A word in edgewise

Carole's apparently catching up on yesterday, so I'll just slip in quickly to say today was marked by sleeping in (kids were at Dave's), eggs and sausage for breakfast, grocery shopping at Wal-Mart, fabric shopping at Hancock's (my vest, bridesmaid dresses, flower girl dress for Angelina), creating storyboards for the stupid bird/worm animation project our teenage classmates voted on, taking the kids to McDonald's, finishing Being There, working on the wedding ceremony, and typing this.

Oh, and passing along cool videos like this. Remember: You saw it here first.

Hayes out.

Saturday

The kids woke up insanely early -- just before 5:00 a.m. -- needing to go to the restroom and wanting to stay up. No way, Carole told them. We don't get up that early. They cried and pouted, and half an hour later Alexander said he needed to go to the bathroom again. Angelina seconded him, and Carole said fine, but one at a time. (They like to accompany each other in there.) This occasioned more tears, but eventually they did fall back asleep, and so did we. They finally got up for good around 7:20. Carole started a movie and gave them the usual breakfast fare to accompany their Chitty Chitty Bang Bang watching, then returned to bed. We snuggled/slept for another hour or so, then got up to watch with them before remembering it was an office breakfast day. Coated the kids and headed for the office. It was nice. They were well-behaved, and this time laughed at the persistent man who always tries to get them to laugh.

The afternoon was spent mostly working on the wedding ceremony and, for me, talking to Dad on the phone, first about the situation between Curt and Deb and later about . . . something else. Oh, getting his scanner to work. The ceremony's coming along. The rabbi's first effort is a decent road map; we're basically rewriting it and adding to it.

And then tonight we headed to the house on the spur of the moment to have dinner with Mom and Dad, per their invite. Nice meal, nice pie, and some Firefly. Dad actually said he thinks it's the best television show he's ever seen, and he's only seen three episodes and the two-hour pilot. High praise indeed. Carole got the fabric she needed from Mom to create a mock-up of the wedding dress she's agreed to make, and we took the little box of toys Mom had requested we bring back.

And now we're back and both falling asleep. Well, Carole actually is asleep next to me on the couch with her hand on my leg; I'm merely doing the head bob thing and printing rows of accidental d's.

Time for more water, some Vitamin C, and some apparently desperately needed sleep.

Tag, she's it

I thought somehow we'd dodged the bullet, that I'd managed to catch and shake a germ without it hitting Carole, but here on my second full day feeling basically back to normal (still a slightly sore throat), Carole's fatigued and suffering a slightly sore throat. We drove this morning together, following my first day driving for Skyhook Wireless (the wi-fi mapping) yesterday alone. It went pretty well, and she felt the same during most of it, but on the back stretch started feeling dizzy in the turns and warmed over. So I cut things off a bit early and got her back for a nap before getting the kids. Overall I think the driving will be fine, but it's even more work than I was expecting. If they have people getting done in three weeks with areas on par with the Plano one they've given me, there's some black magic at work.

The kids were pretty good today, but still acting grumpier than usual. They're acting like they're just not getting enough sleep, but we can only control our end on that. They usually sleep at least ten hours over here. Angelina's been giving us varying degrees of trouble with trying new food, usually overly dramatic crying fits, and neither of them is eating enough dinner lately, so we told them tonight that there won't be anymore big snacks after school, and no junk food at all until something nutritious has been eaten. We're done arguing with four- and five-year-olds about eating properly.

I had a 2.5 hour long conversation with Deb Wednesday night, finally calling her back for her missed birthday call to me. It was way past due. We haven't talked in months. Not surprisingly, I guess, the conversation turned to the situation between her and Andrew and Curt and Ginny. It was good to talk to her about it. The next day I called Curt for his birthday, and had a surprisingly long talk with him about the same. He was encouraged to hear how Deb is feeling about it. A reconciliation will occur because it has to occur, but it's going to take time.

This is already longer than I intended, but I kept remembering things from the week. I was surprised to see it had been since Monday that we'd entered anything here. I hadn't bothered thanks to sickness, but I hadn't realized Carole hadn't posted anything either. It took Shana writing today to say, "You guys aren't writing in your journal alREADY!!!" to make me realize how much of a ghost town it'd been all week. Even though it's only secondarily intended for an audience, it is nice to know it's proving informative for folks who're curious. Curt told me he was up to speed on our activities from it, too. Cool beans, as he would say, or at least used to say.

I sent Carole to bed when she woke up from the couch fifteen or twenty minutes ago, telling her I'd be in a few minutes. I think I've already busted that measure.

Another one down

Played with the kids this morning till Dave picked them up around noon. Carole finally cut Alexander's hair after repeated requests, to his increasing displeasure. He said he wanted a haircut like mine, but we all seem to agree that it looked better the other way. Oh well. Lesson learned, and it will long again in a month or less. Both kids woke up early and seemed to show it, as Carole mentioned earlier.

On the whole it was a decent day; it just didn't go the way I was hoping. Between Carole working on the shower curtains she didn't want to do and me working on other random stuff—updating the Gmail address books, installing Freehand, and creating some basic storyboarding sheets for our animation class—plus lunch and watching some Seabiscuit extras, the afternoon got completely away and we didn't end up leaving to run our errands until 5:00.

Stopped at Movie Trading Company to trade in one movie, and ended up leaving with eleven. This time their $3.99 bins were loaded up with some of my favorite films of all time. Unbearable Lightness of Being, You Can Count on Me, To Kill a Mockingbird, Donnie Brasco, as well as great ones that I do want to own like Being John Malkovich and The Hudsucker Proxy. So against my better judgement, I got most of them. (Enough to take advantage of the bulk rate.) $36 I hate to put on the Discover right now, but at $3.99 it makes sense to get them now and not later for four times as much each. Then we headed for Black-Eyed Pea, also against our better judgement, since we knew it would take an hour to get back home and cook anyway. We split a dinner and salad for $7, so it wasn't too bad. Next stop Bed Bath and Beyond to keep registering, then Barnes and Noble next door for an hour or so, even though it kept us out later, just to renew the spirit some before heading home.

Got Brea's pics from Shana's wedding in the mail (neither of the checks we're waiting for, still; grrrr), so we looked at those online after I sent our wedding rabbi the quotes we'd like him to use or paraphrase in the ceremony. Some good pics in the batch, if a little low in picture quality.




And now here I am. I actually meant this to be a "the day happened" precis, but whaddyaknow, I typed more than I intended.

Which just proves I'm right to be with my intended, who I believe is on the other side of the room offering her own take on all the above.

Night, Carole.

I forgot

I should have been in bed hours ago.

Getting to know you

What's a blog without family pictures? Okay, a lot of them, but that's not how this one's going to be. This is for us, and for others who happen to care. (Or who don't, I suppose, and are just bored.)

This is one of the best pictures of all of us taken so far. Wouldn't you know it would be by someone in the apartment office during one of our "picnics" at the Saturday morning breakfast the apartments host once or twice a month. I think the cast of characters is obvious, so long as you're familiar with the names Clint, Carole, Angelina, and Alexander.


While always cute, we all know that that's not their best, so c'mon, let's just get the obligatory cute kid photos out of the way now:

More to come, but that's all for now. See, we have self-control.

A good day

It started auspiciously and kept that track the rest of the day. The kids were in a good mood from the start, joining each other in the bathroom for their daily "the train is leaving" ritual before assuming the position on the couch (Alexander on the right, Angelina on the left) to color. Carole and I snuggled in bed for another twenty minutes, then joined Alexander and Angelina, the theory being that the more time they get with us—both of us—in the morning, the better mood they'll be in at school and consequently all day. It seemed to pay off, as they were in a famously good state of mind all afternoon.

But first there was the interview. Earlier this week, after weeks of not getting any call backs at all on résumés I'd sent out, I got two in one day. On Monday I'd ditched the StreetDelivery.com job that had seemed so promising at first but had revealed itself to be a much more complicated and tedious affair than I'd expected. I was rather dejected about that, considering it was a salaried position at $2200/mo. I just knew if I was bored by it before I started, I'd never last, and I didn't want to waste their time or mine. So Tuesday I sent out a couple more résumés, responding to ads on the ever-fruitful Dallas Craigslist. The first was to Skyhook Wireless, the same company I'd hit up in January for their Plano/Dallas grid. This was a driving job, mapping wi-fi areas by driving every street in the assigned geographic area, and this round they were looking for Fort Worth. I knew the gas expense would be formidable, but thought the profit might be enough more to still make it worth it. I was wrong. Some number-crunching was making it not worth my while.

But there was that other call, the one from the real estate couple. It was an ad for an office assistant, and not much more than that. Turned out to be a couple—a young, Jewish couple—with a fledgling real estate business. What they needed was someone to organize their lives, run their errands—a Guy Friday. I'm not so hot on helping out fledgling businesses anymore, but I know the environment, and it's a lot more freedom, so when the wife called me yesterday, I thought even at only $1500/mo. to start, it was worth checking out. It would be a steady paycheck. (Hopefully.) So even if the wi-fi mapping was falling through, at least I had the possibility of the office assistant position.

Then the mapping folks called back. Twice. First they called to say, "Turns out we still have Dallas. Want that?" I said yes. Then they called to say, "Guess what? We still have Plano, too. Want that instead?" So suddenly I'm back on with them, planning to start Monday on what they were saying is a three-week-ish job. What do I with the office assistant folks?

What any self-respecting job interviewer would do: Offer up my significant other. Actually it was Carole's idea, and they seemed to go for it. Carole went with me to the interview and we sold ourselves as a team. While I’m driving for three weeks, she’ll handle what they’ll need. She can work in the mornings to get a head start on things, and then I can take over most of it, though we’d still be working on it together. Carole's enthusiasm slowly worked its magic, at least on the wife. The husband was a harder read, but lauged a number of times; I just chalked it up to his not speaking English as well as his wife. He seemed merely to be deliberating things as we talked. But we tried to sell them on the idea that they're getting us as a team, and not just that: They're getting the brain trust of which we're a part—the audio/design, the computer/networking, the labor. We find out Monday if they’re definitely going to go for it, but the wife especially seemed ready to try it out.

So that’s roughly where things stand, job-wise. The kids were great the rest of the afternoon. I wasn’t stressed about job stuff anymore, so I walked away from the computer and became the kids’ play toy for the rest of the afternoon. We tried to get Alexander to let Carole cut his hair—even had Carole finish trimming mine (she did most of it this morning) to coax him—but he wouldn’t go for it. Instead we played with toys and they colored and then baked peanut butter cookies when Carole got a wild hair. At the end they took a bath, I blow-dried their hair, and we put them to bed. It really is a neat feeling, and a swelling sense of reality and responsibility, to have the kids show their real affection for me these days. Alexander especially at this point is very open about how much he loves me, offering up plenty of kisses and hugs throughout the day, and it’s something else. Angelina shows it in her own way, which I’m understanding more as time goes by, but she’s definitely still Mommy’s girl, and that’s all right. That’s what time is for. The secret, I’ve found, isn’t much of a secret at all; it’s only a choice—a choice to lay your ego aside and simply put yourself out there for a child to see. They can sense like bloodhounds if you’re being yourself with them, and it does neither you nor them any good to pretend otherwise. It will be very interesting as these kids, and later mine and Carole’s own kids, get older to hear their memories of their childhood, and how they regarded me. Even with my lack of self-awareness so far as my general appearance is concerned—the main reason why my acne never did bother me as much as it could have—I’ve never thought of myself as having a clown personality. With them I do, and gosh darn it, it’s fun. And what shreds of self-consciousness I did have are now, thanks to them, falling completely away. In McDonald’s, at school, wherever, if they need the old man face, or the “doinking” face—where they pop my face lightly (or not) with their fists and I make all manner of screwed-up faces like they’d hit me hard, accompanied by a “doink”—they get it. It’s all about them. And they know it. Which is why I’ve got too little kids I didn’t even know six months ago telling me that they love me. And I love that.

Tonight Carole and I had our homemade barbecue chicken pizza, which somehow doesn’t taste quite like pizza but still tastes great, and watched Seabiscuit. (We also both had a little bit more than usual of her homemade wine cooler concoction, which is probably why I’m sleepier than usual at this time. Well, that and the four hours of sleep last night.) Seabiscuit really is a great show, and being the horse-lover and, as a kid and teenager, jockey-wannabe, Carole loved it as much as I figured she would. We’ll watch some extras this weekend.

Which has officially started, if one goes by the clock. We rarely do, at least when it comes to sleep, but here I am at the end of this, with Carole already asleep on the sofa, so it would seem a perfect stopping point. Good thing, considering the length. Daily entries would help with that. Something to think about . . . .

Hayes out.

First post of the day! Oh, wait . . . .

Welcome. First post to something else on which I'll always be behind. And the first in what shall be a long line of posts that begin "I should have been in bed hours ago." (Perhaps it could be like the Kramer Entrance Counter on the Seinfeld DVDs.)

I have no great ambitions or aspirations for this venture short of keeping a log of the goings-on of me and Carole as our new life together spins up to speed, mainly for us, but also for the friends and family who want to know, corrupt officials who probably already know, and run-of-the-mill stalkers who will no doubt find out soon enough. We're all about helping. By which I mean, of course, that Carole joins me in this endeavor, and let's not kid ourselves: She'll probably contribute to this more than I do.

At the moment, however, a too-firm Beautyrest calls to me. (Quietly, of course, so as to not wake the kiddies on the floor. Obligatory photos of whom shall be following post haste, otherwise known as "as soon as Carole signs on.")

Night, Carole.