through the pain of sickness? why are sick employees encouraged or even allowed into workplaces? how am i going to coast into the new year with but one sick day when i have to fight a two fronted germ war (my office and alexandra's daycare)?

i know a sick day off is a day's pay without labor and that (due to the stress of a deadline) sickness is often concurrent with important to do's. but what about infecting the rest of the place?

our office and the recirculating air handler that i sit under is a big germ fest. who out there thinks i can make it to january 1 on one sick day? one thing's for sure, should i blow that last day early this fall i'll be playing through the pain till christmas. pass the kleenex.

high stakes hide and seek

this post involves a toddler, a new father, an unguarded spiral staircase in their new apartment, and a happy ending.

his morning like every morning since osa started daycare found me with a 1/2 hour’s sole custody after lori left for work. It’s my favorite part of a weekday – alone time with the baby girl – and a chance to prove to myself and the world (lori) that i know what i’m doing.

We’re in this new apartment which has many boo boo hazards and one granddaddy of them all – a spiral staircase whose landing is a terra cotta tile floor 10 feet below. We keep a baby gate up or the door closed to the room with stair at all times. this morning i went with the closed door.

so when i started our morning routine of washing dishes, entertaining baby, making lunch, dressing baby, hide and seek, monitoring baby i had it all under control. osa was running around like a crazy girl but that's just because she loves to be chased. it's a simple game of hide and seek barely evolved from peek a boo...until this morning.

i was washing a bottle at the back of the apartment when alexandra took off for the front of the apartment - there's but one skinny line of vision from the sink that provides the ultimate peek a boo high for her. when i went to 'peek' she was nowhere to 'a boo'. and i heard footsteps...what?

i put down the bottle brush and took off after her. but she wasn't at the front door. the bedroom door to the stair was closed (phew!) so i started to look behind boxes (we just moved) and in her room but she wasn't there. i totally panicked and then i heard giggling (seriously sounded like that old movie child's play) coming from, of course, behind the closed bedroom door with the stair in it. what a great way for her to teach me that she had learned to turn a door knob (for the first time) slip in and shut a door silently.

i took our lord's name in vain then ripped open the door as she began to take off for the stairs. luckily i caught her grabbed her and hugged her before she got there. we did the rest of the dishes and morning prep with her clutched under one arm as i worked along. the new morning routine, the new solution. i'm going to keep that little mush-mush held tight at least until she's through high school. and buy a surplus of baby gates!

I Stalk Barack

(Pic of a pic. Couldn’t get the stupid thing of my camera phone. Guy with pink arrow is none other than Barack Obama! I happened upon him while passing through The Parker Meridian’s hotel lobby.) Last night, I confirmed my suspicions that Senator Obama and crew were staying at the hotel next door to the building I work in. SWAT teams, assault rifles, secret service agents (complete with red lapel pins – thanks Tom), street closures. It had to be one of the candidates (they were both in town to exemplify how polite they could be around the subject of 9/11) and with all that protection it was more likely Obama than McCain. McCain packs his own pit bull wherever he goes! I may have to save the part where a grin took over my entire face and I yelled “good luck!” and got a wave for another post. AutoCAD calls…

the box - weekend2

weekend 2 and my facebook status was updated to "adam is ready to rock...sheetrock." the sheetrock arrived in the van of leopoldi's hardware owner, joe, who lugged in 10 sheets with me for the right price of free. leopoldi's and their excellence shall be the subject of another post.

more thanks is due to my very good friend brian. a fellow young dad whose son is just months older than alexandra (it would seem months turn to weeks turn to days older as time moves on...they are very good friends too). our wives also speak the same dr. teacher speak (c&t 5000, self ethnography, can you believe so and so's pedagogy pendulum has swung back to phonetics?). they are the rubbles to our flinstone.

anyway in our most manly mandate ever brian and i unholstered our power screw drivers and threw up a whole lot of drywall for a day. we climbed a very short and steep learning curve too. by the end we were really cooking with gas. btw for cutting large openings like doors and windows out we highly rec'd covering over completely with the wall board then cutting out using the rough framing as a template. start with a pointed drywall saw to get the corners started then slip in a board saw and go to town. mad dusty but highly effective and speedy.

a hundred thanks to brian who, on a very hot and humid day, kept me going. the kid exudes enthusiasm and i was honored to share a few 8' long perfect slices so that we could woot, high five, and pound, lock, and shock.

thanks brian and leopoldi's...almost there