Category: family

Max has pink eye. I probably gave it to him. He went to bed last night at eight, like he always does. He woke up at one and was up all night. I got up with him initially, but he, of course, didn’t want me. I got him some juice (spiked with PediaCare – shhhh, don’t tell him), and asked if I could lay down with him instead of going to get Jen. So I went and got Jen. After making sure they were settled and had everything they needed, I went back to bed. It took two hours to get back to sleep. Then, I woke up at 8:30 so I could get Max to the doctor at 9:30. I got ready, got him ready, and headed out the door. As soon as Max realized where we were going, he lost it. “I don’t want to go to the doctor!!! Nononononononononononono!!” He, thankfully, sat quietly in the waiting room, but as soon as it was time to go back, he lost it again. There is no worse feeling than having to bear hug your little boy while the doctor does stuff. It sucked holding him still when he got shots as a little baby, and it sucked this morning holding him still so the doctor could look in his nose, ears and throat and listen to his chest.

We went home, and here I am at work, exhausted. I’m trying to be productive, but it’s just not working. I did get what I needed to get to QA on time, with a couple last-minute added bonuses. I learned some scary stuff about Windows Update (ok, this time I’m switching for real – and, wouldn’t Windows Updates “Checking for updates – no information is being send to Microsoft” be fraud?). I fixed a friend’s Movable Type installation (it’s a lot harder than I remember it being – I think it’s just his hosting company). I should read some more of my Java and JSP books, but I can barely stay awake reading them normally. I should play some more with a random number generator, but that’s boring (I mean, how hard is it to call Random()?).

There are, of course, things I’d like to talk about right now that might actually be interesting. I just don’t have the energy for it.

Max has some bug that makes him sound like Darth Vader. For a three year-old to sound like Mr. Vader is a feat. He’s coughed into wakefulness the past two nights. Jen, being the trooper that she is, stayed up all night with him. He’s OK during the day except for his voice. At night, it gets worse and the coughing starts.

Doing my part to help out, I have become the Family Medicator. I left work early to go get drugs. I got those neat-o new vapo-rub patches for him, some more PediaCare cough and cold and lots of “I have a cold, pamper me” snacks for him. I’m taking him to the doctor tomorrow morning.

As you can see, I’m not really doing much. Max doesn’t like me when he’s sick. He only wants mommy. He won’t let me put him to bed. He doesn’t want to take his medicine, which means I get to play “bad cop” when it comes time to give him his medicine. Yeah, I looo-oove playing bad cop. Let’s hope the doctor gives him something wonderful that clears this crap up soon.

I’m here and I’m sick. Why am I here? I’m not exactly sure. Here I am though, sitting in my office trying not to cough. My throat won’t stop itching or hurting and I didn’t get to sleep until 3:30 this morning. But, I’m here trying to do something productive, and it’s just not coming off.

In good news, I’ve gotten lots of thumbs up on the redesign, and Jodi even linked to me (aww, shucks). I’ve been playing with the stylesheet some to get the menu and body borders to line up right. I think it’s just about right now. I was trying to line them up so I only needed one border on the right-hand side of the body (that’s the div with all the posts in it), but that wasn’t working on the individual archive pages and would leave the left side of the menu without a border. SO, I gave the menu and the body borders on the sides where they touch and moved the right-margin over one and ta-da, looks good in both places.

In sad news, Max is sick too. He’s been working on a fever the past couple days and threw up last night. I’ve been less than helpful because of my sickitude. What’s weird about Max being sick is that after taking Tylenol, he’s pretty much his normal happy self. He’s cuddlier than normal (Max is not big on cuddling normally) and takes catnaps, but other than that, he seems pretty normal. He was sleeping on the sunroom floor, balled up with Lamby, in front of the TV. Jen was sleeping on the couch. My wife is amazing. She’s been getting up with Max in the middle of the night the past couple nights, taking care of him and me and being extremely understanding about all of it. She did get to take a well-deserved five hour nap yesterday afternoon after being up since 2am, but that seems like it’s not enough. She does so much. I love her. I don’t know what I’d do without her.

My mother in law is the best (and how lucky am I that I can say that and actually mean it). In an e-mail to Jen, she said, “duct tape and plastic sheeting is hysterical crap. Now go turn on Blues Clues or something and stay away from the news.”

Way to go, mom!

I think I finally have a plan for the big redesign of this site. Since I don’t really want to invest a bunch of time in learning PHP while I’m still working on getting comfortable with Java, I’m working on doing some funky javascript includes to get content over from the other stuff on this site (photos and the geekery – well, the geekery once I turn it into a blog). I got the photos stuff working last night. The design’s all up in my head and just needs to be translated. It’s funny how completely converted to CSS I am. I used to think in tables and spacer gifs. Now, it’s all divs, floating left and right, width, padding, margin, font-family, etc. It’s a lot more fun than building Byzantine table structures, let me tell you.

I’m still not sold on XHTML and all this validation stuff yet. I know it’s a nice ideal, but at least at work, there are things in XHTML that don’t work in older browsers. There are also things that require more code in XHTML than in old HTML 4.01 Transitional. I’m working on size and speed, not validation, which makes me a bit of a pariah, I know. But, in this huge project you’ll be seeing in a week or so, you’ll notice it doesn’t validate – but it is fast, which is my ultimate goal. For this site, I may try to make it validate, but only as an exercise to see if I can do it.

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I borrowed a bunch of PS2 games from my boss yesterday. Max and I were trying them all out. Of course, every PS2 game (and every PS1 game) has some sort of Loading… screen. Max is really into definitions now, and asked me what Loading means. I told him that the game is stored on the CD and the PlayStation has to read all the stuff off the CD so it can show it to us on the screen. I seemed to accept that, so about twenty minutes later as we were watching another Loading… screen, I asked him what Loading means. He tilted his head to the side like he always does when he’s trying to answer a question and then said emphatically, “It means the blue bar goes shwoooomp!” and used his finger to mime the loading bar. Yeah, he’s three… smart as a whip, but he’s still three.

Ok, one more Max story then I really need to get back to work. As I think I’ve told you, Max can read. This isn’t the story, but it helps to illustrate his reading ability… We went to out local Vietnamese restaurant last week, and Max wanted to read everyone’s fortune from their cookie. He sounded each word out, and only needed help on one (possibility, I think it was). After practicing a couple times, he could read each of them without pausing. The scariest part is that he doesn’t read with a monotone like most little kids. He reads it like he actually knows what it means and puts some emotion and inflection into it. But, my favorite part of his reading is the fact that his S’s and L’s are silent and M’s are B’s. Ok, on to the story… Last night, I was headed upstairs after work to change into my comfy sweatpants and sweater. Max wanted to come too, but I told him to play in his room while I changed. He told me, “Daddy, I can’t. It’s ‘pooky in there!” Of course, I turned on the light for him, and he said, “See? No more ‘pooky!” I’ve been saying it at work under my breath this morning… “Man, I don’t want to do that, it’s ‘pooky!”

You know how I was all eloquent before? Well, this is the second half – what really happened. So, after being stuck at work until after seven (when I was going to take the day off), I get home with a splitting headache and took my lovely and unbelievably understanding wife to Sweetwater Tavern, where my diet took a short vacation while I down half a bowl of spinach and artichoke dip, half a sixteen-ounce prime rib and half a deep-dish apple pie. Yum. Did you realize it’s 15 degrees outside? My fingers are still cold… After all that food creaing an oh-so-comfy lump in my gut, and almost a week of Icelandic weather creating cold-like symptoms… I’m feeling sexy with a capital whoopie, I tell you what. So, I’m sitting here surfing while Jen watches Felicity.

You know what? All of this is OK because we’re sitting here together on the couch in the basement in our warmest sweats, feet touching and stealing little glances at each other. Our marriage rocks because it’s so unlike those horrible contentious things on TV that seem like so little fun. We have fun just sitting next to each other, cracking little jokes, getting giddy laughing at each others laughs, or the silly stuff Max did that day. My wife is the best.

It sounds like a long time ago now, but it doesn’t feel like it. Five years ago today, I got married to the coolest girl on the planet. She laughed at my jokes then and she still does. She still gives me that look that makes me feel like I can do anything. She makes me feel younger than I am. She makes me want to be a better man.

Five years has gone by in what feels like a couple months; but, when I look back, there are all these memories of things we’ve done and well, yeah, there are five year’s worth of memories there. Other than a broken knee and a pretty rough birth , things have been blissful, even when they shouldn’t have been. It’s funny how much can change in five years. We’ve gone from really poor to comfortable. We’ve gone from the sunny dustbowl of Tucson to the (now) frigid greenery of Northern Virginia, from a tiny tiny tiny one bedroom apartment to a townhouse we frequently lose each other in. We went from the two of us playing house in our little box apartment to having a kid to mess up a home we own.

Jen, I would do it all over again in an instant. There are very few things I would change (the whole broken knee thing) and couldn’t imagine my life without you. Happy Anniversary, baby!

The Lawver Family