A Lesson for Daddy

My boy and I ran errands on Sunday. Got paint for the Dining Room, looked for new Living Room furniture, got the car washed, picked up a few things at Menards.

Menards had a aisle with random children's toys. The boy found 4 in 1 deluxe city, with roads and all sorts of fun stuff for his Hot Wheels. It was on clearance for $12, so I got it for him.

He was super excited to put it together when we got home, so Daddy sat on the living room floor with him and they opened the box. I watched as they dumped the contents, cars, little packages of tracks, trees, traffic signs, etc on the floor. I headed to the kitchen to put some things away and then upstairs.

I hear my husband make this loud gutteral noise I hadn't heard from him before, and then I hear blood curdling screams and cries from my boy.

I head downstairs to see what had happened. I found the 2 of them in the kitchen, My husband holding my son and holding my son's hand up in the air. The water was running.

I saw blood and pinkish-blood water dripping down my husbands arm and down my son's arm.

"What happened?"

"It's ok, it's ok. It's just a little cut. He's ok." my husband replied, panting.

"How did he get cut?"

"I gave him my knife to cut open the packages."

"You did what? You gave him a knife?"

"Yeah, my Leatherman."

"Huh?"

At this point, my son was sitting on the counter while my husband continued to hold his hand up. My son was sobbing and asking for his mommy.

I crawled under the arms in the air, and hugged my son and patted his back and told him he would be ok. I continued to hug and soothe him.

My husband walked around to my other side and asked me to hold the boy's hand up. I obliged. I'm still bent over, hugging my child who is sitting on the counter, only now I am holding his hand in the air too.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my husband moving funny. So, I turned my head to look at him. I watched a series of weird head twitching, stumbling side steps and the next thing I know he is falling backwards. His head and shoulder crash into the counter and he falls to the floor.

I look in disbelief, my boy has stopped crying and is staring at his father on the ground. I'm standing there, looking back and forth at my son, who's hand I am still holding in the air, to my husband who just fell to the ground. What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? My son is cut and my husband is lying on the floor.

I reach to my husband (still holding my son's hand up) and grab his arm. I make my way to his hand and start shaking him, saying his name over and over again.

He opens his eyes.

"Dan, Dan, Dan, are you ok. Honey can you hear me?"

"Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. What are you talking about? What's wrong? What happened?"

"You passed out. Or had a seizure. Or a stroke or something."

"I did?" He looks around, and sees that he is on the floor. He gets up off the floor. He is pale as a ghost and panting.

He reaches in the fridge for water. I turn back to my son and notice that the cut has stopped bleeding. I look at my husband again.

"Did you just splash water on your face?" I ask.

Panting, "No, why?"

"Oh my gosh, you are covered with sweat then."

He stands there and steadies himself. I go back to my son. I take the paper towel off his finger and get ready to put Neosporin on the cut and wrap it.

I look at my husband again and and he is so pale he is almost green. I send him to sit down with water and a granola bar.

I wrap up my sons finger, give him a Tylenol, pick him up and head to the living room to hug him on the couch for a while. My husband is laying on the floor. Not passed out, but still green.

After a few minutes, he gets up, his color is normal and he joins us on the couch.

I asked if he thought it was a good idea to give him the Leatherman.

"No."

$9,000 Charmin Ultra

On Wednesday, January 12th at approximately 11:00 am, my husband left for the grocery store to pick up some toilet paper. We were out. At 11:58 am, he arrived home and caught a glimpse of a black sleeved arm and a black shiny thing.

It took a minute to register, but that black shiny thing appeared to be a TV and it was being carried through our neighbor's fence. Quite certain it wasn't our neighbors Harry or Wanda, my husband got out of his truck and yelled "what the f*ck are you doing", and the black sleeved arm dropped the TV and ran. My husband proceeded cautiously to the dropped TV. He thought to himself..."gee, that looks like our TV". (shit) He looked toward the back of our house and saw foot prints leading up to our back door. (shit) He knew the foot prints were not his because it was fresh snow, and he had not taken garbage out yet. (shit) He walked to our back door to discover that it was wide open and damaged. (shit) It had been kicked in. (shit) He grabbed a knife out of the drawer in the kitchen and walked through the house. (shit) Thankfully, there was no-one inside.

He called the police. He called me. Then he started looking around the house. Initially he noticed the TV (broken and in our neighbors back yard), the Wii, his laptop, my laptop and his laptop backpack were missing. I arrived home, and thankfully the police were still there. I noticed that our Christmas cash was missing (somewhere between $300-400), digital camera, digital camcorder, the Wii controllers and nunchucks, Wii games, 3 of my Coach handbags (that were hanging on the coat rack in the foyer...I know...STUPID), my Kindle, some jewelry.

The thief stuffed the laptop backpack (which I went to the ends of the earth to find and spent a hundred bucks on) with the missing items. The laptop backpack was purposefully big enough to carry a 17" laptop and school books and accessories. It was HUGE and sturdy...perfect for a thief.

Over the next day or so we noticed that our "spare" cell phones were gone. The ones I kept in my desk drawer as back ups incase something happened to our current ones. Lightwave 3D was IN his computer disk drive, his scientific calculator was in the backpack, AND a mug he got in Germany - about 25 year ago - was missing. The mug was filled with miscellaneous treasures and trinkets...and his SOCIAL SECURITY CARD!

So, now, not only do we have to deal with personal property theft, we have to deal with possible identy theft. I've reported it to the police, the SS office, the Credit Bureaus. I've changed all of my usernames and passwords that may have been prefilled on various websites on my computer.

And while I was changing those usernames and passwords, I completely forgot what new login I had just set up for our bank accounts. I ended up getting locked out of our account for 3 days because I kept trying versions of what I thought I changed it to.

I didn't eat for 2 days following the event and felt broken. I hated being in my house. I hated not being in my house. I slept with my son for the first 2 nights, for fear of an intruder taking him or hurting him. I have allowed him to crawl into our bed for several nights since the intrusion.


We decided not to tell our son what had happened. We didn't want to scare him. We figured the only items he would notice were missing were the tv and the Wii. We made up a story about our cats wrestling (and boy do they wrestle, WWFF {World Wrestling Feline Federation}) behind the tv and accidentally knocking it, and the Wii, off the tv cabinet. He fell for it.


He did ask his dad why he had a different laptop (because we replaced it the next day). His dad said that he took his other one to school and traded with this one. He fell for that too.


So, the items missing total roughly $9,000. Our insurance company was absolutely wonderful and fast with the claim. State Farm rocks.

Most of the items taken is just stuff. I am sad about the digital photos on my laptop. I did save all of my photos to disk about 6-7 months ago, so I'm only missing 6-7 months worth and a lot of them are posted on facebook, so I can get some of them back. The camcorder had the boys holiday program on it. I'm sad about that. But I have photos.


My dad gave me a diamond channel set ring 13 years ago after his double bypass heart surgery. When he returned home from the hospital, I basically moved back in with my parents while he was recovering. I helped him get out of bed and get dressed every day. I helped him up and down the steps. I made him do his lung exercises. I made him eat. You see, he listened to me. He wouldn't do these things for my mom. He called me his Drill Sargeant. After he recovered and was feeling good, he and my mom got me a 1 carat diamond channel set ring as a thank you. Completely unnecessary, as I would do absolutely anything for my parents, but it was very important to me. They picked me up at the airport, after a trip out to Arizona to visit my then boyfriend (now husband) and surprised me with it in the airport. I was so touched I silently cried in the back seat all the way home. And now...it's gone.


Sold for crack.



We spent over $200 securing the doors and windows on the first floor. Another $200 on wood blinds for the front bay window - in lieu of the sheer curtains that hung there.

We spent $655 having an alarm system with cellular communication installed.

This has been one of the most miserable experiences of my life.

And certainly the most expensive Charmin Ultra in the world.

A year in review

Well, I guess it's an annual thing now, plus I really want to try and blog more than 5 times this year, so here goes...our year, twentyten:

My boy turned 4
I turned 40
My husband turned 41

I got a 5% raise
Husband is still collecting unemployment, despite 2 stupid roadblocks by the repugs
Have received many compliments regarding my work and have been invited to sit down in my bosses office (very unusual)

Went to North Myrtle Beach
In the summer
Wore a bathing suit in front of people
In 100 degree weather
Watched my bff get married for the 2nd time

Was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia
Started taking Cymbalta
Have no neck pain, little back pain, no GI issues, no headaches, no painful skin, few mood swings, the list goes on
I feel great
I feel like a WHOLE new person

Husband is an Honors Student, loves Math and building Digital Circuits
He is enrolled at UT for Grad School
Hopeful employment will come quickly after graduation in the spring
His Professors at Owens continuously ask him if he is going to TEACH after graduation

My mom suffered chest pains and it was determined it was not her heart but the worthless Gall Bladder
My dad suffered halucinations, uncoordination, uncontrolled out of body experiences and it was determined it was his sugar pills (diabetes) and dehydration (from having the flu). Medicine has been adjusted and he is feeling great.
My boy had croup a couple times, but his Ped has assured me it is not asthma and he will grow out of it

I did not renew my membership to Lifestyles for several reasons
I found it an absolute pain in the ass to get there
I think the facility is filthy
I hate the fact that overweight girls work there and eat at the front desk
I decided to start walking in the morning and then took a stab at jogging
I wasn't very good at jogging, and never really jogged further than a mile
The mornings got too dark and since that was my only real time to do it, I gave up
I will exercise again
Someday

My husband and I celebrated 11 years of marriage
We had some deep heart to heart conversations and are closer than we have ever been
He is truly the love of my life

My boy moved from the Preschool to the Pre-K room
He is very smart and easily bored with school
He aced both 2010 skills assessment tests

We are in the process of remodeling our upstairs bathroom
The tub enclosure was ripped out and a claw foot tub was installed
Floor is partially tiled and wall surrounding tub is tiled
Walls are painted

I know there's more, but I have been fooling around with this thing off and on for a month, so I'm finished.

What awaits us in 2011....